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Vive le Disruptive Consumer!
How better to illustrate the point of the power of the customer as part of the Culture of Disruption than the news that an activist investor group has approached the board of directors of Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry (and masters of the “see no iPhone, hear no iPhone, speak no iPhone” school of management) to propose innovations to keep the company competitive?
Going Postal
A few weeks back, the United States Postal Service declared an upcoming $10 billion loss and said it might need to lay off over 120,000 people. In an interview the president of the letter carrier association and number of other postal service officials discussed the reasons for the current situation. The following made me fall…
Everybody is Responsible…Except Us?
Who’s responsible for a company’s fate? Take Enron. All of us saw the valuation of this company skyrocket without explanation during the drunken euphoria of the bubble days. We loved Enron because our stock was making us rich. The shareholders were sleeping by not demanding answers. The board was bought and sold. The employees were…
If You Can’t Disrupt, You Won’t Innovate
Innovation is disruptive. The three Merriam-Webster definitions of “disrupt” are “to break apart,” “to throw into disorder” and “to interrupt the normal course or unity of something.” It’s number three that matters. Change is a measure of progress; the stronger the disruption the greater the possibility of improvement. When the Internet was introduced as a…
Is There a Leader in the House?
In my recent talks at university business schools, professional organizations and conferences, I have been promoting the concept that the world is changing—becoming highly distributed, global, collaborative, open and participatory—and that the legacy notions of corporate leadership are fading away. We are entering a world defined and measured by the influence of your actions and…
Where Were the Boards?
I have and continue to serve on several for-profit, commercial boards and not-for-profit boards for more than 12 years. Let’s remember the key premise of boards: unbiased, external oversight bodies charged with acting in the best interest of the organization and its stakeholders. Right. Then we have reality. Board members are not supposed to have…