Steps to Becoming a Disciplined Disruptor: Innovation

Some companies lose themselves in trying to grow too quickly. In the fight to get ahead, they forget where they came from – the core tenets that made them unique, and gave them the ability to compete and win.

This can be particularly true for start-up executives, who often find challenges in discovering their company’s true advantage. As they attempt to grow, they sometimes have a tendency to want to branch out beyond that advantage. In many cases, this approach to growth lacks discipline and does not take into account what actually makes their company special – its offerings, yes, but also its core philosophies. If this is the case, the growth process can lead down uncertain paths that include the creation of disparate product offerings, unhappy employees, and disenchanted customers and a lack of competitive advantage.

The business landscape is littered with large and small companies that started doing one thing and then got distracted by bright, shiny objects – the concept of “Hey, wait a minute – if we can do THIS, then certainly we can do THAT, too!” Startups will often try to reach beyond core capabilities, but, unfortunately, in far too many cases this means diluting the focus that initially made the business great, to the point where mediocrity reigns across the board.

Then, there are organizations like Atlassian, a Sydney-based software company. Its website describes the corporate culture and make-up as “geeks, beer drinkers, nerf herders, fraggers and Wolverine-wannabes.” And that could very well be. But Atlassian is also very, very good at creating issue tracking and collaboration software. That’s the company’s focus, and it’s committed to doing it well. It’s why Atlassian has grown from a handful of employees in 2002 to more than 400 today.

There are, of course, examples of larger companies that have done well by applying a laser-like focus and disciplined approach. Over the past five years, Apple has been extremely focused on delivering quality content through the iPad, iPhone and more. Its M.O. is to deliver attractive, cool devices that are fast and user-friendly. While its primary rival Google is intent on offering many services and products in a multitude of areas, getting further away from its core service offering (search), Apple seems content to provide a singular, focused experience. Needless to say, the approach has worked well for the company.

Contrast that with companies like Research in Motion (RIM) or, going back even further, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). RIM’s troubles within the mobile space have been well documented, but they stem from one common mistake made by many companies: not listening to the customer base. At one point in time, RIM was an innovator; it provided businesspeople with communications devices the likes of which had never been seen before. But when customers declared they wanted a better browsing experience and applications, RIM balked and stubbornly refused to provide either. The company moved away from a core aspect of its business – providing innovative mobile devices – and have since stagnated.

DEC’s an even more cogent example of a company that had everything yet lost its way. DEC started off by focusing on the microcomputer market, eventually growing into one of the biggest technology organizations on the planet. But the company strayed from its roots, incorporating new and varied products, different distribution models, and more, to the point where DEC became a behemoth without focus, one that could not support its own weight. Slowly, the company that once proudly announced that it had never undergone a layoff began breaking apart until, in 1998, the remaining assets were sold to Compaq – a sad end to a once-promising company’s epic decline.

But for every DEC, there is a Red Hat. For every RIM, there is a SalesForce.com. And for every startup’s inspiration, there is an Atlassian and others like it. All of these organizations have successfully found the sweet spot between growth, discipline, and differentiation by not only identifying and honoring uniqueness, but by also keeping customers happy.

The good news is that discipline is an attitude that can be fine-tuned and adopted.

Kevin B. Thompson

Kevin B. Thompson is president and CEO of SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), a provider of IT management software. He has served in that role since March 2010. Prior to that, Mr. Thompson was the company’s COO, as well as CFO and treasurer. He has also held positions at SAS Institute and Red Hat,, and serves on the board of directors of NetSuite.

via chiefexecutive.net

 

How To Avoid A Nightmare: Public Speaking

If you've got something to say, ideas to share, people to influence, or a customer base to attract, public speaking is an opportunity ripe for the taking. You might have the best products or services and a terrific track record, but if you don't or can't communicate about it with your target audiences, you're limiting your effectiveness. All too often, the very best stories in organizations and companies go untold because of people's reluctance to take the stage.

Speaking in public ranks high on the list of people's fears, and that leads to a lot of missed opportunities. Anyone who has ever been in the audience when a good speaker took the stage knows what power lies in this skill. It can change minds, inspire action, and launch and cement relationships in a way that no other form of communication can.

An audience can reach a new understanding and be motivated to follow a call to action—and to follow a person. Executives with the ability to hold the attention of others through the power of the spoken word find themselves rewarded, and their abilities and ideas acknowledged.

Time to Testify

Yet for all its power, the "public" part of public speaking gives many people pause. Even a friendly, interested audience can be a frightening prospect to some executives, who would rather let great opportunities pass them by than be judged by an audience. But every time we speak—whether to an audience of one or 100—we run the risk of being judged on whether we've got something to say worth listening to.

That's not a reason to avoid opportunity—it's the very reason to embrace it. If you believe in something and are actually behind your product or service, you should let no opportunity pass to get up and tell others about your conviction. Here's another way to look at it: Instead of thinking about the risk of being judged by 100 people (or however large your audience is), think about the chance you have to influence them.

Of all the marketing techniques your organization can invest in, speaking directly to audiences is one of the best ways to "build brand" for companies and ideas while enhancing the standing of the speaker.

Getting Started

Remember that even the best orators needed practice and training. Public speaking is a learned skill, and you will improve with time if you take the initiative. With preparation and practice, you can learn to carry an audience, strengthen relationships, and reach people you otherwise couldn't have.

Here are some tips to help get reluctant executives started on embracing business' unsung tool: public speaking.

Aileen Pincus writes the "Speaking of Business" column for BusinessWeek.com's Managing channel. She is president of The Pincus Group Inc., an executive firm coaching firm that offers training in presentation, speech, media, and crisis communications.

via businessweek.com

 

Unlock Your Passwords by Just Standing Next to Your Computer

Ogilvy Paris has developed a new app inspired by Ford’s key-free technology for unlocking and locking cars.

KeyFree Login logs you in to all of your Internet accounts (Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.) by unlocking your passwords when your mobile device is close to your computer. When you move away, it locks them again by logging you out.

The hands-free technology works on MacOS computers with Google Chrome and Bluetooth mobile devices. KeyFree Login launched on the Ford France website and is due to go global shortly. Check out the video below to learn more about the app:

 

via mashable.com

 

Small Business Drives Growth and Hope: Putting Poverty On Hold

Small businesses drive growth, even at the bottom of the pyramid.

Noodle shops around the outskirts of Iloilo City in the Philippines’ Western Visayas region do brisk business as new housing subdivisions, financed by remittances from tens of thousands of overseas contract workers, mushroom across the landscape. It’s the perfect site, says Celmar Palao, for a burger joint.

Palao, a shy, domestic worker with a talent for cooking, left her rural home outside Iloilo for a job in Singapore 12 years ago. She planned little more than earning enough to support her young daughter and aging parents. Now, after completing a two-year programme at aidha, an award-winning, Singapore-based, micro-business school, she thinks long-term.

“There are plenty of local food places in Iloilo’s outskirts,” she explains. “To start a successful business you need to do something different. Burgers are something I can make easily and sell fresh.”

With a business plan in place, a shop lined up to rent and her daughter and niece ready to work, Palao, is preparing to open her own restaurant.

Building capacity

Aidha has helped some 500 domestic workers like Palao launch their own business and provided thousands more with the financial education to take control over their lives.

“I think it’s well known that really every successful economy in the world is based on small business and that’s what aidha’s all about,” the school’s founder and director, Harvard-trained academic Sarah Mavrinac told Knowledge on the sidelines of an INSEAD panel discussion on “Growing the Private Sector” in Abu Dhabi recently. “We’re about building the small business capacity that will power the economy, not just of the family or the local community but of the country itself.”

Despite referring to itself as a micro-business school, Mavrinac says aidha strives for more. “To my mind, micro-enterprise is about putting poverty on hold, putting food on the table. Aidha is about moving up the ladder from micro-enterprise to the sustainable small-business level, where a business looks to employ others, and grow - a level that really makes a difference.”

Taking the programme to the world

Initially aimed at educating Singapore’s female, migrant domestic workers, aidha – Sanskrit for ‘that to which we aspire’ - has aspirations of its own. Launched in Singapore in 2006, it’s recently received initial approval to open in Dubai, and hopes to have the first class running there by the end of June. From Dubai, it plans to expand across the U.A.E., the Middle East and through the North African region. Opportunities are also seen in Hong Kong, China and the U.S.A., serving the Latino migrants around Los Angeles. “We have a programme now which does some tremendous work and I think it’s ready to take out to the rest of the world,” Mavrinac says.

In the U.A.E. it plans to extend its services to the massive population of male migrant workers while in the North African countries, the curriculum will have to be adjusted to suit the huge number of unemployed youth. “What makes the programme work very well in Singapore is the fact that individuals are employed and are able to save significant sums so they can invest in their own organisation and business launch with sums far greater than they could realise from a micro-enterprise loan. In North Africa, we are going to have to see how things work when we serve people who do not have a steady income. But all the research we’ve done so far suggests that this will fly.”

It all starts with savings

Saving is a strong part of the school’s curriculum. Students meet each month with their bank passbooks to show how much they have saved. Before joining aidha, Palao had been working in Singapore for eight years and saved nothing. Now she has bought a piece of land near her family village outside Iloilo, a small house on the outskirts of the city and has the capital to open her own small business.
The programme, which also offers modules in leadership, computer technology and business studies, costs students US$S350 a year. “It is a lot for them,” Mavrinac concedes. “But there is something very important about buying a service. And we need to survive. We’re a social enterprise and we want to ensure we are building a sustainable programme that means we cannot rely exclusively on donations.”

Volunteers

Aidha relies on volunteers to act as tutors and mentors, with many former students, like Palao returning to help with administrative duties.

“I owe so much to aidha,” says Palao. “When I first came to Singapore I didn’t have any dreams or think about doing anything with my money except to send it home to my family. While studying at aidha I realised I had talents. Now I’m going to open a burger cafe and one day … a bigger restaurant.” By Jane Williams via knowledge.insead.edu

________________________________________________________________________

Hire Jim Woods to Speak to or Advise Your Organization

Innovation, Growth, & Hypercompetition Consultant/Speaker/Business Coach

 Website: InnoThink Group

Request a consultation: Office: +1 719.649.4118 or complete our form.  

 

Innothink Group is a strategic management, innovation and business coaching consultancy. 

Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients.   

We provide broad ranging advice covering innovation, commoditization, competitive advantage, business policy and strategy, as well as global strategy and implementation. 

 

 

Being Happy Can be The Hardest Part of Living

Life is unbelievably difficult. We all struggle with self confidence.

We struggle hard to make the grade. And yet, fall short. Finding our footing can take a long time. 

For most of my life I attempted in vain to make something meaningful of myself. I failed to keep a job or relationship. My family and friends would say I was disaster prone. One church member proclaimed, “If Jim Woods didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all.” What he failed to understand was, I didn’t need luck ……. I needed a friend. 

Keeping our self image whole as we caution our children is hard in the face of unrelenting pressures to be successful in a way that may not coincide with our internal beliefs. 

The key to my self image at a time when it seemed I had little was: 

Refusing to define myself in a mold created by circumstances or anyone else.

Not giving in to challenges.

Persistence

Recognizing I had a story I alone must tell

Using my challenges to inspire others.

Everyone has greatness in them

Your time table is different.

We are unique.

Gifts must be shared to be appreciated.

Never to dismiss a thought as a possibility with “I can’t do that.”   

I began to see thoughts as God’s way of answering my prayers. Moving confidently in a very different place mentally by moving one foot in front of the other until one day I was at my destination. The ability to keep going became causal to my personal and professional life despite obstacles. 

When I see how others fail because they second guess their worth it hurts me.  I know if they were speaking to their children their advice would be: 

“Try a different way. You can do it.” “I believe in you.” 

One of my favorite quotes when speaking is by Theodore Herzl, “If you will it, it is no dream.” Jim