Moving the Needle

The Rise of Product Management
From its foundational beginnings in early brand management to high tech software program management, product management has emerged as its own collective of product-focused best practices. Product Management is a vital component of organizations undergoing digital...

How Innovation Labs Must Evolve
With the rise of entrepreneurial activity after The Great Recession, Innovation Labs became all the rage in corporate environments. Corporates wanted in on the energy, if not the spirit. The word “innovation” became a popular buzzword that meant so many different...

Re-think Your Next Re-org
When was the last time you went through a company re-org? Re-orgs seem to be happening more and more regularly, especially with large organizations, and the excuses for them are often tenuous. Within the startup world, there’s buzz that Elon Musk’s mass layoffs at...

Creating effective KPI’s for 2023
We’re coming to the end of 2022 and ’tis the season to evaluate 2022’s performance and plan for 2023 targets. Despite ongoing challenges in the economic and business environment, I’ve heard from many people that they had aggressive metrics for themselves and their...

How to Explore in the Core
Dividing your company into execution mode vs exploration mode, as recommended by the multi-named mythology of “ambidextrous organizations,” “dual operating systems,” or “dual innovation,” will prevent you from competing efficiently in the digital age. These are...

How to Succeed at Opportunity Discovery
Opportunity discovery is the practice of figuring out where a business can find new growth. It’s the phase that comes before customer discovery and before product idea. (You can actually start with either of those, but one should take a big step backward to learn more...

How to Properly Engage with Customers to Receive Meaningful Insights
One of the most under-appreciated aspects of the global economy’s Digital Transformation may be surprising at first blush: Customers have a lot more power now. While lax antitrust enforcement and the erosion of consumer protections might suggest otherwise, generally,...

Explore in the Core
It's cliche when people say, "Entrepreneurs are the risk-takers.” To the contrary, entrepreneurs actually seek to avoid risk. They are risk mitigators. They seek to reduce the uncertainty in a new venture. Those who do not reduce uncertainty are the risk takers. This...

Scaling Agile Through Cascading Missions
I had a conversation recently with a few industry professionals who were expressing concerns about the idea of scaling agile. Their objection was that not everybody can be agile nor needs to be. Their primary argument was that most people’s jobs are well-defined in...

Becoming a RAD Organization
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,...