C-Suite Network™

Menu
Search
Close this search box.

Category: Industries

Categories
Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Industries Management Personal Development Technology

Keeping Up is a Fool’s Game

Many business consultants agree that benchmarking is imperative to strategic planning. By using metrics, a business will study the practices, designs, and financial outcomes of industry leaders with one distinct purpose: To keep up with the pacesetters.

There’s just one problem. Keeping up—with technology, with the competition, with anything in business or life—is what some would call a fool’s game. Think about it: When you’re merely keeping up, what’s the advantage? In reality, there is no advantage; all you’re doing is making yourself just like everyone else.

So how do you gain advantage and truly stand out from the crowd? Here are three suggestions.

1. Get off the Treadmill

Rather than keeping up, a smarter way to benchmark means you will look to the future. Most benchmarking practices are based on two questions:

  • What path are my competitors on right now?
  • And, what are all the successful companies evolving to?

However, there is a third question to ask yourself – and it’s key to moving past the pacesetters:

  • What’s the likely progression of the industry as a whole?

Asking these questions enables you to go beyond your competition and get off the treadmill of keeping up. It opens your eyes to future possibilities—to stay ahead of the pack instead of side-by-side with them.

In my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization: Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage, I reinforce the major competitive edge that comes from the ability to accurately anticipate the future. Think of being anticipatory as a new competency; it’s a mindset that teaches you to elevate tried-and-true strategies like benchmarking to new levels. Unlike traditional benchmarking, which looks backwards and measures what has already worked, being anticipatory requires you to look forward.

2. Use Hard Trends to Get Ahead

Ask yourself: Is your industry faced with cyclical changes, such as seasonal, economic, or sales cycles? If the answer yes, you can expect the normal ebbs and flows that go along with that. But, if the answer is no, there may be even opportunity out there.

Trends that are linear (and not cyclical) present the best opportunity for exponential change. These are trends in technology and innovation that show no signs of slowing down. Think about the future of virtualization, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT). How could advances in these areas impact your business?

I call the latter, Hard Trends, and they are things that are sure to happen based on their upward trajectory and other considerations I talk about in the Anticipatory Organization. Knowing how to identify them can give you a powerful window to the future.

3. Learn from a Leader

While Blockbuster worked to maintain its foothold as the largest movie-rental outlet, Netflix was redefining the concept altogether.

Though Netflix began in 1997 by lending or selling physical DVDs to its customers, it already had a technology platform. Consumers could order their movies online and have them delivered through the mail. One thing it didn’t do was open a brick-and-mortar store.

Ten years later, Netflix added streaming media to its mail-order business. From there, consumer behavior and digital technology took care of the rest. By the time Netflix reinvented itself as a content creator in 2012, the majority of its content was consumed online – including on tablets and phones, which didn’t even exist when the company began.

The key here is to realize that moving beyond competition into innovation wasn’t just a small tweak in order to hit a benchmark; it was a complete change in direction. Netflix didn’t even try to compete in the physical space, they made a one-way move and invested in the future of streaming technology instead.

Are you anticipating the future with confidence? If you want to learn more about the Anticipatory Organization, my new book is available on Amazon.com now.

Categories
Best Practices Economics Entrepreneurship Industries Marketing Personal Development Sales Technology

How Technology Changed the Billion-Dollar Ad Game

The advertising industry has had a long and successful history. It has been a very big business, especially for brands like Procter & Gamble, which topped AdAge.com’s list of the world’s five largest advertisers with $10.5 billion in advertising spending.

For decades, the personal care company kept its products front and center in the minds of consumers – on TV, in print and eventually online. The formula was simple: P&G would spend a huge amount on advertising and loyal customers would respond by buying its products.

That is no longer the case. Technology has changed the ad game for P&G – and not in a good way.

Brief Timeline of Advertising Game-Changers

So if your company is like P&G, what should you do? Start with a fresh look at how much technology and advertising have changed over the last 30 years.

As you look at this timeline, pay attention to how technology worked for – or against – advertisers throughout recent history. Then, use my Hard Trends Methodology to predict what’s next.

1990s – Hundreds of cable channels and the Internet launched, and advertisers jumped to buy space wherever their audiences would be.

Early 2000s – TiVo was one of the first disruptors to these seemingly endless advertising avenues. For the first time, consumers had power over when they got their content and began to skip the ads.

2001 – Next came iPods, which could play downloaded media while consumers were on the go.

2004 – Amazon.com launched as a virtual bookstore and began laying the groundwork for online retailers

2006 – Social media pioneer Facebook opened the News Feed, in which anybody – and any brand – could self-publish content. Facebook ads, for which advertisers once again had to “pay to play,” wouldn’t come until later.

2007 – Netflix went from DVD to streaming and never looked back. Consumers could now also choose what to watch, whenever they wanted to.

Also in 2007 – Smartphones came on the scene, allowing consumers to carry all types of media in their hands. The ad industry had to go mobile – often in addition to going traditional. Though it wasn’t easy to navigate at first, by 2015 mobile ad spending would top $28 billion.

2008 – Spotify started running on advertising dollars initially, but also offered premium, ad-free packages to consumers at nominal prices.

2009 – In the late 2000s, YouTube began allowing pre-roll ads; advertisers were once again able to recapture a very captive audience.

2012 – Facebook purchased Instagram. It would be five years before the $1 billion gamble would pay off, but in the meantime, real people became the faces of brands. The newest media-buying currency was the influence of the crafty, hip or carpool moms who had become spokespeople.

2015 – Amazon.com hit a milestone as it accounted for at least half of all e-commerce growth. Many experts attributed sales success to the debut of the company’s one-click ordering.

2018 and beyond – Not only is data-driven advertising becoming more popular, it’s expected in today’s “show me you know me” consumer culture.

If you use my Hard Trends Methodology to look ahead to the future of advertising, you’ll be able to anticipate that the next decade will move even faster. Even more devices are likely to be developed, and they will ultimately be connected to each other as an integral part of our lives.

Now is the time to learn to anticipate the next wave of technology. Start with my book, The Anticipatory Organization, which is fittingly available with one-click ordering on Amazon.com right now.

Categories
Best Practices Culture Economics Entrepreneurship Industries Leadership Marketing Personal Development Technology

To See the Future, Think Both/And

Whenever a new game-changing technology is introduced, our instinct is to assume that the current technology we are using will quickly become obsolete and will vanish from our use.

History has shown that the hottest new breakthrough technologies do not necessarily replace older ones. Instead, they often coexist side by side because the old technology has its own unique profile of functional strengths that the new technology never fully replaces.

How many times have you greeted a new innovation with an either/or assumption? Either you use the old or the new. But this is not an either/or world we live in; it’s a both/and world. It’s a world that is both paper and paperless, online and in-person, old media and new media.

Yes, No or Some of Both

In my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization: Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage, I teach readers how to gain a major competitive edge by learning to accurately anticipate the future. This is a skill that can be learned, and in this blog I’ll share one of the principles I have used for decades to accurately predict the future of technological change, one that you will be able to apply in countless ways: the Both/And Principle.

First, a bit of history. In the early 1980s, I developed the Both/And Principle and started applying it with great success. Here are some examples that will help you to see how to use it yourself.

Either/Or Assumption #1:

The introduction of digital documents meant that we would all be 100% paperless in a few years.

For example, in the late 1980s, when CD-ROMs were introduced, industry experts, the press and futurists predicted that by the mid-1990s, offices would be completely paperless. At the time I applied the Both/And Principle and predicted that we would have increasing amounts of both digital documents as well as paper documents in the future. It’s now 2018 and we are still managing both paper and digital documents.

Why is paper still around? Paper is inexpensive, portable and can be folded and tucked in a pocket or purse. It is an inexpensive display medium that does not need power. In addition, a handwritten paper note of gratitude to an employee is far better than sending a text or an email.  So instead of asking “How can I eliminate all paper?” a better question I had my clients ask was, “What is the best use for paper and the best use for digital?”

Either/Or Assumption #2:

E-commerce will render brick-and-mortar retail stores completely obsolete.

In the mid-1990s, around the time that Netscape, Yahoo!, eBay and many other Web-based businesses started rapidly growing, many futurists and the media predicted that bookstores, auto dealerships, shopping malls and retail stores in general would soon be obsolete.

The logic was that a physical store can only hold a few hundred or several thousand items while a virtual store gives you access to millions of items or titles 24/7.

So why do retail stores continue to survive and why are many even thriving? The answer is that physical shopping is experiential, not just transactional. Brick-and-mortar stores and malls that have continued to elevate the customer experience are social gathering places that create a sense of community, which technology can’t fully replace. In addition, many products are difficult to buy without physically seeing them and trying them out. Others require a knowledgeable person to help you make a decision. Why did Apple open an Apple Store? If you have been there, you know why. Why is Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores? Now you know why.

Either/Or Assumption #3:

Smartphones will replace laptops.

Not that long ago, business publications were having a debate about the future of computing. They asked the question, “With our smartphones and tablets becoming our main personal computers, won’t this make laptops obsolete?” The answer is still “no.”

The reality is, we still have the equivalent of mainframe computers, we just use them differently than 20 – or even five – years ago. If they have a smartphone and/or tablet, the majority of business users are already using their laptop differently, and perhaps much less, but they are still using both.

Introducing Both/And Thinking

While others were predicting the end of laptop computers, printed paper and retail stores, I did not fall into the trap of those bad predictions because I had developed a series of research-based guiding principles that would help avoid such mistakes, and the Both/And Principle is a major one.

The premise is simple: Your technology works well for you, but you discover a new app, gadget or process that could significantly transform your business. You don’t want to part with what’s been working for you, but you also don’t want to be left behind.

The Both/And Principle allows you to keep bridging your legacy systems with the new technology or processes. Integrating them in a way that will create higher value than either has by itself provides a pathway forward.

It is a powerful corrective measure to either/or thinking, meaning that the future will only be either one way or the other. The Both/And Principle recognizes the folly of assuming that the “new” will totally supplant the old, and it recognizes that they can be integrated. Once you try it, you will see the Both/And Principle can accelerate your team’s performance because you haven’t settled for one or the other.

Powerful Both/And Duos

Digital documents have powerful strengths; they are here to stay, but so is paper. Here is a short list of Both/And Principle examples:

  • Brick-and-mortar retailers and Internet retailers
  • Digital and analog
  • Paper mail and email
  • Nautical charts and GPS
  • Full service and self service
  • Wiring such as copper and  fiber-optics and wireless
  • Traditional media and digital media
  • Gasoline engines and electric motors
  • Digital music playlists and live concerts
  • Video conferencing and face-to-face meetings

A key success strategy is to integrate the old and the new based on the strengths of each. In fact, the hottest breakthrough technologies tend to coexist and integrate to create new value with their predecessors rather than completely co-opting them. Why? The old technology has its own unique profile of functional strengths.

Case Study: Amazon.com and Kohl’s

In August 2017, Kohl’s announced it would sell Amazon products in its retail stores. But that was just the beginning of this Both/And Principle business maneuver. Kohl’s department stores and Amazon.com have been piloting a retail model that even more perfectly demonstrates an integration of the old and new.

Since September 2017, the two have been running a pilot program in which Amazon.com purchasers who want to return an item can return it to a Kohl’s customer service desk. Customers who bought a product online can now skip the post office and instead return it to an ever-increasing number of Kohl’s stores.

Consumers enjoy the convenience, and according to a number of recent studies, total visits to Kohl’s stores with Amazon’s return program have outperformed other stores in sales by about 8.5%. In other words, customers returning items end up finding more to buy at Kohl’s. Kohl’s also reported an increase in new customers.

Both/And Thinking and You

What are some examples of Both/And thinking that could benefit you? Are there any new technologies that would give you amazing new capabilities that could become something you feel your business could not live without? What are some of the newest technologies that you believe will disrupt and transform your business? What would happen if you combined the old and the new in a way that creates higher value than either has on its own?

If you would like to learn more anticipatory skills so that you can turn disruptive change into your biggest advantage, read my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization: Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage

Click here for a special offer from Daniel Burrus

Categories
Economics Growth Industries Personal Development Technology

Will Your City Be a Smart City Soon?

Despite the apparent trade-off between privacy and efficiency, authorities across the globe are intent on becoming known for achieving smart city status and for the right reasons. Politicians are seeing the real benefits and cost savings that smart city initiatives can provide, and as citizens we need to get used to the idea of our towns collecting and making use of more and more data to reshape the world around us for the greater good.

As the number of connected sensors, machines and devices rapidly grows in crowded cities, the data generated will provide the ubiquitous big data that we often hear about. But we are only just beginning to realize the value in a network that increasingly consists of everyday objects. Everything from buildings, energy, traffic flow, education, healthcare and even elevators contains information that represents both the daily grind and natural flow of every city.

This increasing volume of data that is generated every second of every day should and will be put to great use in the months and years ahead. Now that we have fully embraced the concept of smart devices with our phones, and we are beginning to experience it in our cars and homes, it’s only natural that we now look to make our cities much smarter too.

Although we are slowly obtaining a greater understanding of the data that surrounds us, the good news is that positive results are already happening. Authorities are faced with a double-edged sword in which almost every choice comes with a compromise. For example, video surveillance in high crime areas has proven to reduce crime rates from 5% to 20%, but as a society, are we willing to reduce crime by introducing cameras watching our every move? This is the kind of trade-off we will have to face if we want to dramatically lower crime rates.

The traffic in every major city across the world is probably our biggest concern, given we have all experienced gridlock. Once again, technology comes to the rescue. Traffic signal optimization has shown to reduce travel times by up to 20%.  And let’s not forget the joy of trying to find a place to park. The average person spends 18 minutes per day trying to find a place to park. Smart parking systems can reduce up to 30% of congestion without authorities even needing to build new lanes and roads.

There is already a wealth of statistics available now that major technology research in cities has revealed the scope of the cost savings. For example, 40% of municipal energy costs comes from street lighting. Intelligent lighting can reduce energy costs by up to 20%. Lansing, Michigan, put in smart street lighting and was able to reduce costs by 70%, a big win for the mayor who championed the initiative.

As a word of caution, it appears that we are still very naive when it comes to security and our responsibility in this digital age. With so much of our lives and infrastructure getting connected, we all need to step up our game and appreciate the implications of ignoring security warnings.

For example, a recent report revealed how vulnerable our hospitals are to cyber-attacks and hackers. Maybe it’s our self-awareness that is in need of a 21st-century upgrade. In years past, 18 USB sticks were dropped purposely on multiple floors of a hospital. Within 24 hours, one of them had been plugged into a nurse’s station, infecting the network with malware, which gave the hackers access to the entire network.

With the majority of public-serving institutions at risk from hackers intent on causing chaos and disruption, it’s more important than ever to re-evaluate your level of security and threat prevention. Threats can appear in many different forms, such as ransomware that will lock all files and demand payment to unlock your data. The only positive aspect of ransomware is that it informs the user instantly of an infection.

However, there is also much stealthier malicious software that can be secretly stealing data or compromising systems completely under the radar of the establishment. Eliminating these risks by upgrading old systems is key, but so is educating users about understanding the vulnerabilities in the workplace and how to prevent them.

The creation of closed systems with hardware-embedded security will make it easier to predict and prevent cybercrime. Crime will continue to be a risk, but new advanced intelligent systems can help predict an attack and prevent it before it happens.

These security challenges should not damage the level of excitement and energy around the future possibilities. In this digital transition, we are merely taking another brave step forward, and there is no doubting how cash-strapped local and state agencies can become more efficient by better using data and implementing new technology.

Many large companies are involved in making cities smart, including Cisco, IBM, and Siemens. Cisco will happily advise governments that a smart city can save energy by 20%, reduce water consumption by 50%, crime by 20%, traffic by 30%, and so on. These facts, backed up by data, will be tough for those in control of budgets to resist.

Businesses, local and state agencies, committees, etc., will always be cost and data driven. Our evolving digital economy will ensure that smart cities, IoT, and local services will all become a natural part of our lives. Yes, there will be security and even privacy challenges, but this is a hard trend that will happen, so the time to start solving predictable problems is before they happen.

Many of our fears of a technology-fueled dystopian future are based on fictional literature and Hollywood movies. But we seldom stop to think that our future reality could be quite different from 1984 or the rise of machines that the Terminator franchise warned us about.

Real life is not always as interesting as art. The implementation of computerized sensors for nearly everything we know and love to drive down costs and improve efficiency could be as exciting as it gets. Is it such a bad thing?

Eliminating waste, intelligent traffic management and vast improvements to public transport during peak periods are mouthwatering prospects on their own. The belated arrival of e-government services, allowing faster access at a lower operating expense for taxpayers, should also be enough to convince even the biggest cynics.

I don’t believe this is an either-or situation. Technology should be able to improve every aspect of our lives in our homes, cities and world. We now interact with each other more than ever before, not less—contrary to popular opinion. The rise of the global community is enabling a greater understanding that shapes our world view and challenges age-old stereotypes.

As citizens of a global community, we expect our smartphones to provide us answers to any questions as they pop into our heads. We have developed an insatiable thirst for real-time information. Reliability and simplicity are expected to be standard, meaning this is how cities will soon be judged by both their inhabitants and visitors.

We now connect and interact in many different ways, which illustrates how technology is bringing us closer together. The real spirit and character that live inside every city across the world do not need to be sacrificed and will continue to thrive as long as we work to keep the best of our past and present, as we build a better future together.

Concentrating on resisting change or fearing the unknown is counterproductive. I have advised major businesses and governments for decades that the best way to improve planning is by learning to separate hard trends, the trends that will happen, from soft trends, the trends that might happen, and use this knowledge to shape the best future possible.

Innovation leads to disruption, not being disrupted. Learn more with the book, Anticipatory Organization, now available for purchase at www.TheAOBook.com
Categories
Best Practices Growth Industries Management Skills

Cognitive Excellence Is The New Benchmark of Business Performance

By Daniel Burrus and Neil Smith

(In this blog series on how elevating cognitive performance is a game changer for organizations, I’ve invited Neil Smith, CTO at Think Outcomes, to join me in writing on this important topic due to his expertise and the cognitive performance software his firm has created.)

Today, business performance is measured by transactional throughput and is commonly captured in a set of transactional metrics such as revenue, investor ROI, manufacturing capacity, service level performance, available to promise, etc. Commonly, the operations of a business are defined as the transactional activity. Yet, the definition of a business operation encompasses both its transactional operations and its cognitive operations. To break through current ceilings of business performance, the processes in both the transactional operations and the cognitive operations must execute with excellence.

Transactional Operations of an Organization

Commerce activities represent the transactional operations. Professionals are involved in planning and management of tasks to execute customer, supplier and employee transactions. Task-oriented processes occur before, during and after the customer journey. ERP, SCM and CRM software helps professionals responsible for transaction management execute transactional operating processes.

Examples of Transactional Responsibilities

  • Manage sales transactions
  • Manage marketing campaigns
  • Procure products and services
  • Fulfill orders
  • Capture accounting activity
  • Schedule materials
  • Manage inventory turns
  • Plan for distribution
  • Forecast financial performance
  • Service customers
  • Manage human resources
  • Compensate employees

Executives have invested significantly to evolve the processes on the transactional side of their businesses.

Cognitive Operations of an Organization

The cognitive operations comprise teams that think and communicate perspectives for a living. These teams are internal and external to the organization:

  • Senior executives, senior managers and other professionals
  • Management consultants, board members, lenders and insurance providers in the services ecosystem
  • Investors, analysts, supply chain partners and business partners, who are part of the extended enterprise
  • Regulators and educational institutions, who are standard setters

In a cognitive operations, professionals think critically, collaborate, communicate with their stakeholders, make decisions, advise other professionals and monitor uncertainties. As professionals perform mindful work, they often experience gaps in their knowledge that lead to uncertainties. Uncertainties stall decisions. Cognitive processes represent the work that takes place in their minds.

Cognitive operations exist across industries, such as oil and gas, life sciences, private equity, management consulting, environmental management, asset management, space, insurance, banking, aerospace, defense, healthcare, government and education, etc. Below are some examples where critical thinking, stakeholder communications and performance advisory occur in life sciences for their cognitive work:

Examples of Cognitive Responsibilities in Pharma

Chief Medical Officer

  • Develop corporate strategy
  • Brainstorm with clinical key opinion leaders around clinical challenges
  • Create quality control measures for clinical trials
  • Ensure performance among clinical and regulatory teams
  • Collaborate with health authorities
  • Communicate with regulatory authorities
  • Perform due diligence research on business development opportunities
  • Monitor investment in clinical programs

Chief of Staff

  • Improve processes to enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness
  • Identify Hard Trends to strengthen the accuracy of forecasts
  • Prepare CEO for stakeholder meetings
  • Ensure innovative qualitative and quantitative measurements

VP, Drug Process Development

  • Apply anticipatory thinking and new tools to transform processes
  • Demonstrate process reliability
  • Verify process effectiveness
  • Build process control strategy

VP, Drug Manufacturing Process

  • Ensure a stable design environment
  • Assess drug degradation
  • Link material attributes and process parameters to CQAs
  • Demonstrate linkages between process and product reliability
  • Track outcomes for each changing state
  • Establish feedforward and feedback controls
  • Anticipate and monitor failure conditions

VP, Corporate Development

  • Craft risk-managed pricing
  • Evaluate portfolio implications
  • Analyze integrated due diligence

VP, Supply Chain

  • Use new tools to transform supply chain processes
  • Communicate supply chain risks and opportunities
  • Simulate implications of a supplier failure

Professionals in the cognitive operations either accelerate or constrain their cognitive performance based on their mind-set and the technologies they use for their mind’s work.

Professionals in the transactional operations benefit from software architectures for their responsibilities. Yet professionals in the cognitive operations don’t have the same capabilities to perform their jobs. Rather, they have their job descriptions, their experiences and their minds; they utilize multipurpose software in the form of spreadsheets, presentation software and word processing documents. Leaders and managers do not have a software architecture designed to elevate their cognitive responsibilities. Nor do they have a way to think through their uncertainties in a Socratic manner. These issues are critical for a cognitive operation to advance and gain a competitive advantage.

In working across organizations for decades, we’ve seen a theme in which leaders and managers who seldom take enough time to think through uncertainties the first time around is high. Yet there seems to be enough time to revisit the topics a second time as problems arise. Beyond time pressures, confusion persists around how to think through uncertainties. The lack of clarity regarding how to manage uncertainty has led leaders and managers to spend more time managing the crisis and less time managing new opportunities. By learning to identify the Hard Trend certainties that will happen, anticipatory leaders learn to innovate with low risk and have the confidence certainty provides to make bold moves.

What is Cognitive Excellence?

Anticipatory leaders and managers exhibit cognitive excellence through a constant flow of insights and foresights that resolve uncertainties. These professionals become a critical resource to highly effective cognitive operations. They are go-to professionals, whether they exist in an organization, in the services ecosystem or as part of the extended enterprise. Organizations need to instill these anticipatory capabilities in their professionals to achieve greater business performance.

“Past performance is not a predictor of future results.”

This performance caveat is attached to any investment in the stock market, and it applies in business too. Future performance is dependent on anticipatory skills and cognitive excellence. Professionals face change all the time. Some say change is the only constant; in fact, it’s accelerating at an exponential rate, which creates additional uncertainties as well as new certainties! It’s challenging to achieve cognitive excellence in the minds of professionals consistently today without anticipatory skills and software that:

  • Define the cognitive gaps
  • Illustrate aberrations in future performance through measurable evidence
  • Trigger questions of uncertainty in your mind
  • Move you from uncertainty to greater certainty

That’s why cognitive excellence doesn’t just come from experience. It comes from advancing the capabilities of professionals with:

  • Anticipatory leadership skills
  • A responsibility architecture for their cognitive work
  • An agile and anticipatory mental framework to help them address change across situations
  • Software spaces to perform their mind’s work

The ability to nimbly address questions of uncertainty through a repeatable Socratic process greatly enhances leaders’ and managers’ capabilities to perform at a very high level as key contributors to their organizations and their clients’ organizations. This is how professionals can transform the performance of their businesses.

As professional teams elevate their cognitive capabilities toward excellence, their organizations transform into highly performant cognitive factories. Professional teams leverage each other’s thinking through a uniform process to visualize performance patterns for their minds, where they gain insights and foresights. Anticipatory professionals not only pre-experience their own uncertainties, they also help their stakeholders pre-solve their questions of uncertainty, too.

The cognitive era is shaping the coexistence and interdependence between humans and machines. This new era demands leaders to advance the capabilities of their cognitive processes. As machines learn, humans must focus their time and attention in areas where machines are far less effective. Professionals need to redefine and reinvent their business models, markets, products, services and processes to provide the next level of value for their clients. Anticipatory leaders and managers need to focus their time on the layers of both uncertainty and certainty where future state thinking is needed and reassign current state thinking to others. That’s how they’ll continue to differentiate their personal and business brands. Professionals need to accelerate their learning and get comfortable with uncertainty through the use of higher certainty frameworks. It’s imperative for organizations to get on board with elevating their cognitive performance. Waiting will cost organizations the value of cognitive insights and foresights, while your competitors grow their knowledge.

Machine learning is causing a shift in the workforce — an emerging crowd of retrained professionals whose jobs are increasingly occupied by machines. This requires cognitive professionals in their current roles to manage the knowledge gap between themselves and their new human rivals. They accomplish this by advancing their cognitive skill sets, learning to become anticipatory leaders and through the use of technologies built the way they think about uncertainties.

Learn how to elevate your planning, accelerate innovation and transform results with The Anticipatory Learning System and how to maximize the cognitive performance of your team with Cognitive Performance Software.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Industries Management Skills Technology

Eliminate Cognitive Friction to Maximize Human Performance

By Daniel Burrus and Neil Smith

(In this blog series on how elevating cognitive performance is a game changer for organizations, I’ve invited Neil Smith, CTO at Think Outcomes, to join me in writing on this important topic due to his expertise and the cognitive performance software his firm has created.)

Improving cognitive performance is a strategic imperative for anticipatory leaders. Yet, cognitive performance slows down due to cognitive friction. Cognitive friction occurs when professionals can’t think through uncertainties clearly in their minds. These uncertainties include:

  1. Risks
  2. Opportunities
  3. Outcomes
  4. Consequences
  5. Implications
  6. Impact
  7. Causations
  8. Causes and effects

In an organization, cognitive friction occurs frequently across many professional roles, minds and perspectives. For the 15 areas in a cognitive operation below, cognitive friction not only spans many responsibilities, it also impacts relationships and shapes cultures.

15 Areas of a Cognitive Operation

Cognitive Friction Across Perspectives

Cognitive friction occurs when two or more professionals are challenged to get on the same page. They must resolve their perspectives — which can be very challenging. In business, professionals:

  • Perform critical thinking
  • Make decisions
  • Communicate with stakeholders
  • Collaborate with other professionals
  • React to uncertainties
  • Work with peers and stakeholders to address situational challenges
  • Advise other professionals about their cognitive work
  • Evaluate the thoroughness to think through situations in the minds of their thinkers
  • Review the risk-reward trade-offs among their team members

Cognitive Friction Within the Mind of a Professional

Cognitive friction exists within the minds of professionals and creates undue stress. The six reasons friction occurs is due to:

  1. The processing limitations in the mind
  2. Ineffective communications
  3. Unproductive collaborations
  4. Uncertainties in their minds
  5. Lack of cognitive insights and foresights
  6. Bias that leads to cognitive divisiveness


Processing Limitations in the Mind

When processing multiple data points in the mind, cognitive work can become a highly stressful activity. It’s amazing how many leaders are not equipped with cognitive tools to manage uncertainty across situations, close their knowledge gaps and achieve expected results. When a situation includes more than seven variables, it’s well-known that the human mind is not able to process this level of complexity. Think how we receive, process and remember phone numbers. Our minds are not wired to synthesize 10 or more digits at a time. In the U.S., people think about the 10 digits in a pattern of a 3-digit area code, a 3-digit prefix and 4-digits for the line number; our minds consume, process and recall smaller chunks of information.

Try this exercise in your mind to see how complexity increases quickly: spin all the digits of five phone numbers in your mind as if the numbers were on a slot machine. Can you keep track of the numbers? Most of us cannot; our minds get overwhelmed right away.

When multiple changing variables exist, that’s the type of stress professionals experience every day in their minds as they perform their risk-reward trade-offs. Without additional cognitive capabilities, leaders turn to their gut as a place to find answers; often, though, the gut isn’t a very good logic engine. Operating risk is introduced when critical thinkers and decision makers do not have access to complementary, cognitive tools to perform their cognitive activities at their best.

Effective Communications Accelerate Buy-in and Decisions

The challenges increase further for critical thinkers and decision makers when they communicate with their stakeholders, peers and dependents to gain agreement about multiple, interdependent variables. These heterogeneous thinkers add new perspectives to the decision process, which increases the complexity.

That’s when members of decision teams communicate from their emotional viewpoints. Decisions stall, lasting impressions impact culture and relationships, and people experience an impasse.

Productive Collaborations are Needed to Achieve Better Outcomes

Google Hangouts, Skype and Zoom represent a step forward in collaboration and reduce travel costs. Yet, as professionals move between face-to-face and online meetings, they still struggle to innovate with breakthrough thinking.

Often, we hear professionals say, “if I could see what’s in the minds of the people I’m working with, that would help me address the challenges I’m aware of, too.” Yet, given human limitations, most professionals can’t bridge that gap effectively. If meetings involved the ability to demonstrate thinking patterns, that would help professionals overcome this human hurdle.

As professionals join meetings, they commonly bring their mental models and biases from years of experience. Their mental models create barriers to synthesizing other people’s perspectives as well as new ways of thinking into their own thinking. Where they use their voices and presentation software to convey their thinking, most attendees try to follow the logic rather than elevate their own thinking. If they had a way to unify their thinking through the visualization of evidence that focused on addressing questions of uncertainty and their critical thoughts, they’d optimize their time, learn to pre-solve issues and focus on better outcomes together. That would advance productivity in thinking in a visual way.

When professionals conclude their meetings with follow-on questions, leaders wonder which questions weren’t brought up? Are their teams going down the wrong paths? How do these questions connect to the stakeholders’ objectives? Are they considering the Hard Trends based on future facts that are shaping the future? Professionals expend valuable time to get to clarity as they reflect on their learnings when they need insights and foresights more quickly. Anticipatory leaders seek to institute advanced collaboration processes that yield greater productivity among their teams. They see everyday innovation and breakthrough thinking as a competitive advantage today as well as tomorrow.

Uncertainties, Cognitive Insights and Foresights

As connected teams in today’s data-driven world, data scientists and stakeholders strive for better outcomes together. Where data scientists focus on big data and use machine learning to ask questions about data, stakeholders focus on decision information and ask questions to solve situational challenges. The minds of stakeholders are as effective as the:

  1. Quality of their questions to resolve their problems and uncertainties
  2. Cognitive insights and foresights that arise from their mental models

Bias and Cognitive Divisiveness

In the minds of professionals, cognitive friction results from their cognitive biases and the synthesis of disparate data. Cognitive divisiveness exists among professionals as data synthesis and bias differ across perspectives. Cognitive friction and divisiveness affect velocity and outcomes.

In their roles, professionals:

  • Are often unable to access data structured the way they think about risk-reward trade-offs
  • Don’t know what they don’t know during decision making
  • Are challenged many times to demonstrate their points of view
  • Are frequently challenged to see alternative points of view during communications
  • Struggle to shape the thinking of team members due to predefined mental models
  • Are challenged to arrive at strategic foresights and engineer outcomes

A Critical Thinking Advantage

To gain an advantage in today’s world, cognitive teams must pre-solve issues through a continuous flow of cognitive insights and foresights. To achieve their objectives, they must find new wisdom within the cognitive gaps in their minds — i.e., to get from “here” to “there.” “Here” is where they are today in context to their cognitive responsibilities. “There” is where they need to go. This cognitive gap represents their current state and target state of their subject profiles. Their stakeholders depend on actionable knowledge and wisdom from their team of thinkers to improve business results. This starts with the capabilities of their cognitive resources and tools.

Learn how to elevate your planning, accelerate innovation and transform results with The Anticipatory Learning System and how to maximize the cognitive performance of your team with Cognitive Performance Software.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Management

Peloton: The Poster Child of Intentional Customer Attention

Create an Exceptional Customer Experience with Intentional Attention

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’m obsessed with Peloton. What’s a Peloton, you ask? It’s basically a bike that goes nowhere. It is also a case study in my book, Attention Pays.

John Foley, the CEO, is the brainchild of Peloton, a stationary bike with a tablet attached. But what John will tell you is it’s a technology company, not a fitness company.

They are the poster child for intentional customer attention for many different reasons. John is very attentive to the community which has over 80,000 subscribers on their Facebook group. This active community posts questions about features they’d like, and then, the company incorporates them in the software.

They carefully choose instructors they know will resonate with riders. Their instructors have become so adored, they even have their own cult following. These instructors are like celebrities. Each very different and very talented, attracting a certain kind of customer. Instructors often times have their own Instagram and Facebook pages that riders can follow as well.

Peloton pays attention to their community, which is made up of home-riders. These home-riders use their bike in the basement, their home gym and on their patio while following instructors they love. Riders can choose to ride live recordings or ones previously recorded. They can select from many different scenic rides when the class model isn’t what they desire.

They even created the home rider invasion where riders leave the confines of their home and travel to New York. There, they get to meet their favorite instructors and do classes in the studio. Because their rider community is so strong, meeting each other in the home rider invasion is as much of a perk as meeting the instructors.  I a very loyal customer and any day I’m working from home, I take advantage of my Peloton. I love their instructors! Jennifer Jacobs is definitely one of my most favorites.

Peloton’s business model demonstrates how one leader paid intentional attention to the customer and created a revolution in the fitness industry. Are you ready to do the same in your business?

Categories
Best Practices Growth Industries Management Personal Development

Pay Attention to Peer and Partner Departments

What are you doing to pay attention to other departments? That’s right. In today’s organizations, we have so many different business models, we have matrix organizations. Whereas a leader you might have virtual relationships with you, that don’t have a direct line to you but maybe they have responsibilities that impact your team. Or maybe you have other departments who have to get work done before you can touch it in order for you to proceed. We need to pay attention to other departments. So, today, what I would like to consider is how do we have that profession attention commitment to other departments?

The first step is an obvious one and that’s about building relationships. Now, building relationships sounds so easy but how are you doing it? Are you inviting people to your team meeting so that they can get an insight into what your team’s talking about? Are you shadowing people to understand what’s going on in their business?

One of my clients is a major media company, and they have an advertising and sales decision. Now in advertising and ad is called a “spot”, so what I was able to do was to follow a spot. Like a day in the life of a spot from the moment they sold the ad to the client all the way through until it was placed on television. What as fascinating about that was working with all the different departments to understand how everything impacts something else.

When was the last time you developed department relationships by reviewing end-to-end processes for efficiencies? What relationships could grow? What policies could you update?

The first step in truly paying attention to other departments is build relationships. This can often happen through things like affinity groups. Another one of my clients has major affinity groups for all kinds of different reasons that people meet. Can you build relationships through affinity groups?

The second strategy is to share success. That’s right. So what does that mean? Understanding objectives of other departments is really important because you can know how to celebrate when they get some great things happening. But in the same way, if another department has an implication, has and impact is probably a better word, on what you do, then share with them when that goes well. Share the successes and not just the challenges. Too often we only reach out to another department when somethings gone wrong.

Wouldn’t it be cool to proactively pay attention to celebrate success together? Share new stories, share customer experiences, testimonials, emails that are great. Share success stories with other departments, so they have a greater appreciation of what they’re doing and how it impacts you and vice versa.

The third strategy is to invite collaboration. When you have someone who comes into your team from another department, they have a very different perspective. They might look at the world more creatively. They might have a great idea so ask for their input, encourage them to share, openly, about anything they see that might improve the way you do things, might enhance the client experience.

I have one client where they do regular Lunch and Learns for other departments. It’s a great way for them to meet other people, to share success stories about what’s going on but also, to be able to collaborate on how they can perform better as a company overall.

Three ways that you can pay attention to other departments. Build relationships, share success and invite collaboration. What would you add?

You see I believe that when we truly pay attention to others, attention comes back over and repeatedly. You’ve heard me say it before and in our book, “Attention Pays”, that when you pay attention, attention pays, right?

What are some additional ways that you can really pay professional attention and commit to other departments? Other departments impact your success as a leader. Like I said, “When you pay attention, attention pays.”

Categories
Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Industries

5 Ways Contractors Trick You Out of Your Money

We have all heard the horror stories about the Big Bad Contractor!  Contractors, in general, are viewed as dishonest and homeowners shake in their britches when something around the house breaks. It is unfortunate, because I have met a lot of contractors and most of them just want to do a good job for their clients and be able to sleep at night. They are normal people who picked a profession that has a lot of variables and it is a balancing act that is very difficult to maintain 24/7, 365, without issues.  

Imagine trying to juggle multiple objects of varying size, weight, and angles, while someone from the sidelines throws in more objects. That is what it is like to be a contractor! Joe fell off a ladder and delays the tile job, the plumber got stuck at an emergency and needs to schedule his part for another day, the homeowner had to reschedule last minute and yet demands the contractor gets done with the project by the end of the week or they will write a bad review.

The contractor’s job is volatile at best and the moment they lose control of the juggling act, they are labeled as bad and their reputation is threatened with the homeowner’s ability to review them or spread a warning about them across social media.

I always try my best to share things like this, because I think homeowners need to understand, going into any relationship with a contractor, that there needs to be a little bit of levity on their part.  With all these objects being juggled, it is likely that the contractor might forget to call them back or would be behind on getting them an estimate. When your hands are on fire, getting the fire put out as quickly as possible, with the least amount of pain as possible, becomes the contractors reaction to being overwhelmed.  In other words, they have to quickly focus on what causes the most pain for everyone.

Do they finish fixing an issue that has them trapped under a house in the mud, or stop everything and run back to their truck to call and say they are going to be an hour late?  The homeowner waiting for them to make the time window doesn’t care what the issue is, they have dinner at 6pm and this rotten, lying, so and so, didn’t even have the dignity to call and say they would be running late.  Is this person a bad contractor? Ask the homeowner that didn’t get the call.

Now, on the other side, let’s look at what people would usually view as a good contractor. The company has tons of resources, a fleet of trucks, can guarantee they can be on time, and when the technician arrives they are super friendly and look very professional. They must be good, because I see them on TV all the time and they offer financing and they are the official contractor to my favorite sports team. When you look on Google, they have hundreds of 5 star reviews!  THIS has to be a good contractor right? Let’s dig a little deeper. They are on TV all of the time, so their marketing expenses run into the millions. They have a fleet of decked out trucks and are fully stocked, so their daily cost for the fleet is running into the tens of thousands, they have SALES technicians that are trained to the hilt and earn a commission when they sell something. It is their job to get into that house on time, be friendly and helpful, and find anything that has a potential of ever breaking down in the lifetime of your home. Oh, and by the way, if we knock all of this out today, we can offer a huge discount and give you zero percent financing (for 18 months and then the interest kicks in).

If you give us a great review on Google, we will give you another $200 off or your choice of season passes to Six Flags!  Now THAT is a good contractor right? Well, not that they are bad at their job, but you now just paid up to 4 times what you needed to pay to fix the original issue and was sold a bill of goods that was nowhere near necessary.  By the way, even these guys could run into an issue and be an hour late, BUT a sweet representative from the office will call and let you know.

So the point of my rant is that it is very difficult to label a contractor as good or bad.  There needs to be a lot more thought that goes into it, than a missed phone call or whether or not they arrived on time.  I would wait all day long, and even be willing to reschedule, for the honest contractor that can fix my problem at a fair and honest rate and won’t try and take me for more than is necessary.

However, as I promised, these are the 5 ways a contractor can trick you out of your money and take advantage of you.

1. Misdiagnosis. You have seen the sting operations on TV. This is basically just a direct lie typically covered up by a bunch of technical jargon.  Don’t just take their word for it, make them show you and explain how they came to that conclusion.

2. Bait and Switch. There are two types of Bait and Switch

  • Couponing– these are the ones who advertise an extremely low price and then after getting to your home reveals what it will really cost to fix your “particular” problem.

  • The Product Switch – The contractor sells you the upgraded model of whatever and actually installs the lesser model since most of us do not know the difference.

3. Under Bidding. When a contractor knows they are competing against other contractors for your business they will sometimes give a lower bid and once they collect your upfront money they “find” an unexpected problem and has to add that to the bill.

4. Ding Dong Ditch. The contractor gets money upfront for materials and disappears off the face of the planet. Nowadays with the ability to get a disposable phone, it is incredibly easy to disappear.  Make sure you do your research and no how to physically get in front of the contractor with ease.

5. High Pressure / High Fear sales tactics. Many companies have changed their format to a commission based selling scenario for their technicians. Commission doesn’t rule someone out, but it obviously opens the door for a technician to use pressure or fear to get a bigger paycheck. It really all depends on how the owner trains their people, but if you combine high overhead with a commissioned sales technician, then it stands to reason that they need to get more money than necessary out of you.

Here at The Good Contractors List, we have worked with hundreds of contractors and there has been only one that I would consider bad and we exposed him AND ourselves on the Channel 11 News!  We messed up and we paid for it, but we did our best to warn anyone else about doing business with them. Click HERE for the story!

In conclusion, when looking for a contractor, I would do my research.  Do more than just read through their website. Go to the Better Business Bureau and see how long they have been in business. Google their name and the owner’s name to see if you can find anything derogatory.  Read through any reviews you find and see if there are any negative patterns that seem to be consistent. Look at the size of the company and aim for the ones who appear to be professional, but maybe not over the top in resources or marketing prowess. Even if you get a referral from a family member, do research on the referral and make sure they are reputable beyond your cousin’s one interaction with them.

Then, go into the relationship understanding that they are dealing with a lot of variables and there could be something that doesn’t go perfectly. It will mean a lot to them to have you rooting them on and working with them to give you what you need at a fair and honest rate.

Categories
Accounting Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Industries Investing Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

What’s Your Company’s Moral Compass?

Imagine that you’re in the running for a coveted spot in a well-regarded organization for a high-level position. It’s taken you years to get to this place and you really want this job. You wait and wait through the agonizingly long interview process and in the end, you don’t make the grade.

These are the kinds of situations that “try men’s (and women’s) souls.” How you go through the stages of making the decision to apply, to how you tolerate the waiting, to how you manage the disappointment of being overlooked are great indicators of how you handle stress (and life) in general.

This is just one example of how reaching beyond your comfort zone initiates a series of mental challenges. In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optima; Experience, Michaly Csikszentmihalyi (Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1990)l, spent years researching the question of what makes one happy. Ultimately, according to his findings, the answer to this very illusive inquiry was: “The control of one’s consciousness determines the quality of one’s life.”

In other words, how we internalize and make peace with the myriad of disappointments and loses as well as deal with our successes and celebrations determine our level of satisfaction we experience in our lifespan.

Given that introspection and transformation are such critical factors in every person’s – and ultimately in every company’s well-being, I’m always amazed at how little attention is paid to the recognition of how important this kind of mental training is.

And I specifically use the word “training,” because the mindset needed to weather the ups and downs of life are not natural. Our brains are wired for danger and spew forth an endless sea of worst-case scenarios. These peak performance skills need to be taught We learn them, either through the school of “hard knocks” – which can take a lifetime – or through parents, teachers, coaches and mentors.

What then, is the role of the company?  Business is business, and the bottom line is the barometer of success or failure.

Yet, the world is changing. The balance of power is shifting, and employees are demanding a more human approach to their work experience – which is in greater synergy to the more spiritual yearnings of mankind. They are asking their companies to honor higher moral values, such as a sense of purpose, respect for family life, racial and gender equality, awareness of individual differences and authenticity, to name a few. In other words, they are asking their organization to be “conscious.”

To be “conscious” means to be transparent, to allow oneself to be vulnerable, to accept responsibility for one’s own behavior and to be on the path of continuous personal and transformational growth. Where is your company on this moral compass?

Here are three ways you can begin to tackle this worthy challenge:

1. Make Your Own Personal Growth a Priority

Wherever you are in the hierarchy of leadership, ask yourself, “Where am I on my own path of personal growth?” Have I invested my efforts to be the best person I can be? Do I have a trusted advisor that helps me see my own blind spots? Every highly successful person I know has someone in their corner who helps them navigate those precarious situations that keep them up at night.

2. Listen to your employees.

Goal setting is a common measure of performance in companies. But when people don’t reach their goals, do you really know why they don’t? There are ways of increasing the level of meaningful communication between managers and employees that go way beyond the traditional semi-annual or annual reviews. Beaconforce, a startup here in San Francisco is one of those innovative companies that have a great solution to this problem.

3. Train Your Employees for the Olympics

As I mentioned above, a resilient mindset is critical for sustainable growth. It may sound like Utopia, but imagine you had an entire organization of individuals who had the mental fortitude to handle the daily pressures of work and life outside of work. Did you know that $1 billion is lost in productivity in the US alone due to stress-related absences? These stress management and peak performance skills, as I said, can be learned. Be that company who understands, appreciates, and puts into action, the concept that all change in your organization and the world, begins with each and every individual having a healthy and resilient mental mindset.

If you’d like to dive deeper to learn more about your own level of Peak Performance skills, go to http://masteryunderpressure.net or join our Facebook community at Mastery Under Pressure Community.

Or contact me directly for a 30-minute complimentary consult at tina@tinagreenbaum.com