Tag Archives: Leadership

How to Build a Culture for Market Dominance

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The Sony Walkman was a great innovation, and it allowed Sony to dominate the portable music market for several years. But then along came the Apple iPod. Apple quickly took over the market from Sony even though Sony had developed an MP3 player before Apple. What happened?

Gerard Tellis, author of Unrelenting Innovation, says that Sony’s innovation was stifled by what he calls the “incumbent’s curse.” The three traits of an incumbent that can slow down innovation are:

  1. Fear to cannibalize current products.
  2. An aversion to risk.
  3. A focus on the present.

Sony was concerned about their music royalties so their MP3 player included anti-piracy software that stifled its adoption by consumers, and Apple took over the market. Tellis believes that unrelenting innovation requires that a company must work at overcoming this incumbent’s curse by reversing the traits:

  1. Be prepared to cannibalize current products.
  2. Embrace risk.
  3. Focus on the future.

Tellis developed a list of practices by which any company can become unrelentingly innovative and continue to dominate their respective markets. If you would like to hear about these practices, join us on May 29th for our Soundview Live webinar with Gerard Tellis called How to Build a Culture for Market Dominance.

Invite your colleagues and fill a conference room for just $49 for this exciting opportunity. And if you subscribe to our Online Edition of Soundview Executive Book Summaries, all webinars are free – $99 for our book summaries plus weekly webinars – not a bad deal.

Can Conflict Cause Creativity?

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Conflict is often viewed as one of the biggest roadblocks to achieving a shared goal. There are many instances in which it can bog down or completely derail a project from reaching completion. However, consultant Lina M. Echeverria, author of Idea Agent: Leadership that Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation, argues that there is a hidden benefit to conflict: it can help your team achieve creative breakthroughs.

In a recent Soundview Author Insight interview, Echeverria addressed the concerns leaders have about conflict:

Conflict is one of the things that scares most leaders because it doesn’t feel good.  We have always been conditioned from early childhood not to fight.  Be good.  Be nice.  And it is not about encouraging fighting; it is about encouraging dialogue.  It is about encouraging the ability to disagree, to give other viewpoints and engage in a dialogue.  But as I say, it really feels in the pit of your stomach like, “Ugh, I don’t want to be here.”  So, what it takes first is a lot of courage once you have come to the realization that that conflict is an essential part of the creative process.

It is an essential part because people that are creative, that have a really good idea that others have not seen, are driven by this vision.  And this vision can be very, very powerful and they’re not going to stop because of any barriers until they achieve the mission.

So, when those viewpoints come from a different angle, you could have a lot of passion, each [person] pulling in a different direction or let’s say, pushing towards the center and trying to make [his or her idea] happen.  So, what is needed is to bring them to the team.  Have them understand that theirs is not the only way and that they need to learn to respect others while at the same time, helping them understand how their behavior can impact the dynamics of the team and can push others down.

Soundview subscribers can login to their online library to hear the complete interview with Echeverria. The Soundview Executive Book Summary of Idea Agent is available for download now.

Communication Week is Coming

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Next week we will be hosting two excellent Soundview Live webinars around the topic of communication and influence. This topic has become critical with changes in the business environment, including a new digital generation entering the workforce, the advent of social media, more people tele-commuting, and companies becoming more culturally and ethnically diverse.

May 13th: How to Hold REAL Conversations with John Stoker

In this Soundview Live webinar, How to Hold REAL Conversations, John Stoker offers clear explanations of the theoretical aspects of conversation along with practical application of real skills that will help you to connect with others in a deep and meaningful way.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The four conversation skills that make for effective communication.
  • The eight principles for conducting REAL conversations.
  • The effectiveness model of conversation involving Respect, Results and Relationship.

May 15th: The New Science of Leading Change with David Maxfield

In this Soundview Live webinar, The New Science of Leading Change, you’ll be the first to hear from author David Maxfield about the new research, case studies, and content featured in the latest edition of Influencer. David will teach influence strategies for achieving  profoundly better results by changing bad and entrenched human habits. And he will examine, in detail, why people do what they do and what it takes as a leader to help them act differently.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to use three keys of influence to become a true leader.
  • How to identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change.
  • How to apply strategies for changing both thoughts and actions.
  • How to marshall six sources of influence to make change inevitable.

Please consider joining us for one or both of these important webinars. As always Soundview subscribers attend free of charge. You can fill a conference room with colleagues on one registration, and submit questions to the authors throughout the presentations.

How Strategy Really Works

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PLAYING TO WIN

LEARN TO WIN FROM AN ALL-TIME GREAT CEO

A.G. Lafley knows something about successful corporate strategies. As former CEO of Procter & Gamble (P&G), Lafley, with the help of strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G’s sales and quadrupled its profits. In Playing to Win, Lafley teams up with Martin, now the renowned dean of the Rotman School of Business in Toronto, to outline a step-by-step process for developing and implementing a successful strategy.

The Five Choices

This process is built on a set of five integrated choices. “These choices and the relationship between them,” the authors explain, “can be understood as a reinforcing cascade, with the choices at the top of the cascade setting the context for the choices below, and the choices at the bottom influencing and refining the choices above.” One of the first examples used in the book is P&G’s Oil of Olay product, once a floundering brand known derisively as “Oil of Old Lady.” Building on their framework, Lafley and Martin break down the cascade of strategic choices that led to the brand’s impressive turnaround. Here are a few of them:

  1. What is our winning aspiration? This choice refers to “the purpose of the enterprise,” the authors write. For Oil of Olay, it was to become a leading skin care brand again.
  2. Where will we play? This second choice identifies specifically where the product or company will compete. The Oil of Olay brand stayed with its mass market retailers (e.g., Target and Wal-Mart) rather than the prestige stores (e.g., Macy’s). But it positioned itself as a “masstige” product — higher end (and higher priced) than the traditional mass market beauty product.
  3. How will we win? This question must be answered with a clear value proposition and a path to competitive advantage. Among Oil of Olay’s winning strategies was producing a better anti-aging skin care product — a product at the right price (e.g., not too low) that would entice the prestige customer base.
  4. What capabilities must be in place? The task here is to define the activities and competencies that support the where-to-play and how-to-win choices. Oil of Olay, for example, was able to leverage P&G’s strengths in consumer understanding and brand building.
  5. What management systems are required? Likewise, strategists must define the systems, structures and measures required to support the choices. Oil of Olay was also able to leverage P&G’s systems as well as its channel and partner systems.

This framework can be applied at all levels of the company, including the organization level, strategic group or, as in the example above, the single business unit, the authors write. Clearly, the choices need to support each other among the different levels.

A Do-It-Yourself Guide

While most of the book is dedicated to the five-choice framework, Lafley and Martin offer two additional tools to support the strategic choice process. The first is a structured methodology for analyzing the company — specifically its industry, customers, relative position to competitors and the potential competitor response to your strategic choices. The authors also offer a “reverse engineering” process to test potential strategic choices.

Tools, of course, can go only so far. Reading this book will not make you into another A.G. Lafley — his success at P&G is much more than a function of methodologies. However, by helping strategists focus on the important where-to-play and how-to-win questions, Playing to Win is an invaluable map that gives business leaders at least a fighting chance for a successful journey.

Unleashing Potential through Secure Base Leadership

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Whether you’re out in the woods camping, hiking the Long Trail, or climbing a mountain, you generally set up a base camp, and place you can return to for supplies, to rest, or to seek safety from the storm. This base camp is your security, a safe place to return to.

People can also be a secure base. A mother is a place of safety for a child to return to when he or she needs reassurance or when something scares them. In the workplace, a leader can be a secure base for their employees.

George Kohlrieser, in his book Care to Dare, defines a secure base as “a person, place, goal or object that provides a sense of protection, safety and caring and offers a source of inspiration and energy for daring, exploration, risk taking and seeking challenge.”

Through his research, Kohlrieser discovered nine characteristics of a secure base leader:

  1.  Stays Calm – a secure base leader remains composed and dependable, especially when under pressure.
  2. Accepts the Individual – the leader shows caring for the human being before focusing on the issue or problem,
  3. Sees the Potential – secure base leaders see the employee’s potential talent versus his current functioning or state.
  4. Uses Listening and Inquiry – this leader has a preference for listening and inquiry rather than “telling” and advocacy.
  5. Delivers a Powerful Message – secure base leaders are masters at coming up with pithy sentences, or what is called “bull’s-eye transactions.”
  6. Focuses on the Positive – this leader is good at directing the Mind’s Eye of other people to focus on the positive rather than the negative.
  7. Encourages Risk-Taking – this characteristic goes beyond acceptance to taking direct action.
  8. Inspires Through Intrinsic Motivation – the secure base leader talks about what is inherently interesting and enjoyable, instead of just focusing on money and financial reward.
  9. Signals Accessibility – people believe that secure base leaders are always accessible and available.

If you would like to become this secure base leader, then you’ll want to join us on May 10th for our Soundview Live webinar with George Kohlrieser called Unleashing Potential through Secure Base Leadership. Register today and bring your questions for George to answer during the session.