Summer Thriller; Vacation Disconnected; Slowing Time Down; Language Training for Tots
July 25, 2013Fail to Scale; Dream Team; Product CEO Paradox; VP Marketing; 4th Quarter Strategies Needed
August 15, 2013Facebook Succeeds; August Read; Slow Ideas; Digital Disruption
"…keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Measuring the Employee Side of the Business
– the
August "Growth Guy" syndicated column addresses a continual question we get:
"how to easily measure, on a weekly basis, if employees are happy?" Take 4
minutes to scan through for some suggestions and innovative new technologies
that are helping companies keep a daily and weekly pulse on the employee side of
the company. Special thanks to Sebastian Ross for co-authoring the piece with
me.
Digital Disruption
— James McQuivey's 2013 book
Digital
Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation
makes for a perfect August read – a time to reflect on your fundamental business
model and noodle ideas for dramatically disrupting your own business before the
competition does. In fact, the technologies for measuring employee happiness
highlighted in the latest Growth Guy column are representative of the kind of
digital disruption McQuivey discusses. Start with Josh Bernoff's short
introduction (he keynoted our Summit last year) and then just keep reading –
super engaging stories throughout. Gazelles200 and book club members will get
the book next week.
#1
Biz Guru
— Clayton Christenson, Harvard strategist and author of the classic
The Innovator's Dilemma,
was named the #1 biz guru in 2012. His recommendations always carry huge weight
with me. He had this to say about
Digital
Disruption, "I have studied disruptive innovation for more than two
decades. Here, McQuivey offers insights about disruption — and about the
accelerating pace of disruption — that I truly hadn't understood before. This
is a very important book about what tomorrow holds in store; it shows us both
what will happen and how to address it. I recommend it enthusiastically." After
initially making me sick to my stomach, reading
Digital
Disruption
has energized me to pursue some significant changes in Gazelles – stay tuned.
Mark
Johnson
— Christenson's partner in his consulting firm is Mark Johnson, author of
Seizing the
White Space
(you'll be hearing more about this book later this year). Both Johnson and
McQuivey are keynoting the upcoming
Growth Summit in Las Vegas, Oct 22 – 23. They join Ram Charan, Stephen M.R.
Covey, and other thought leaders – giving you an opportunity to gather the best
ideas as you plan for 2014 and beyond. Don't miss their important, disruptive
ideas.
Facebook Succeeds
— speaking of digital disruption, I mentioned earlier this year that Mark
Zuckerberg faced his own stomach turning realization in December 2011 that
Facebook was missing the whole mobile revolution. So through a maniacal single
focus to go mobile, Zuckerberg realigned every resource within Facebook to
transition to mobile in 18 months (May 2013) – and he did it. Reporting July
24th that 41% of record revenues came from mobile, Facebook's stock is within
pennies of its IPO price of $38, jumping 30% in just one week!! What is your #1
focus the next 12 to 24 months to disrupt your industry or simply catch-up?
3D
Systems
— one of the hottest technologies changing many industries is 3D printing. And
3D Systems is leading the charge, the 12th fastest growing company in the US.
Take 1 minute to read this short piece on their company, another firm which
has seen its stock skyrocket. I'm still surprised that Apple hasn't jumped into
this space. Every home will have a 3D printer in the near future; more
importantly, there's a need for the iTunes for 3D printer files – files which
will be as plentiful as mobile apps and music in the near future as well. A
couple firms are already jumping into this hot space.
Slow
Ideas
— why do some innovations spread rapidly and others at a snail's pace? Dr. Atul
Gwande (author of
The Checklist
Manifesto) addresses this challenge in his
July 29th article in
The New
Yorker. While the use of anesthesia went global within 9 months of
being demonstrated in 1846; it took decades for surgeons to adopt simple
practices to keep the surgical environment sterile!! Why? Here's my favorite
paragraph from what is a lengthy article (10 minutes to read) – lessons for all
of us introducing new ideas:
"So what were the key differences? First, one combatted a visible and immediate problem (pain); the other combatted an invisible problem (germs) whose effects wouldn't be manifest until well after the operation. Second, although both made life better for patients, only one made life better for doctors. Anesthesia changed surgery from a brutal, time-pressured assault on a shrieking patient to a quiet, considered procedure. Listerism, by contrast, required the operator to work in a shower of carbolic acid. Even low dilutions burned the surgeons' hands. You can imagine why Lister's crusade might have been a tough sell. This has been the pattern of many important but stalled ideas. They attack problems that are big but, to most people, invisible; and making them work can be tedious, if not outright painful."
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Lessons? Make problems visible and then craft a solution easy to administer.
Again, this is where digital technology plays a huge role. Think about it.
No
Insight Next Week — back Aug 15.
COACHING:
