Thought Sparks Wrap Up — November 2021
Dear colleagues,
I am just delighted to share with you that the #1 and #2 slots in the bi-annual Thinkers50 ranking of management thinks have been awarded to Amy Edmondson and myself. Amy and I have been colleagues and friends for many years.
We were both just getting started in our academic careers back in the 1990s. Amy’s work on teams and psychological safety unlocked key ingredients that could have a critical impact on the success — or not — of a given strategy. My work on planning under uncertainty outlined the context in which her ideas take on critical importance for planning to learn. Over the years we’ve been delighted to explore the ways in which our work complements each others’, including why we so often get the importance of appropriately managing failure completely wrong!
What a thrill than to find out on Tuesday the 16th that Amy and I would be sharing adjacent spaces on the Thinkers50 ranking. Further, that so many of my good friends, including Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Scott Anthony, Whitney Johnson, Sanyin Siang, Dorie Clark, and many others have joined the ranking.
As I’ve been doing in 2021, this wrap-up gives you an overview of my weekly Thought Sparks news pieces, intended to do exactly that — spark your thinking!
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10 Questions to Ask Before You Believe in a Business Model (November 2, 2021)
Not all business models are equally attractive. Before you invest time, energy, and emotion into a new business, run through these ten questions.
Click here to read the full article.
The latest for the Flops File — Zillow Offers (November 9, 2021)
Here’s a recipe for creating a new business disaster: Don’t test your assumptions and treat them as facts. Put all the money into the venture upfront. Don’t engage in low-commitment testing. Have leaders that are personally associated with the venture’s strategy. This article analyzes Zillow’s disappointing venture into home flipping through the lens of discovery-driven planning.
Click here to read the full article.
Can Agile Make Wherever You Work a Better Place? (November 16, 2021)
The Great Resignation has brought to light what many of us realize — bureaucracy, hierarchy, and the wrong kinds of rules create a stifling, miserable workplace. If you don’t want to quit, here are some ideas for using agile concepts to make wherever you work a better place.
Click here to read the full article
Psychological safety is an idea that has finally come into its own after being discovered, rediscovered, and now popularized. This article explains the concepts and offers some excerpts from my delightful Friday Fireside Chat with Harvard’s Amy Edmondson.
Click here to read the full article
Congratulations on the official publication of Lead from the Core, Jay Steinfeld (November 30, 2021)
Jay Steinfeld is an entrepreneurs’ entrepreneur. With bootstrap (maybe even shoelace) levels of funding, he became an early Internet sensation, building Blinds.com into a powerhouse that was eventually acquired by Home Depot. This article offers an overview of his story and the core values he describes in his book.
Click here to read the full article
In the Press
GE and the Belief in Management Magic- The Wall Street Journal — Article
The Innovation Theater Trap — Management Today — Article
Chobani Is Going Public. Its ‘Anti-CEO’ Founder Won’t Be The Only Employee Who Could See A Big Payday — Forbes- Article
Upcoming Events
December 17: Friday Fireside Chat with Chris Ategeka
Chris Ategeka is an opportunity/talent catalyst, a successful entrepreneur, a TED talker, and a Ugandan orphan, among many other things. His accolades go on for pages! He came to my attention for his work on the unintended consequences of technology, which he is addressing through an unusual startup funding model. We’ll be talking about his book, his organization UCOT and how he hopes to help humanity from creating things that are not in its own best interest.
Just Released: New Learning Modules on Discovery Driven Growth and Customer Insight
Over the years, a lot of people have asked me to put together some kind of program to learn the Discovery Driven Growth approach to planning under uncertainty. It’s here! It’s a short, online, easy to work through course with a mix of videos, downloads, spreadsheets, and other tools to get you and your people up to speed quickly.
For a deeper dive on a discovery-driven approach to creating customer insight, we’re also offering a six-course series that includes the sessions on discovery-driven growth plus five additional modules on customer insight, featuring real-life case studies, downloads, and much more.
You can find out about the offerings here:
https://learninghub.valize.com/
If you are interested in purchasing a bulk subscription for your organization, please reach out to us at growth@valize.com.
November Highlights
Racism and social justice seem like intractable problems. So I was thrilled to host Robert Livingston on a Friday Fireside Chat to explore the solutions he teaches us in his great book The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth About Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations.
With workplace burnout and the nature of the office up for grabs, it was great to also host Liz Wiseman on the research behind her new book Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact. She’s found what separates big-impact people from mere contributors.
The Thinkers50 and Drucker Forum events were also highlights, although I was not able to travel to either London or Vienna to be there in person.
Working Together!
Here are some ways we can work together:
We can help you kick-start the design of your innovation program in a 30-day sprint.
We can review your innovation portfolio, free up resources by killing a few zombies and make some space for your future business
We can help you diagnose your level of innovation mastery
Have a team with issues? We can help fix that with a simple team effectiveness program
And of course, you can subscribe to my regular publications on Thought Sparks
Where there is uncertainty, there is also opportunity.