There is what Steve Blank calls the stage where you are searching for a scalable business model. Then, there is the stage when you have found that model and need to scale it. In the former stage you have to have a "beginner's mind," be in learning mode, and expect to learn things you didn't anticipate.
I think the most important thing to do is to recognize the fundamentally different circumstances of pursuing growth.
I think it is only in hindsight that you can determine whether something is a mistake or not.
Creating the new increasingly is more than 50 percent of a top leader's job.
In the strengthening the core job, a leader can draw on their past experiences. After all, in most cases they did the job of the people that are reporting to them! So they know when something is screwed up, they know the risks worth taking, and they know the corners to cut. But when they are creating the new, no one knows what the right answer is.
There's a general belief that failure is the friend of the innovator, but I've come to view it a different way.
The school at which you studied - design school, disruptive school, TRIZ school, user-centered innovation school, etc - determines the specific words you use.
The curious company studies the anomalies or the unexpected findings. The company that isn't curious ignores them or punishes people who don't do exactly what they set out to do.
Three of our core corporate values are inclusiveness, collaboration, and humility.
People who copy what exists copy a point-in-time artifact, and if you are managing the process correctly you are already hard at work on the next thing.
Now, I worry a bit about the TEDification of the world where style trumps substance, so hopefully you have a good blend of both!
You have to make the decision about whether you want to avoid or you want to overcome the resistance.
If you are trying to improve the performance of existing operations in known markets, it is an analytical problem where it's just a question of aligning your execution engine in the right way. If it is about creating something new and different, you can't derive the right answer analytically.
You have to chip away at it and shape it to let the winning idea emerge.
I'm not very good at sitting still.
Avoiding along some dimensions is easy. Create organization space and bring in some new talent so the innate cultural resistance is less material. Unfortunately, it's rarely that easy.
Some people who were central to former success aren't the right people for your future success.
What looks like resistance in many cases is rational responses to incentives and ingrained resource-allocation processes.
The reality is customers lie - not because they want to want to deceive you, but because they don't do a good job of predicting what they will do in the future.
It would be fun too to put some of the great philosophers and political scientists of the past couple centuries into a time machine, have them look at the world today, and see what they think. Imagine Schumpeter, Malthus, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Marx, and more! That would be good fun.
The number one thing I urge people to remember is it is all about being scientific about managing strategic uncertainty, while striking the important balance between being thorough and being flexible.
Leaders today face challenges for which they are utterly unprepared.
People who live in more than two countries are more successful innovators.
I'm suggesting that principles meant to deal with uncertainty that occurs naturally can be useful to manage the uncertainty that characterizes any new idea.
If you work on a new product launch, spent time in a new geography, or work to develop a completely new skill, you have no choice but to figure out new ways to solve problems.
