Chesterton's Fence and Understanding The Why Behind DecisionsMaking better decisions requires understanding the rationale behind previous decisions. If you don’t understand how you got here, you run the risk of making things not better, but worse.Jun 13, 202402:27Do You Have an Employee Attrition Strategy?Most organizations struggle with employee turnover. There are multiple reasons why this occurs, ranging from internal culture issues to simply a hot job market. But instead of being in reactionary mode when employees decide to leave, why not have an intentional attrition strategy?May 30, 202402:54Technology, Psychology, and ChangeOver the last few years, retailers have invested a lot in self-checkout lanes. This was initially seen as a great way to reduce labor costs and challenges with hiring. They were touted to reduce waits in line, eliminate the need to interact with a checker, and get you out in no time. But it hasn't done any of that.May 30, 202402:29Is Customer Service Dead or Just a Strategic Company Decision?Many companies are pulling back on customer service, reducing resources, training, and automating support. It's understandable to an extent. Hiring and retaining customer service staff is incredibly hard. The cost of training people is high. Customers are increasingly doing their research before they enter a store, and they don't even want to talk to anyone at all - just find their item and get on with their day as quickly as possible. So it would make sense that there's a contraction in customer service overall. However, are these companies dramatically shifting where their value lies?May 02, 202403:16Marketing Shouldn't Always SellThere's been a recent push (most likely by the bean counters) to establish a direct ROI for marketing efforts. I can understand this thinking. Advertising and marketing are expensive. The adage of "half of all marketing spend is wasted, we just don't know which half" makes sense, if you're looking at waste in an immediate return sense. You spend $X on advertising and marketing this quarter and only get $Y in sales. As a numbers person, you'd want to invert that balance. But the problem is, that's not the only purpose of marketing and advertising.Apr 18, 202404:01Why A Strong Brand Isn't a Luxury but a NecessityWho invented the light bulb? Of course, you'd say Thomas Edison. But what you may not realize is that Edison did not invent the light bulb. It was actually invented by Joseph Wilson Swan and Henry Woodward. What Edison did really well was commercialize the invention. But why do we always think of Thomas Edison first? Of course, he was a prolific inventor, but more importantly, he built a recognizable and resonating brand.Apr 04, 202403:02Asking the Right QuestionsWe ask questions all the time. At work, at home, amongst friends. Often, we ask questions that we already know the answer to, and other times, we ask questions that validate our existing perceptions. But in business, when we're trying to find answers to complex, layered, multi-faceted problems, we need excellent questions to get the answers and insights we need to make the best decision possible. But we're usually pretty bad at it.Mar 20, 202404:05A Different Approach to IncentivizationThere's a lot of advice out there for designing employee incentive programs. Most of it focuses on common tactics including additional vacation days, public recognition, health/wellness reimbursem*nts, referral bonuses, tuition reimbursem*nt, professional development, and monetary bonuses. Aside from the economic considerations, the bigger question to answer first is always the why and what.Mar 20, 202402:35Is Your Customer Feedback Used to Diagnose or Sell?Why don't companies take more time to truly understand customer needs? In short, because it's hard, it takes time, and sometimes, we don't want to hear what they have to say. Customer feedback isn't simply about capturing data from questionnaires, reporting the top three frustrations customers have, and then deciding which one is the least costly and painful to implement. It's also not rolling your eyes when you hear the same concerns over and over again.Mar 20, 202403:12Why Do We Separate Change From Day-To-Day Operations?Say the company is having trouble with widget quality and missed deadlines. Should leadership focus on fixing the operational problems or on the strategy? Most executives would prioritize the former. They would say, “Let’s first patch the holes and then modernize the ship.” And most CEOs would say, “Ok.“ This is a big mistake.Feb 08, 202402:43Kairos and the Art of TimingWe've all heard the term "Chronos" often regarding expensive watches, and the measure of time. But there's another term for time that's even more important - Kairos. In Greek, kairos represents a kind of “qualitative” time, as in “the right time”; Chronos represents a different kind of “quantitative” time, as in, “What time is it?” and “Will we have enough time?”. Jan 18, 202402:45Who's Your Brand's Rival?Everyone likes a good rivalry story. They inspire, build emotional connections, and create a deep level of authenticity with the characters involved. Your brand has rivals too, and capitalizing on those rivals can help you position your identity in a way that differentiates you from the herd. Jan 04, 202402:40Finding Your Big SmallSmall things can have big, lasting impacts. For example, 60% of the fish food that organisms living in coral reefs eat comes from the tiny larvae of tiny fish. Coral reefs could not survive without them. We often don't consider the small - especially in business. Small changes are typically overlooked, and the big changes usually get all the attention.Dec 19, 202302:37What IS NOT Strategy and What ISRecruit and retain top talent.Increase market share.Improve customer satisfaction.Expand into new geographic markets.Diversity product offerings.Are these actually strategies or not?Nov 27, 202302:04Do You Have Information Rot?Every organization we've worked with has reams of consumer feedback. Often it is utilized to make critical decisions. Sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, the feedback itself becomes the exercise, where study after study is created multiple times a year, and the insights are simply shared across the organization - nothing more. While customer insight collection is one thing, how companies analyze it is another. Even though we do relentless collection, leaders overlook the fact that consumer stories and insights are subject to decay.Nov 08, 202303:19Strategy is also about People and Culture DynamicsWhen organizations design strategies, the focus is typically on crafting an approach to achieve key organizational goals. These plans usually take hundreds of hours collectively, and once complete, are presented to the organization in a series of town halls, beautifully illustrated documents, and leadership meetings. Yet while we believe the strategy itself is the path to success, it's the people and culture that make a strategy work.Nov 01, 202303:54Eliminating Waste Over Increasing EfficiencyEfficiency is fundamentally about using less input and getting more output. When CEOs talk about increasing "worker efficiency", it usually means getting fewer workers to do more work. You can have the most efficient workforce in the world, but if the company, the system, and the process they’re working in are wasteful, none of it really matters. Eliminating waste is actually way more important than driving efficiency. Efficiency will help you, but waste will crush you.Oct 19, 202304:20Sorcerer's Apprentice TheoryYou likely remember Mickey Mouse and the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's a story that revolves around an apprentice of a great sorcerer who has grown tired from repetitive manual labor and decides to automate his chores with a bit of help from his departed master's hat.There are multiple interpretations of lessons from this story. The one most frequently cited is about the consequences of laziness, and getting involved in things you don't understand. But I'd argue that's missing the point.Oct 05, 202303:01Tackle the Big Things FirstLet’s say you’re trying to teach an elephant how to recite poetry while balancing on a soccer ball. How should you allocate your time and money between training the elephant and designing the soccer ball? The right answer, of course, is to spend zero time thinking about the ball. But most people will rush off and start designing a really great soccer ball first. Why?Sep 25, 202302:28It's Not Enough To Launch a New Product. You Need To Consider the Bigger Picture.Innovation can change industries and systems, but real innovation causesa change in how people behave. Consider technologies like Slack, iPhones, or even the Cloud. For these large innovations and the organizations that adopt them, there is a dramatic shift in how time is spent, how communication happens, how team members relate to one another, and, significant changes in productivity.We might believe this is because they are revolutionary, but it's actually because these new products weren't sold because of what they were, but what they impacted.Sep 14, 202303:11Why Terminology MattersRapid Unscheduled Disassembly vs. Explosion. Pre-Owned vs. Used. We've seen a lot of terminology changes over the years, and it's because words matter. How you communicate and frame something has been a technique used by marketers for decades. Yet as organization leaders, we often make terminology more abstract and complicated instead of simple, compelling, and clear. This is one of the main causes why our organizations don't understand what we do and why we do it.Aug 31, 202303:44A Declaration is Not a StrategyBudgeting season is coming soon for many companies, and this usually includes the review of major initiatives, costs, resources, and activities for the coming year. Sometimes, it's also the time to re-evaluate the organizational strategy or even create a new one. And while creating a strategy can be a daunting task, many leaders actually go through long and convoluted processes to create one, only to shelve it in a matter of months.Aug 16, 202303:25Transient Leaders Kill Culture For Reasons You Don't RealizeSome organizations go through CEOs and department heads like Kleenex. Today, the average tenure of a CEO is 4.6 years. In other cases, C-Suite leaders rotate out of the organization within 1 or 2 years, and a new leader is installed. And it's always "This one is the right one - they're bringing incredible experience/ideas/perspective to the organization." They try to install a few changes that typically don't stick, and are moved out in short order. Then the pattern repeats.Aug 03, 202302:53Why Imperfect is Better Than PerfectThe greatest stories start with imperfection. Something went wrong - usually in a dramatic fashion - then a roller coaster of ups and downs until the recovery and eventual happy or hilarious ending. Perfect stories - where everything goes smoothly - aren't stories at all. They're a lecture.Jul 26, 202302:25Are You Obsessed with the "What" Instead of the "How"?It's easy to document and communicate the "what". What is your department doing this quarter? You have a laundry list to show them. It reinforces that you have "lots to do" and are valuable to the organization.But where's the strategy? Why is this approach different, unique, compelling, or the right way to achieve the bigger goal?Jul 13, 202302:55Do You Presume What Customers Want?Imagine two people meeting up on a blind date. The first person begins by introducing themselves, going through a 10-15 minute detailed introduction and overview of their life and history. They then move quickly into explaining how and when both of them will get married, buy a country house, and have three children, illustrating how this plan is the best and right option, and that no other person is as suited as they are for this.This sounds weird and presumptuous, yet that’s how many companies approach their customers.Jun 29, 202303:06Conway's Law and Organizational CommunicationWhat is Conway’s law?It comes from a 1967 paper byMelvin E. Conway, and the basic idea is that organizations tend to design products that reflect their internal communication structures.Put another way,Conway’s law implies that the quality of a product or service is reflected in and linked to theworking methods of the business that produces it. This means that successful product or service design depends on communication: between designers, product owners, marketing, and sales, not to mention customers, who should have a strong influence on the creation process.Jun 22, 202302:47Is Company Gravity Killing Your Organization?Most business leaders stress the importance of understanding and responding to ever-changing customer needs to stay relevant and competitive. Yet why do so many companies spend the majority of their time focusing inward?May 24, 202303:20Why You Need to Learn Executive TellsPoker is a game of concentration, reactions, and critical thinking. While luck still plays a large factor in the distribution of the cards, your skill at reading common poker tells can give you a significant edge. This means focusing on your opponent’s body language to decipher subconscious shrugs, sighs, and signals that give away their hand. It's the same in business, but often tells are even more obvious - coming right out of the individual's mouth.May 11, 202302:42The Biggest Risk to Your Business is What You Actually See ComingFloods are typically predictable. There are forecasts which discuss river levels, and projections for where the water will rise to and over what period of time. No one dismisses these projections, and we always prepare accordingly. But these floods don't happen because there's monsoon-level rain in the area. It happens because of extensive snow hundreds of miles north of us. The snowpack depth and melting rate where the Mississippi River begins determines our level and timing of flood risk. While most companies don't have this type of clear correlation or prediction capability to determine what will impact their organization, each and every company has its own proverbial 'flood risk'.May 02, 202303:27How Big Is Your Organizational Debt?We're all familiar with the concept of financial debt - money you owe, often with interest. Some of us are familiar with technical debt - taking shortcuts while writing code (or making repeated changes to code) that has downstream consequences later. Financial and technical debt plays an important role in organizations.But another type of debt exists— organizational debt. Organizational Debt is the "interest" companies pay when their structure and policies stay fixed and/or accumulate as the world changes.Apr 27, 202303:03What Really Kills Organizational ProductivityWhile politics are inherently part of business, time wasted and money lost are typically blamed on inefficiency and lack of productivity. People aren't working hard enough. They're slacking off. They're not really working when they are working from home. This all stems from the perception that people can't really be trusted to do their jobs without extensive supervision or oversight. (But that's a debate for another day)Apr 20, 202303:16Are you creating, killing, or hiding value?In business, we talk extensively about value, specifically how we can create it. But more often than not, in our quest to find new ways to develop value, we have many overlooked opportunities to unleash existing value and underlying things in our organizations that kill it.Mar 20, 202303:31Why Your SWOT is UselessOne of the traditional steps in developing a strategy begins with a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. The results are usually unremarkable, highlighting the same things year after year, and failing to reveal any new, unique ways for the organization to compete. So can a SWOT really form the foundation of an effective strategy?Mar 08, 202302:54Transparency Creates a Better Customer ExperienceWe've all been in the hospital waiting room. You sometimes seem to sit there forever. You see people come and go, and maybe you see your appointment time come and go. You don't know whether they're running behind, forgot you, or simply have an emergency to deal with. While a changing schedule flow is understandable, it doesn't bode well for the proverbial customer experience. But transparency can make all the difference.Mar 01, 202302:413 Signs of Organizational Dysfunctionality and How To Fix ItWe all have worked for dysfunctional companies at one time or another. Most of the time, we view them through the lens of people - whether it be domineering bosses, hostile work environments, or sweat-shop-like circ*mstances. However, there are three common behaviors that can permeate a company and create dysfunction, even if the people and teams are the nicest on the planet.Feb 23, 202304:18Why Organizations Say But Don't Really DoWe've heard it before. A new initiative or focus is announced to the organization. There's an explanation as to why it's important, and why the company is addressing it. Then crickets. Or worse, a few superficial, window-dressing activities are conducted before it goes radio silent. Why? Why bother with starting something that's just going to get brushed under the rug? Is it bad leadership? Lack of resources? In reality, sometimes the reasons are more mundane than we'd like to believe.Feb 15, 202304:03Building Business Resilience Starts With The FundamentalsDuring the 1980s, top executives were judged on their ability to restructure, declutter, and de-layer their corporations. This often translated into overly flat and overly lean organizations, where remaining staff worked longer and harder with less. While the approach benefitted the bottom line, it didn't increase organizational efficiency, effectiveness, or productivity. Now, leaders are examining how to improve business operations, but often overlook the fundamentals. They cling to the flawed mindset that technology, more meetings, and more documentation will fix it. Instead, we need to get back to the basics.Feb 09, 202305:18Why Organizations Lie To ThemselvesAs a leader, one of the jobs you have is to identify organizational gaps. Whether it be operational, resource-based, process-centric, or sales-driven. But what happens when you overlook or completely dismiss gaps that you know exist? Some might say that's negligence, but the real question is, what's the cause of that negligence? Is it laziness? Ignorance? Or avoidance?Feb 01, 202304:50What Happens When a Department Has a Bad ReputationWe all know when two employees have a conflict, there are countless articles on how to coach and mitigate the situation. But what happens when departments have conflicts? In virtually every organization, there are teams that don't work well together. It may be a rub between marketing and sales, or operations and production. No matter the departments, this rub impacts morale, culture, communication, productivity, and in the end - profits.Jan 25, 202303:36The True Cause of the Strategy-Execution GapWhen the strategy doesn't deliver on anticipated expectations, the strategy-execution gap is the scapegoat. In fact, thousands of articles have been written on this phenomenon. For example, here's one of the top results from a quick Google search:"What causes execution gaps? There are numerous potential causes of execution gaps, such asgoals and timelines that are too ambitious, little to no clarity about the vision or goals, and even a lack of buy-in from key players. One of the biggest causes relates to your resources."However, this actually isn't the problem. Yes, these components can influence the success or failure of a strategy, but they're not the cause of the strategy-execution gap.Jan 19, 202304:25A Simple Way to Understand StrategyStrategy is a hard concept to digest, especially for stayed institutions that have seen past success but have reached a growth plateau. New competitors are coming in, the organization has started to move slower, and sales are anything but impressive. They're surviving, but not flourishing. Often, the first step is to refresh the "organizational strategy". This comes in the form of a series of meetings, where high-level, lofty aspirations are put to paper, and then delivered to the rest of the organization. Then - well, not much other than a series of new initiatives, which barely move the needle. The problem is, we misunderstand what strategy is. Today, we're going to give you an easy example to use.Jan 05, 202304:18Why We Confuse Tenure With ExperienceA tenured employee issomeone who has worked for a company or organization for a number of years. Employees that have worked for a company for more than five years are considered long-tenured employees, while those that have worked for a company for less than five years are considered short-tenured employees. Employees with tenure usually have more expertise in their positions than others. But often, this expertise isn't what we think it is. Does someone have 20 years of experience or one year of experience repeated 20 times?Dec 14, 202204:21Why Your Strategy Isn't WorkingExecutives often spend months (sometimes years) putting together a strategy to grow their organization. However, these strategies are often abandoned, changed, or lose momentum within a year or less. Why? How is it that we spend so much time, money, resources, and effort in creating a strategy, which becomes proverbially obsolete once the rubber actually meets the road? Here are the top 6 reasons why it happens.Dec 07, 202203:41Why Employees Don't Take OwnershipI recently had a conversation with a C-suite leader of a company that has 6,000+ employees who were implementing a significant organizational structure change to build in more accountability and ownership across 50 interconnected departments. The goal was to create an umbrella team who would be in charge of ensuring there was more transparency and communication between each department. This layer would aggregate and disseminate information, along with being the one point of reporting to upper management. On the surface, this may sound good, but it's actually a terrible idea.Dec 01, 202204:18Why Brands are BlandingDifferentiation; by definition, is what branding is. Which is precisely why I’m so baffled by blanding. Blanding is the copy-paste model of consumer product development and brand marketing that follows repetitive patterns in the name of modernity but at the expense of authenticity and originality. With results that are, in a word, bland.Oct 27, 202203:22The Best Customer Experience Means Owning One ThingWe can't be all things to all people, though as companies, we often try. Take a hospital. You try to provide superior care, ensure patient safety, manage insurance claims, recruit top-tier staff, maintain excellent facilities - the list goes on. It's a daunting task, and it's hard to say that any one of those items listed sits at the top of the proverbial importance pyramid. But if you don't have a clear north star set, the customer experience will oscillate.Oct 18, 202203:52Better Customer Experiences Begin with Better InformationTypically, taking your car to the shop isn't a pleasurable experience. Even if you roll in for a simple oil change, there's always something else that needs to be addressed. Often customers are skeptical about a shop's recommendations and have a perception they're being upsold on unnecessary repairs. You could attempt to change that perception with advertising, and push the message that your shop is the "most honest", but is this really getting at the heart of the issue?Oct 05, 202203:49Why Do We Continually Allow Sandbagging to Happen?Sandbagging isa strategy of lowering the expectations of a company or an individual's strengths and core competencies in order to produce relatively greater-than-anticipated results. Unlike Quiet Quitting, which focuses on stopping the completion of any tasks not explicitly stated in the job description, Sandbagging fundamentally drags down overall company performance. We've all seen it, experienced it, or maybe have done it ourselves. But why does Sandbagging happen, and why do we allow it to occur? There are a few behavioral reasons, beginning with what we let happen.Sep 29, 202205:55If you're not uncomfortable, it's not changeChange is uncomfortable. Inherently so because it's different. It's unfamiliar. It's new. It's unknown. Yet, most changes in organizations aren't changes at all. They are the reshuffle of existing deck chairs. They are so soft and subtle as not to burden or worry the masses. They are often minuscule. It's no wonder that organizations that seek change and enact their soft modifications are disappointed in the results.Sep 08, 202202:43
