What if your portfolio planning included visibility? With Moves The Needle's Prioritization Tool you can identify ideas that require exploration as well projects that should be funded because they are high impact with high evidence of success.
The current model of horizon planning has diverged from its original thesis. Instead of focusing on growth or new revenues, it has been molded into three time horizons based on "level of innovation." The fundamental problems with this model is two-fold. First, true innovation is unpredictable, so you can't lay it out on a time horizon. Second, growth can come from numerous places, not just "innovation". Where is not determined by the tine horizon or the model itself. Companies that prioritize their projects based on the incorrect assumption of "time to ROI" clearly means an inefficient allocation of resources.
The goal of the book Disruption Proof is to help leaders and founders of companies to create what I call RAD companies, which stands for being resilient, aware, and dynamic. RAD requires new behaviors and skills for all, while also establishing new systems, processes, and structure to deal with an increasingly complex and uncertain world.
RAD companies are necessary to survive and thrive in the Digital Age. Many of the trends we see in business–increasing diversity, agile practices, developing empathy, running experiments–are in response to the complexity and uncertainty in our sociopolitical, economic, and working environments.
When you scale based upon functions, you are likely reinforcing silos. You end up cascading tasks that one hopes align with organizational priorities.
Mission-based organization of the company, rather than carving work up based upon function is more impactful. In the end, most teams will look the same, as if they were carved up by function, but only because the mission dictates that. In other words, if a team has a mission that requires building particular software product functionality, the team will likely be composed of all software developers. On the other hand, if a mission requires a team to investigate what functionality will increase customer engagement, functions other than developers would be required. Learn how Moves The Needle has helped companies with mission-based organization.
The horizon model originally came from the book “The Alchemy of Growth” by Stephen Coley, Mehrdad Baghai, David White. The purpose for the model was to help businesses think about their need to develop new revenue sources over time.
The increased complexity and endless disruptions of the modern world brought on by the transition to the digital age means uncertainty is everywhere. All across our businesses, we face new challenges, as what used to work no longer achieves desired outcomes. The self-awareness of admitting what we don’t know is the first step toward figuring out new best practices. Fundamentally, people must act differently in the face of uncertainty. Businesses need to adopt learning strategies in order to improve, adapt, or even reinvent their execution strategies.
Do companies know how to innovate? Should innovation be part of an individual’s job title? Should it be in a job description? Does a company even need to innovate? Most big companies think technology when thinking about innovation, regardless of whether or not they’re technology companies. Startups are often considered to be de facto innovators, but is that the case?
Wars, technological advances, the pandemic, social, and political turmoil have led to businesses facing disruption on an ongoing basis. As technology innovation has moved to the edge, technical risk is less problematic than market risk. The risk to business is less “can we build the product” than “should we?” Customer insights represent an important and vastly under-appreciated intellectual capital versus, say, patents. Businesses must be closer to the customer; understand them deeper. They must be able to respond to change. Overall, companies must be nimble and move fast.
Disruption is happening, and we can’t stop it—it's part of the shift from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age. We can, however, learn and adapt in order to survive and thrive. We can do this by thinking like entrepreneurs, in other words, learning before executing. To behave in this way, however, requires new leadership skills and benefits from alternative organizational structure.
In this episode, Jocelyn Mangan, CEO of Him for Her, joins us to discuss how her social impact enterprise is building the boardroom of the future by addressing the gender gap in for-profit boardrooms to increase diversity. Him for Her’s unique approach overcomes the networking gap responsible for the sparsity of women in the boardroom by engaging business luminaries such as Stacy Brown-Philpot, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Weiner, Eric Yuan, and many more to connect the world’s most talented “hers” to board service.
Steve Portigal, Author, Speaker, and Customer Research Expert, shares how to drive innovation using the power of strategic customer insights. He reminds us that learning from customers is “messy” because we are complex beings. In order to go deep while interviewing customers you should have clarity about what is uncomfortable for you and what is uncomfortable for customers and not conflate the two. His provocation “No One Cares” highlights the risk of magnifying the significance of our solutions in a customer’s life and missing the opportunity to focus on things that customers care about.
Being a leader embodies so many skills and mindsets that you have to pay attention to. You need to empower your employees and help them unleash the power they already have. It is crucial to communicate and help teach employees how to become A-Players to help build your company from the ground up. Keep in mind that it is up to you to find the best role for each individual in your company instead of grouping them all together. If you can execute these qualities, then you have what it takes to create success.
Brad D. Smith, Executive Chairman of the Board of Intuit, shares his lessons in leadership and the role of a CEO in nurturing innovation. He talks about developing a Founder's mindset, the importance of creating a learning environment where people treat success and failure the same way, and how to deliver the numbers today and reimagine the company for the future.
Stephen Ranjan, Vice President of New Product Development at Roche Diabetes Care shares how leaders and teams there are overcoming the unique challenges of innovating in healthcare despite the global pandemic. He shares how they built new capabilities to explore the needs of underserved customer segments and develop solutions at speed in a regulated environment.
In this episode, we are joined by Michelle Brigman, Director of Customer Experience at 7-Eleven. Michelle shares how, in the face of the global pandemic, 7-Eleven quickly shifted to ensure their over 68,000 store owners and franchisees could continue to meet their customers’ needs. She also provides insight into 7-Eleven’s COVID19 Command Center and how they use this to rapidly collect and respond to insights gained from all parts of their business.
