Marshall Goldsmith on Leadership Effectiveness: Feedforward Instead of Feedback

Providing feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for leaders. As they strive to achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are doing. They need to know if their performance is in line with what their leaders expect. They need to learn what they have done well and what they need to change. Traditionally, this information has been communicated in the form of “downward feedback” from leaders to their employees. Just as employees need feedback from leaders, leaders can benefit from feedback from their employees. Employees can provide useful input on the effectiveness of procedures and processes and as well as input to managers on their leadership effectiveness. This “upward feedback” has become increasingly common with the advent of 360 degree multi-rater assessments.

But there is a fundamental problem with all types of feedback: it focuses on the past, on what has already occurred—not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.

Over the past several years, I have observed more than thirty thousand leaders as they participated in a fascinating experiential exercise. In the exercise, participants are each asked to play two roles. In one role, they are asked provide feedforward —that is, to give someone else suggestions for the future and help as much as they can. In the second role, they are asked to accept feedforward—that is, to listen to the suggestions for the future and learn as much as they can. The exercise typically lasts for 10-15 minutes, and the average participant has 6-7 dialogue sessions. In the exercise participants are asked to:

• Pick one behavior that they would like to change. Change in this behavior should make a significant, positive difference in their lives.

• Describe this behavior to randomly selected fellow participants. This is done in one-on-one dialogues. It can be done quite simply, such as, “I want to be a better listener.”

• Ask for feedforward—for two suggestions for the future that might help them achieve a positive change in their selected behavior. If participants have worked together in the past, they are not allowed to give ANY feedback about the past. They are only allowed to give ideas for the future.

• Listen attentively to the suggestions and take notes. Participants are not allowed to comment on the suggestions in any way. They are not allowed to critique the suggestions or even to make positive judgmental statements, such as, “That’s a good idea.”

• Thank the other participants for their suggestions.

• Ask the other persons what they would like to change.

• Provide feedforward - two suggestions aimed at helping the other person change.

• Say, “You are welcome.” when thanked for the suggestions. The entire process of both giving and receiving feedforward usually takes about two minutes.

• Find another participant and keep repeating the process until the exercise is stopped.

When the exercise is finished, I ask participants to provide one word that best describes their reaction to this experience. I ask them to complete the sentence, “This exercise was …”. The words provided are almost always extremely positive, such as “great”, “energizing”, “useful”, or “helpful.” One of the most commonly-mentioned words is “fun!”

What is the last word that comes to mind when we consider any feedback activity? Fun!

Eleven Reasons to Try FeedForward

Participants are then asked why this exercise is seen as fun and helpful as opposed to painful, embarrassing, or uncomfortable. Their answers provide a great explanation of why feedforward can often be more useful than feedback as a developmental tool.

1. We can change the future. We can’t change the past. Feedforward helps people envision and focus on a positive future, not a failed past. Athletes are often trained using feedforward. Racecar drivers are taught to, “Look at the road ahead, not at the wall.” Basketball players are taught to envision the ball going in the hoop and to imagine the perfect shot. By giving people ideas on how they can be even more successful (as opposed to visualizing a failed past), we can increase their chances of achieving this success in the future.

2. It can be more productive to help people learn to be “right,” than prove they were “wrong.” Negative feedback often becomes an exercise in “let me prove you were wrong.” This tends to produce defensiveness on the part of the receiver and discomfort on the part of the sender. Even constructively delivered feedback is often seen as negative as it necessarily involves a discussion of mistakes, shortfalls, and problems. Feedforward, on the other hand, is almost always seen as positive because it focuses on solutions – not problems.

3. Feedforward is especially suited to successful people. Successful people like getting ideas that are aimed at helping them achieve their goals. They tend to resist negative judgment. We all tend to accept feedback that is consistent with the way we see ourselves. We also tend to reject or deny feedback that is inconsistent with the way we see ourselves. Successful people tend to have a very positive self-image. I have observed many successful executives respond to (and even enjoy) feedforward. I am not sure that these same people would have had such a positive reaction to feedback.

4. Feedforward can come from anyone who knows about the task. It does not require personal experience with the individual. One very common positive reaction to the previously described exercise is that participants are amazed by how much they can learn from people that they don’t know! For example, if you want to be a better listener, almost any fellow leader can give you ideas on how you can improve. They don’t have to know you. Feedback requires knowing about the person. Feedforward just requires having good ideas for achieving the task.

5. People do not take feedforward as personally as feedback. In theory, constructive feedback is supposed to “focus on the performance, not the person”. In practice, almost all feedback is taken personally (no matter how it is delivered). Successful people’s sense of identity is highly connected with their work. The more successful people are, the more this tends to be true. It is hard to give a dedicated professional feedback that is not taken personally. Feedforward cannot involve a personal critique, since it is discussing something that has not yet happened! Positive suggestions tend to be seen as objective advice – personal critiques are often viewed as personal attacks.

6. Feedback can reinforce personal stereotyping and negative self-fulfilling prophecies. Feedforward can reinforce the possibility of change. Feedback can reinforce the feeling of failure. How many of us have been “helped” by a spouse, significant other, or friend, who seems to have a near-photographic memory of our previous “sins” that they share with us in order to point out the history of our shortcomings. Negative feedback can be used to reinforce the message, “this is just the way you are”. Feedforward is based on the assumption that the receiver of suggestions can make positive changes in the future.

7. Face it! Most of us hate getting negative feedback, and we don’t like to give it. I have reviewed summary 360 degree feedback reports for over 50 companies. The items, “provides developmental feedback in a timely manner” and “encourages and accepts constructive criticism” both always score near the bottom on co-worker satisfaction with leaders. Traditional training does not seem to make a great deal of difference. If leaders got better at providing feedback every time the performance appraisal forms were “improved”, most should be perfect by now! Leaders are not very good at giving or receiving negative feedback. It is unlikely that this will change in the near future.

8. Feedforward can cover almost all of the same “material” as feedback. Imagine that you have just made a terrible presentation in front of the executive committee. Your manager is in the room. Rather than make you “relive” this humiliating experience, your manager might help you prepare for future presentations by giving you suggestions for the future. These suggestions can be very specific and still delivered in a positive way. In this way your manager can “cover the same points” without feeling embarrassed and without making you feel even more humiliated.

9. Feedforward tends to be much faster and more efficient than feedback. An excellent technique for giving ideas to successful people is to say, “Here are four ideas for the future. Please accept these in the positive spirit that they are given. If you can only use two of the ideas, you are still two ahead. Just ignore what doesn’t make sense for you.” With this approach almost no time gets wasted on judging the quality of the ideas or “proving that the ideas are wrong”. This “debate” time is usually negative; it can take up a lot of time, and it is often not very productive. By eliminating judgment of the ideas, the process becomes much more positive for the sender, as well as the receiver. Successful people tend to have a high need for self-determination and will tend to accept ideas that they “buy” while rejecting ideas that feel “forced” upon them.

10. Feedforward can be a useful tool to apply with managers, peers, and team members. Rightly or wrongly, feedback is associated with judgment. This can lead to very negative – or even career-limiting – unintended consequences when applied to managers or peers. Feedforward does not imply superiority of judgment. It is more focused on being a helpful “fellow traveler” than an “expert”. As such it can be easier to hear from a person who is not in a position of power or authority. An excellent team building exercise is to have each team member ask, “How can I better help our team in the future?” and listen to feedforward from fellow team members (in one-on-one dialogues.)

11. People tend to listen more attentively to feedforward than feedback. One participant is the feedforward exercise noted, “I think that I listened more effectively in this exercise than I ever do at work!” When asked why, he responded, “Normally, when others are speaking, I am so busy composing a reply that will make sure that I sound smart – that I am not fully listening to what the other person is saying I am just composing my response. In feedforward the only reply that I am allowed to make is ‘thank you’. Since I don’t have to worry about composing a clever reply – I can focus all of my energy on listening to the other person!”

In summary, the intent of this article is not to imply that leaders should never give feedback or that performance appraisals should be abandoned. The intent is to show how feedforward can often be preferable to feedback in day-to-day interactions. Aside from its effectiveness and efficiency, feedforward can make life a lot more enjoyable. When managers are asked, “How did you feel the last time you received feedback?” their most common responses are very negative. When managers are asked how they felt after receiving feedforward, they reply that feedforward was not only useful, it was also fun!

Quality communication—between and among people at all levels and every department and division—is the glue that holds organizations together. By using feedforward—and by encouraging others to use it—leaders can dramatically improve the quality of communication in their organizations, ensuring that the right message is conveyed, and that those who receive it are receptive to its content. The result is a much more dynamic, much more open organization—one whose employees focus on the promise of the future rather than dwelling on the mistakes of the past.

 

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith was recently named winner of the Thinkers50 Leadership Award (sponsored by Harvard Business Review) as the world's most influential leadership thinker. Along with being recognized as the #1 leadership thinker, Marshall was listed as the #7 greatest business thinker in the world. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There was the #2 bestseller on the INC Magazine / CEO Read list of business bestsellers for 2011. This is the fifth year in a row that What Got You Here Won’t Get You There was in the top ten. MOJO was listed at #19. This is the second year in a row that it has been in the top twenty. via marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com

 

Lessons on Leadership - Organizational Culture, Penn State, and Avoidance

It will be many years before the implications of the child sexual abuse perpetrated by Jerry Sandusky will be fully understood. As details continue to emerge in the present we find a horrifying pattern of abuse over many years and an organizational culture that enabled individuals at multiple levels of leadership to look the other way. The echoes of disbelief from similar scandals in the church ring in our ears. We have learned how deluded and deceptive pedophiles can be in securing relationships of trust to exploit children, rationalizing abhorrent behavior as something other than what it is – criminal assault.

Added to our immense grief for the physical and psychological harm done to innocent lives, is the realization that when leaders are made aware of a possible act of abuse, the instinct is to duck and cover. Is this the result of an individual character flaw? Is there some lack of professional training or development? Did they not understand the expectations and responsibilities they carry in positions of authority?

The report released Thursday from the Special Investigative Counsel, Louis J. Freeh, former director of the FBI, details the many failures of leadership involved at Penn State. One reference in the executive summary, however, makes a much broader sweeping statement about the cultural context of the university and the community:

“A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community.”

It seems this statement could be adapted to many settings in which the decision to act is mitigated by a fear of bad publicity. The generic version would read, “A culture of reverence for the [fill in the blank] that is ingrained at all levels of the [organization].” Suddenly the pain of the Penn State community feels closer as we all know circumstances in which our regard for individuals or institutions can cause us to compromise on standards that cross moral, legal or ethical boundaries.

As I followed the news coverage of the events surrounding the emergence of the scandal through the Sandusky trial, I was struck by two events that appeared out-of-place. First, when the Penn State board of trustees made the decision to terminate Coach Joe Paterno (along with President Graham Spanier), the crowds protesting the end of Paterno’s career at Penn State seemed odd. The investigation was ongoing. The facts had not surfaced publicly. Yet the exuberant devotion to a sports idol and elevation of the football program to cult status revealed a distorted culture. Children had been sexually abused. We had many more questions than answers. Yet the crowds celebrated the hero-status of someone who knew about it and didn’t stop it. The situation did not call for a celebration; it called for reflection.

Second, the conclusion of the trial delivered a stack of guilty verdicts for Jerry Sandusky. Here again, crowds gathered as if it was a pep rally following the game. The fans cheered as the lawyers emerged from the courthouse to offer “post-game” remarks much like the coach and the MVP of the championship team. Media interviews followed on strategy and tactics. The coach for the losing team signaled he would be back with an appeal. One of the commentators on the news broadcast I was watching was stunned by what he saw. As a trial lawyer himself, he had seen many post trial settings, but nothing like this. The situation did not call for celebration; it called for reflection.

It’s inexcusable, but understandable that a distorted cultural context can give pause to leaders charged to act in ways that may be misunderstood or unpopular. We have much to learn from this tragedy. We have to find ways of developing healthy organizational cultures that will not bend to fears of bad publicity, but remain steadfast in ensuring well-being, providing justice and acting with integrity.

Mark Putnam is president of Central College in Pella, Iowa. He authors a blog, Mark: my words, at http://blogs.central.edu/president/ and can be reached at president@central.edu.

 

via hard-ball-innovation.posterous.com

Tom Peters: Ten Questions on Excellence

In the 20-odd months since In Search of Excellence was published, I have spoken to some 400 audiences. They were in Maui, Hawaii; and Geneva, Switzerland. They were representatives of old industries like steel and forest products, and of new industries like software and gourmet chocolate-chip cookies. They included everyone from a top wholesaler of plumbing and electrical fixtures in Sweden to the owner of the world's largest dairy store, in Norwalk, Conn. Among them were 5,000 city managers, 1,000 bakers, and the senior management of Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc.

Surprisingly, despite the diversity of the audiences, they all asked similar questions. What follows is a distillation of those questions -- and of how I try to respond.

1. Excellence focused on large companies. But is there anything you learned that relates to the particular problems and opportunities of smaller companies?

There is a lot of advice and writing on the transition a small company must go through as it grows. It suggests an inevitable cycle of deterioration, an evolution from a highly charged, entrepreneurial, customer-intensive enterprise to a bureaucracy. The implied message is: "You're going to become calcified; it's just a matter of how soon."

There is a germ of truth in this. There is no doubt that the $15-million company, no matter what the business, needs a more highly articulated set of procedures for controlling things than the $100,000 company does.But most of the scenario is hogwash. The magic of W. L. Gore, Dana, Emerson Electric, 3M, Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Milliken, and Johnson & Johnson -- in other words, the companies we hold up as excellent -- is that they have all retained a much higher share of their "small company" simplicity and vitality than their less effective competitors have.

The message of Excellence is that the key to corporate success lies in superior customer service, continuing internal entrepreneurship, and a deep belief in the dignity, worth, and potential of every person in the organization. There is no iron law that says you must lose those virtues as you grow; in fact, the principal job of senior officers of a small corporation is to maintain them. The tools may be different for a Disneyland than for a one-park, 20-acre establishment. But the intensity of customer focus can and must be maintained. The personal touch -- we call it Management By Wandering Around, courtesy of Hewlett-Packard -- can also be maintained. Giving up MBWA is not an imperative of size. But the sad news is that small companies can lose touch very easily and that the basics of Excellence are at issue from the start.

2. Excellence also focused on the concerns of people who are building companies, using models of enterprises that have been people-oriented and innovative since inception. But what can you do if you inherit a company that has been bureaucratic or lackluster for decades?

Successful turnarounds are a tough act, but what is perhaps most interesting about them is that they follow exactly the same form as the new-company building efforts. The greatest turnaround artists work repetitiously on creating distinctive strategic skills. They are tireless.Each, above all, believes in the power of a thousand little things done just a bit better.

A handful of stories come to mind. Rene McPherson inherited, as chairman, a then-$1-billion (now more than $3-billion) business in Toledo -- Dana Corp., a manufacturer of such products as brass propeller blades and axles, a company he described as "having the rottenest product line ever granted by God to a Fortune 500 company." In the 1970s he turned it around to the point at which it became the number 2 company among the 500 in return to investors. McPherson radically decentralized. He gave the factory managers autonomy and the tools to do the job: finance, personnel, purchasing, computers, etc. He created an exciting, no-nonsense, competitive environment with a ceaseless focus on practical productivity improvements. His focus was the people on the line -- "the boss of their 25 square feet," in McPherson's terms.

More important was McPherson's approach to change. When he is asked to comment on the importance of any particular program in his productivity-improvement process, he shoots back with: "It is damned important. Another feather on the scale."

A different sort of turnaround is PepsiCo Inc. Fifteen years ago it was a sleepy, second-rate competitor to The Coca-Cola Co. Today it is a vital, entrepreneurial, $7.5-billion company. The magic has been brute persistence, never assuming that the job is complete.President Andy Pearson's strategy, while in the field with a division, is to avoid the executive suite like the plague. He first zeros in on the young assistant brand manager, and he always asks the same damned questions. "What have you learned in the last 96 hours? What's going on in the test market? What are you up to?" That's the PepsiCo magic. Every one of Pearson's talks is, at best, another feather on the scale.

The theme is incredibly consistent, regardless of the company, yet each variation of the theme is unique.Successful turnabout artists are, pure and simple, no more and no less, broken records. No stone is left unturned. No stone is especially important. Yet no stone is unimportant.

3. One of Excellence's premises is that a company's attitudes about people, products, and its way of doing business are defined by its founder. The book holds up Tom Watson, the founder of IBM Corp. and the inspiration for many of IBM's characteristic values and practices, as a model. But what if the founder of your company lacks Watson's stature?

There are several ways to answer this question. Most important is to challenge the notion that the people who run the socalled excellent companies are 17 feet tall with well-honed tap-dancing skills. It's not so. Some are extroverts. Many are introverts. Tom Watson Sr. was, in his own words, an "avowed showman." On the other hand, if you're more than seven inches away from Bill Hewlett, you have a tought time hearing him. But they all have one thing in common.Almost all are obsessives.

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Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. A strategic innovation consulting firm engaged to catalyze bottom-line growth. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim’s business experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 or click here for more information.  Follow us @innothinkgroup LinkedIn Facebook

 

Innovation and Growth : Tom Peters Takes On Harvard Business Review

Thanks, Ted. It's about time the Harvard Business Review recognized the important issues raised by the entrepreneurial renaissance of the past 10 years. Since you're the Review's editor, I guess you deserve the credit for opening up the magazine to a debate on the subject, and for letting George Gilder lead it off with his article in your March-April issue. He was most eloquent in showing how, and why, entrepreneurship has made the United States more competitive in the international semiconductor market. But as for your own column in that same issue, well that's another matter. . . .

1 OK, I suppose there is a thriving industry built around the entrepreneurial phenomenon. You may also have noticed that there's a much, much bigger industry that thrives on advising and chronicling the sparkling personalities who run our largest companies. The Harvard Business School practically invented it. You and your colleagues sit on big-company for the giants. Are we to conclude that your views on the role of large companies are, ipso facto, suspect?

2 Yes, Ted, some guides to small business are that trite, but no serious student of entrepreneurship suggests that success is either easy or certain. To paint all of them as simple-minded cheerleaders is like writing off Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and the Harvard Business Review just because The One-Minute Manager and a host of kindred publications make fixing General Motors seem as easy as one, two, three.

3 Come on, Ted. To begin with, what economic proposition offers anything but "modest plausibility," from the forecasts of Chase Econometrics to the pronouncements of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan? And surely there is at least as much truth and plausibility in the work of David L. Birch and George Gilder as in the formerly fashionable hype of, say, John Kenneth Galbraith. You remember him. He's the sage who once wrote: "There is no more pleasant fiction than that technical change is the product of the matchless ingenuity of the small man forced to employ his wits to better his neighbor. Unhappily, it is a fiction. . . . A benign providence . . . has made the industry of a few large firms an almost perfect instrument for inducing technical change."

4 Ted, Ted, Ted. "Privileged few"? "Undistinguished many"? Even at Stanford, they wouldn't go quite this far. By "privileged few," you mean, I suppose, those who've been privileged to attend Harvard Business School, and other assorted denizens of the Fortune 500 boardrooms. But who do you include among the unwashed masses -- excuse me, the "undistinguished many"? Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? Don Burr? Tom Monaghan? Seymour Cray? Fred Smith? This is really too much, dear professor. It's no wonder that guys like poor Dick Nixon, the Whittier bench warmer, came to loathe the Harvard establishment.

5 Yes, it is. But it is easier, and more conventional, to exaggerate what big companies do, and what they've done in the face of new competition and a technological revolution. And what have big companies done lately? Lost jobs. Innovated less. Moved operations mindlessly, and prematurely, offshore. Failed to protect their markets. Kept their leaders insulated from reality (although that may be changing, thanks largely to the efforts of such financial entrepreneurs -- pardon the expression -- as T. Boone Pickens and the Hafts).

6 Now hold on, Ted. When it comes to imitativeness, lack of creativity, and aversion to risk, nobody can top your longtime friends at companies such as Procter & Gamble and NBC. I refer to you to The Bigness Complex, by economists Walter Adams (former Michigan State University president) and James W. Brock, who review numerous studies on the innovativeness of big companies: "Nor do giant firms display any appetite for undertaking more fundamental and risky research projects. That is, contrary to the image that bigness is conducive to risk-taking, there is no statistically significant tendency for corporate behemoths to conduct a 'disproportionately large share of the relatively risky R&D or of the R&D aimed at entirely new products and processes. On the contrary, they generally seem to carry out a disproportionately small share of [that] R&D. . . ."

7 Come, come. Condescension is one thing, but this is perverse. Of course, many start-ups fail. So do most new products from large companies. And, yes, companies -- as well as products -- often start out as "illusionary creations." A dream is illusionary by definition. To become reality, it must be modified again and again. Even then, it may come to naught. But without such dreams, there is no progress -- at IBM, at GE, or at Microsoft.

8 Watch it, Ted, you've just tripped. A couple paragraphs back, you were dismissing most start-ups for their lack of "exceptional enterprise or new ideas." Now, you're praising big companies precisely because they avoid exceptional enterprise and new ideas. So which is it -- bold is good, or bold is bad?

9 We all like to play the Big Numbers game, Ted, but these numbers are utterly meaningless. Nobody doubts that large companies spend a lot of money on R&D. The question is: what do they get, and produce, in return? All that spending hasn't kept the Fortune 500 from losing 2.8 million jobs since 1980. Meanwhile, the United States has gained nearly 10 million jobs over the same period, the vast majority created by small, growing companies. As a nation, we're getting a far better return on investments in entrepreneurship than on big-company R&D.

But we all know you can't win the Big Numbers game without producing a figure four times larger than the other guy's biggest number. So let me just add that, as impressive as IBM's $5.5 billion may seem, it is barely a quarter of the investment that new and ongoing businesses obtained last year from the "informal" capital network of aunts, cousins, dentists, and so on.

10 Finally, a simple statement of fact. Thanks, Ted.

11 On the contrary, there is precisely such a presumption. That's the whole point, Ted. We are in an era when the gazelles seem to have a clear advantage over the elephants. Markets are fragmenting. (Yes, I know, you are the grand doyen of "global branding," but hey, I won't rub it in.) Product cycles are shrinking. Competition is intensifying. And the technology of miniaturization is upon us. The elephants know what all this means, even if you don't. Why else would they be trying so hard to imitate gazelles -- downsizing, decentralizing, working overtime to make themselves look like collections of smaller companies? If you don't believe me, talk to your friends at P&G, Du Pont, Campbell Soup, and IBM, to name but a few.

12 Sure, Genentech grew fast, but it's still less than a tenth the size of Merck or American Home Products -- and doing just fine in the pharmaceutical big leagues, thank you. Anyway, I'm not saying there are no advantages to size. But there are also any number of inherent disadvantages, which we are just beginning to understand. These days, moreover, a midsize company can often achieve many of the advantages without the disadvantages -- by subcontracting, creative use of databases, strategic alliances, and so on.

13 Look, it's no big thing, but what you're saying here is: we bigger, Harvard-bred folk should really look out for the little folk -- give them a hand, or a ladder (to use your metaphor). It's all so nauseatingly condescending. Stop. Desist. We've had enough.

14 So you want us to shut up. Ted. You want us to stop "[discrediting] the large entities" that just happen to be so generous in their support of Harvard Business School, from which so many of their leaders graduated. And we're supposed to be grateful to these larger enterprises for "[producing] the capital and the markets that encourage and sustain new companies." You're saying the little guys, who create most of the jobs and do most of the innovating, are here courtesy of the big guys. Sure, Ted, right. Now tell us about the helping hand IBM gave to Control Data, Cray, Amdahl, Apple, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Sun Microsystems. . . . Isn't there some new best-seller about swimming with the sharks?

15 I suppose this is true, as far as it goes. But tell me, Ted: if company size is no big deal after all, why is HBR devoting its pages to a major debate on the subject? Of course, the "world's work gets done by all sizes of enterprise." What that statement overlooks are the real problems large companies are having because they are large, and the challenges they are facing from smaller companies -- which are producing better results with fewer resources.

Economies change, Ted. There have been long periods when predictability reigned, and large, stable enterprises thrived. But isn't it possible that we've entered a new era -- call it the Age of the Gazelle -- in which excessive bigness has become a handicap, while leanness and flexibility have emerged as advantages? There is much evidence to support such a view, not just in the United States, but in China, Belgium, Italy, Great Britain, and Spain, to name but a few of the countries where aggressive new companies are on the cutting edge of economic change. These days, even executives of large companies are questioning the advantages of size. Consider Don Povejsil, retired vice-president for corporate planning at Westinghouse, who recently stated that "most of the classical justifications of large size have proved to be of minimal value, or counter-productive, or fallacious."

That's why the Gilder article is so timely. Maybe you should go back and reread it. He makes a very convincing case that size is a profoundly important issue in today's economy -- an issue that can't be dismissed with platitudes about the need for companies big and small. via inc.com 

Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. A strategic innovation consulting firm engaged to catalyze bottom-line growth. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim’s business experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 or click here for more information.  Follow us @innothinkgroup LinkedIn

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Why Best Practices Get You Only So Far - C.K. Prahalad

Companies identify best practices, particularly those of market leaders, and try to implement them. Such benchmarking has a role to play in business, but I’m not exactly a fan of the process. It may allow enterprises to catch up with competitors, but it won’t turn them into market leaders. Organizations become winners by spotting big opportunities and inventing next practices—as I’ve pointed out to CEOs for over two decades now.

Companies become winners by spotting big opportunities and inventing next practices.

Next practices are all about innovation: imagining what the future will look like; identifying the mega-opportunities that will arise; and building capabilities to capitalize on them. Apple’s Steve Jobs and Tata Motors’ Ratan Tata do just that.

Most executives believe it’s tough to identify breakthrough opportunities. However, several are pretty obvious; Peter Drucker once said that the best opportunities are “visible, but not seen.” I help executives unearth opportunities by focusing them on big problems that their companies will benefit from by tackling. They must ask six questions:

• Is the problem widely recognized?

• Does it affect other industries?

• Are radical innovations needed to tackle the problem?

• Can tackling it change the industry’s economics?

• Will addressing this issue give us a fresh source of competitive advantage?

via excellenceininnovationblog.posterous.com

Why Best Practices Get You Only So Far - C.K. Prahalad

Hire Jim Woods for your event. Jim speaks and consults on innovation, strategy, competition, leadership, and creativity.

Call: +1 719-266-6703 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting FREE +1 719-266-6703end_of_the_skype_highlighting Email: consulting@innothinkgroup.com

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective growth strategy email or call us at 719-266-6703 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting FREE 719-266-6703end_of_the_skype_highlighting for availability. consulting@innothinkgroup.com

via excellenceininnovationblog.posterous.com

An Innovative and Creative Class of Graduates Assimilating to The Metro

"So if you haven't found a job yet: You're better off coming to the city than sitting on your parents' couch."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Remarks at the Cornell University 2012 Convocation, May 27, 2012

 

As another college graduation season draws to a close, today’s New York Times reports the results of a small analysis we conducted on college degree attainment rates in metropolitan areas. We examined the share of adults age 25 and over in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas who held at least a bachelor’s degree in 2010, versus in 1970. (The Times’ website provides a table with the key data.)

It suggests a centrifugal force that is concentrating the nation’s college graduates into a set of metro areas that, like Bloomberg’s New York, are pulling farther away from the pack.

But first: Why is high college degree attainment important for a metropolitan area? The article notes that places in which lots of college graduates cluster exhibit patterns that, not surprisingly, are common to college graduates themselves: longer life expectancies, higher incomes, fewer single-parent families. Indeed, differences in adults’ rate of bachelor’s degree attainment explain nearly three-quarters of the variation in per capita income among metro areas in 2010. And higher regional income can translate into a higher tax base, better public services, and more private amenities.

The Times story emphasized one of the key findings of the analysis: as the overall American population grew more educated over that 40-year period, metro areas became less alike in their rates of college degree attainment. It reports the story from Dayton, OH, a metro area that ranked in the middle of the pack in 1970 (49^th out of 100), when it had a large supply of good jobs, at firms like NCR and GM, that didn’t require a college degree. Today, however, in the wake of significant manufacturing job losses, it ranks 85^th among the 100 largest metro areas, with just 24 percent of its adults holding a college degree, well below the metro average of 32 percent.

By contrast, the Chicago metro area—also a significant manufacturing center in 1970—had a very similar share of college graduates to Dayton that year. Yet it managed a large jump in educational attainment over the succeeding four decades, as its economy diversified and moved into high-value services, ranking the region 18^th overall by 2010 (34 percent of its adults hold a four-year degree).

These two places exemplified the broader divergence that occurred over time among metro areas in their college degree attainment rates. Some trends worth noting:

• In the 20 most highly educated metro areas in 1970, 16 percent of adults held a college degree. In those same metro areas in 2010, 38 percent of adults held a college degree, a 22 percentage-point increase. The 20 least educated metro areas in 1970 made substantial progress too—growing their college degree share from 9 percent to 25 percent—but that 16 percentage-point increase still left them farther behind the “smartest” metro areas by 2010.
• Seven of the ten most educated metro areas in 1970 remained among the ten most educated in 2010. Washington, D.C. held the number one spot in both years. Only four of the ten least educated metro areas in 1970 remained in that group in 2010, with Central Valley immigrant magnets such as Stockton, Modesto, and Bakersfield moving down the list during that time.
• Metro areas that enjoyed the most substantial jumps in their college degree attainment ranks included many, like Dayton, that lost a tremendous share of their manufacturing between 1970 and 2010. But because regions like Worcester, Baltimore, Charlotte, and Pittsburgh shed much of that base earlier than other manufacturing centers, they have had more time to build services-oriented economies in sectors like health, professional services, higher education, and finance, and to grow, attract, and retain highly educated populations to fill those jobs.
• When it comes to absolute increases in the share of adults with college degrees, size clearly matters. Among the 20 metro areas with the largest such increases from 1970 to 2010 were Boston, San Francisco, Washington, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, and Denver. Indeed, the metro areas posting the largest gains are, on average, more than three times as large as the metro areas experiencing the smallest gains over that period.

So what’s going on? A mixture of powerful economic phenomena are boosting the value of living around other college graduates. Young educated workers will change jobs numerous times over their careers, which makes living in a large, “thick” labor market with diverse opportunities more appealing. The same force leads an increasing number of educated two-earner couples to these same sorts of large metro areas. Living in a highly educated metro area boosts one’s own acquisition of human capital and earning power, and leads to better employment outcomes for workers across the education spectrum.

This doesn’t mean, however, that it’s the end of the line for Dayton and other metro areas that are lagging in the race for highly educated workers. If nothing else, the experience of places like Pittsburgh indicates that progress is possible, even for metro areas that are not exactly migration magnets for young adults. But those places also provide a reminder that an upgrade in educational attainment doesn’t occur spontaneously, and often accompanies broader economic transition in the region.

Young people will still leave Dayton, as they do every major U.S. metro area, for opportunities in places like Charlotte and New York. Yet with respected higher educational institutions, a still-significant advanced manufacturing base, innovation hubs like Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and a new sense of urgency, Dayton may have the fundamentals to compete more vigorously for a highly educated workforce in the coming decades, and the prosperity that it can bring.

• 

  Alan Berube

  Senior Fellow and Research Director

  Metropolitan Policy Program

   

  Alan Berube is senior fellow and research director at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. His areas of expertise include metropolitan demographic and economic trends, and social policies affecting low-income families and communities.

via brookings.edu

 

via excellenceininnovationblog.posterous.com