One of the more successful strategies I have seen managers take in their organizations has been shifting their focus from managing the process to leading to outcomes. In the age of employee empowerment, one of the best ways to allow your team to feel like they have a say in the work is to allow […]
Tag Archives: Innovation
Be Willing to Change – Change is Power
Last week I was in the car driving and listening to the Jeff Blair Show on Sportsnet 590 The Fan. While discussing the pitching situation with the Toronto Blue Jays he said something that really stuck out to me. Jeff had recently changed his position on whether pitcher Aaron Sanchez should move to the bullpen and he was […]
Build a Strong Foundation for Innovation
Those of you who know me won’t be shocked by the fact that I have a serious passion for innovation. I believe you always need to be constantly pushing your organization (and your life) forward. You need to focus on reinventing what you do and how you do it as often as possible to drive […]
Leading in Innovation – Who Are The Innovators?
Over the past several months I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the industry in which I work (Financial Services) and wondering what it is that keeps this industry from leading in innovation. Like many other industries, the leaders in banking regularly talk about innovation, and some even claim to be leaders in innovation. But […]
Who’s Driving Your Innovation Bus?
Innovation has become the buzzword of the decade with every CEO, Senior Manager, and CTO beating the drum for “Innovation” in their companies. While I don’t disagree with them on the need for innovation, I do have a major issue with the way that many of them are driving that innovation agenda. When tech leaders or […]
Sniper With A Shotgun
Generally it is considered mutually exclusive to take the “shotgun” approach to innovation or the “sniper” approach to innovation. You are either in one camp or the other, but certainly not in both. In the shotgun approach you fire lots of little ideas at the wall in a seemingly random fashion in hopes that one […]
Connecting the Value Chain
Many of the recent Innovation success stories have been about the creation of new ecosystems which have created new customer value in a way that wasn’t imagined previously. The iPod and iTunes created an ecosystem of music which included the simple purchase, organization, and portable playback that previously took several steps and suppliers to achieve. […]
Innovate Everything
Most often when people hear the word Innovation it springs to mind images of high tech gadgets like the iPhone and iPad. For a smaller group of people it may also trigger images of service innovations like NetFlix or Starbucks. A few really creative folks might even register images of business model innovation like Google […]
fail to Avoid Failure
I often get quizzical looks when I suggest that the adoption of a failure acceptance mindset in an organization or team is one of the most critical factors in the success of an organization. I believe very strongly in the mantra put forward by design firm IDEO: Fail early and often to succeed sooner. IDEO […]
Skate Where The Puck Is Going
Unless you are just starting our in your business and have a completely clean slate you carry some baggage into each decision in the form of the outcomes of your previous decisions. That baggage sets the foundation for your future decisions and can take the form of organizational structure, staffing decisions, technology investments, brand image […]