Everyone bows down to the all, important benchmark.  How many times have you heard someone say, “You only get what you measure”? Most organizations commit to identifying and measuring performance against industry best practice.  Many have recognized the value of looking outside of their industry for practices that might provide a source of competitive advantage.  Adopting existing best practice makes sense if you want to improve the performance of your current business model.  Going beyond the limits of your current business model requires a network-enabled capability to do R&D for new business models.  The imperative is to build on best practices to explore and develop next practices.

Understanding best practices and applying them to increase business model productivity is an essential capability for all organizations.  No surprise most companies benchmark their performance adopting practices ranging from accessing benchmarking data to sourcing (internal and external) process improvement capabilities.  Like all learned behaviors the earlier it is adopted the easier it is to scale and to apply in other markets.  Entrepreneurs and small business leaders should start with a back of the napkin approach.  Be specific about goals and take the napkin out a lot.

It doesn’t take long to exhaust the library of best practices in any given industry.  Field organizations have seen most of what the competition is doing and can report their observations.  In addition your customers and networks have an important perspective that should be tapped.  Social network platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked-in make real time information interaction possible across networks. Leverage these new tools and platforms.  It is worth it.

Only exploring your own industry for best practices is limiting.  New sources of competitive advantage are far more likely to come from observing and adopting best practices in completely unrelated industries.  All leaders should spend more discretionary time outside of their industry, discipline, and sector.  There is more to learn from unusual suspects who bring fresh and different perspectives than from the ideas circulated and re-circulated among the usual suspects.  The big and important value creating opportunities will most likely be found in the gray areas between the silos we inhabit.  Get out more.

Best practices are necessary but not sufficient.  Business models don’t last as long as they used to.  Leaders must identify and experiment with next practices.  Next practices enable new ways to deliver customer value.  Next practices are better ways to combine and network capabilities that change the value equation of your organization.  Organizations should always be developing a portfolio of next practices that recombine capabilities to find new ways to deliver value.  Leaders should design and test new business models unconstrained by the current business or industry model.

It is easy to sketch out business model innovation scenarios on the white board.  It is far more difficult to take the idea off the white board for a spin in the real world.  We need safe and manageable platforms for real world experimentation of new business models and systems.  Since most leaders in the 21st century will likely have to change their business models several times over their careers it makes sense to do R&D for new business models the same way R&D is done for new products and technologies today.  Create the space for exploration.

It is not best practices, but next practices that will sustain your organization on a strong growth trajectory.  While you continue to pedal the bicycle of today’s business model make sure that no less than 10% of your time and resources is dedicated to exploring new business models and developing next practices.

Beware of random collisions with unusual suspects.  Unless, of course, if you want to learn something new.  In that case seek out innovators from across every imaginable silo and listen, really listen, to their stories.  New ideas, perspectives, and the big value creating opportunities are in the gray areas between the unusual suspects.  It seems so obvious and yet we spend most of our time with the usual suspects in our respective silos.  We need to get out of our silos more.

It is human nature to surround ourselves with people who are exactly like us.  We connect and spend time with people who share a common world-view, look the same, enjoy the same activities, and speak the same language.  We join clubs to be with others like us.  I want to belong to the non-club club.  The only tribe I want to be in is a tribe of unusual suspects who can challenge my world-view, expose me to new ideas, and teach me something new.  Our tribe of unusual suspects can change the world if we connect in purposeful ways.

As an “accidental bureaucrat” over the last six years I had a front row seat to observe the silos in action.  Every week went something like this; On Monday I met with the health care crowd, on Tuesday it was the education crowd, on Wednesday the energy crowd and so on, you get the idea.  This cycle repeated over and over again.  Each crowd was comprised of the usual suspects, well-intentioned people rehashing the same discussion incessantly.  The scene is right out of Groundhog Day.  Most of the participants were there to represent institutional perspectives and to protect their respective interests.  In each crowd there are always a few innovators that want to change the conversation but they make little progress.   At the end of each week I always came away with the same conclusion.  If only we could take the innovators from across each of the silos and bring them together to enable more random collisions.

Maybe we could change the conversation if we connect the unusual suspects in purposeful ways.  Maybe then we can make progress on the real issues of our time, little things like health care, education, and energy.  It will take cross silo collaboration and breaking down the boundaries between industries, sectors, and disciplines.

People always ask me how I could have worked in the public sector after being in the private sector all of my career.  Doesn’t it move too slowly?   I don’t know about that.  I worked with many large companies, during my road warrior consulting days, and I don’t remember them changing so quickly.  You are right, I would say, government agencies move pretty slowly too.  I can’t resist adding, I am certain that academic institutions move the slowest of all!  The point is few organizations across both the public and private sector have the capacity to innovate and change because they are working hard pedaling the bicycle of their current business model and trying to stay alive and competitive.

Read the rest of…
Saul Kaplan: Random Collisions

It is too easy and wrong to think that innovators are egocentric, always admiring themselves and their accomplishments in the mirror.  They are confident but not self absorbed and impervious to outside input.  If anything innovators are vulnerable, self aware, and open to diverse and critical input to improve their ideas and concepts.  The view they see while looking into a mirror is more like the wavy one in the circus fun house that reflects a distorted view.  A view that always causes a gasp and accentuates flaws that need serious work and improvement.  Innovators know they must improve in order to find better ways to deliver value and solve real world problems.

Innovators spend very little time looking in the rear view mirror.  They tend to be forward thinking and looking.  It is important to learn from the past but innovators are never bogged down in it or constrained by the way things have always worked.  Innovators tend to be market makers rather than share takers.  Understanding how a market has worked in the past is helpful but innovators like to tinker across markets to envision and create an entirely new market model or system.

Looking in the rear view mirror magnifies the view from behind making objects seem closer than they really are.  This distorted view puts too much emphasis on the past and is troubling to an innovator trying to create the future. While situational awareness is important innovation is about creating new and better ways to deliver value.  It is about moving forward and away from intransigent models and systems that only appear larger in the rear view mirror than they really are.  Fixating on the past looming large in the mirror is not helpful other than to motivate the innovator to enable change faster.

The side view mirror offers a different but equally distorting view. You know the mirror that has etched on it the words ” objects in mirror are closer than they appear”.   Its convex shape is designed to provide a wide-angle view.  Innovators love wide-angle lenses that provide a larger perspective and world-view.  But the side view mirror makes images appear further away than they really are.  If anything innovators are guilty of the opposite.  Seeing innovation so clearly that they see it happening sooner than it is likely to.

Innovators are optimistic by nature and in my experience not the best at predicting market timing.  They are great at seeing opportunities and passionately working toward making them a reality but tend to think they will come to fruition sooner than they actually do.  How many innovators drove by a Blockbuster video store shaking their head saying all of this video content will be distributed digitally making the bricks and mortar stores obsolete.  They were right of course it is just taking longer to happen. That is usually the case with innovation.  Innovators think their innovations are closer than they appear in the side view mirror.

OK, enough with the mirrors.  Innovators, mirrors, and admiring the past are not compatible.  Let’s look forward. Innovators are trying to create the future and agree with Gibson when he said the future is already here it is just unevenly distributed.  Standing in the future and building a path to it is the innovator’s opportunity.  Eyes forward, let’s create the future together.

Drip, drip, drip.  One comment on a blog post. One re-tweet of a point of view. One new Facebook friend.  You might not even realize while it is happening but over time an audience is developing that is genuinely interested in what you have to say and gives you permission to share it.  Individuals are learning how to share their stories and gaining confidence by participating actively in social networks. Personal networks have become the new marketing channels and marketing has become the art of dribs and drabs.  The problem is that most organizations haven’t figured it out yet.

I believe the marketing model of companies deploying large internal teams of marketing specialists supported by even larger external advertising and public relations firms is dead.   Watching the series Mad Men reminds me of how little the advertising and communications industry has changed from a model that is clearly being disrupted by the new world of social media.

It is exciting to be a participant in the seismic shift away from the old models of mass marketing and communication. The days of the big campaign developed behind closed doors followed by a grand unveiling comprised of orchestrated media placements and road show whistle-stops are behind us.  Now the message is developed and honed every day.  You don’t need an army of specialists to tell you what the message is.  You just need to put your genuine ideas out in public every day where a community of interest can provide you with immediate feedback, help you to improve, and share your ideas with their networks if they like them.

No intermediaries required.  Being genuine is valued above all else.  No need to assign the task of sharing your perspective, idea, or message to a third party.  Share them yourself.

This shift must be driving traditional marketing types and communications firms crazy.   The industry was built on a foundation of “controlling the message” and secret sauce that only the experts possessed to unlock access to big media outlets. Imagine the horror when huge campaigns are ripped apart within 24 hours of release by the viral unknown masses or when an undiscovered talent like Susan Boyle can become an overnight global sensation.

Dribs and drabs sound so inefficient and even dangerous when you grew up in an industrial era when marketing was about controlling the message, leveraging marketing experts, and mass media channels to reach a target market segment.  Marketing and Communications has been a centralized and protected function within most organizations.  God forbid anyone outside of the chosen functions speaks on behalf of or about the company in public or on the web.  Social media has blown traditional marketing up and most organizations I interact with are struggling with how to manage the new world where individuals are empowered communicators with an audience.

Communication is personal and everyone has a role to play.  The world of personal and organizational communication is merging whether we want it to or not.  I have talked to many active participants on social media platforms that are constrained or even blocked from communicating while at work or about work after hours.  This is silly.  Organizations are missing an amazing opportunity to virally share their stories and to tap into the networks of all the organization’s stakeholders.  Organizations need to trust employees, contractors, suppliers, and customers to build and strengthen networks of supporters and fans that are the most important marketing asset today.

Organizations should be focused on turning all stakeholders into active storytellers and passionate supporters.  Accentuate and build on the positive.  Forget trying to hide the negative.  Respond, learn and improve from it.  It is no longer possible to control communications about your organization.  Everyone should be encouraged to communicate openly and large marketing departments should be replaced with listening departments to learn from and leverage what is being shared.

The learning curve to go from industrial era mass marketing to personalized social media marketing is steep but rewarding.  The most important rule is that everyone gets to play.  I mean everyone.  Celebrate the dribs and drabs.

On New Year’s Eve I received one of those blast-from-the past emails, made possible by Google, from a long forgotten friend from high school days.   I hadn’t thought about the crew from an after school job 35 years ago at McDonalds forever. (Yes, you heard right, I flipped burgers at McDonalds)  The email moved me and provided a wonderful end-of-the-year gift because this friend had taken the time after all of these years to reach out and thank me for the positive influence I had on her life.  I had no idea that I had said these things and that my passion for mentoring extended all the way back to high school.

Here is an excerpt from the email.  Tell me you wouldn’t have been moved if this popped in to your in-basket on New Year’s Eve.

“Over the holidays I was with a bunch of friends and we were all talking about gratitude, and the fact that we are much more aware of all of the people who have touched our lives in positive ways along the way.

I mentioned that I have always wished I had run into you sometime as an adult so that I could tell you that you changed the entire course of my life when I was 18 and pretty directionless.  You told me that I was smart, too smart not to go to college.

So I went. To college, that is.

And then I went to law school.

I have honestly thought about how different my life might have been if you had not done what no guidance counselor or parent or frankly any adult in my life had thought to do….you encouraged me to be more.  So, thank you!”

Wow.  What a nice way to end the year. I have been thinking about my McDonalds after school job and the crew I hung out with since receiving this uplifting note.  I had forgotten how much I learned from my first job serving up greasy fries and how some of the things I took away from that time have stayed with me over the years.  I must have barked out to my kids, “Clean as you go” hundreds of times while they were growing up.  I know it drove them crazy but you won’t find any of them with cluttered countertops, desktops, TIVOs, or lives. They have no idea that I learned that annoying habit and phrase while working at McDonalds. Clean as you go is important in the kitchen and in life.

I also remembered something this week that I don’t think I have ever shared publicly.  I was fired from that job at McDonalds.  My best friend at the time decided to steal one of those frozen birthday cakes from the walk-in freezer out in the parking lot. The store manager caught my friend in the act. He confronted me because he knew we were friends and assumed it was a conspiracy (It wasn’t, I swear!). I must have had a big shit-eating grin while denying it (the same one that anyone who knows me has seen many times) because he fired me on the spot.  I was devastated at the time because I needed that job to save for college.  Looking back at it I can trace the resolve to control my own career, not letting any company or institution think they can control it for me, to that frozen birthday cake and being fired from my first job at McDonalds.  I have stuck to that resolve throughout my career.

It is I who should thank my friend (not the one who stole the birthday cake) for having the courage to send me that email on New Year’s Eve.  Thank you for bringing back such wonderful memories and for teaching me something important.  Because of you I have amended my “clean as you go” philosophy.  While it might be necessary to get rid of the clutter in your life perhaps it is more important to hold on to the old friendships and memories that impact your life.