“Change management” scares me.  It’s like selling a poorly designed product or service.  Someone has to twist your arm to buy it. We have to manage change when it’s not attractive.  Change management becomes code for convincing others to change. The less attractive the change, the more change management required.  It smacks of hierarchical thinking [...]

Globalization intensifies competition.  It can seem like every day some competitor is offering a new feature or product that you don’t have.  The natural tendency is to fight back by adding what’s missing to your product or service.  What sets the above companies apart is they win by offering less. Don’t go into Trader Joe’s [...]

In the wider world, leadership and leading change are virtually synonymous.  With increased competition, the ability to change rarely happens as fast as we’d like. For example, how many times have you: Solicited input to define a change only to find that while everyone supports change, there are multiple opinions of what it should be [...]

What’s the most critical challenge facing CEO’s in 2010?  According to 1,500 CEO’s interviewed for IBM’s 2010 Global CEO study, the answer is instilling creativity into their organizations. I’d suggest they consider creating an attractive platform that potentially accesses  thousands of creative people from outside their organization. By shaping their businesses around an attractive platform, [...]

Apple and Google stand out as two highly successful Silicon Valley gorillas at the top of their game. In the past, their products were complementary but they’re now doing battle in mobile phones, mobile search, digital books and the new tablet market.  Both companies target individuals over corporations yet how they grow and reach wider [...]

Coming out of the Great Recession we’ve entered a period of deleveraging and belt-tightening that some call the “New Normal”.  Clearly there have been fundamental changes in the global economy but changing economic conditions alone understates what constitutes the New Normal.  There’s a wider New Normal to consider. First, the projected GNP growth for developing [...]

I get nervous when companies get excited about benchmarking.  I understand why they do it.  If you’re lagging, benchmarking defines a target and improvement path to catch up.  But that’s exactly why I get nervous.  At best, benchmarking helps you get to where others already are, and more often, where they’ve been.  It paints the [...]

Technology influences economies at the same time economies point to the next technology that can be monetized.  In The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves (Free Press, 2009), Brian Arthur goes a step further suggesting that economies are defined by and structured around technologies. He argues that the daily encounters between [...]

The default context for business leadership is the firm.  This was appropriate when stand-alone manufacturing companies in mature economies dominated business.  Today’s economy creates a radically different context for leaders and thus requires a new model.  Credible competition now comes from every continent, particularly developing countries, as innovation and technology fuel service as well as [...]

Starting with web sites, then blogs and now social networks, the Internet provides a virtual and expansive version of the old public square.  Web sites replace the colonial homes and stores that surround it.  If Thomas Paine were alive today, “Common Sense,” would be posted on a blog rather than the square’s bulletin board.  Social [...]