Tag Archives: strategy

The Cloud is like a teenage driver

Nobody is shocked when they hear the teenager just learning to drive got into an accident. After all, even with the safest car on the block, the kid just lacks the depth of experience.

Maybe that’s the same growing pain we’re seeing from some of the recent outages at many major tech providers over the last few weeks. Maybe we simply lack the depth of experience? We think we know what to do but aren’t really prepared for situations that occur just 1% of the time.

Developing processes, buying hardware, staffing up, increasing complexity…. Making those significant investments just for something that just happens 1% of the time. Tough to get 20x return on that stuff. Tough to justify when the “accidents” just hurt you.

Now imagine that teenager is driving a bus full of people. Those 1% situations switch from potentially doing harm to just a few to endangering many. After all, they are providing a transportation platform for anyone willing to pay.

Isn’t this the same for our cloud providers that supply many others with platform-as-a-service? Now when Amazon or Google hits a rough patch, the thousands of others riding on their platforms get tossed around too.

I’m confident that our teenage drivers will get better. They will gain more experience, plan better, get help, and most importantly realize their actions (or lack of action) can and does impact others.

Let’s hope the leadership of the new guard for cloud computing are brave enough to fight for funding to take today’s platform offerings from ‘good enough’ to ‘great’ since we are all now getting on the bus.

Adoption – fun versus efficient

I love how this diagram highlights that the adoption of ‘fun’ things is much more viral than the adoption of ‘efficient’ things. Of particular interest with this diagram is that it considers older innovations and how they took off. This is part of the allure of gamification…. making things fun.

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This diagram is from the article “Household appliances and the use of time: the United States and Britain since the 1920s” by Sue Bowden and Avner Offer.  It was published in The Economic History Review, Volume 47, Issue 4, pages 725–748, November 1994.  

Fostering a culture of innovation

I’ve been fascinated with Quora for the last few weeks.  Earlier today I posted a response to the question “How do you foster a culture of innovation in a large company?” and since I’ve mulled over this for some time, I wanted to also capture my thoughts here.  Below is what I posted as a response.

For innovation to be successful in large organizations, I think you need a strategy that considers the end-to-end lifecycle of innovations. To me this means you need an ecosystem which spans several stages and provide capabilities that allow formal & informal innovation:
  1. Get Ideas – where can we get ideas, how can we validate and rate them, can we stimulate innovative thinking in particular areas, etc.
  2. Try Good Ideas – where and how can we try out some of these ideas, who funds prototypes & pilots, how do we know if they are good, etc.
  3. Promote Winners – how can we get our promising innovations into the mainstream, who funds taking them to the next level, how easy can they integrate and/or scale, etc.
  4. Productize – is this something we can sell, is there a market for this, etc.

Across each of these stages, you need to also be mindful of the dynamics and perspectives of who is involved. Each stage of the end-to-end innovation lifecycle brings a different set of interested parties.

  • Motivations – What motivates the innovator? What motivates the early adopter? Why would a mainstream person be interested? Is this optional or required?
  • Incentives – Do we need incentives to get ideas, to rate ideas, etc? How di we celebrate successes at each stage? What are the benefits for involved parties?
  • Investments – Why should we invest time/money/resources/attention? Is the return tangible? How long before we see results?
  • Risks – What happens if we fail? Are we willing to put our money where our mouth is?

I further believe you MUST ensure connectivity and flow across each stage of the end-to-end innovation lifecycle or you will only get pockets of success. In conclusion, the innovation ecosystem is more valuable than the sum of its parts.

Gamification – the emperor has no clothes!

Shortly before the holidays I decided to stop checking in through Yelp’s iPhone app. I really gave it a go. For around 6 months I regularly checked in when I was at restaurants, grocery stores, music lessons, basically anywhere I went. What do you suppose I earned for over 300 manual check-ins?

I’m proud to tell you I’m the “duke” of 20 different places. I have acquired the prestige of 6 special “badges” while also being recognized by yelp as a “regular” at 11 establishments. Impressive, right?

No discounts. No special treatment. Nothing tangible. Just feel-good ego-stroking nothingness. This form of gamification simply plays to our competitive nature. It is hollow and empty.  I feel like I am wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Games are fun and don’t need to translate into tangible stuff but somehow I feel like somebody gets something tangible out of this.  Somebody also has gone through great pains to make me think I’m getting something out of it. 

I’m not faulting Yelp here, they are working with what they have and riding a trend.  However, I am concerned as we see more and more gamification in software offerings (particularly in the mobile space), we will begin to see more and more distrust by users.  Nobody wants to feel used… nobody wants to realize they are parading through the streets with no clothes on.

Reflecting on core strategy

As my friend Mike likes to say “I’m a lucky man….” I still can’t tell whether it’s an affirmation or tongue-in-cheek but it’s one of the traits I like about him. Another friend told me about this iPhone app called the Gratitude Journal and explained how it changed his outlook.

Sounded interesting to me. I mean happiness is a core strategy for everything that I do on my life, after all. I’m a believer that love conquers all, positive thinking is powerful, mind over matter, etc… (yeah, all that foolishness). I also know myself to be susceptible to taking things for granted. So I decided to challenge myself to try this gratitude journal and see what happens.

It changed me…. and more importantly my children.

Although I didn’t stay very disciplined in using the gratitude journal beyond a few weeks, the sheer fact the I was confronted with thinking positively everyday about what I’m thankful for was enough to leave a mark on me. I thought about how lucky I am to live where I live, feeling safe and warm, surrounded by people that love me. To quote Mike…  “I’m a lucky man.”

One night at dinner, I was telling my inspiring wife about the gratitude reflection activity. She’s a clever one and suggested we should all express our gratitude at dinner each night. So we started that night and each of us, including my 6 & 8 year olds, each said three things we were grateful for during that day.

We’ve been saying our “thankfuls” at dinner for over a year now. We’ve also added to it by saying three ways we helped someone else each day. I love this and feel proud to be teaching my children this personal reflection technique.

I am a lucky man! I’m especially lucky to now keep my core life strategy (be happy and appreciative) in my mind every day.

Anyway, the point here is that by simply asking yourself an often-overlooked question, you can make improvements and realign to your core strategy. This applies in personal (see above) and business activities.

As business leaders, do we remember to ask the fundamental questions that explore alignment to our firm’s core values & strategies? For example, do you know whether your company prefers faster time to market or quality? If you do know the answer, do you remember to explicitly ask about it when reflecting and making business decisions?

Perhaps this is a bigger concept than what I wanted to post about. What I’m getting to is that perhaps a simple checklist (hat tip to the checklist manifesto) of questions related to your core corporate strategy could help your firms get back to and apply the most important and essential criteria that makes it unique and competitive.

Leadership & dog walking

I was at the park this weekend and was watching a man being walked by his dog. 

I laughed because I’ve been there… I’ve been that guy.  I couldn’t control my own pet.  The only power it seems I had was dictating when the walk would take place… beyond that, the dog was in control.  I largely became just a weight to my dog, overhead for her to deal with as she tried to make the most out of the situation.

But why did it have to be so difficult?  Why so stressful?  Why so unpleasant?

Well, it was simply because I hadn’t taken the time to discipline my dog and harness her enegy for something good…. something we both could enjoy.

It seems to me this is a common issue with leaders too.

Sometimes we are fortunate to work with disciplined and effective people.  Those people have learned how to navigate in a way that is beneficial for their managers.  They know what is safe and when to ask for permission.  In other words, someone spent time teaching them.  Whether it was through rewards, praise, or an iron fist… they learned attributes that have helped them to succeed.

Leaders need to continue nurturing their people.  They need to establish boundaries and reward good behaviors.  They need to invest time to train their teams what is expected of them.  They need to lead.

What about you?  Are you walking your dog or is your dog walking you?

a ‘quirky’ enterprise innovation model

I was recently checking out quirky.com and it occurred to me some of the elements/approaches they employ might alleviate some of the shortcomings found in enterprise innovation processes.?? In a nutshell, here’s how quirky works:

  1. People pay $99 bucks to submit an idea for some kind of cool thing.??
  2. That idea then goes into a kind of contest to become the next quirky product.??
  3. The contest part is where the quirky community rates and votes for the different ideas (they call it influence products) in a certain time period.??
  4. At the end of the time period, the winning idea in the contest becomes the next quirky product.??
  5. The quirky team then builds the product in a certain period of time.??
  6. The finished product then becomes available for sale.

———-

I’m sure you’re thinking “Ok Wolf, but how does that apply to enterprise innovation…”??

Scaling a promising concept or innovation to a larger audience inside an enterprise can be very challenging.?? I believe most of these challenges are derived from a flawed design in the innovation maturation / harvesting process.?? In many cases, the burden of getting the promising innovation to the next level falls on the shoulders of the innovator or intrapreneur. There may be innovation programs in place to raise awareness, but in my experience those programs often come up short in facilitating connections between the innovator and teams that have the broader skill set to help scale the innovation’s value to a more mainstream audience.?? I’ve discussed the challenges often faced by intrapreneurs in some previous posts (here and here).

But if we consider the quirky approach as a model for enterprise innovation, there may be a more valuable way to leverage the deep skills and talents found within an enterprise.?? Each step of the quirky process is interesting in some way.

  1. Submit idea — Have a small barrier for the idea submitter to overcome which helps to keep the idea pipeline clean.?? In the context of the enterprise, allow any employee/agent to contribute ideas.?? Innovation becomes relevant for all staff… not just techies.

  2. Idea in weekly contest for next product — I’m fascinated with this idea of a brief time period to keep the contest excitement going…. adding drama week in and week out.

  3. Idea review by community — Ideas are reviewed, collaborated on, rated, etc.?? Its the active community that defines the agenda and focus of the next great thing to be produced.?? In essence this pre-establishes that a ‘market’ for this idea exists right now.?? The enterprise leverages the community to build a portfolio of offerings the community has already validated as attractive.

  4. Weekly contest ends and winning idea is selected — After a fixed period of time, a decision to move forward or not is reached.?? That decision is derived based on employee input.?? Again, I think the “contest time period” is important here to provide the focus.

  5. Winning idea is executed by quirky team — A staffed. multi-disciplinary team then executes on the winning idea.?? In my mind, this is exactly where many existing enterprise innovation processes are weak.?? Idea folks aren’t always builder folks.?? Additionally, idea folks might not have the time, personal networks, or expertise (supply, manufacturing, marketing, sales, etc.) to execute the idea.

  6. Finished product becomes available — A place where the cool new thing can be leveraged.?? Although there’s often no money changing hands internally, perhaps there are other forms of capital (social, influence, recognition) which can serve as the ‘take’ for all those involved in the previous steps.

Ultimately a model like the above could provide a multi-audience value that complements the varied skills and traits found within the enterprise.

Value for the submitter:
  • In-depth idea evaluation.??
  • Detailed community comments and feedback.
  • Potential candidacy as the a product.
  • If chosen, the idea is executed by a defined team and becomes a product available for use in a short timeframe.
  • If it becomes a product, the idea submitter gets some form of award (monetary, patent, news story, etc.).
Value for the community:
  • Even if it wasn’t your original idea, community members divergent skills and perspectives can help to shape the idea into an even more powerful and valuable offering.
  • It is the community that is driving the decision-making as it represents the initial target market for the product produced.
  • The model appears to recognize that it takes a village to care for an idea.?? They do this by tracking “influence” for community members. In the enterprise this could manifest in the form of collaboration recognition and reputation building.
Value for the enterprise:
  • Great innovation to improve portfolio.
  • Majority of the benefits (whether financial or not).
  • Community-validated ideas prior to development expense.
  • Built-in early adopters and evangelists who supported idea from the start.

What do you think??? Where are the strengths and weaknesses of this kind of model??? What have you seen work?

I’m motivated by more than money

Maybe it’s just because I came from a big family that didn’t have too much money? ??Maybe I feel more entitled than I should? ??Maybe I’m just needy? ??Whatever the case, I am greatly motivated by being recognized for the value I bring to my work. ??Sure I like monetary awards… but my personal motivation is fueled by more than cash.

In today’s workplace, there are lots of talented people and one way to stand out is to have your successes publicly documented by others. ??In other words, have a great reputation. ??While I can blog about my own exploits and triumphs, my reputation is really driven by awareness and/or validation from others. ??So I get a warm & fuzzy feeling when that validation comes in public settings.

Earlier this week there was a story featured on my company’s main intranet page regarding a recent announcement of CIO Leadership Awards. ?? This caught my eye as there appears to be an ever-declining trend to award programs as a result of the current economic environment. ??So I was really happy to see this high visibility recognition program. ??Reviewing the article, it certainly sounded as though there were several interesting projects recognized. ??However, I must confess I was disappointed to find I didn’t recognize any of the projects/teams. Where were my peers? ??Hell, where were my projects?

Regardless if these kinds of team awards have a monetary component or not, I think the broader recognition and visibility is a great motivator. ??I know I would feel proud if something I worked on was recognized publically in this manner. ?? Reputation building has always been important for career growth but it seems in today’s ‘flat’ and wired world, having electronic trails of your reputation has increasing value and importance. ??

As @ceonyc opined in one of his recent posts (Blunt advice for MBAs who want to work at startups), “wouldn???t I rather have a note from someone… (with) a twitter account where 500 more people follow you than follow you back???and indication that you say things worth listening to.” ??While having a twitter following is only one dimension of online reputation, it can provide validated evidence of your value…. just as internal recognition in the form of awards can. ??And many of these kinds of recognition & reputation building motivators don’t have any hard-dollar costs.

Seems to me that making people feel good and valued through recognition systems is more important today than ever before…. and its really inexpensive too. Of course I’ll still take cash but flattery and recognition can keep me motivated too.