Barriers To A $Billion

Facebook and Cisco: Hitting The Reinvention Wall

2012-06-19T13:41:20-07:00

"The world is moving faster, it's getting more competitive, not less, and I think those who are dominant in their prior generation are really going to have a hard time moving into this newer generation." "In five to eight years they are going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared."

Innovation In A Reinvented World — Values and Vision: Tackling the Organizational Challenge

2012-02-25T15:32:30-08:00

"The rules have changed, and we need a new playbook. Join me as I draw back the curtain to reveal this new reality and provide you with a roadmap for navigating between the old world of business and the new world of business." - Innovation In A Reinvented World

Cisco Develops Tool for Defining and Cascading Strategic Direction Across the Enterprise

2012-01-16T14:18:56-08:00

Cisco is in the middle of reinventing itself and driving innovation to new levels. How the company cascades its new strategic direction across the global enterprise is one of the reasons for its unfolding success.

Delivering On The Strategic Promise: A Balanced Scorecard is essential but not near enough.

2011-08-08T17:48:00-07:00

Globalization and technology are driving change at a velocity never before experienced. Seventy-two percent of the 1600 executives included in the study cited innovation-led growth as one of their top three strategic priorities. Another study shows that business leaders seem to be losing confidence, though, in their ability to develop and execute strategy, according to the 2300 study respondents. The $Billion question continues to be, 'How does a company achieve innovative transformation stardom?' Three factors determine innovative transformation stardom — one or even two of the three won't get you there, all three are required.

Dysfunction #7: Unable to Successfully Transition to a New Vision and Strategy

2011-04-11T10:09:20-07:00

7 Dysfunctions of High-Potential Companies The beginning of a downward spiral. Incremental strategic change is no longer enough to remain competitive or a market leader. Without periodic structural, discontinuous, or even disruptive strategic change, a company will plateau and eventually enter a downward spiral. Yet successfully transitioning the enterprise from...

Apple Stock: On the way to a $1,000? — Can it get there without Steve Jobs?

2011-01-19T00:40:00-08:00

Apple stock has continued to steadily climb upward, passing $340 a share, causing some to wonder if it's on the way to a $1,000. Insane idea? With sales up 70% for the most recent quarter... the options market is already taking bets that Apple will top $500 in the next couple of years. What was posed as a theoretical question in the previous post is now a reality. How will Apple function without Steve Jobs — in the near-term and, more importantly, in the long-term?

Dysfunction #6: Not Learning As Fast As The Competition

2011-01-03T14:31:33-08:00

Learning faster than the competition is about much more than new products. In fact, learning and innovation may have nothing to do with technology: Here's an excellent way to gauge the rate and depth of learning across your enterprise — are you learning faster than your competition?

Apple Stock: Blasting Through $300 A Share — How big a factor is Steve Jobs?

2010-11-06T00:23:00-07:00

Apple's board of directors, not having confidence in Jobs' ability to keep the momentum going, hires John Scully as CEO in 1983. With Apple quickly losing momentum, Apple's board of directors tries to sell the company before, as some predict, it fails. If you invested $1,272 in Apple (100 shares) on April 17, 2003 that investment would have brought $63,654 on November 4, 2010. An unbelievable 5,000 percent increase in less than eight years! John Scully... I'm actually convinced that if Steve hadn't come back when he did — if they had waited another six months — Apple would have been history. It would have been gone, absolutely gone.

Dysfunction #5: Under-Leveraged Intangible Assets

2010-10-11T01:00:00-07:00

Turning talent into wealth. Are your most important assets generating cash? Intangible assets account for an average of seventy-five percent of a company's market value. The majority of knowledge workers waste... A five-year study of 460 companies found... Post-IPO companies that do this well have higher survival rates.

Dysfunction #4: The Organization Isn't The Strategy

2010-09-27T01:00:00-07:00

This problem is causing some real pain among executives... a study of CEOs found that... Incredible talent and effort goes into developing a winning business plan. To be successful, at least as much talent and effort must go into developing an organization capable of executing that plan. If your competitors are executing better than you are, the financial markets won't wait to see if your strategy plays out.

Strategic Planning — Among The Weakest Leadership Competencies

2010-09-20T01:00:00-07:00

Strategically wondering around is expensive! Remaining viable as a business requires leadership to clearly define and effectively execute and manage the company's strategic direction. This isn't happening at many companies and is often the reason for their failure to meet the promised annual numbers — why they can't get there from here. The results of a survey of 2200 corporate leaders found...

Consensus May Destroy Your Company

2010-09-13T01:00:00-07:00

You can't make this stuff up! Fast forward a few weeks and we find Oracle hiring Mark Hurd — for $Millions! Yes, the same person that HP employees referred to as a "tyrant," giving him the lowest employee approval rating of any major high-tech company. What are they thinking? When we think of market-leading companies like HP and Oracle, big doesn't necessarily mean better. Decisions of the kind the executive has to make are not made well by...

Dysfunction #3: Strategic Chaos

2010-09-06T01:00:00-07:00

7 Dysfunctions of High-Potential Companies Strategy — the least understood aspect of a business. Everyone talks about strategy and you would think that a company’s strategic direction is one of the most well understood aspects of the company. Actually, the opposite is often true. Research conducted by The Palladium Group...

Leading In A Virtual World: Reversing the huge loss of performance virtual distance can cause.

2010-08-30T01:00:00-07:00

Whether your team members are down the hall, in the next building, or living on the other side of the world — the impact of virtual distance on performance is equally destructive. The assumptions and practices for leading co-located teams are ineffective for dealing with virtual distance and leading in a virtual world.

HP - How to destroy reputation and brand.

2010-08-23T01:00:00-07:00

Both my father and father-in-law retired from HP, proud of the company's values and the founders' integrity to those values. That was then and this is now — this isn't the company my father knew. HP's lack of integrity to several of the core values that have guided the company since 1957 has severely damaged its reputation and brand. Whether on the way to the first $billion in revenue, or, like HP, well beyond, values succession should be as important to the board of directors as is CEO succession. "Tyrant," "Thug," is this HP's new brand...?