Tag: Innovation

Posted on

Entrepreneurial Leadership

There has been much discussion around transformative innovation that explores new horizons and potentially disrupts business models, and whether this requires an entrepreneur mindset.

‘’Entrepreneurial Leadership’’ is a mindset that emphasizes the strategic management of risk and dynamic, changing systems. Entrepreneurial leaders look for new opportunities and ways to innovate as individuals and as part of a team.

These qualities often contrast with traditional leadership methodologies that emphasize following processes and procedures in an orderly, predictable way to minimize risk

Leaders need to harnesses the power of relationships, puts people first, enabling them to take on and solve daunting challenges enabled by a mindset that turns problems into opportunities that creates economic and social benefit.

Passion for ownership and collaboration, thriving in uncertainty, relentless optimism about the future, deeply inquisitive, open to new experiences and unique skills of persuasion are powerful mindsets and beliefs demonstrated by entrepreneurial leaders. The best entrepreneurial leaders are good at experimenting, learning and iterating that unleashes an ability to unlearn and relearn at an increasingly faster rate.

I’m always on the lookout for inspiration, and fortunately, I can find it almost anywhere. It’s one of the reasons
I love to travel. Since the senses are heightened around new circumstances, it’s an opportunity to reconnect to the world sensorially.

For many years I had the fortune to travel to Finland on business, the country values its people and offers many socially responsible programs, like free higher education. Its weather has also had a profound impact on its people. Winters are cold and there is a hardiness to the people as a result of dealing with that cold. The Finns use the word ‘’Sisu’’ to describe their character.

According to Wikipedia, the true meaning of the word Sisu:

“Cannot be translated properly into the English language. Loosely translated to mean stoic determination, bravery, guts, resilience, perseverance and hardiness, expressing the historic self-identified Finnish national character.”

Sisu is a great ideal that can be found at the heart of every entrepreneurial endeavour: contained within its English translation is the combination of guts, grit, resilience, determination, and bravery. It takes a combination all of the above to take a concept from idea to reality. Those who have changed our world had Sisu within them.

Sisu refers to mindset. In her book “Mindset,” Carol Dweck talks about two types of mindsets: one is fixed while the other is growth-oriented. By fixed, Dweck means that a person might think that they are born with a certain amount of talent and it won’t change. If you can’t sing, for example, you never will. A growth mindset is focused on learning: I can’t sing… yet. The yet is the most important part of the growth mindset.

Professor Carol Dweck – Leadership and the Growth Mindset

Perseverance, from my perspective, means one is not ready to give up yet, and therefore Sisu can be considered a growth mindset.

How are executives responding in todays new business world? As you may expect, they are largely focusing on maintaining business continuity, especially in their core. Executives must weigh cutting costs, driving productivity, and implementing safety measures against supporting innovation-led growth.

Unsurprisingly, investments in innovation are suffering. The executives in a recent survey by McKinsey & Company showed that they strongly believe that they will return to innovation-related initiatives once the world has stabilized, the core business is secure, and the path forward is clearer. However, only a quarter reported that capturing new growth was a top priority (first- or second-order) today, compared to roughly 60 percent before the crisis hit.

Possibly the most important discussion around business today, design lead creativity and innovation is about spearheading business reinvention and the disruptive economy.

Innovation, the successful implementation of new ideas, is an important driver of economic growth.

At IBEM combining our collective wisdom and experience we have developed a number of systematic models and approaches that can greatly assist on this journey of entrepreneurial leadership.

We start off with our entrepreneurial leadership canvas which defines a set of skills an attributes of an executive team that we believe are more fit for purpose for the future we face. This has been compiled with input from senior global executives and top thought leaders from academia. This forms the bedrock of all supporting models and approaches and when used in this context has the ability to unlock both strategic and cultural innovation.

We unpack the view of the three horizons of growth and how portfolio theory can have on growth aspirations with H1 running the core business, H2 transforming the core business and H3 innovating brand new businesses.

Appreciating the ease or product replication globally we commence a journey of discovery relating to business models and business model innovation. This ultimately leads to a discovery of what is the core job to be done for customers and does your business model play in the blue ocean or red ocean. Business model innovation is currently untapped in most organisations and is a wonderful approach to reinventing the customer experiences of the future.

Most organisations fail to take this opportunity.

Through our deep experience in building a design thinking school we demonstrate the power of this approach and how it can be used as a catalyst for innovation and driving a more human centred approach that is deeply embedded in empathy mapping.

Change is complex and in many cases not undertaken in a manner that uplifts and unlocks mindsets and beliefs. With our experience working with Harvard Professor John Kotter on his 8 steps of change process we believe this to be a wonderful foundation for any transformational change programme.

Successful innovation creates customer value through new products, services and processes, giving rise to new markets and economic growth, as well as contributing to higher productivity, lower costs, increased profits and employment. The central role of innovation in creating future prosperity and quality of life is widely acknowledged and accepted. Innovation drives long-term economic growth, and states that:

Innovation… has long been viewed as central to economic performance and social welfare and empirical evidence has confirmed the link between innovation and growth. This means that all businesses must understand the importance of innovation and develop an innovation culture to strengthen its efforts and outcomes. In addition to its growing importance and profile, innovation culture has also evolved in line with developing thinking about the scope and nature of innovation in a disruptive economy.

There is a huge gap between aspiration and reality – McKinsey & Company’s yearly global CEO report shows that 84% of world leaders are still operating in a horizon 1 strategy. Leaders who use vision to navigate the future often employ strategy to help them steer their organizations more effectively toward its destination.

To lead with vision, however, requires a fine balance among what matters today, what we anticipate will matter tomorrow, and how we can create the future through inspired, collective effort. There are three horizons that leaders should understand to ensure that vision unfolds as one would hope.

To define the horizon thinking:
• Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
• Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
• Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities and new business to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption.

Leaders need to see beyond the short termism, uncertainty and address the risks while finding the opportunities in digital disruption, the economy, and geopolitical uncertainties, this requires a horizon 2 and horizon 3 approach. CEO’s are the company’s ultimate strategist.

In my experience, innovative cultures start with a philosophy and a tone one analogous to the classic parenting advice that children need both “roots and wings.” As an innovation leader, you must ground creative people in accountability for the organization’s objectives, key focus areas, core capabilities, and commitments to stakeholders. Then you give them broad discretion to conduct their work in service of those parameters. Obsessing too much about budget and deadlines will kill ideas before they get off the ground. Once your scientists understand that they are ultimately accountable for delivering practical products and processes that can be manufactured affordably, you can trust them to not embarrass you by wasting a lot of money and effort.

This trust helps forge an innovation culture. Innovation parenting also pays attention to innovators’ social development. Millennials, in particular, will expect and seek out opportunities to interact with people who interest and excite them exchanges that should, in turn, build innovation energy. To help individuals see where their work fits in the knowledge ecosystem, encourage relationships with colleagues in the internal innovation chain, from manufacturing to marketing and distribution. I ask my new hires to generate a list of who’s who at Corning within the first few months on the job. This helps them overcome the assumption that many hold that they must do everything themselves.

Innovation culture is made up of practices that support and strengthen innovation as a significant aspect of progress and growth.

It includes all structures, habits, processes, instructions, pursuits, and incentives that institutions implement to make innovation happen. It values, drives, and supports innovative thinking in order for it to be successful on an organizational level. To fully understand the importance of your company’s innovation culture you need to know how this impacts what employees do or say at work every day. This will help establish specific behaviours within the organization such as communication patterns between departments during meetings or who gets credit for new ideas when they come about.

While most business leaders now believe having a diverse and inclusive culture is critical to performance, they don’t always know how to achieve that goal.

Continuous innovation stimulates revenue growth and helps companies perform better during economic downturns.

Fixation on top-line growth can skew innovation efforts, resulting only in innovative gains from the low-hanging fruit of incremental growth.

Disruptive innovation is only possible when the entire organization is set up for an innovation mindset, a process that starts with proper leadership training. In this environment, nimble decision-making is a companion to rigorous experimentation. Team members must make the best decisions possible as quickly as required. These decisions must be open to re-examination as new information surfaces.

Trust is one of the most vital forms of capital a leader has today. Amid economic turbulence and global uncertainty, people are increasingly turning to their employers and business leaders as a source of truth, rather than their institutions and government officials. Trust, which can be defined as a belief in the abilities, integrity, and character of another person, is often thought of as something that personal relationships are built on.

A high-trust organization is one in which employees feel safe to take risks, express themselves freely, and innovate. When trust is instilled in an organization, tasks get accomplished with less difficulty because people are more likely to collaborate and communicate with each other in productive ways. As a result, outcomes tend to be more successful. No heroic leader can resolve the complex challenges we face today. To address the important issues of our time we need a fundamental change of perspective. We need to start questioning many of our taken for granted assumptions about our business and social environment.

Leaders serve as role models for their followers and demonstrate the behavioural boundaries set within an organisation. The appropriate and desired behaviour is enhanced through culture and socialisation process of the newcomers. Employees learn about values from watching leaders in action. The more the leader “walks the talk”, by translating internalized values into action, the higher level of trust and respect he generates from followers.

There are countless reasons why a growth mindset is important for business. There are several iconic brands that have adopted a growth mindset, including Apple, Bloomberg, and General Electric, and are known as innovators in their space. A fixed mindset can hinder growth and stops innovation from flourishing – a major problem for companies looking to get ahead of the competition.

One of the world’s most well-known and successful companies, Microsoft, switched its culture to a growth mindset when CEO Satya Nadella took over in 2014. In his words, prior to this mindset shift, “Innovation was being replaced by bureaucracy. Teamwork was being replaced by internal politics. We were falling behind.” Once Microsoft consciously started examining its work culture and implementing the attitudes of a growth mindset, including valuing innovation even if there’s failure along the way, the company truly transformed. As one employee put it, “The culture at Microsoft changed from ‘know-it-all’ to ‘learn-it-all’.” This ultimately helped Microsoft continue to lead in the technology space.

A growth mindset dramatically improves a company culture, but it must be practiced by senior leadership before junior employees will feel comfortable taking on the same mindset.

According to one study, employees that are in a company that values a growth mindset are 47% likelier to say their colleagues are trustworthy, 65% likelier to say that the company supports risk taking and 49% likelier to say that the company fosters innovation. To sum it up, employees value working at a company that fosters a growth mindset.

Companies that encourage a growth mindset must communicate what that mindset entails clearly with employees, so they know it’s okay to take risks, try new things, and potentially fail. According to the NeuroLeadership Institute’s Idea Report, “Growth Mindset Culture,” support from top leadership is critical for success in an organization. Sixty-nine percent of organizations used top leaders to communicate, teach, and role model growth mindset throughout the company.

Educating and instilling a growth mindset into company culture is a worthy cause for organizations looking to continue to innovate and stay ahead of their competition. When top leaders within a company embrace a growth mindset, the entire organization will follow suit.

Finally, to help bridge the trust gap we recognise that organisations need to work with each other and with wider society to identify practicable, actionable steps that businesses can take to shape a new relationship with wider society: a new ‘settlement’ based on mutual understanding and a shared recognition of the positive role that business plays in people’s lives.

The essential practices underpinning distinctive innovation have not changed in this time of crisis, but the relative emphasis and urgency of where businesses should focus has.

Above all, organizations need to realize that innovation, now more than ever, is a choice. Regardless of the relative emphasis and order, which for years have helped leading innovators more than double the total returns to shareholders compared to laggards, will continue to be critical in navigating and emerging even stronger from this crisis.

In the words of Professor Carol Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success:

“Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

Posted on

Design led innovation… the driver of accelerated economic growth

President John F. Kennedy once observed that the word “crisis” in Chinese is composed of two characters; one representing danger, the other opportunity. He may not have been entirely correct on the linguistics, but the sentiment is true enough: a crisis presents a choice.

This is particularly true today.

How are executives responding? As might be expected, they are largely focusing on maintaining business continuity, especially in their core. Executives must weigh cutting costs, driving productivity, and implementing safety measures against supporting innovation-led growth.

Unsurprisingly, investments in innovation are suffering. The executives in a recent survey by McKinsey & Company showed that they strongly believe that they will return to innovation-related initiatives once the world has stabilized, the core business is secure, and the path forward is clearer. However, only a quarter reported that capturing new growth was a top priority (first- or second-order) today, compared to roughly 60 percent before the crisis hit

Possibly the most important discussion around business today, design lead creativity and innovation is about spearheading business reinvention and the disruptive economy.

Innovation, the successful implementation of new ideas, is an important driver of economic growth.

Successful innovation creates customer value through new products, services and processes, giving rise to new markets and economic growth, as well as contributing to higher productivity, lower costs, increased profits and employment. The central role of innovation in creating future prosperity and quality of life is widely acknowledged and accepted. Innovation drives long-term economic growth, and states that:

Innovation… has long been viewed as central to economic performance and social welfare and empirical evidence has confirmed the link between innovation and growth. This means that all businesses must understand the importance of innovation and develop an innovation culture to strengthen its efforts and outcomes. In addition to its growing importance and profile, innovation culture has also evolved in line with developing thinking about the scope and nature of innovation in a disruptive economy.

There is a huge gap between aspiration and reality, McKinsey & Company yearly global CEO report show that 84% of world leaders are still operating in a horizon 1 strategy. Leaders who use vision to navigate the future often employ strategy to help them steer their organizations more effectively toward its destination.

To lead with vision, however, requires a fine balance among what matters today, what we anticipate will matter tomorrow, and how we can create the future through inspired, collective effort. There are three horizons that leaders should understand to ensure that vision unfolds as one would hope. To define the horizon thinking:
• Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
• Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
• Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities and new business to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption.

Leaders need to see beyond the short termism, uncertainty and address the risks while finding the opportunities in digital disruption, the economy, and geopolitical uncertainties, this requires a horizon 2 and horizon 3 approach. CEO’s are the company’s ultimate strategist.

Less well understood is that she/he is also the ultimate integrator, charged with identifying the issues that span the enterprise and formulating a response that brings all the right resources to bear. To do that well requires a broad range of contradictory perspectives: outside in and inside out; a telescope to see the world and a microscope to break it down; a snapshot view of the immediate issues and a time-lapse series to see into the future with the right lens.

Throughout the world, organizations are seeking ways to streamline their processes and improve employee experiences. One way that is presenting itself as the ultimate panacea to enhancing the customer journey is to create dialectical leadership’ and ‘distributed leadership’ and combine them depending on the situation, to achieve a balance between various contradictory elements such as the ‘tug-of-war between efficiency and creativity’, and demonstrate organizational adaptability.

While strong communication is critical for teams to succeed, businesses need cross-departmental collaboration to move the needle and achieve their overarching goals There is a name for this approach—a holistic growth strategy. The goal of a holistic growth strategy is to unite every department to work together as one cohesive unit. While each team has a different specialty, people complete their tasks with the bigger picture at the forefront of their minds. Each employee will understand and be focused on how their work contributes to the company’s holistic goals, like scaling, boosting return on investment (ROI) and retaining customers. Driving sustainable, inclusive growth requires the right mindset, strategy, and capabilities.

Here are some steps that could help foster successful growth. Companies are now shifting away from that kind of mindset in favour of a more holistic approach. The latter involves considering the impact that every change is going to have on the entire organization, and not just specific functions or departments. The reason behind this approach is to attain a business transformation that is embedded in the very culture of the organization; is aligned with the organization’s purpose, and embraced equally by every single employee– not just enforced upon members by the managers. Such a shift means that the organization holds employees and leaders across each department accountable for their roles in the success of the business. An organization that takes a disjointed approach to implement technology only risks having a section of its employees lacking the skills needed to keep up with today’s fast-paced, disruptive and dynamic business environment.

In my experience, innovative cultures start with a philosophy and a tone one analogous to the classic parenting advice that children need both “roots and wings.” As an innovation leader, you must ground creative people in accountability for the organization’s objectives, key focus areas, core capabilities, and commitments to stakeholders. Then you give them broad discretion to conduct their work in service of those parameters. Obsessing too much about budget and deadlines will kill ideas before they get off the ground. Once your scientists understand that they are ultimately accountable for delivering practical products and processes that can be manufactured affordably, you can trust them to not embarrass you by wasting a lot of money and effort.

This trust helps forge an innovation culture. Innovation parenting also pays attention to innovators’ social development. Millennials, in particular, will expect and seek out opportunities to interact with people who interest and excite them exchanges that should, in turn, build innovation energy. To help individuals see where their work fits in the knowledge ecosystem, encourage relationships with colleagues in the internal innovation chain, from manufacturing to marketing and distribution. I ask my new hires to generate a list of who’s who at Corning within the first few months on the job. This helps them overcome the assumption that many hold that they must do everything themselves.

That’s nonsense; others within the organization often have already sorted through similar problems. Understanding that early in one’s tenure reduces wasted effort and can inspire new bursts of collaborative creativity. Innovation culture is made up of practices that support and strengthen innovation as a significant aspect of progress and growth. It includes all structures, habits, processes, instructions, pursuits, and incentives that institutions implement to make innovation happen. It values, drives, and supports innovative thinking in order for it to be successful on an organizational level. To fully understand the importance of your company’s innovation culture you need to know how this impacts what employees do or say at work every day. This will help establish specific behaviours within the organization such as communication patterns between departments during meetings or who gets credit for new ideas when they come about.

While most business leaders now believe having a diverse and inclusive culture is critical to performance, they don’t always know how to achieve that goal. Continuous innovation stimulates revenue growth and helps companies perform better during economic downturns. Fixation on top-line growth can skew innovation efforts, resulting only in innovative gains from the low-hanging fruit of incremental growth.
Disruptive innovation is only possible when the entire organization is set up for an innovation mindset, a process that starts with proper leadership training. In this environment, nimble decision-making is a companion to rigorous experimentation. Team members must make the best decisions possible as quickly as required. These decisions must be open to re-examination as new information surfaces.

This means that decisions should be refined on an ongoing basis. The need to be “right” must be set aside in favour of continual learning. What was once called “flip flopping” will now be called “learning.” An example of nimble decision-making is an organization that offers training to help participants combine data-based decision-making with intuitive decision making to leverage the power of both. They make decisions at the appropriate point to support the process of experimentation. When experiments are run, participants learn, and prior decisions will be revisited when appropriate and updated. Leaders and their employees must value adaptability, flexibility, and curiosity.
All of these skills and aptitudes support an individual’s ability to navigate rapid change. Employees must remain flexible and focused on the face of ongoing change. They need the capacity to feel comfortable and supported by their colleagues so that they can adapt to planned and unplanned change with creativity and focus.

Trust is one of the most vital forms of capital a leader has today. Amid economic turbulence and global uncertainty, people are increasingly turning to their employers and business leaders as a source of truth, rather than their institutions and government officials. Trust, which can be defined as a belief in the abilities, integrity, and character of another person, is often thought of as something that personal relationships are built on.

A high-trust organization is one in which employees feel safe to take risks, express themselves freely, and innovate. When trust is instilled in an organization, tasks get accomplished with less difficulty because people are more likely to collaborate and communicate with each other in productive ways. As a result, outcomes tend to be more successful. No heroic leader can resolve the complex challenges we face today. To address the important issues of our time we need a fundamental change of perspective. We need to start questioning many of our taken for granted assumptions about our business and social environment.

Leaders serve as role models for their followers and demonstrate the behavioural boundaries set within an organisation. The appropriate and desired behaviour is enhanced through culture and socialisation process of the newcomers. Employees learn about values from watching leaders in action. The more the leader “walks the talk”, by translating internalized values into action, the higher level of trust and respect he generates from followers. To help bridge the trust gap we recognise that organisations need to work with each other and with wider society to identify practicable, actionable steps that businesses can take to shape a new relationship with wider society: a new ‘settlement’ based on mutual understanding and a shared recognition of the positive role that business plays in people’s lives.

To create such a settlement, businesses need to see themselves as part of a diverse, interconnected and interdependent ecosystem one that involves government, regulators, individual citizens and more. Trust within and across this ecosystem is key to its long-term sustainability and survival. That’s why trust needs to be restored to the heart of the business world.

Positive habit formation is a method that successful athletes have tried and tested. It entails identifying what behaviour is required to achieve a win and establishing a routine to reinforce this. To apply it in business, ask yourself: what consistent actions do I need to start taking that would improve my overall performance? For instance, if meetings with a certain colleague often overrun, it’s worth considering how that time is being used, adopting a more efficient format and then embedding this through repetition. Great performance is as much about the purpose and culture of the organisation. These beliefs are found in the vision, ethos and values, leadership, the strategy and plans, in people, and importantly that people are trusted to make things happen. Reconnecting with your purpose and values will make it possible, when this crisis has passed, to look back with pride at how your company responded.

Culture always matters, but it matters now more than ever. If these core attributes are applied to the business then high-performance leaders must have an overwhelming desire to lead and that the desire to lead must be for the right reasons. It is only through having this overwhelming desire that they will have the emotional energy, enthusiasm, stamina and drive to undertake the unremitting pressure and sustained hard work required to turn an average organisation into a high performing one.

Events have changed our world and the way that we work in an extraordinarily short time. It is becoming increasingly evident that we will have to live with and adapt to these changes for a long time and it is far from certain that we will ever return to life exactly as it was before the pandemic. These changes bring with them great challenges and risks. These are uncharted and difficult waters to navigate. However, in our view there are also great opportunities, and these challenges can be met where leaders are able to move from a crisis management mindset to thinking about how to run their businesses differently, with a strong focus on culture.

Company’s that get this wrong run the risk of poor conduct, low staff morale and ultimately, weak future performance. However, those that find ways to nudge behaviours in the right direction have the chance to build business models and resilient cultures that adapt to the new circumstances with positive outcomes for customers, employees and investors.

It’s important to have a holistic strategy that enables people to work effectively with colleagues regardless of location. Key to this is a shared purpose and a sense of cohesion. This strategy should be driven from the top and include all teams. Equip and trust your people to build and use capabilities that suit them. Provide support from a mental wellbeing perspective help people find ways of working and connections that work best for them in this new world of work. AI can be used to help employees make better decisions and focus on higher-value tasks, whilst also boosting inclusivity and sparking creativity.

Your people are the heartbeat of your business. Leaders must ensure people have the right skills and technology to succeed and the ability to innovate wherever and however they work. They must meet the needs of every individual embracing diversity in all forms. An effective culture gives people not only the means to be productive but the drive to innovate, adapt, and progress. Support the workplace with technologies that suit remote, office, and frontline workers while keeping them secure. Organisations need an integrated and intelligent approach to security, powered by the cloud and AI. Customer trust is everything. Therefore, ensuring employees have access to the information they need, wherever they are, whilst maintaining security, privacy, and regulatory compliance is vital. Key to the hybrid workplace is human centred design and complemented is a technology platform that allows strategic direction and a strong culture.

Finally, the essential practices underpinning distinctive innovation have not changed in this time of crisis, but the relative emphasis and urgency of where businesses should focus has.

Above all, organizations need to realize that innovation, now more than ever, is a choice. Regardless of the relative emphasis and order, which for years have helped leading innovators more than double the total returns to shareholders compared to laggards, will continue to be critical in navigating and emerging even stronger from this crisis.

As Tim Brown, former CEO of IDEO, once said:

“The transformation of a business-as-usual culture into one focused on innovation and driven by design involves activities, decisions, and attitudes. Workshops help expose people to design thinking as a new approach. Pilot projects help market the benefits of design thinking within the organization. Leadership focuses the program of change and gives people permission to learn and experiment. Assembling interdisciplinary teams ensures that the effort is broadly based. Dedicated spaces such as the P&G Innovation Gym provide a resource for longer-term thinking and ensure that the effort will be sustained. Measurement of impacts, both quantitative and qualitative, helps make the business case and ensures that resources are appropriately allocated. It may make sense to establish incentives for business units to collaborate in new ways so that younger talent sees innovation as a path to success rather than as a career risk.”

Posted on

Guest-blog: Scott Hunter discusses the importance of Five High Impact L&D Ideas on a Shoestring Budget

Scott Hunter

Today’s leadership development landscape demands employees adapt to constant change. In order for organizations to take on the pressing need of reskilling and upskilling, it’s critical they’re immersed in a culture of learning. However, the way we learn is changing: employees want control of their own learning, yet they also want guidance and support from managers and learning and development teams.

The uncertain economic environment of the past few years has had a significant impact on the resources available for learning and development in many organisations. This year we are starting to see signs of greater L&D investment in parts of the private sector, but pressure on resources remains an issue for many and workloads are high. This squeeze on resources, combined with an increasing shortage of key skills, means the need for effective, targeted L&D will continue to grow.

Currently many are held back by a lack of confidence, knowledge and insight around how to harness technological tools to improve their learning and development interventions. L&D needs to build skills and expertise in this area to profit from new innovations that meet business requirements and the demands of learners.

The L&D profession faces a stimulating and challenging future in meeting organisational and learner requirements in fast-paced and busy environments. L&D teams need to continue to work collaboratively across the organisation to ensure that current and future business needs are met and that L&D is agile, effective and timely. Technological developments and emerging insights from other disciplines have great potential to aid this process – but only if the capability to exploit these tools and techniques is developed concurrently. We, therefore, need to keep an eye on the future, to understand the evolving learning landscape, while continuing to build the professional competencies we need today to drive and sustain organisational success.

Today I have the distinct pleasure of introducing another Guest Blogger, Scott Hunter, Scott is a specialist in personal influence and creative thinking.

Scott works in an exciting and ever-changing world, faced with new challenges and opportunities. Organisations today are in desperate need of creating agility and a more open capacity to learn. They need innovative solutions to meet the ever-increasing demand for change, requiring a new approach.

There is an opportunity for a holistic approach to learning and change to come to the fore. There is more demand than ever for learning that engages, adds value, drives performance and reignites organisational values and purpose.

Scott has been involved in learning for over 20 years, experiencing the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Over the last 5 years, he has focused on the changing landscape of learning and finding new ways to create development opportunities and learner journeys outside of the normal approaches.

Scott is going to talk to us about the importance of innovative learning and development and the ‘Five High Impact L&D Ideas on a Shoestring Budget’.

Thank you, Geoff, it is a pleasure to collaborate with you on this important subject.

L&D is often under budgetary and time pressures, with an ever-increasing demand to deliver solutions. This can appear like a never-ending challenge to meet these seemingly paradoxical pressures of developing employees with less money and time.

I would argue, that these challenges can be an opportunity for L&D to have an organisational wide impact, for L&D to help change the perception of what learning is within organisations. Using innovative solutions, it can be possible to guide learning in the organisation that align with business objectives and share accountability.

Learning cannot be detached from performance and, to achieve this, it is important to identify the environmental issues that need to be considered. It is not enough to just introduce new L&D activities and solutions, without considering the requirements needed to help support and the practice of new skills/behaviours in the workplace.

Here are 5 ideas for learning solutions that can be delivered with little financial or time investment from L&D, the participants or the organisation. Included are some thoughts on each idea and some potential environmental considerations for them to deliver the biggest impact.

1. Dragon’s Den (Shark Tank)

Elvin Turner, in his book ‘Be Less Zombie’, describes experiments as the rocket fuel of innovation and, let’s be honest, which organisation doesn’t want more innovation at the moment.

Experiments enable organisations to explore possible innovation, with minimal financial or time investment. They enable innovation to become less risky and more data and evidence-driven.

This is based on the Dragon’s Den TV show.

Once a month/quarter, an employee can pitch their innovation-ideas to a panel of managers in the organisation.

If the managers like the pitch, they can then agree to invest a small amount for the employee to run an experiment to test the assumptions their innovation is based upon.

To meet the criteria of an experiment it should be:

• Small
• Cheap
• Fast
• Designed for learning

This provides an ability to maximise learning with the minimum commitment of resources. Each iteration and development of the innovation is supported by data demonstrating the potential after every step.

It also provides information that can create clarity on actions or directions that will not be beneficial to the organisation.

Some of the advantages of this L&D activity:

• Increases employee understanding of the organisation
• Develops critical skills required for leadership
• Aligns innovation energy towards tangible benefits for the organisation
• Creates deeper insights into opportunities
• Creates knowledge that can be used across the organisation to make evidenced improvements
• Encourages collaboration across the organisation

Environmental considerations

• Leaders being open to the ideas from employees
• Supporting the experimentation during work time
• Reward and recognition of employees in line with learning
• Supporting employees in developing pitches
• Support in designing experimentation and metrics
• Allowing employees to be involved in the projects

2. Work Based Projects

Work-based projects can be used to align employee learning efforts to strategically identified outcomes. Creating opportunities that have tangible business outcomes. Creating the environment where employees can participate and learn simultaneously provide huge benefits.

Projects are ongoing within organisations on a regular basis and are great opportunities for employees to practice the skills/behaviours identified. These projects can be existing ones, or they can be created to specifically support the application of skills/behaviour from a programme, such as a leadership programme.

The use of projects can provide an evaluation of the application of learning, the behaviour of participants and the application of skills in a real business environment. This provides the opportunity for specific and data-rich analysis of the programme and its impact.

Some advantages of this L&D activity:

• Provides opportunities to practice skills and behaviours in a real business environment
• Provides rich data to evaluate the programme and participants
• Links tangible business outcomes to the L&D activity
• Provides the opportunity to test organisations processes and procedures
• Develops a deeper understanding of the organisation
• Encourages collaboration and cross-functional/department working
• Develop leadership skills

Environmental considerations

• Leaders support in providing time to be involved in projects
• Clarity on the deliverable of project and provision of sufficient resources
• Agreement and collection of suitable and relevant metrics
• Ongoing support and feedback during the project

3. Peer to Peer feedback sessions

The power of feedback has been well documented and is an integral aspect of performance management and coaching. However, I would suggest that most of the interactions and observations of our work are with our peers.

It seems, therefore, that gaining feedback from peers can be a great source of information to for areas of improvement, and recognition. The use of peer to peer feedback can create a more open and transparent working environment.

Also, it can provide insights into behavioural aspects of performance, which can often be missed in more traditional performance management approaches.

It can work in an organic way, where feedback is in line with recent observations and requests. Or it can be guided, perhaps to provide feedback to specific behavioural requirements of the organisation.

One example could be, that putting customers first and excellence are key pillars of the organisational strategy. L&D could then provide guidance on what areas to observe and provide feedback on during the peer to peer sessions. This links ongoing organisational feedback with identified strategic outcomes of the organisation.

Potential advantages of this L&D activity:

• Improved performance across the organisation
• Improved relationships
• Improved teamwork and communication
• Alignment of feedback to organisational outcomes
• Support delivery of behavioural change in the workplace

Some environmental considerations

• Support of peer to peer feedback in the performance management process
• Review reward and recognition policies and processes
• Support with guidelines on providing and receiving feedback
• Support from line managers to encourage the process
• Agree metrics for uptake and impact

4. Skills-based video channel

Employees want to be able to do what they need when they need it, lack of specific and often little pieces of information can create unnecessary delays. An example may be needing to create a pivot table in Excel.

Normally this may require an employee to find someone who knows how to do this and then ask them to show them. This is time-consuming and an inefficient method of knowledge sharing.

L&D can create a video channel that is dedicated to micro explainer videos of skills that are often required within the organisation. Working with line managers, L&D can identify employees who have these skills and approach them to create explainer videos.

These videos can then be tagged and hosted on an in-house server, or externally such as a closed YouTube or Vimeo channel. Content can be updated, as and when it becomes clear that skills are required, or an employee has a skill that could be beneficial.

This will provide employees with a searchable and accessible resource of skills and information, which they can easily use at the point of need.

The content could also be highlighted to groups in their employee life cycle as it may become useful. Such as reminders about interview skills, tips for performance management could be provided to line managers in the run-up to scheduled performance management reviews and assessments.

Potential benefits of this L&D solution:

• Provide access to skills as and when required
• Reduce potential delays, improve productivity
• Increase motivation and value for those employees selected to provide content
• Flexible content that is adaptable to organisational needs
• Reduce dependence on training courses, saving time and finances
• Reduce time away from work of subject matter experts

Environmental issues

• Access to the appropriate server to host videos and allow organisation-wide access
• Review reward and recognition for those submitting content
• Provide feedback for content generation
• Support of leadership in creating content
• Ensure compliance with appropriate copyright and licensing requirements
• Communication of resource

5. Microlearning activities

Microlearning is all around us and used in everyday life; allowing employees to consume information and learning quickly and effectively.

These activities can be directly linked to skills or behaviours that are required to deliver team/organisation outcomes. This provides flexibility to create content that can be delivered within specific areas of the organisation, or across the whole organisation.

These can be scheduled and used as stand-alone actions or can be used to support other programmes or initiatives.

In the ‘Influence to Innovate’ coaching programme we provide individual and group microlearning activities. One example is called ‘Lip Sync’ which was designed to help develop better listening skills. Below is an outline of the activity.

Title

Lip Sync

Rationale

To build trust, one of the most important dimensions is selflessness. However, in conversations, we often interrupt and speak over others. This demonstrates that we are more interested in what we have to say rather than what others are saying. This damages our reputation and decreases the trust others have in us.

How to Play

• During your day, when you’re invited into a conversation, pay attention to the lips of the others.
• As soon as their lips move, you must ‘Lip Sync’ by not moving your lips and letting others speak.
• Your objective today is to ‘Lip Sync’ as often as possible, ensuring that your lips do not move at the same time as others

Reflection

At the end of the day, take some time to reflect back and answer the following questions:

• What were the differences in conversations when you managed to ‘Lip Sync’ compared to when you were unable to?
• What do you think the impact on the others was?
• How might ‘Lip Sync’ help you in your work and personal relationships?
• What action can you take to improve your ‘Lip Sync’ ability?

Or if you prefer to see it in a micro-learning format, click here

As an example, you can see that this activity can be briefed quickly and the playing of the activity happens within the normal working day. It does not impact the operations of the organisation and can be completed across specific teams or the whole organisation at the same time.

The use of microlearning can help develop learning at speed and scale.

Some benefits of this L&D solution:

• Specific skills can be developed organisation-wide at the same time
• There is no requirement to be released from work
• Skills can be developed that are directly linked to team/organisation goals
• Can be used to develop behaviours in real work environment
• Can support long term learning programmes
• Improve relationships within organisations
• Can embed values at scale and speed

Some environmental considerations:

• Support from line managers in playing the game
• Support to encourage reflection on the day’s play
• Facilitating healthy discussions within teams
• Link required behaviours to performance management, reward and recognition
• Access to activities
• Enabling all employees to participate

Summary

In my opinion, L&D does not own the learning in the organisation, and can move itself to be seen as the strategic convener of learning. All the ideas in this blog were chosen against the following criteria:

• Had limited operational impact
• Had limited financial costs
• Encouraged learning, as close as possible, to the required application
• Ability to support organisation-wide learning
• Ease of linking to organisational outcomes
• Encourage multiple stakeholders in learning
• Can be easily evaluated for impact

This is not an exhaustive list, and there are many great ideas on how to create learning opportunities in the workplace.

Hopefully, these ideas have given you some food for thought, enabling you to implement some of these quickly and easily into your organisation.

These ideas may help move the conversations L&D are having in organisations and change the perception and move them to be seen as trusted strategic partners.

If you would like to chat about changing the perception of learning in organisations, feel free to reach out.

You can contact Scott Hunter with your questions:
email: scott @ theinnovatecrowd.com
web: www.theinnovatecrowd.com
LinkedIn: Scott Hunter

Posted on

A world event and perseverance may just be the start of a new journey of innovation

The current COVID-19 pandemic is presenting business leaders with some very difficult decisions.

COVID 19 is not alone on the list of world event’s and its easy to forget the legacies of the past that have shaped our world. World history is filled with disasters, and most of them come with extremely high death tolls.

This list looks at the top 12 disasters:
1. Shaanxi Earthquake 1556
2. Tangshan Earthquake 1976
3. Antioch Earthquake 526AD
4. Haiyuan Earthquake 1920
5. Aleppo Earthquake 1138
6. Hongdong Earthquake 1303
7. Hiroshima Nuclear Detonation 1945
8. Nagasaki Nuclear Detonation 1945
9. Spanish Flu 1918
10. Asian Flu 1957
11. Sept. 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks
12. SARS 2003

The Worst Disasters on Earth have been truly devastating, and they go to show that no matter how impressively we build our structures, Nature wins out in the end.

Every disaster has things to teach us.

Looking back at a decade in which superstorms, wildfires, disease outbreaks, and monster earthquakes have taken unimaginable tolls all over the planet, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the scope of the problem.

But learning the lessons of every disaster, every time, is important. Every time, the world can respond more effectively – drawing from past experiences and avoiding past mistakes. As extreme weather worsens, people’s understanding of a disaster’s scope and effect can evolve as well.

Isaac Newton was in his early 20s when the Great Plague of London hit. He wasn’t a “Sir” yet, didn’t have that big formal wig. He was just another college student at Trinity College, Cambridge.

It would be another 200 years before scientists discovered the bacteria that causes plague, but even without knowing exactly why, folks back then still practiced some of the same things we do to avoid illness.

In 1665, there was a version of “social distancing” – Cambridge sent students home to continue their studies. For Newton, that meant Woolsthorpe Manor, the family estate about 60 miles northwest of Cambridge.

Without his professors to guide him, Newton apparently thrived. The year-plus he spent away was later referred to as his annus mirabilis, the “year of wonders.”

In London, a quarter of the population would die of the plague from 1665 to 1666. It was one of the last major outbreaks in the 400 years that the Black Death ravaged Europe.

Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667, theories in hand. Within six months, he was made a fellow; two years later, a professor.

Resilience is the process of being able to adapt well and bounce back quickly in times of stress. This stress may manifest as family or relationship problems, serious health problems, problems in the workplace or even financial problems to name a few.

Developing resilience can help you cope adaptively and bounce back after changes, challenges, setbacks, disappointments, and failures.

To be resilient means to bounce back from a challenging experience.

Research has shown that resiliency is pretty common. People tend to demonstrate resilience more often than you think. One example of resilience is the response of many Americans after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and individuals’ efforts to rebuild their lives.

Persistence is the quality of continuing steadily despite problems or difficulties. It is one of the qualities of high achievers. The longer you stay committed to a task or goal, the more likely something good will happen for you. And believe me- the Universe will test your commitment to your goal. You develop yourself and learn new lessons, you face challenges and obstacles, but the payoff comes when you refuse to give up.

Have you heard that anything worth having is worth working for? It’s true. Some of my most difficult situations preceded tremendous breakthroughs. There are tons of examples of underdogs or heroes of ours who persisted, stayed on course, and met or even exceeded their goals.

Let’s look at some examples.

• NASA experienced 20 failures in its 28 attempts to send rockets to space.
• Tim Ferriss sent his breakthrough New York Times bestselling book 4 Hour Workweek to 25 publishers before one finally accepted it.
• Henry Ford’s early businesses failed and left him broke 5 times before he founded Ford Motor Company.
• Walt Disney went bankrupt after failing at several businesses. He was even fired from a newspaper for lacking imagination and good ideas.
• Albert Einstein was thought to be mentally handicapped before changing the face of modern physics and winning the Nobel Prize.
• It took Thomas Edison 1,000 attempts before inventing the light bulb. His teachers also told him growing up that he was too stupid to learn anything.
• Lucille Ball was regarded as a failed actress before she won 4 Emmys and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors.
• Dr. Seuss’s first book was rejected by 27 publishers before it was accepted.
• American author Jack London received 600 rejections before his first story was accepted.
• Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime, though today, his works are priceless.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for not being good enough.
• J. K Rowling was nearly penniless, severely depressed, divorced, and a single mom, who went to school while writing Harry Potter. Rowling went from needing government assistance to being one of the richest women in the world in a 5-year span through her hard work and perseverance.

Persistence as with resilience, determination and purpose is the quality of continuing steadily despite problems or difficulties. It is one of the qualities of high achievers. The longer you stay committed to a task or goal, the more likely something good will happen for you. Some of my most difficult situations preceded tremendous breakthroughs.

Persistence is one of several vital characteristics of successful leaders. Driven by an indomitable spirit, successful leaders never give up on their dreams of building a viable business. There is no impediment too great. This unflagging attribute is a key characteristic of triumphant business builders.

Purposeful Driven Leaders tackle bewildering and potentially catastrophic situations. They possess courage, hope and a deeply held belief that they can survive the moment and continue to prosper.

Personal strength, greatness, self-confidence, maturity and wisdom are by-products gained through unfathomable adversity. It has been said that men become great mariners when sailing on troubled waters, not calm seas. The same axiom applies in the business world.

Serious hardships may be financial in nature. They might also be employee-, client-, vendor-or investor-based. They may arise through human error or market conditions. I can see, in my mind’s eye, the depressed face of a purposeful leader who can’t make payroll or has just lost a substantial client. I can sense an owner’s profound frustration upon learning a product has failed and there is a lawsuit to manage.

We can empathize with a founder’s pain when there has been a fire, theft or betrayal. Consider the emotions felt with the death of a spouse or key employee. These occurrences are severe, somewhat common, and require a powerful and thoughtful response.

We need to have more gratitude for the amazing opportunities that are born from disasters and world events.

On a final note, the first step in becoming innovative is accepting that the world around us needs to change, sometimes because of unexpected and unprecedented events, and believing that we as individuals must take initiative to make that change happen.

It requires ongoing learning and an open mind with a willingness to see the world in new ways. Upon such realization, one must develop an unshakeable mental toughness for the long haul.

Changing the way we live or do business requires imagination and creativity. And that requires staying curious about the world. The less we’re wrapped up in our current situation or thinking, the more we notice about the world.

Even Einstein famously declared that he had “no special talent beyond being passionately curious,” which means there is no better avenue to cultivate creative work aside from impassioned curiosity.

Taking unconventional paths requires taking risks for a greater reward (financial or otherwise). It takes courage to act differently than others might. Innovative people tend not to dwell on things, but are decisive – the unknown does not paralyze them. They invest in their own capabilities and plough forward to create access where there is none. This brings us back to the need for mental toughness, because many times those risks don’t pay off right away.

Connecting the dots between the access one already has and the access one needs, coupled with the traits described above, allows us to survive and thrive.

As Walt Disney once said:

“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

Posted on

UK-Central Europe Business Summit – Technology, Innovation, Investment

I am looking forward to attending the UK-Central European Business, Technology, Innovation, Investment Summit in Budapest – Hungary on May 11th – 2020.

There will be over 100+ Central European and British Companies including the British Chamber of Commerce (Corporate sector and SMEs) in the IT, Technology and Investment Sectors, to include; Vodafone, Tesco, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, BP, MOL, Samsung, Mastercard, KNORR Bremse, investors, angels, private equity and VC’s.

The summit will cover technology, innovation and investment across some of the largest talked about subjects in business today.

I am looking forward to being a panellist at this prodigious event, debating international trade, growth and development to Central European Markets.

Innovation’s role is a key driver of economic growth, in general, #innovation benefits go beyond #productivity and can improve welfare through channels such as lower morbidity and longer longevity. In digital technologies such as AI, in ICT including quantum computing, and in genomics and synthetic biology about one-third of the increase in longevity in Europe, for instance, is due to innovation.

May 12th, I will be introduced to business leaders discussing my new book “Purposeful Discussions”, the 4th Industrial Revolution and Future Trends; some of the topics I will be discussing are as follows:

Innovation – Innovation increases your chances to react to changes and discover new opportunities. It can also help foster a competitive advantage as it allows you to build better products and services for your customers.

Regulation – The impact of formal standards and regulation on companies’ innovation efficiency in different levels of technological uncertainty.

Geopolitical – The increasing spectrum of political and economic activity occurring outside government control or oversight means that vulnerabilities have increased throughout the networks of globalisation.

Summit-details and tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/uk-central-europe-business-summit-technology-innovation-investment-tickets-89052198523

 

Posted on

Navigating the Data Experience Economy

I recently attended a Podcast in London called ‘Unleash your Product Data’, the description of the event caught my attention with speakers and experts in the field from Boden, Productsup and The Comma Group. I have recently been a judge for ‘The Experian Data Excellence Award for Lloyds Bank National Business Awards 2019’, so fresh off the mark, I was ready with my questions!

Here is a link to the PodCast: Podomatic Podcasts

After the questioning, Emile Bloemen from Productsup approached me and we had a very interesting discussion across the Product and Customer Experience in data, which I found fascinating, and which prompted me to write this blog.

Let’s have a look at the customer experience and why the need for product experience management.

Truly understanding customer needs may help companies improve not only the buying experience but also their bottom line. A company’s relationship with its customers is about much more than improving product ratings or decreasing wait times. Understanding the customer journey is about learning what customers experience from the moment they begin considering a purchase, and then working to make the journey toward buying a product or service as simple, clear, and efficient as possible.

Customer experience has become the centrepiece of most marketing strategies today. Marketers have begun to realise that it’s the biggest differentiator a brand or a retailer has in today’s overcrowded market. A great customer experience starts with a compelling product experience. Customers have their pick of channels, so standing out among the crowd with relevant product information is imperative.

The race to own customer experience is on. Companies are recognizing the importance of delivering an experience that makes them stand out from their competition. Some are learning the hard way.

In recent year’s United Airlines had a brand crisis, in which $1.4 billion in value was wiped out overnight when a passenger’s experience went viral on social media. And, you may not have heard about Juicero, but it fell victim to a brand crisis when it was discovered the proprietary juice packets needed for its $699 juicer weren’t so proprietary, resulting in the company dropping the price of the juicer to $200, and then ultimately going out of business.

Be it customer service, product quality or just the way the customers feel about the companies they do business with, customer experience rises to the top of whether or not the customer will decide to keep doing business with a brand.

Everything a brand does – the way it does its marketing, research, advertising and more – all play a role in shaping the customer’s experience. Focusing on customer experience management (CXM) may be the single most important investment a brand can make in today’s competitive business climate.

Look around you. How many people are on their computer? Their cell phone? We’re surrounded by digital experiences, both at work and at home. Whether you’re a SaaS or cloud business, or if a digital experience is just one facet of your offerings, it’s imperative that you deliver an amazing product experience.

As a product leader, this weight of this responsibility falls on your shoulders and if you want to create competitive products, you need to develop a customer-centric mindset. Understanding product experiences inside and out will benefit your customers and your career. We’re no longer transitioning to a new era of business, we’re deep in it, and if you want to keep up, you need to be in tune with your customers and deliver continuous intrinsic value. Otherwise, you’ll be obsolete before you can say “Blockbuster.”

For this reason, Product Experience Management (PXM) tools are a necessity. You want to be able to compete on all the shopping channels and new marketplaces that arise. The ability to prepare a product catalogue to flow into every channel in the required format is no easy task.

The eCommerce space is changing. Customers demand a compelling and consistent brand experience wherever they shop. Product experience management allows brands and retailers to offer buyers these superior experiences, leading to increased conversions, reduced returns, improved customer satisfaction, and stronger brand loyalty.

‘Brands and retailers must deliver a compelling story across all digital touchpoints during the purchasing journey.’

That all sounds well and good – but how do you actually do that?

How can brands and retailers manage product experiences and provide compelling content in the proper context?

And where does product information management (PIM) fit into this picture?

What is Product Experience Management (PXM)?

Product Experience Management is a new profession. It’s the subtle science of delivering product information in context, adapted and scoped by channel and locale to match the buying experience at every touchpoint. Having the right data and insight into the type of product experience buyers expect is the foundation for any great customer experience.

‘According to Forrester, 85% of customers rate product information as the top feature they want from a website.’

Product experience management is how you make an emotional connection with your buyers. It’s the next stage beyond goods and services in the progression of economic value. PIM is the “what” you use to describe your commodities, goods, and services, while PXM is “how” you stage an experience. In 1999, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore wrote a book entitled ‘The Experience Economy’. The context is about how people trade money for time. This concept and the progression of economic value help us understand how we arrived at the place where customer experiences are the centrepiece of business models.

Pine and Gilmore say that in today’s economy people differentiate themselves from their competitors by moving up the economic value chain to provide excellent customer experiences. This value chain concept is shown below:

By using PIM as an engine for automating the boring, tedious, repetitive tasks involved in collecting, standardizing, and enriching product content, your marketing and eCommerce teams can turn their attention to contextualising product information, before distributing it to each channel.

Putting product data in context can mean several things: the right images, the right descriptions, the right attribute sets, and more. Each must be precisely tailored for the locale, cultural norms and standards, context for the channel, and the ways your buyer interacts with your brand. With the right tools, you can even leverage product data intelligence to further streamline your PXM practice.

These days, it’s all about speed. If you can’t get your products to market fast enough, then you’ll miss out on sales. It’s especially critical to get to market on time if your products are sold on a seasonal basis, or if you regularly add new products and models.

A good PXM solution enables your team to publish and update product catalogues in a timely way. It provides workflows to optimize and streamline processes, helping brands and retailers quickly add new products or channels. It uses business rules and automation to reduce manual work, freeing up time for marketers to write emotional product descriptions, while managing product images as well as text. With improved, streamlined processes, marketers can create complete and compelling product experiences across all channels.

This is the century of ‘smart devices’ which pushes the boundaries further and making the impossible possible. Organisations should analyse the gap across various markets in the technology field and innovate smart products and accessories catering to different requirements of their customers. The right product innovation can not only save an organisation from extinction but also help them sustain and grow by penetrating markets faster, connecting better with clients, seising big opportunities and having an edge in the business competition.

Profitable it seems for organisations to come up with innovative products, the groundwork to find a breakthrough idea is extremely complex. The complete cycle of inventing & innovating a product, after further developments and modifications, till it reaches maturity and leads to innovation of another new product is time-consuming and exceedingly complicated.

It needs immense precautions to implement an idea for product innovation and the development of the same. Tech experts should keep in mind its further implications, possible benefits, and disadvantages, if any, before the product is launched in the market. Balance is a very important aspect for an organization in product innovation.

The refinement of ideas, innovation of products and their public acceptance decides the future of an organisation and its success. The path is full of risks, nevertheless, organizations should step ahead cautiously by investing majorly in product innovation and deploying the best minds, in order to succeed and sustain today’s market

Final thought, in an age of constant, complex and disruptive technological innovation, knowing what, when, and how to structure regulatory interventions has become more difficult. Regulators find themselves in a situation where they believe they must opt for either reckless action (regulation without sufficient facts) or paralysis (doing nothing).

Inevitably in such a case, caution tends to imply risk. But such caution merely functions to reinforce the status quo and makes it harder for new technologies to reach the market in a timely or efficient manner.

Possibly the solution, is for lawmaking and regulatory design needs to become more proactive, dynamic, and responsive. So how can regulators actually achieve these goals? What can regulators do to promote innovation and offer better opportunities to people wanting to build a new business around a disruptive technology or simply enjoy the benefits of a disruptive new technology as a consumer?

As Mahatma Gandi once said:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

Posted on

Guest-blog: David Priseman – The future of technology in home-care for the elderly

David Priseman

Technology is currently critical to home health care. Future advances in home health care technologies have the potential not only to facilitate the role of home health care within the overall health care system but also to help foster community-based independence for individuals.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing another Guest Blogger, David Priseman, who is an accomplished Executive Director. David had a career in consultancy and banking, including spells abroad with two major European banks and has worked for several years in the field of private equity and alternative finance as well as an advisor to SMEs. He has considerable board experience and currently chairs a mid-sized care home group and is a non-executive director of a small but ambitious technology company. He has a particular interest in how technology can address the challenges of the care sector, which is often slow to adopt innovation.

David is going to discuss with us today the future of technology in home-care for the elderly.

Both councils and families strive to keep the elderly living in their own home for as long as possible. Councils see a simple cost advantage in doing so, whilst families also like the idea that mum (statistically, it is usually mum) can still live at home.

However the reality of a single elderly person living at home on her own can be far from the rosy ideal. There is an alternative image of a harassed care worker rushing into an elderly person’s home, quickly heating up a tin of baked beans then 15 minutes later rushing out of the door. Yet this might be the only contact the person has with anyone until the same or a different care worker rushes by the next day.

Domiciliary care, like residential care, is difficult to provide effectively and profitably. Companies are handing back council care contracts as they cannot operate at the fee levels on offer (1). Staff recruitment and retention is a permanent challenge.

Councils are reluctant or unable to pay more than £15/hour, which is not financially viable for home-care providers, who now have to pay employees a higher minimum wage as well as their travel costs. However it can be viable at £20/hour. With care home costs around the £1,000/week level, half this amount would buy 25 hours of home-care per week. As the number of residential care beds is in slight decline whilst the number of elderly people is projected to rise steeply, this implies that the number of elderly people living at home will also rise. With this could come a significant growth in the self-payer home-care market.

People living at home are exposed to the risk of physical vulnerability, slow and inappropriate care delivery and social isolation. However the recent development of new technologies may in combination significantly improve the social and care experience for such people.

The unpredictability of the number of hours worked together with the short term notice of rotas and sudden changes in rotas are a major cause of high home-care worker turnover (2) and a headache for domiciliary care providers. However a range of competing software and apps have now been developed to mitigate (though not remove) this challenge. This can improve the efficiency of staff scheduling from a provider’s view point, addressing one of the main sources of dissatisfaction of employees whilst also introducing flexibility for the elderly resident.

Many elderly people have traditionally had a regular, perhaps weekly, phone call with their children. Some now conduct this through Sype. In addition, some families have installed a videocam or webcam in their parent’s home, usually in the kitchen or lounge/dining room, so they can see mum. This helps to maintain social contact and give reassurances about mum’s safety and wellbeing.

The development of ‘wearable technology’ should become more widespread. Currently the dominant application is for fitness monitoring during exercise, however it will increasingly move over to healthcare monitoring. This can be a watch or a monitor which is worn as an arm panel or in the future may be embedded in clothing; in all cases it measures certain of the wearer’s vital signs.
At present, these are mostly used in hospitals to reduce the requirement of nurses, of whom there is a well-documented shortage, to conduct routine patient checks. Instead, the data are transmitted to a cloud-based server and if a vital sign reading crosses a warning threshold this immediately signals an alert. In time, these devices will migrate to the residential setting.
This will speed up the awareness and treatment of a wearer’s condition. Major medical devices companies such as Medtronics and GE are active in this area, which has also seen technology start ups enter the market, such as EarlySense and Snap40. (3)

The internet of things (IoT) is rapidly increasing the number of internet-connected devices in the home. This can be used in a number of ways to improve the safety of elderly people living at home. For example, many people get up, go to the toilet, have a cup of tea and open the curtains. Sensors can detect whether or not the toilet has been flushed, the kettle boiled and the curtains opened, and if any of these things has not happened by say 9am then an alert would be triggered. (4)

One of the main problems facing the elderly living alone is loneliness and the lack of contact with others. Here, a combination of technologies is emerging to provide at least a partial solution. Awareness has recently increased of Amazon’s Alexa voice-controlled system which can search the internet, answer questions and respond to simple commands. Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana are similar and rival devices.
Owing to improvements in voice recognition and AI, it will increasingly be possible to have an interactive ‘conversation’ with such devices. At some point, it may be possible to combine this with the face of a person on a screen or even a hologram of a person in the room to create the impression that a human is having a conversation with and maybe even developing a relationship with an intelligent machine-based ‘person’.
This idea has been explored in television and film, for example the science-fiction drama Her when a man develops a romantic relationship with his computer’s feminised operating system (5). Soon, it may become reality and even commonplace.

Finally, more than one of these technologies may combine in a way that provides care monitoring, practical assistance and companionship. Developed countries all have aging populations so the need to find solutions is urgent and many companies and universities are conducting research into this area, such as robotics with AI (6). New market opportunities are emerging to integrate and package appropriate technology solutions.

The vulnerable elderly living on their own at home have often been poorly served to date. Yet the number of such people is poised to continue to rise steeply. However a number of technologies are now being developed in parallel to tackle the problems they face. The result may be an improved care environment for the elderly at home: safer, reliable, better supported and less isolated. Such a future could be with us sooner than we think.

You can contact David Priseman on LinkedIn or by email: davidpriseman @ btconnect.com (remove spaces).

References

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39321579
2. http://timewise.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1957-Timewise-Caring-by-Design-report-Under-200MB.pdf
3. http://www.earlysense.com/ and http://www.snap40.com/
4. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-of-things/internet-caring/ and https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-of-things/elderly-independent-smart-home/
5. http://www.herthemovie.com/#/about
6. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39255244

Posted on

Social Media, H2H relationships and the smartphone

I recently had a very intriguing conversation with my social media and blog agency – we have those conversations normally at 11pm London time, every Sunday night. Jacques will ask me: “How are you my friend? Your blog for Monday is all set.” I will respond with: “I am Social Media worked out, so tired”, to which Jacques responds: “So just come off Social Media and concentrate on your writing, I still want to see your next book!”
At this point I laugh loudly, but the facts are, when Jacques said this to me it was a precious moment of introspection and reflection – some people call this a light bulb moment, the result is he is so right, and this is a subject I have written extensively about: ‘Is Human 2 Human Communication Dying’, ‘In the praise of speed or not, as the case may be’, ‘Has technology killed love and romance’, ‘Why are our H2H relationships so disconnected from life?’ – just to name a few.

One month after truly quitting Twitter (we even removed the Twitter-share buttons from the site), I feel much better: no incessant alerts anymore, no more sending only (without feedback). And, I actually found a true quality-alternative: interaction, feedback and participation – you can find me here: Geoff on beBee.

If you are emotionally attached to your smartphone and rely on it every waking minute, it may be harming your relationships – I find most accidents happen with people texting when they walk, not to mention what happens when you are in their line of the street. The new education for humans is how to avoid being knocked over by the person texting on their smartphone.

So how does social media affect interaction in our society? Will face-to-face communication ultimately diminish because of these new social technologies? These questions are ones that many researchers have found extremely intriguing since the advent and popularisation of social media in the last decade. Within this topic, social competency is an important ideal that most people strive towards, but there is evidence to support the claims that social media is actually harming people’s ability to interact competently in an offline setting.

Psychologists claim that increasing numbers of people in long-term partnerships are having to compete with their partner’s smartphone for attention, making it the ‘third wheel’ in their relationship.

A survey found that almost three quarters of women in committed relationships feel that smartphones are interfering with their love life and are reducing the amount of time they spend with their partner.

Scientists found that what they describe as this ‘technoference’ – even if infrequent – sets off a chain of negative events: more conflict about technology, lower relationship quality, lower life satisfaction and higher risk of depression.
• 62 per cent of women in long-term relationships who were surveyed said technology interferes with their free time together
• 35 per cent claim their partner will pull out his phone mid-conversation if they receive a notification
• 25 per cent said their partner actively texts other people during the couple’s face-to-face conversations
• 75 per cent said their smartphone is affecting their relationship.
The poll, which was conducted by Brandon McDaniel of The Pennsylvania State University and Sarah Coyne of Brigman Young University in Utah, surveyed 143 women.

Further studies on the social competency of youths who spend much of their time on social media networks are sometimes very conflicting. For example, a study executed by the National Institute of Health found that youths with strong, positive face-to-face relationships may be those most frequently using social media as an additional venue to interact with their peers. As a pretty outgoing person myself, I find myself using social media as an extra outlet to obtain real-time news feeds, research and interact with people who are interested in my book. Although I personally agree with this study’s findings, I also believe that social media can be an excellent avenue for introverted people to find a comfortable setting to interact and from the opposite it can drive a highly-motivated individual to isolation, loneliness and to mental health disorder.

I definitely believe that face-to-face interaction must continue to be our main source of communication. According to Forbes magazine, only 7% of communication is based on the verbal word. That means that over 90% of communication is based on nonverbal cues such as body language, eye contact, and tone of voice.

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the brain chemicals of people who habitually used the Internet and were perhaps addicted to it had abnormal connections between the nerve fibers in their brain. These changes are similar to other sorts of addicts, including alcoholics.

Take “ghosting,” which has been discussed regularly in the media lately. The name refers to someone simply vanishing from another person’s life, usually after the two have gone on several dates. It’s a frustrating, confusing and, certainly, impolite way to end a relationship, but it’s not new.

The connected world’s larger behavioral impact is more on how we interact with each other on a daily basis. A 2014 study: “The iPhone Effect: The Quality of In-Person Social Interactions in the Presence of Mobile Devices” looked at the effects that phones have when people talk face-to-face. Observing 100 friendly couples having a 10-minute conversation while their phone was present, researchers noticed that the individuals still continued to fiddle with their phones. When those same couples conversed without a phone present, their conversations resulted in greater empathy.

A very interesting white paper named “Information in the Study of Human Interaction” by Keith Devlin and Duska Rosenberg states that in today’s world, most of us think of information as a commodity that is largely independent of how it is embodied. It can be bought, sold, stolen, exchanged, shared, stored, sent along wires and through the ether, and so forth. It can also be processed, using information technologies, both concepts that would have sounded alien (and probably nonsensical) to anyone living in the nineteenth century, and even the first half of the twentieth.

Little by little, Internet and mobile technology seems to be subtly destroying the meaningfulness of interactions we have with others, disconnecting us from the world around us, and leading to an imminent sense of isolation in today’s society. Instead of spending time in person with friends, we just call, text or instant message them. It may seem simpler and easier, but we ultimately end up seeing our friends face to face a lot less. Ten texts can’t even begin to equal an hour spent chatting with a friend over coffee, lunch or dinner. And a smiley-face emoticon is cute, but it could never replace the ear-splitting grin and smiling eyes of one of your best friends. Face time is important, people. We need to see each other.

This doesn’t just apply to our friends; it applies to the world around us. It should come as no surprise that face-to-face interaction is proven by studies to comfort us and provide us with some important sense of well-being.

There’s something intangibly real and valuable about talking with someone face to face. This is significant for friends, partners, potential employers, and other recurring people that make up your everyday world. That person becomes an important existing human connection, not just someone whose disembodied text voice pops up on your cell phone, iPad or computer screen.

While technology has allowed us some means of social connection that would have never been possible before, and has allowed us to maintain long-distance friendships that would have otherwise probably fallen by the wayside, the fact remains that it is causing us to spread ourselves too thin, as well as slowly ruining the quality of social interaction that we all need as human beings.

As Anthony Carmona once said:

“Social media websites are no longer performing an envisaged function of creating a positive communication link among friends, family and professionals. It is a veritable battleground, where insults fly from the human quiver, damaging lives, destroying self-esteem and a person’s sense of self-worth.”

Posted on

Left brain or right brain – can you still innovate?

Innovation and creative thinking go hand in hand. But today’s corporate leaders are not always encouraged to use their imaginations, especially when it comes to major business deals and decisions. During uncertain times, innovation can take a backseat to well-tested and proven methods of delivering assurances. But novel ideas—and the creative thinking that goes along with them can be the most effective ways to differentiate your corporation or brand in a competitive economy.

When it comes to idea generation, we typically consider ourselves to be either right-brained people or left-brained people. Left-brained thinkers tend to use logic, facts, and objective means to assess the world, whereas right-brained thinkers are known for using imagination, possibility, emotion, and subjective measures. Left-brainers are methodical and verbal while right-brainers are intuitive and visual.

Certain industries are often thought of as being appropriate for right- or left-brained thinkers. Artists and entrepreneurs are creative types who heavily rely on the imaginative sphere of the right brain. Business executives and managers are frequently logical types who may use the left brain for deductive reasoning and analysis. Of course, all humans use both parts of their brains on a daily basis, but the idea of engaging the right brain more readily is one to seriously contemplate, considering ideas are the global currency of today’s ‘creative economy.’

Your brain is divided into two completely separate hemispheres. Each hemisphere processes information differently. Your left hemisphere processes information in series. It thinks in language. It works linearly and methodically. Your right hemisphere processes information in parallel. It thinks in mental images. It ‘sees’ the big picture.

One side of your brain or the other is dominant. In itself, that should not be surprising, since it’s consistent with another well-known human trait: Some people are left-handed and some people are right-handed. In a similar fashion, some people are left brainers and some people are right brainers.

Left brain vs right brain, what are you?

If you’re the CEO of a major corporation, chances are good you are a left brainer. Before you make a decision, you want to be supported by facts, figures, market data, consumer research. It couldn’t be otherwise in a world where the ultimate measurement is the stock price and the bottom line.

If you have a job in marketing, chances are good you are a right brainer. You often make decisions by gut instinct, with little or no supporting evidence. It couldn’t be otherwise in a creative discipline like marketing.

Another striking difference: Left brainers have a strong preference for verbal thinking, while right brainers favour visual thinking. When a management type makes a speech, he or she usually stands behind a podium and reads a script or the words on a teleprompter (or uses PowerPoint slides with nothing but words). When a marketing type makes a speech, he or she usually stands in front of a screen and makes a presentation using dozens of visuals.

Because they are verbally oriented, left-brain people are usually good talkers. Salespeople, for example, are often exceptionally good talkers but notoriously bad at the paperwork or writing part of their jobs.

Right-brain people are usually good writers. Why? Because arranging words on a page is as much a visual challenge as it is a verbal one. In letters and e-mails, for example, right brainers will often arrange the words so that each line contains a complete thought.

Most managers are verbally oriented left brainers. Why is this so?

Because of the way people move up the ladder in the corporate world. The general principle is: You don’t get promoted, you get elected.

business-model-innovationManagement is like politics. Your fellow workers determine whom they would like to work for. A left brainer is an extrovert, particularly good at schmoozing with people. A right brainer is an introvert, totally outclassed when it comes to office politics. As companies get older and bigger, their upper levels tend to be staffed almost exclusively with left brainers. As a result, the innovators (primarily right brainers) tend to leave or get pushed out.

What saves the situation, as far as the economy is concerned, is entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Herb Kelleher and dozens of others. Entrepreneurs are invariably right brainers who often turn out to be exceptionally good marketing thinkers, too.

Take Steve Jobs, who at one time was fired from Apple. Jobs is a classic right brainer with a intense focus on a product’s visual appearance and a disdain for the consumer’s opinion. “Steve Jobs doesn’t do market research,’ said venture capitalist and former Apple employee Guy Kawasaki. ‘Market research for Steve Jobs is the right hemisphere talks to the left hemisphere.’

“People don’t know what they want,” Jobs once said, “until you show it to them.”

Once again, what are you? While it would be nice to think you could operate both sides of your brain with equal facility, the facts suggest otherwise.

Most management publications are also focused on execution. Fortune magazine once reported, “Ninety percent of organizations fail to execute on otherwise well-planned strategies.”

But if they fail to execute the strategies, how does one determine they were “otherwise well-planned”?

How do marketing people deal with CEOs who have the power to make strategic marketing decisions without the experience only a lifetime of marketing can accumulate? It’s not easy.

The next generation of entrepreneurs seems especially ready to recognise the value of whole-mind thinking when it comes to innovation. Young entrepreneurs like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey often have a deeply methodical side (he began as a programmer), but also a complementary creative side that grapples with problems nonlinearly while embracing uncertainty.

So while some well-established business leaders may still believe in a mutually exclusive right-brain/left-brain dichotomy, the more progressive approach is realising that creativity actually exists in many different forms. Considering what it has done for social media and other channels of e-commerce, promoting this type of holistic-minded business philosophy is essential to better innovation in almost every industry.​