Articles in our business and strategy category focus on innovation, planning, entrepreneurism and, of course, business and strategy. Issues range from small business planning to business intelligence systems for large corporations.

Key new posts that represent our current thinking in this area include:

- The renaissance of old technologies (or the cost of new in innovation): How low-tech is a rich source of innovation.
- Grow your business: better, not bigger: Why investing in better hardly ever means bigger.
- Creating tailor-made companies: Why stacking on brilliance is the best possible investment.

By far the most popular posts written in this category are the step-by-step, nine-post series on pitching and pinging:

- 1+7 Steps to pitching an idea: How to create, scope, structure, refine, and pitch an idea. And, as a bonus, what to do if it fails.
- 13+ questions for pitchers: Questions each entrepreneur should answer before creating a pitch.
- Put the pitch together: Sorting out all the detail created by answering the 13 questions listed above.
- 60-second pitch: The 10 point outline: Ten tips to outline the pitch.
- 60-second pitch: The first 10 seconds: Investing ten seconds to make them want 50 more.
- 60-second pitch: The three biggest mistakes: Have a purpose, be interesting and get ready.
- Presenting the bigger small picture: 5 minutes to present key nuances of business plans.
- The overview: Key issues to cover in full-blown business plan presentations.
- Pitching, flipping and pinging: Where pitching is you talking for business; pinging is you listening for business.

Another popular set are the Blue Ocean Strategy posts:

- When sharks visit your blue ocean: A quick glimpse of the choice at hand.
- Blue Ocean Strategy: The one sentence overview.
- The best sort of blue: The best of Blue Ocean Strategy.
- When blue oceans turn purple: The low-end of Blue Ocean Strategy.
- Blue ocean revival: New interest in Blue Ocean process and discipline.

The most important tags used in this category are:

- Entrepreneurism: Making innovation useful.
- Innovation: Applying ideas.
- Strategy: Choosing among options.
- Planning: Stepping out of strategy.
- Principles: Timeless foundations of business.
- Investment: Leveraging a little to gain more.
- Governance: Guiding brilliant people.

>>>

I was 16. I’d just got my motorcycle licence. I was giddy.

Giddy in that sweet, breathless, heart-bounding way. Color is saturated. Everything grand.

Out on my own bike, own path; I could go wherever I chose. I went straight to the Army Surplus store – needed a few things for the bike.

Still awkward, I lugged around the bulgy helmet, too obsessed to leave it with the bike.

But, holding the helmet meant having no basket. No basket meant the helmet carried the goods.

Still excited. Still giddy. I didn’t know I was being watched.

Got to the counter: old black military boots, boot polish, nifty swiss-army-like knife. Bought them all. But the bike straps … they were black, like the helmet. They lay hidden, forgotten in the make-shift basket

I was outside, on my way to the bike, when I heard her voice. A super-sized service assistant stood beside her. She’d been watching.

Up in her office she told me she’d already called the police. I was charged with shop-lifting. She asked why I didn’t look worried.

That’s easy. I don’t shop-lift.

My parents had told me integrity mattered. Being able to smile at that leathery security lady taught me why.

20 years ago I learned that lesson. In the last five years I’ve come to be grateful. My business exists on integrity.

>>>

“If you have integrity, nothing else matters.  If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.” ~ Alan Simpson

My father-in-law asked if I ever get nervous advising billion-dollar companies or guiding multi-million-dollar government investments. He asked if I ever worry about being wrong. Do you, he wondered, ever have soft-spots to hide?

That’s easy. I don’t leave soft-spots.

I don’t lie. I don’t cheat. I don’t take work I can’t do.

Don’t include pieces that shouldn’t be there. Don’t leave out pieces that should be in.

If I owe, I pay. If I say I’ll do it, it is done. If I say I won’t, I never do.

I can smile at any leathery anybody. That’s easy.

We get hired to create clarity. That’s usually a fairly sensitive thing to need. Most are reluctant to ask.

Not one client would come if there was even a suggestion that our integrity was jeopardized. You don’t bring your most difficult problems to people you can’t trust.

>>>

“Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.” ~ Mark Twain

But I’ll say this: Integrity is expensive. I keep track and sometimes total-up the business I’ve declined to protect integrity. In the last three years, that number is just about $750,000. And inside those three years are patches where saying no to a contract meant there was absolutely nothing in the pipe.

“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.” ~ William Faulkner

There are days when I wonder about this conviction.

What of this drive to peerless?

Is it just arrogance? Maybe I’m naive?

Probably.

I’ll probably look back at these years and smile. Shake my head at that young man – so earnest, so strident.

But, right now, it feels right. That’s about all I have to go with.

I know that if I’m to do all the things I dream of doing – I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be higher. I have to be huge.

I have to stand in front of the world’s most influential decision-makers and grin: That’s easy.

>>>

“The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.” ~ Japanese Proverb

“I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.” ~ Oscar Wilde

What a niggly little thing integrity is. So fragile. So critical.

Comprised of a billion small acts. Obliterated by just one.

It’s no panacea either. It doesn’t absolve responsibility. It isn’t an excuse. I can’t say, wrapped in a shawl of integrity, that I’ve no need of experience, persistence or grace.

Integrity finds its best use in the hands of the active. In the hands of those ready to invest, learn, climb, gather, and accomplish. It’s in the act that integrity is rare.

For the stagnant, low, and unaccomplished, integrity is part of most options. Of a hundred alternative paths, probably half would hold true to integrity. It’s among the high, few, world-class actions that integrity is so hard to find. Among a handful of alternatives, integrity might be part of just one or, more often, none at all.

>>>

My problem today is that integrity matters too much. It’s still a conscious and often aggressive choice. I’d rather it was inert – like crystal.

Will it grow to be translucent? Will it become a hardened vessel, ready to carry all the liquid parts of a richly lived life? Will it always be this organic, pulsing, winding tendril?

Coming from Canada, it was fun to see how food retail is run. I was fascinated to see how clearly average refrigerator size defines food shopping practice. At home we run massive refrigerators and freezers. I have friends with two of each. We buy in bulk and go for weeks at a time without another trip to the supermarket. In England, for most, it’s a daily affair.

The most interesting spot was our stop at Bigham’s kitchen. Charlie Bigham used to be a management consultant. In 1995, he turned 28, quit consulting, bought a camper and took off. By 2005, when I met him, he was running a 35,000 square foot kitchen with room for 300 employees. Annual revenues hovered £6m. In ten years he worked up from a camper van to one of the premier ready-made meal brands in England. How?

There are, of course, myriad reasons. My favorite is his investment in systems. Charlie told us of the several ways he invested in outside expertise. One of the key investments was in technology to monitor ingredient use.

Fresh ingredients are key to the Bigham’s brand. Charlie said he can order fresh ingredients, delivered daily, so precisely that they order within the gram (or whichever alternative unit is appropriate: pounds, ounces, etc.). They produce a single extra serving of each of the lines they produce each day. It’s an astoundingly sophisticated capacity for a relatively small company. But, think of all that capacity enables:

- It enables cost control at the most minute level.
- It enables extremely high-efficiency in storage. Nothing is carried overnight.
- It enables maximum versatility. Each night the table is cleared. Every morning is a new opportunity to implement a new line.
- It enables maximum responsiveness. Nuances and small changes are easily incorporated in the next day’s run.
- And, of course, it enables incredibly fresh production. It’s made in the morning and on the shelf in the afternoon.

When I asked where Charlie would attribute his success, he waved at the chefs, stood with his back to a magnificent kitchen, and shoved his hands in very consultant-like trouser pockets — the system, he said. The capacity to create order in the heart of his business.

I’ve got nothing like the system that Charlie built. But I’ve never forgotten his lesson. I invest, every week, about thirty percent of my time in the systems of my work. When I meet with new clients, systems are the first thing I go looking for.

In this down economy it gets easy to dog-paddle around, waiting for things to pick up. I’m convinced though, the first few momentum generating opportunities will go to those that used this time to build the systems they need to be successful.

In the curious eyes of a child …

Only children get to stare. I’ll look into the eyes of a child for hours. I can hardly stand to look into an adult’s for six seconds.

Children make miracles of hands, new snow and mud puddles. I spent a week at NASA and still managed to get bored.

There is something compelling and endearing in curiosity. A beginner’s mind is a marvel. Why are we so ready to abandon that advantage? Why do we strive to be experts? Why do we fight to have all the answers?

Knowing: enemy of curiosity

Sophistication gets in the way of simple worth. Polish pushes past practicality.

I was delighted when we finished our Jurisdictional Advantage assessment tool. I thought I’d finally created the tool to tempt new clients. It is rigorous, analytical, relevant and enormously powerful.

But as I invested more time in discussing it’s merits and even when I revealed its value in response to new, related opportunities — it pushed instead of pulled. The rigour and depth made some worry about overblown budgets. The sophistication suggested simplicity might get ignored. The practical-minded saw threats lurking in its long-range capacity.

More than that, I became (have become) closed to newness. Instead of greeting each new colour with the wonder of a child, I find some way to find its pre-fab place inside the tool.

The words used to describe the tool were, at first, simple. But in supporting its pre-fabricated relevance, things get ever-more complex. Language starts to hide meaning instead of reveal it.

There is a real tension here. On one hand, people want to see some evidence of capacity. What better way than to flash a well-used, refined set of tools and portfolio of happy clients? But, on the other hand, everyone wants to be unique. They want bespoke.

It’s a tenuous balance. Proof of universal satisfaction and evidence of exclusive service. Show that everyone is happy and ensure that no one has anything similar.

It’s made me wonder about the path to haute couture: the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing — made to order for a specific customer, made from high-quality, expensive fabric, sewn with extreme attention to detail and finish, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques.

Of all that haute couture involves, what is universal? What principles live at its heart? What is unchanged, in spite of creativity? And how is this harnessed?

The first day of Singularity’s executive program almost feels normal. Sit in classes, listen to lectures, hustle back and forth between meals. My little brain was buzzing along, content in its regular patterns.

By about 10 AM the second morning, I knew I had a fire hose in my mouth. The pressure of new information, new paradigms, and a rapidly shifting set of future potentials was too much. Either I had to let go or I find some other release.

I released reality. Let every new idea tear through and decided to pick up the pieces later.

What is Singularity University?

Singularity University is led by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. Ray is famous for his book on singularity, exponential growth curves, and vitamins. Peter runs X-Prize, takes people to zero-gravity, and strives to escape Earth’s orbit.

The university introduces exponential growth technologies. It takes leaders through transformational technologies that change the future. The list includes: synthetic biology, customized medicine, bioinformatics, nanotechnology, alternative energy, artificial intelligence, robotics, and cloud computing networks.

Sort of creeps up on you

The power of Singularity creeps up on you. Its impact peaks after the program is done.

While in the program, everything is amazing. But because it’s all incredible — it sort of starts to feel normal. Like jumping out of a plane: The first few minutes are insane. After a while though, you’re just falling (really, really fast). After its done though, things start to settle in.

The first big burst is the people. They are amazing. Kurzweil, Diamandis, Dan Barry (three-time NASA astronaut and robotics expert), and Ralph Merkle (inventor of hash trees, cryptographic cracks, and nanotechnology expert) are just a few of the boggling roster. Jonathan Zittrain visited us and we visited Luke Nosek at Halcyon.

Luke’s company is an example of the second mind-popping element: There are actually companies doing all this crazy stuff. Halcyon Molecular is literally, honestly creating the world’s fastest human-genome sequencing technology in their garage — I saw it. We raced a Tesla roadster (here’s me in the passenger seat), talked with robots, and watched a guy print 3D prosthetic legs (including tattoos) in one shot.

The last big shift came while old paradigms reluctantly evaporated. Some really big problems look like they aren’t problems at all. What does genetically-tailored medicine do to world-wide disease? If energy scarcity disappears, beaten down by carbon-neutral alternatives, what changes? When salt-water oceans become fresh-water substitutes: what of water wars? As abundance rises, what changes?

Singularity struggling

I left Singularity buzzing with the potential but bothered by something I struggled (still struggle) to define. It’s related to the last question above: As abundance rises, what falls?

Throughout the program I kept thinking of those iconic disaster scenes. The hero races along some bridge, safety beckoning from the far side. Behind the hero, the bridge is crumbling and blood-thirsty threats hunt for his life. There’s no time to turn around. No time to fight. No time to save anything. Just race, head-long, for the other side.

As we race for the giant up of exponential technologies, is it at the cost of a giant down behind us? As the exponential curve arcs up does it also arc down? Does this really start at zero, like all curves mysteriously seem to do — or did it start from a massive and incomprehensible negative well beyond our knowing?

Haven’t we seen this before? Wasn’t whale oil a “limitless” resource? Crude oil reserves used to be oceans, right? What of bison and cod? Good grief — we still use “oceans” to mean “limitless”, so recent is our recognition that they are alarmingly finite.

Are apparently limitless alternatives really even evidence of abundance? Abundance only seems to get important when you’re running really short on something else. Abundance needs absence to get headlines.

So abundance carries the real threat of its inverse: scarcity. Today’s abundance is just a new version of an old paradigm — limitless reserves, made more efficient by technology, to be squandered violently by oblivious generations?

How much of the devastation wrought by Alberta’s oil sands is the consequence of exponential growth technologies? Of all the species we’ve destroyed, how many are gone because we believed they were limitless? Ask almost any of the once powerful empires — how good is abundance?

Just a question

I am a huge fan of Singularity University. An abundant fan. Nothing of the above should suggest skipping that opportunity.

I just want to ask a question that no one there wanted to answer: What does the Singularity invite us to ignore?

Related links

TECHCRUNCH: Singularity University Executive Program — Ray Kurzweil’s Opening Address
BUSINESS WEEK: Singularity University Gives Execs a View of the Future
CNET: Singularity University seasons executives for the future
WIRED: Singularity University

Fiftieth Street and 50th Avenue quarter the town. Each quarter respect the cordons, except the semi-industrialists. Like a wildfire, they leapt 50th Avenue, moving down to consume parts of the south-east.

Heavy-industry barricades the south. A bulwark against newfangled economies, these are lumber-mills and power-plants. The town hums. The air is scented by sawn trees.

Drayton Valley is west of the Rocky Mountains–forests cover the 200 kilometres to the peaks. Go east, across the North Saskatchewan River, to find Canada’s breadbasket. North is crude oil, natural gas, and Alberta’s oil-sands.

Agriculture, forestry and energy are the economic engines in Alberta and Drayton Valley is a lot like other towns in the province–dependent on capricious commodity prices. It followed their path up, through the 50′s oil-boom and down again into the 2000′s.

Today it’s late in 2009 and for Drayton Valley it’s been a year of convergence.

Viewed from one direction, things look sketchy. Drayton Valley’s energy companies crumble under falling prices. Pinched by Pine Beetle and close to worthless lumber, timber companies are tired. Agriculture just crawled through another season of drought. It’s been a blunderbuss of bad.

But, during this same time, the world suddenly turned. Green is great. Clean technology gets more VC investment than any other sector in North America. And feeding into every, single, clean opportunity is at least one of four things: agriculture, forestry, energy or water. Bad became good.

Bad allowed Drayton Valley to find a door, out of pure primary production. It has enough revenue to make the transition–if it moves deliberately. It has the right skill-sets available–if it moves quickly. It has a tailored set of opportunities–if it moves proactively.

Drayton Valley is a town on the edge of a wicked bad problem–the threshold almost palpable. But, for now, it lives in a labyrinth of wicked good.

(Disclosure: Sift builds with Drayton Valley)

Remember your first Halloween? The moment you discovered a mountain of candy behind every door? That one night, in a year of dark nights, to dress up, trot through town, stay up late, plus get candy!

Remember your first Halloween? The moment you discovered a mountain of candy, wantonly devoured, in the space of seconds, is bitterly bad.

Wicked good flipped. It became wicked bad.

How many wicked problems were once wicked goods?

Are poverty and pollution the product of something good? Is global warming and economic cooling a consequence of good that became bad? Did epidemics, exhausted resources, extinct species, and environmental degradation have their start in greatness?

- Poverty is principally caused by disproportionate good. Some get the most good. Some get none.

- Pollution is caused by too much good of one kind. It’s the concentration that makes it bad.

- Epidemics are enabled when good has gone on too long. We weren’t tested. We’re weak.

- Exhausted resources, especially naturally renewable resources, are chiefly caused by taking too much good too fast.

For a while, good was great. Then, one day, good became bad

Where is that moment when wicked good flips. Why does it flip? How long was it good before it became bad?

Why wait while working with good? Why wait for good to become bad? Why not think now about sticking with good and skipping the bad?

What wicked good have you found? What do you do to keep it from becoming wicked bad?

I’ve come back from SoCap09 with an air castle. It’s a plan to anchor communities on brilliance, open innovation and stack potential while bridging across funding platforms to create sustainable impact. How’s that for a mouth-full of clouds?

Here’s the foundation:

Spot Brilliance:

We just built an analytical tool for spotting brilliance. Advantage Assessment creates a rigorous, evidence-based view of real, tangible, regional strengths. It will point to the few things a place can do really well. We’re talking with Central to decide if they’re interested in using their process for invoking action around those strengths.

Find Hubs:

We’re working with (and looking for) “hubs” – communities, companies, or networks set within diverse issues, interests and resources. For example, we’re working with the community of Drayton Valley to identify its few opportunities to be truly brilliant and leverage its agriculture, forestry and energy resources into bioindustrial opportunities. It ties in the community, current corporations, new companies and technologies, research organizations and academic institutions and all levels of government. My mantra going in: Honor complexity, pillage complication.

Create Anchors:

We’ll leverage “hubs” to anchor co-opetition, collaboration and open innovation. Pick your favourite trendy word – the idea is that when real opportunity is at stake, authentic collaboration is most likely. When a hand-picked group of complimentary players are brought to a common game, the incentives are right (for a while) to drive success together. We’re doing the math to set up that context.

Blend Mandates:

I realized at SoCap09 that investors live on a gradient. It runs from impact to return. Government investors and NFPs seek impact. Industrial investors and VC’s go for return. But (and here’s the kicker) they all need to be there for the game to work. The point isn’t an individual $5 million investment, it’s the entire $150 million pool. The gap isn’t a shortage of capital. It’s a failure to blend mandates (in a sophisticated, credible, and invest-able way).

So, this is the foundation of the air castle: Pick a few right things and anchor them on real and tangible opportunity for impact and return.

Get good at the story. Get amazing on the structure. Be brilliant in the pool.

What else? Name the missing bricks:

What else does the castle need?

You’ve worked at impact for ever, see some smoke?

I’m restarting preview conversations of new blog posts. Want in? Subscribe to email notification from the blog.

Keywords: Stacking, Brilliance, Open-Innovation, Blending-Mandate
Tags: Brilliance, Character-of-Place, Innovation, Investment, Planning, Strategy

Investment is a choice. Precision is the vehicle. Impact is an outcome.

Investment is a choice. An informed choice to deliver a range of returns.

Choice requires precision. Precision in timing, pricing, people, and reason. It’s about getting in at the right time, for the right price, with the right people. It’s about getting out in the right way at the right moment.

Impact is a version of interest. It’s another line of return. It’s among a set of investment intentions.

Impact is simple. Precision is complicated.

You want impact? Find a huge rock. Throw it in a small pond.

Precision? It’s not always intuitive. Take a look at what’s in the pond. Take a look at what’s around the pond. Figure out what feeds it. Find out who needs it.

Drop the rock, forget the splash, solve the problem: save a wetland.

Impact requires more than metrics and evaluation.

Metrics tell us what we’ve done. They measure the past. Evaluation tells us what might be and measures a static future.

Metrics lead to more rocks. Evaluation leads to bigger rocks. We need smarter rocks.

Metrics and evaluation hide the uncertainty of choice. They are accountability tools – not decision tools. They create platforms and benchmarks – slingshots and catapults. We also need targeting systems that deal with evolution and dynamics.

Beyond metrics to sensing and foresight

Our success will be defined by an ability to 1) sense the evolution of now, and 2) anticipate where dynamics will lead us.

Sensing “now” demands a new set of filters and criteria. Today, in a world deluged by data (which change every day), relevancy matters more than volume, frequency and timeliness. Curation counts.

Foresight clarifies “next”. It acknowledges that the future is unknown but leverages fit, character, and ability to absorb new opportunities. It seeks to understand a kind of gravity. These elements attract opportunity. Knowing their gravity and reconciling with emerging demand enables analytical understanding of what might come next.

We live in a fulcrum

Social issues are surging, in the face of a flagging economy. We are global. Our systems have failed. We haven’t yet chosen new ones. A window is open. The world is begging.

Grasping the potential of this moment depends on four key actions:

Deliver returns:

Let’s get clear. This is and must be about money. Without financial return, this won’t fly. The trick is making social values as definitive as cash. And then delivering them too.

Be precise:

To “define”, “benchmark”, and “evaluate” let’s add “sense”, “map”, and “feed”. Precision enables performance and drives impact.

Embrace complexity:

Social issues are complex. They are multi-faceted. Change anything, the rest moves too. There’s no single stream of return – it’s systemic.

Create clarity:

Honor complexity; pillage complication. Let things be inter-connected but do not twist. Money works because its simple. Invest simply, with reason, enabled by precision.

Create a path – recapture the present – sustain the future

We must learn to leverage social value to fortify financial value. It’s critical for mitigating risk. It creates fit. It ensures sustenance. It ensures consistency between systems, activities within systems, and new investments.

—

Henry David Thoreau, Journal (November 1, 1851)

“It is a rare qualification to be able to state a fact simply and adequately.
To digest some experience cleanly.
To say yes and no with authority – to make a square edge.
To conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact…”

My son, Keaton, is a maker.

He makes rockets and towers to launch them. He’s enormously busy and very proud of his work.

I’ve seen him stand toe-to-toe with sun-burnt farmers, at the foot of a massive 16-wheeled, 12 foot tall tractor and extoll the virtues of the perfectly constructed fuselage.

To him, the world was built for rockets. Everything is inextricably related to fuel, engines, and navigation systems.

Keaton is a maker.

Keaton is four.

2.

Maker means creator or inventor. It’s replaced discoverer, trader, and even designer as the “I am” of choice. Craftsmanship and artistry are rising to pre-industrial levels. “Hand-crafted”, “tailored”, and “bespoke” are the marketer’s favourite descriptors.

Authors and investors are enthralled with the potential of “making”. As an idea, it’s shouldering out “innovation” (it’s more practical) and “productivity” (it’s more creative).

What does this change? What does it enable? What enables it?

Below is a brief list of people playing with these questions:

Makers: All Kinds of People Making Amazing Things In Garages, Basements, and Backyards.

Paul Graham: Taste for Makers & Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule

Umair Haque: Smart Growth Manifesto & How to Build (and Use) Thick Power.

Hugh McLeod: Questions with author of Free, Chris Anderson & The OverExtended Class.

Jason Fried at Big Omaha.

What does it mean when investors, authors, academics, artists and designers all talk of “making”. Is this a category push or a labeling push? Is this a new (albeit old) category of business? Or is it a rebrand?

We’ve seen this before – in the 30′s people ran for other options and again in the 90′s. The running isn’t odd – it’s the coming back the is striking.

Where did the “re-mix” and “mash-up” economy go? We once talked about customization and layering as new vehicles of value. Did the economic collapse convince us they were hollow?

3.

What lies at the heart of “making”? Will it endure? Will it, like environmental stewardship, be forgotten when our markets make their next corner? Or, is it the practical evincing of stewardship?

Is “making” the necessary foundation for all our old, deeply meaningful words like husbandry, craftsmanship, master-builder, and sustainable?

We speak of “making”. Being maker changes what?

4.

Please, comment below or feel free to email.

This conversation started several days ago – on an early draft we posted for email subscribers. If you want in, subscribe to email notification from the blog.

I have three kids. The oldest is four, the middle 1.5 and the youngest is just three months old. Life is busy.

It’s a non-stop collage of messy bums, running noses, skinned knees and bumped heads. Sad, happy, angry, bored, sick – all at once, in the space of moments, everybody, all the time.

There’s no time for the lawn, paint-chipped deck, creaking closet door, or dripping tub facet. Just keeping the floor clean, kids fed, and fridge stocked is too much. It’s a crazy, beautiful, hectic time.

I can’t count the days when I’ve said, out-loud, “Why doesn’t someone take one of these kids?!?” I don’t mean take, like steal. I mean take, like a Grandpa. Take for ice-cream. Take to the zoo. Take from me, into time, and return later happier and, preferably, ready for bed.

And, of all the things I do need, like a bigger house, new car, more money, new socks, and cleaner office – one of the things I don’t need is: more advice.

Sure, I value the advice I get. But I don’t need it like I need more time. Better advice is a third-level need. First, I need more time. Then, new socks. And, after that, maybe some advice.

2.

I bet your job sometimes looks like my house. I bet you sometimes, probably mosttimes, wish you could hire out some of that weight.

Here’s another bet: Those few times you’ve tried to hire out that weight, it didn’t create the value you hoped. Whatever was done just didn’t implement well.

You wanted time. Thought at least you’d get socks. And, instead, got advice.

I’ve been wondering why that is? Thinking about what needs to change up front to change the result at the back. What do you think?

1. Sounds like prophecy. Who really thinks forecasters and futurists are much more than fortune-tellers in suits?

2. Too difficult to connect to tactics. We’re in business, so where’s the money?

3. Fit within priority structure is unclear. Business plan, annual goals, quarterly targets, executive commitments – where’s foresight supposed to fit in that?

4. Results are too difficult to measure. It’s about the future, so how will we know who’s right until we get there?

5. Data is too old or too dirty. If this is the future, why’s the data from 2001? And, how come there’s two decimal places when the time series in only three years long?

6. Baffling methods. Cryptic names, enigmatic systems, mystic doctrine – where’s the Kool-Aid?

7. Too abstract. Lots of stories, where’s the analytics?

8. Spot-check today says little about evolution tomorrow. Planning, strategies, tactics – these are a balancing acts at best – how can today’s “foresight session” give us anything useful beyond the next 15 days?

9. Too far out. We’re barely keeping up with a three-year plan, why talk about 20 years from now?

10. No time to explore. Explore? There’s already too many obvious opportunities to pursue.

Seriously, hammer away. Why will you say no if someone tries to sell you foresight? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or send an email.

We start the conversation early and post drafts for email subscribers. If you want in, subscribe to email notification from the blog.

—

Keywords: Foresight, Analytical-Foresight, Analytics
Tags: Foresight, Analytics

Of course you’ve heard about “The Recession”. But have you seen it yet? I never thought I would.

For the first time I’ve heard the tinny ring of uncertainty and panic in the voices of working-men. I hear the glossy air of unfounded optimism in the stories my wife’s friends tell each other. It’s awful. It’s like watching old 30′s movies, in HD.

Recession on the horizon

Here in Alberta you see storms coming for hours. They roll up, huge and black on the horizon. As the storm creeps closer, the air stops holding sound. The breeze drops into silence. Things take on the surreality of a hyper-idyllic summer day and then the storm pours in.

We say, “It feels like rain.” Right now, if feels like recession.

We wait for silence.

Responding to the recession

Recession hurts. When silence drifts in, decision-makers will run. I wonder which few will stay, with us, out in the storm.

We have two strategic responses to recession. We can rest in our strong cash position and last a few years without revenue. Or, we can move deliberately into darkness.

Forward feels frightening. But, it feels like the right thing to do. As we get ready to step out, I’m answering three questions about our company. If you are a decision-maker, if you run a small business, if you play in innovation – you should answer them too:

- Where is your competition weak?
- How can you design to maximize the possibility of something good happening?
- Can you move upstream, further into results?

Competition and weakness are old-economy ideas

In a Web 2.0-Obama-Twitter world, words like “competition” and “weakness” feel out of place. But they are less about “conquering” and more about success in a recession.

Instead of competition, you want recession-proof blue oceans. You want to stack on and compound the success around you. You want to move the game to unexpected places.

Strategic success of pressing

In his New York Times article, “How David Beat Goliath”, Malcom Gladwell illustrates the advantage of moving forward, or pressing, in unexpected places. Pressing, Gladwell argues, creates movement in areas where others have little or no prepared response. It breaks conventions.

The Bible describes David as a young, inexperienced fighter. Goliath, on the other hand, was the champion of his people and, literally, a giant. The two set up for a one-on-one, winner-takes-all battle: Israelite versus Philistine.

Initially, David got ready for a conventional sort of fight – coat of mail, helmet, and sword. But the armor didn’t fit and it was a bad idea anyway – David was a shepherd. Instead, David dropped everything, grabbed a few rocks and his slingshot, and went out.

“And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.”

Of this, Gladwell writes, “the second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up … David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.”

Too often, we look at our “opposition” and see only barriers: Bigger businesses with bigger budgets, stronger technologies, and early market positions; Decision-makers with no budgets, obscure alternatives and unfounded ambitions; and Economies with trickling cashflow, mounting debt, and massive unemployment.

It’s natural to focus on the giant-part of obstacles. For success in recessions (and any other time too), the trick is pressing gaps:

- Instead of looking at well-armored giants, look at unprotected spaces. In giants, these are bigger than usual.
- Instead of looking for oceans of (highly contested) opportunity. Look for games too small or too specialized to attract crowds.

Engineered success

Coach Michael Leach is probably the most innovative offensive mind in American college football. Since starting as head coach of the Texas Red Raiders football team in 2000, he’s led to team to a winning session every year.

Famous for his wild offenses, eccentric interests, and obscure lectures; Mike Leach is an outlier. His agent, Gary O’Hagan, says “He’s so different from every other football coach, it’s hard to understand how he’s a coach.”

“Each off-season, Leach picks something he is curious about and learns as much as he can about it: Geronimo, Daniel Boone, whales, chimpanzees, grizzly bears, Jackson Pollock,” writes sport journalist Michael Lewis. “[In 2004], after a loss to Texas A&M, Leach delivered a three-hour lecture on the history of pirates.”

With plays like “Ninja” and “Ace Rip 6 Y Shallow”, Leach runs one of the most intricate offenses in college football. “The Texas Tech offense,” Lewis writes, “is designed to maximize the possibility of something good happening rather than to minimize the possibility of something bad happening … Leach and his offense are approaching the natural end of a path football strategy has been taking for 50 years. They are testing a limit.”

“Synergy, in Leach’s view, doesn’t come from mixing runs with passes but from throwing the ball everywhere on the field, to every possible person allowed to catch a ball … One of the side effects of Leach’s tinkering with the accepted rules of offensive conduct is to upset the ordinary rhythms of a football game.”

Note, very carefully, what is maximized. Leach doesn’t fanatically avoid failure. He is not rabidly focused on Hail-Mary, do-or-die offense. He optimizes for success. He does this by upsetting the expected rhythms of his game.

Success’s result

In cases like ours, determining the result of success is more difficult than maximizing its probability.

In my work, success means a client makes the right investment. A CEO makes the right decision, a government chooses the right analytical framework, a cluster of companies choose the right business model to aggregate their technologies – whatever the context – we help decision-makers make choices.

If the “right choice” is success, what is the result? That’s hard to define because it rolls out in time, its result depends on how it’s implemented, and it’s subject to commitment by decision-makers.

Asked another way, if the “right choice” is success, what does the prototype look like?

What if we delivered the Championship Bowl not just the playbook?

Moving into results

A few days ago I wrote about Gad Shaanan. He used to run Gad Shaanan Design, an industrial design shop with clients like HP, GE, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and Siemens. He recently sold it and today leads Gad Light, a company that undertakes market analysis, product innovation, and early-stage prototype design for a handful of Fortune 500 companies.

We spoke a few days ago. I am interested in his use of business intelligence and analytics. In answering my questions, Shanaan kept connecting success to a drive for results.

An industrial designer with a world-class reputation, Shanaan insists on both advising and implementing on behalf of clients. He doesn’t want to give up the reins too early. He knows success depends on delivery.

Like most service providers, his firm: spots opportunities, performs analysis, and provides engineering support. As industrial designers they also make models. And, unlike most service providers and most industrial designers, Shanaan insists on being part of final implementation.

He moves up, into results.

Honoring the game

I give away the final result to decision-makers. That’s a mistake. We deliver playbooks but leave the game and Championship to others.

Leaving the playing to others is be fine if we deal with complete teams and experienced coaching staff. But (and this is a huge revelation for me) we don’t work with broadly capable companies. And, even better, we never should.

My surprise came after thinking more about Shanaan’s work. I wondered why corporations like HP, GE, and Johnson & Johnson would use his shop to deliver final results. These businesses are huge. What possible role could a tiny design house have with companies like these?

The gap Shanaan exploits comes as a result of the game these companies play. Like the 330-pound defensive linemen on Coach Leach’s team – these large companies are specialists. They are product-deployment juggernauts. They do one thing very, very well.

And, just like as defensive linemen don’t pick up the ball and run plays, HP and GE get help when they call new offensive patterns. They supplement their focused capacity in product-deployment with Shanaan’s product development prowess.

Our best; or why we’re not all quarterbacks

Now, would HP or GE pick up the ball if Shanaan gave it away? Absolutely. Do the decision-makers we work with accept that role? They do. In a heartbeat.

Leaders take the ball because they want to be brilliant at throwing for touch-downs. Everybody does.

I’m sure every successful lineman once struggled with an ambition to be quarterback. But linemen aren’t quarterbacks. They aren’t built for it. It isn’t their best.

Every good coach of linemen determines which of his players knows their best. Who commits to their role? If linemen want to run plays instead of punishing the opposition – they’re not worth coaching.

Linemen willing to honor their role enjoy a lifetime of nuance inside their position. Across their careers they use a range of different coaches. Their specific job, within the general role, evolves. But one thing stays constant – they will never be quarterbacks.

Similarly, no company that plays all positions well. Most have a best. For the rest they use external capacity and bring in coaches.

When we get hired to create playbooks, we fill a gap. To use the metaphor, we help lineman understand the broader game. But, when we walk away after sketching the playbook – we ignore the fundamental purpose our role – to hold the line. We take great risk not being there for the big game. A brilliant playbook is a waste if the line is constantly breached.

Giving away results is our biggest mistake. We create playbooks all the time but rarely stick around to deliver the Super Bowl.

What are you giving away?

Facing an impending storm

As recession’s silence descends and every one runs for cover, you and I can rest and wait. Or we can turn and face a dark horizon.

In this recession, we can press, we can design for maximum probability of success, and we can seek to own results. If we run we are guaranteed to be poorer. If we turn … well, let’s find out.

What did I miss?

What gaps are you looking at?

What’s keeping you inside the conventional rhythms of your game?

I’d love to hear from you. This conversation got started two weeks ago – we post an early draft for email subscribers. If you want in, subscribe to email notification from the blog.

Keywords: Recession, Business, Decision-makers, Strategy, Success, Results
Tags: Planning, Strategy, Foresight, Alberta

Of all you do, what creates the most value?

Of the value you create, how much comes from core competencies (the things you do best)?

It’s come as a surprise, but reality is: Only a few of the things I do actually create value.

The role of deliberate practice

In The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance (1993), psychologists K. Ericcson, R. Krampe and C. Tesch-Romer give evidence to support the long-held belief that excellence is a product of effort across time. It takes ten years, say Ericsson et al, to become expert in anything. It’s the consistency, not talent, that matters most. “Experts”, they write, “grow to acquire cognitive skills enabling them to circumvent limits … From our search for immutable characteristics corresponding to innate talent, we conclude that individuals acquire virtually all of the distinguishing characteristics of expert performers through deliberate practice … In summary, our review has no support for fixed innate characteristics that correspond to general or specific natural ability …”.

So, off we go. Confident in the faith that hard-work and deliberate practice will make us experts – we plow ten years into a set of core capacities. Finally, we pop out 3,650 days, an expert.

But here’s the hitch: While the path to expert is clear, the most valuable areas of expertise are not. Being an expert is one thing. Being an expert of value – that’s a whole other deal.

The essence of excellence

We love professional athletes, rockstars, moviestars, and brilliant CEOs (at least we used to). We thrill in the fantasy that their success is somehow mirrored in our potential. But it’s only a few that grasp the reality of the hard work required to generate that success.

The greatest athletes have a lot to teach us about value creation. In the Mundanity of Excellence, researcher Daniel Chambliss writes, “The mundanity of excellence is typically unrecognized … the reason is fairly simple. Usually we see great athletes only after they become great – after the years of learning the new methods and gaining the habits of competitiveness and consistency … They have long since perfected the myriad of techniques that together constitute excellence.”

Chambliss concludes that 1) excellence (consistent superiority of performance) is a qualitative phenomena where top performers focus on qualitative, not quantitative improvements, 2) Talent is a useless concept masking the reality that concrete actions create outstanding performance, and 3) Excellence is mundane and accomplished through ordinary actions, performed consistently and carefully, compounded together, and added up over time.

Choosing focus

Growing up, sport was a big deal. Hockey and basketball were mainstays.

To be good in hockey there are no capacities more essential than skating, passing and shooting. If you want to practice for maximum payoff: do lots of figure-eights (backwards and forwards), pass and receive passes all along those figure-eights, and take a ton of wrist-shots. Slap-shots, skating round and round the rink, and coasting around in scrimmage games won’t yield a hundredth of what is gained by practicing these top three simple skills.

Similarly, in basketball, focus on simple dribbling, passing, lay-ups and short jump-shots. An important addition might be free-throws if you’re big and liable to get fouled a lot. Dunking, nifty mid-court moves, and long-bomb shots are a waste of time for most players.

Skating, passing and shooting are the money-makers of hockey. Dribbling, passing and short-shorts are the nickels and dimes of basketball. Your drive and put are where to make gains in gold … on and on through sport after sport. The path to value is clear.

In sport it’s easy to pick important methods to creating value. Practice this few things, over and over again and in ten years (with the assurance of Ericcson et al.) you’ll be pro or at least pro-grade. It’s not so clear, unfortunately, in business.

Identifying the core capacities that create value in business seems much more difficult. For evidence of this challenge, simply observe the wide, wandering path of most corporations. It’s clear that many aren’t sure what creates value. They’re guessing.

Beyond guessing

Identifying value-generating core capacities is difficult, humbling, and, yes, mundane.

First, it’s impossible to find what counts without first detailing what you do and what it achieves. Banal? Maybe. But metrics are critical.

Track where you make efforts. Track where you gain success. Weigh time and expense against sales volume and revenue. Few small to mid-size companies actually have a grip on this kind of information.

Second, learn what is being bought.

Very few of our clients know what is truly valued of all they do. Most know what they want to be valuable. Most know what they try to sell. But hardly any know what is really being bought.

In an interview on the role of industrial design plays in business strategy, Gad Shanaan describes the surprisingly simple elements that drive new product success. In a high-tech world, it’s often low-tech differences that make the sale. He says that most of his clients can’t see the value because they’re too close to their industry.

Sometimes it’s a company’s culture that makes sales (versus the glitzy new design). Sometimes it’s buttons on the front of the TV instead of the side. Simple things create value in ways most would never imagine. And, paradoxically, many of the things we think matter most make no difference at all.

Shanaan explains that the best path to knowing these things is to come with fresh eyes, a new perspective, and a willingness to research areas that most take for granted. Doing the analytical work creates the insights. Doing the simple and often mundane thing creates the value.

Third, ask those that buy what else they want.

The most common forms of business planning are baffling. Executives sit in boardrooms, years away from their most practical experiences, trying to plan for a deeply uncertain future. Entrepreneurs beat their heads pulpy on walls, trying to guess where markets are going. And both, eventually, sit down to write a document that supposedly shapes their undelivered response to the dynamic future alternatives they mysteriously chose to consider.

An alternative path, and one I love to advocate, is writing a preliminary business plan. A mere skeleton of the monster that most produce. After framing your capacities, listing a few new concepts and briefly summarizing the market – take that three to eight page document to partners, suppliers, and clients. Show up reasonably dressed, vastly at ease and ask in a natural voice (with a hint of inquisitive):

A. “What is missing?”
B. “Can you see yourself in this?”
C. “What do you need next?”

You’ll be amazed at the answers. You’ll be stunned by their willingness to put themselves inside your work. You’ll be thrilled by their early commitment to their fingerprints on your skeletal plan.

But, be warned, almost none of it will be exciting. Sustainable things are built on patience and trust. Most of what’s fast and fun dies quickly.

A simple and mundane process. It yields simple and mundane answers. But the beauty is: You will know far more about the few things you need to practice right now to get more sales.

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Strategic fit among activities is fundamental to any advantage and, more importantly, the sustainability of that advantage. In his 1996 Harvard Business Review article, What is Strategy?, Michael Porter discusses the synergy between strategic choice and the context in which the decision is made.

Porter argues that fit occurs when there is simple consistency – activities are reinforcing and effort is optimized. In the HBR article he writes, “Rather than seeing [strategic choice] as a whole, [decision-makers] have turned to ‘core competencies’, ‘critical resources’, and ‘key success factors’. In fact, fit is a far more central component of competitive advantage than most realize.” (Porter, 1996: 70) Fragmenting systems into parts may make us feel like we’re getting a grip but it only works if every piece is understood in the context of the whole.

Competitive advantage of context

It’s simple math to see that context matters. When I work out on our deck I get less done than when I toil at the office. The work is the same, tools are identical, but significantly less gets done in one context versus the other. Distracted by kids, birds and the endless construction behind our home – I can’t concentrate outside.

Similarly, water management in Canada, for the most part, is significantly easier than in, say, Israel. Back-to-back droughts and a relatively infinitesimal base allocation make Israel an unlikely place for water-intensive industries.

Compare Edmonton, Alberta to Silicon Valley, California – where would you start a new high-tech business (if you could pick)?

Clearly, place matters.

Yet, in spite of the obvious importance of place, it seems to factor little into the alternatives considered by decision-makers. And when it does, it is rarely with the thought of leveraging the advantages of place but more often overcoming the barriers.

Place matters

We recently completed a piece of work focused on understanding the role of place in optimizing investments. The analysis includes more than 75 indicators that measure the relative strength of a region’s capabilities, supporting institutions, environmental context and industrial ecosystem.

The tool is built to help investors understand which places are the best places for specific industries. For some industries skill sets and technologies matter most. For others the support of industry associations and local government is key. And it goes around the circle, but the point is that places are optimal sites for only some industries – not all industries.

This assessment, of the advantages that accrue from place, is called Jurisdictional Advantage. It measures the character of place. It is an important tool for reconciling the vast range of market opportunities a region might wish to pursue with the relatively few opportunities a region is positioned to capture.

When place creates success

A friend told me a story about Rick Warren that I haven’t been able to confirm. Since I think the story is interesting, I thought I’d it anyway.

Rick Warren is the celebrated author of The Purpose Driven Life. Forbes called his previous book, The Purpose Driven Church, “the best book on entrepreneurship, management, and leadership in print”. He’s been invited to speak at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and TIME’s Global Health Summit. The Economist said he is “arguably the most influential pastor in America.”

In 2006, after selling more than 30 million copies of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren was a bit of a celebrity. In an interview, the story goes, he was asked what’s next. Apparently he misunderstood the question and started to run through a list of new goals. The interviewer interrupted and rephrased the question: Did he plan to leave his Church and pursue other things? Realizing what was meant, Rick grins and says something like, “Oh, sorry, no we have no plans to leave. We made a commitment to stay with the church for 40 years. We aren’t going anywhere.”

40 years!

Imagine what would change if you committed to stay in one place for 40 years. Think of how that changes your choice of home, friends, community and work. As a business owner, consider how much more important “place” would suddenly become.

If people, supporting agencies, infrastructure, natural environment and industrial ecosystems define place, what would be different, in your interest in these elements, if you knew you would never leave the place you are now?

Choosing to stay

I still struggle with living in Edmonton. It’s flat, there’s no good lakes, the winters are long and dark, and it is way out on the edge of the world. It’s hard for me to commit to staying.

Maybe it’s my young kids, it might be the product of ageing, or maybe I suddenly recognize its importance but these days I feel a pressure to choose a place. I feel the importance of investing in people. I feel like I should get involved at the university or support local economic development. For the first time ever, I think some of the decisions the city is making feel important. I wonder about caring for the river not far from our home. I think often of other, local companies that might need what we do (even if they can’t afford it).

I feel the weight of place. Not a burden. More like my favorite, leather coat. It lies heavy on my shoulders, it creaks with my movements – when I first put it on, for some odd reason, it reminds me I am alive.

What is place for you?

I am deeply interested in stories of how place matters to business and the success of local economies.

- Has your business chosen to stay? What has that meant? What changed?
- Has your business existed in the same community for more than 50 years? What has that taught you about the importance of place?
- Of those businesses and industries that care most for your community – its people, environment, and success – how long have they been around? Are the people that run them from that same place? Why do they care?