Friday, October 28, 2011

From megatrends to strategy execution (#2): 14 striking strategy execution figures

This is the first article of the series of posts by strategy execution expert Jeroen De Flander. His company is performing yearly benchmarks on strategy execution, generating loads of insights on how strategy is (and quite often: is not) implemented within companies. Here is a first set of findings from that exercise.

(guest post by Jeroen De Flander)


On average, companies lose 40-to-60 percent of their strategic potential during execution. Imagine the amount of money you could save by closing that gap.
HOW TO CLOSE THE EXECUTION GAP?
But in order to take the next step – to close that gap – organisations need a more detailed view of exactly where they are losing performance. Knowing that your organisation loses between 40 and 60 percent of its strategic potential on the execution highway between the city ‘strategy’ and the city ‘performance’, is an interesting fact but doesn’t really help solve your problem.
14 STRATEGY EXECUTION INSIGHTS
Here are 14 insights, researched by the performance factory:
  • Almost all – 94 percent – have indicators that relate not only to financials,
  • but also to customers, processes or people.
  • Around 1 in 3 – 30 percent – receive no information on how to execute the strategy.
  • Only 61 percent is convinced that the strategic initiatives are staffed with the right people.
  • As little as 27 percent believe that the strategic initiatives are being managed correctly.
  • 27 percent doesn’t receive any individual feedback.
  • As many as 17 percent lack leadership objectives.
  • 17 percent indicate that performance isn’t monitored.
  • 38 percent indicate that poor performers don’t face any consequences.
  • More than one third – 37 percent – have never had the opportunity to participate in a 360° skills assessment exercise.
  • 18 percent is unable to explain how to set individual objectives.
  • 27 percent receives no training on essential management skills.
  • 36 percent do not question appraisals objectively.
  • Of all managers, 24 percent do not receive any useful strategy information from other departments.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Using megatrends to ensure the long-term success of your company

My latest presentation on how to use megatrends in corporate strategy. This presentation covers:

- why you need to take megatrends into account in long-term strategic planning;
- how this relates to business model innovation and strategy execution;
- list of 60 megatrends to take into account;
- a simple process to discuss megatrends internally and draw conclusions for your strategy.

enjoy!

Where will the next wave of innovation come from?

Nice compilation of speeches of one of the futurists I admire, Mike Walsh, covering topics such as:

  • where the next wave of innovation will come from;
  • future of the web;
  • how to include consumers in your innovation process;
  • when to act on trends...

Okay, it's only a compilation and you won't have all the answers to these questions by looking at the video, but consider this a good brain teaser ;-)

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Gamification of business: advergaming is the new thing !

Looking for more evidence of the 'gamification of business' trend, I stumbled on this great intro of the concept of 'advergaming' by Jesse Schell... both the trend and the guy look like worth following:



(the full speech can be seen on: http://fora.tv/2010/07/27/Jesse_Schell_Visions_of_the_Gamepocalypse )

Monday, October 24, 2011

Augmented reality through your wireless headset

Call me old-fashioned, but this somehow starts to scare me... okay, I'm a laggard in terms of technology (at least of gadgets), so in a way I wouldn't be surprised to use this type of headsets somewhere in a decade or two. But still, wearing a headset throughout the day that whispers things to me and takes decisions in my place, it's somehow, well... scary...

Anyhow, this type of gear will most probably invade much of our lives in the future... in fact, its a combination of multiple trends -not all of them megatrends:


  • automation of personal decisions and choices (think of the fridge ordering milk automatically as well);
  • location-based services (which does imply that your social network tracks you anywhere you go);
  • personalisation (services based on your personal preferences... the result of this would be that your device -in this case your headset- would have a more intimate knowledge about you than your partner...).


Friday, October 21, 2011

From megatrends to strategy execution (#1) -intro

In an ideal business world, determining your long-term strategy should start with a thorough assessment of the impact of megatrends on your business –and would not only take into account the trends that have an obvious, direct impact on your industry, but others as well that might have indirect effects (on your customers or your ecosystem for instance).

Based on the ideas and strategic directions obtained from the exercise, the second step would look at how to adapt and change processes in order to respond to the challenges and reap the benefits of the future, using business model innovation techniques for instance.

However, a third and often forgotten discipline is equally important to make strategy work: strategy execution!

I must admit I’m not an expert in this field. But I was fortunate enough to have a couple of discussions with an expert, Jeroen De Flander, whose book ‘Strategy Execution Heroes: Business Strategy Implementation and Strategic Management Demystified - A Practical Performance Management Guidebook for the Successful Leader’ stroke me both for its practical usability (it’s loaded with concrete tips on strategy execution) and its breadth (nothing is omitted, it even goes down to the presentation style of the CEO).

Jeroen agreed to share his top strategy execution advice on my blog, so in the next 3 Fridays he will be posting on this blog, covering following topics:
  • 14 striking strategy execution figures (28/10) 
  • 9 reasons why strategy execution fails (4/11) 
  • 8 dynamics for strategy review (11/11) 
So watch this space to get some crucial advice on strategy execution! (or, if you can’t wait, visit Jeroen’s blog archive full of tips and tricks on strategy execution).

Thursday, October 20, 2011

How to escape the competitive herd?

It’s an intriguing question, you have to admit. In a time where –so it seems- every brand digs itself into an ever increasing amount of ‘hyper segments’ (aren’t we all waiting for a toothpaste that whiten our teeth while tasting like chocolate?), how does one differentiates itself?

The classical tools for brand augmentation –by addition and by multiplication- are not effective if every competitor follows the same strategy. Furthermore, competitive strategies tend to level out the players in it. If every brand is focusing on improving the metrics where it scores badly compared to competitors, what really happens is that every brand will start to look the same –like ‘average’:



So how can one differentiate itself from the competitive herd?

Youngme Moon provides some examples of companies who do, and even provides a classification for them –although she goes in great length in explaining that this classification is neither waterproof nor complete. It’s not a magic lotion neither. But it provides some good sense of ‘direction’:

  • Reverse branding –those that ignore augmentation and get to the core of the added value of the product or service (take Google with its white, almost empty homepage, created in the midst of a fight among portal sites to get as much things as possible on their homepage);
  • Breakaway branding –those that redefine the category they’re in, linking it to other categories if needed (take Swatch as an example, a ‘disposable’ watch where watches were supposed to be a high standing products; or –funnier- The Simpsons, redefining both the kids’ cartoon and the adult soap show;
  • Hostile branding – those that willfully go against any preconceived conception of business soundness, like believing the customer is king (Apple, Bathing Ape, Birkenstock) or that everybody wants bigger and better things (Mini Cooper’s introduction in the US market, with their slogan: ‘XXL XL L M S MINI’). 
It’s not waterproof indeed, but it provides plenty of food for thought and a common vocabulary to understand how some brands succeed in escaping the competitive herd.

Both for its intimate style and witty insights, it’s the best business book I’ve read so far this year.



"Different" by Youngme Moon from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.




Check out my previous book reviews:

Monday, October 17, 2011

Technology innovation award 2011 winners -a peek into the future?

It's always interesting to track these type of 'technology innovation awards' winners, as they often give a sneak preview of times to come.

The Wall Street Journal's 2011 winners are not really a surprise, at least not for the first 2 ones: making heart cells from stem cells surely is a massive breakthrough (bio)technology, and retrieving biofuel from water and sunlight would certainly help us a long way in dealing with climate change.

The third one -IBM's supercomputer Watson- got me puzzled a bit at first... surely an 'omni-knowledgable' computer is nothing more than a nice gadget? Not necessarily, as mentioned in the video. It could also help making quicker decisions, for instance in determining complex patient treatments. I wonder what else it could be used for...


Friday, October 14, 2011

Learnings from crowdsourcing my company logo

I’ve been writing quite a bit about crowdsourcing on this blog. So it was about time to ‘walk the talk’ and gain some experience myself with it. Creating my own company gave me the ideal opportunity to test it out, so here are some thoughts on what I’ve learned from the experience in crowdsourcing my company logo:

To crowdsource or not to crowdsource? 

Before I started I wondered whether there were any downsides for crowdsourcing. The upsides are quite obvious: for a low cost you can tap into a multitude of creative brains. But what about the negative side?

 I found a couple of articles stressing the downside of crowdsourcing. Perhaps the most convincing argument was a short study showing that the most successful creators on a number of crowdsourcing sites had ‘win rates’ of inbetween 2-15% (the number of their submissions that ultimately won the prize vs. the number of designs they submitted). So, the argument goes, it is not really worth the effort for true designers to earn a living with crowdsourcing.

It is a good argument, but it’s got its weaknesses:


  • I can think of multiple reasons why a good designer would want to earn a ‘quick’ 300-500$ in his spare time; 
  • If a designer submits 5-10 designs a day he could earn 3000-6000$ a month at a win-rate of 10%, which is a decent earning in many countries across the world; 
  • A designer working on a logo through crowdsourcing can be asked by the buyer to make small changes to it during the contest. Apparently these are considered as multiple submissions, while it would have taken him only a minute or two. So if you take this into account the win-rate is probably much higher than 10% in average. 


Making the choice of crowdsourcing platform 

I shortlisted 4 crowdsourcing platforms that advertised specific focus on logo creation. After further investigation, I’ve put two of them aside: microburst.com (many of the examples of winning logo’s were a bit too playful for my means) and logotournament.com (a bit too pricy for the budget I’ve put aside for this 300$).

It was a hard choice between the two that were left, but ultimately I’ve selected Crowdspring on the argument that since it crowdsources other creative designs (websites, names, branding, etc), it would probably have a more diverse set of designer working on logo contests. Furthermore, the second platform (logomyway.com) has an awfully ugly logo for itself, which does not speak in its favor.

Are the submission any good? 

Well, you can judge by yourself by clicking here.

A couple of findings though:


  • About 50% of submissions don’t care to read the brief or think a bit along the concept and business of the client; 
  • I suspect (though am not sure) these are logo’s that were submitted for other contests or were laying in the drawer for a while; 
  • The best submission occurred in the first 3 days. By the 3d day we already had a list of our 5 favorite designs. If I had to redo the exercise I would have reduced the project time from 7 to 4 or 5 days; 
  • All designers are very responsive and open for feedback. 
  • Well, it’s fun!!!


So which logo won?

The contest is still running for a couple of hours as I write this, so I can’t disclose.

But watch this space since I will start using the winning logo as from next Monday!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Biggest tech disruptors: Cloud and mobile, what does it mean?

okay, you won't be surprised by the statement of this venture capitalist: cloud and mobile are the big technology disruptors for the near future.

But, taken together, they unleash a wide range of new opportunities that some might not yet envisage... most of them are location-based services, and the two examples given in the video might seem simple enough, but if you apply the same thought on virtually anything that moves you'd probably have a good picture of the world ten years from now...

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Corporate shared value: the example of Salesforce.com

Some readers might remember my proposed segmentation of corporate 'shared value' efforts. In it, I positioned Cloud CRM provider Salesforce.com somewhere in between pure philanthropic work and social innovation (the latter referring to the fact that companies are using their core business to do social good):



Salesforce.com's 1-1-1% rule is pure philanthropic, but it also offers its software for free to some selected charities, hence mixing business value and social good into quite a unique blend. I know other companies are at that crossroad as well, but what I find striking is that this concept was at the core of this company from the very start, and not driven by external forces. Another sign of times to come?


Monday, October 10, 2011

Are we already in the post-PC area?

well, according to these figures, yes... the mobile explosion -driven by apps- and the trend of consumerization of IT are slowly replacing the role of PC's. No, it isn't the end of PC's, but their importance is definitely weakening. Not really surprising, but it's good to have the data behind the feeling:


Friday, October 7, 2011

Megatrends posts, sorted by topic

With more than 150 posts on megatrends so far, it's probably a good time for me to get them sorted out. As 60% of the readers of this blog are first-time viewers (thanks Google analytics), you might have missed some previous posts that could be of interest to you:

Useful tools:


Global issues (geopolitics, society, economics, ...)
(focus on education)
Sustainability
Leadership, Business strategy, innovation
Shared value, corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship
Crowdsourcing, open innovation, desintermediation
Technology
Future living...

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Which industries are threatened by desintermediation trend? Should they adopt new business models as a result?

I’ve been spending the last two days building the website for my freshly created company (www.i4fi.com for those interested). I still can’t believe I’ve done this myself! With no technical background of any kind –I even have some kind of aversion for the gritty details of it- the result is quite close to what I had in mind.

 Ten years ago such a project would have cost me around five to ten thousand Dollars and a week or two of extensive collaboration with an agency. What happened since?

Obviously this is part of a growing trend to ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) in technology. But at a broader level, you could see this as part of the ‘desintermediation’ trend as well: the fact that, with the growth of the global grid, we are getting access to some services directly at the source rather than through intermediate ‘service providers’.

 I’ve discussed this trend in relationship with banking (‘peer-to-peer’ lending) and the music industry (the ‘fan-funding’ model) already. But clearly the technology industry is impacted as well, through the consumerization and DIY trends.

 Obviously, these sectors won’t disappear with the disintermediation trend, but they will have to reinvent themselves through the adoption of new business models as a response to it. Here’s an overview of the threat levels and the potential response for some industries:



 Can you think of other industries threatened by disintermediation and how they should respond?

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The virtual company: 'no office? not a problem...'

Waw, talking of a cool idea.... This 'General Assembly' doesn't only look like a cool place to work, but for the startups working in it it also provides access to venture capitalists. I can very much imagine how this collaborative environment is fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. As such, it's maybe a sign for times to come:






(this is part of my quest for how a virtual company would look like... click here for
#1: The crowdsourced company
#2: The buildingless office )

Monday, October 3, 2011

A sign of the times, how social media is used to manipulate opinions

From the WSJ: "Scientists at the Indiana University are studying Twitter to investigate the nature of truth, lies and politics", quite a revealing video report.

It's a good sign of the (future) times, I guess... with some simple programming one can use Twitter (and other social tools) in quite a deceptive ways -to manipulate public opinion for political reasons, for instance. The more interconnected the world becomes, the more room we will create for such frauds.

However, I don't agree with the statement of one scientist at the end, who argues that this might constitute a threat to democracy. Decades ago our parents were influenced in their political choices by the one newspaper their parents read, and that contained no less deceptive information. It hasn't threatened our democracy. We can't go back to pre-social media information gathering, so perhaps we have to transform ourselves (and others) into increasingly critical news gatherers instead...