Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

Posted on

Innovation versus “The Way We’ve Always Done It”

by

For the last few months, I have been writing about the value of preserving your core competencies. If you’re GE or Kodak or Microsoft, or even if you are you (!), your core competency is the heart and soul of your business.

Where you are going and what you are building will happen on the bedrock of who you are to the public and your customers. At core, Kodak will always be about preserving images. GE will always be about great engineering and manufacturing industrial and commercial machines. Microsoft is about processing and storing information.

By connecting to the reason you are in business, you can make good decisions about where to place your focus now and in the future. If you want to drift too far from your core mission, consider starting a new business. But just because you stick to your knitting, as it were, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace change. In fact, staying in business is all about the art of embracing life-sustaining change.

The Art of Embracing Change

Change for the sake of change is just so much wasted motion. Healthy change is very different. Healthy change is innovation and the life blood of your organization. It is knowing when the environment or external conditions require your response to stay vibrant. Healthy change can also come from inside your organization. The best kind of internal healthy change comes from developing new products, services and processes that set a new standard requiring others in your industry and the external environment to respond to you.

Living organisms are always changing. With rapid advances in technology and global 24/7 interconnectivity, nothing stays the same for more than a New York minute. To remain competitive, your organization will respond to this change, and perhaps even initiate some of it. That doesn’t mean that the core elements that define your organization don’t deserve the respect they have earned. Consistency is a good thing, especially in the midst of change.

Preserving Core Competencies is not Stagnation

Let me repeat that. Preserving your company’s core competencies is not about stagnation. It is healthy to preserve what works and how your customers know you. Play to your strengths.

Stagnation is different. Stagnation is that enemy of innovation: “This is the way we’ve always done it.” If something is the way you’ve always done it, it’s time to look at your products, services and processes and rethink it. When you rethink it, you may find you have already optimized the way it can be done. For now.

Due to the rapid changes in technology, and changes in education and (get this) people, the way you have always done things is probably not the best way to do things now. Real healthy change is about keeping things alive. Like a shark, if your organization stops moving, it’s dead.

BYOD, IoT and Embracing Change

I have been kicking around the tension between preserving core competencies and embracing innovation for a few months. An article from from CIO Insight last week gave me the clarity to organize my thought on this issue. In How the IoT and BYOD Increase Business Agility , author D.P. Morrissey discusses the vulnerabilities, inevitability and impact of both the Internet of Things and Bring Your Own Device on companies. Quoting a survey by Tata Consultancy Services, the article says:

“The topic has become the focus of passionate examination and spirited debate at the top-most level of a growing number of major companies around the world … The early IoT leaders are more likely to digitally reimagine their businesses and produce substantial value for customers, not just value for themselves.”

Like a Shark

Yes, the value of your business’s core competencies cannot be overstated. They cannot be lost. However, as long as your company plans to operate in the 21st Century – and perhaps beyond – it must keep moving.

Morrissey encapsulates the essence of this tension when he says, “There is little forgiveness for the slow in business. Just as evolution rewards the strong, businesses that embrace agility and IoT practices will be rewarded by leading markets and financial categories.”

 

Posted on

Preserving Core Competencies: At GE, Everything Old is New Again

by

A few weeks ago, this blog looked at Kodak’s counterintuitive entry at the Consumer Electronics Show, featuring its return to the Super8 movie camera. Film, really? Yes. Kodak represents a perfect case for retaining your core competencies because you just never know when film will make a comeback.

Today, an article in strategy+business makes a similar point as it traces GE’s headquarters move to tech hub Boston from its former home at 30Rock in Manhattan. GE had planted its headquarters in Manhattan due to its acquisition of NBC Universal and the growth of its financial division, GE Capital.

The strategy+business article  makes the point that GE’s pivot to Boston is responding to two things:

  1. a change in focus and
  2. a change in the workforce.

The new technology workforce it wants to attract are centered in hubs like Boston, and the young engineers and researchers want to live an Uber-friendly urban lifestyle. The article summarizes this point in its last two sentences where it describes a GE advertisement:

Owen, a young, skinny, apartment-dwelling software professional, tell[s] his surprised friends and family that he is going to work for GE; instead of working on apps, he’ll be working on trains and planes and engines. You can be sure that Owen would much rather take the T to work in an open-plan office at the Boston Seaport than fight traffic to get to an isolated campus off the Merritt Parkway.

But the more salient point for our purpose here is that GE’s change in focus is a return to its core competency as a pioneer in engineering and research. The writer, s+b executive editor Daniel Gross, discusses touring plants in Schenectady featuring 3D printing, in South Carolina building turbine engines and in North Carolina building jet engines.

GE’s new focus is just a return to its primary purpose, harkening back to a time when it built the large turbines that drove hydroelectric plants and helped put the first man in orbit building rockets at Cape Canaveral. I just wrote a book for a former GE executive Elmer D. Gates who sadly passed away in December, only three weeks after his book signing. In his book, U-Turn Leadership  , he describes his 30-year career leading GE divisions as a manager with an engineering background and being part of those efforts that built modern industry.

GE’s move to a tech hub to attract talent from the research universities in Boston is really a return to its core competency. GE is coming home to engineering from its foray into the entertainment and financial industries. The article in strategy+business is just another reminder to retain your core competencies. Especially if you want to blaze trails into the future by continuing to engineer solutions that catapult human beings into space.

An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.– Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

 

What is your company’s most valuable contribution to society and how might you perpetuate it?

Posted on

Your Organization’s Kodak Moment: Preserving Your Legacy

by

vinyl-records2

The Consumer Electronic Show, CES to you tech junkies, featured acres of new tech toys at its annual convention last week. One car company, Faraday Future, even displayed a concept car that would make the Batmobile jealous. Amid all these Back-to-the-Future goodies, Kodak had the audacity to feature its Super 8 movie camera as its next great product release.

Here’s an excerpt from an article from eWeek, 10 Innovative Tech Products Grabbing Attention at CES 2016.

Kodak Wants to Turn Back the Clock With Its Super 8 Camera

Kodak wants to prove that old film camera really isn’t dead. The photographic products maker shocked CES with the announcement that it’s reviving its Super 8 camera, first released in the mid-1960s, for the digital age. Early reports suggest Kodak will launch the camera later this year in limited quantities. The Super 8 shoots video on 8-millimeter photographic film. Owners then have two options: ship out the film to Kodak so it can be developed for viewing on a film projector or have it converted to digital format. Either way, it’s nice to see Kodak’s determination to keep film alive.

Kodak is being at least counterintuitive here, if not downright stubborn. Kodak’s name was synonymous with film and cameras for most of the 20th Century and, by darn it, plans to carry that legacy into the 21st. This move is an object lesson in finding your internal subject matter experts, and making sure you don’t lose your core competencies. You never know when film will make a big comeback, and you will have lost your first mover advantage, even if that first move is 70 years old.

Kodak as the Poster Child for Innovation #Fail

In business management and tech circles, it is often said that Kodak lost its edge in photography due to its failure to recognize two things

  1. The pace and direction of technological change, in this case the potential for digital photography and the speed at which the new technology was advancing, and
  2. The business it was really in, which was capturing memories, not camera, film and chemicals.

When you are looking around your organization and thinking about what knowledge needs to be preserved, think big and think outside the proverbial box. Don’t assume that you can read the tea leaves regarding either the pace of change, the direction the change will take, or the ongoing need for your goods and services despite changes in your market.

One More Case in Point, and a Plug for a Relative’s Product

Film might not only be the medium that has more staying power than the futurists give it credit. Think about vinyl records. For those of you under 40, that was the way people bought music and listened to it at home before CDs and downloads.

Vinyl records are being pressed and sold again. It’s a cottage industry, mostly, but one that is gaining a new audience. Musicians and bands are turning to “pressing vinyl” again as a cool retro move. This has even spawned a business for turntables again. Take my cousin Lance, for example. His band NO BS! Brass just released its latest funky cool jazz record on vinyl. Here’s the link and shameless plug.

Whatever business you are in, you might think that the world is changing so quickly that you will soon be looking at your customers in the rear view mirror. Not necessarily. Look at technologies that you think are passe, but in the bigger picture will always have a place with small, niche markets, rebuilders, and collectors.

Preserve your core competencies. You never know when the gramophone will make its comeback.

Posted on

How To Run A Successful Coaching Business from Home: Life Beyond The Cubicle

by

home-office-438386_1920-1140x641

This is reposted from Evercoach and ran on November 18, 2015. Check it out here with the cool layout and more graphics. Thank you to Ajit Nawalkha and the team at Evercoach.

 

Did corporate mergers and acquisitions leave you out in the world to fend for yourself? That’s great!

You’ve already got the personal discipline and structure to succeed on your own.

Coaches and consultants fresh from inside a large organization have a lot to offer new clients. You have a depth of experience and knowledge that only your years in the hallowed halls of a corporate enterprise can provide.

This could be the start of something big.

At first, you might find the cubicle-less-ness of your world gives you a feeling of freedom that is more illusory than real. If a large company isn’t imposing a schedule on you, you need to do it for yourself to realize your full potential.

As a self-employed businesswoman, I have been able to garden when the weather is lovely on Tuesday at 10 a.m., take walks at 2:30 in the afternoon just to stretch and enjoy the sunshine, attend school functions in the middle of the day to see my son perform in a toga, go to a yoga class two mornings a week and even disappear for long weekends. So, I’m here to tell you that yes, it’s possible to work from Maui and enjoy the view of the beach as long as you remember you are running a business to pay for it.

Here are 10 tips for running a coaching business from home that separate the pros from the posers:

Set aside dedicated office space

Make this space every bit as free from personal artifacts as your corporate cubicle. Pics of the spouse and kids are okay, but put the toy box in another room.

The sooner you can get out of the corner of your bedroom and into a professional room of your own, the better. You can write off your home office space as long as you aren’t using a desk and computer that you share with your kids in the family room; talk to your accountant.

Update your equipment and software

You are your own tech department now.

Make sure you are running the programs and have the applications that your customers and clients are using. You don’t want to be frivolous with your spending during your startup, but this is a very good place to be investing your limited funds in your home business.

Consider upgrades as an ongoing business expense. Again, this is the cost of doing business so keep receipts for your accountant.

Make a daily schedule and stick to it 

Block out a big, uninterrupted chunk of time each day to do your most demanding and important work.

Then limit emails to a specific time slot and don’t get sucked into all-day IM sessions with your besties.

Get dressed for work

Nothing elaborate here. You can leave grandma’s diamond earrings in their box, but go to the trouble to put on a clean shirt and jeans in the spirit of dress-down Friday.

It affects your attitude and reminds you that you aren’t on vacation.

Your office should be a no-jammie zone to keep your head in the game. (Although I’ll admit I’ve reported to work sick or exhausted in my jammies a few times!)

Close the office door at the end of the day

Take time to enjoy uninterrupted family dinnertime or personal time.

Physically closing a door defines a mental boundary, too. So shut the door and mentally punch out when your work is through.

Network locally

There’s nothing like human contact to keep you grounded.

Regularly get out of your home office and stay connected to other professionals. If you work by yourself, make sure you network so you can look into some else’s eyeballs occasionally and to stay current with trends and best practices.

Take a class. Join a local professional organization. Regularly schedule networking time with colleagues.

Connect online

Attend professional webinars to stay current in your field.

Join LinkedIn groups or professional forums related to coaching. Connect and learn from other professionals by participating in masterminds.

The opportunity to learn from other coaches and trainers at the top of their game has never been easier. Take full advantage of it.

Hire caregivers

Hire a babysitter if you are responsible for young kids during the workday. This reminds you that you are at work and earning a living, especially when paying for child care. Extend this to caring for very ill family members.

As a client, there is nothing more annoying than realizing that the attention, care and time that you are paying for is divided between you and a three year old who wants more Cheerios.

Be flexible

You may have to work 24/7 in the global economy. Restricting your day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your time zone is probably unrealistic if you need to respond to a client five time zones away.

In the global economy “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere”.

This rule isn’t in conflict with Rule #5, but an expansion of it. Rules and boundaries are good for keeping yourself on a schedule, but adjusting to your clients’ needs is even better.

I’ve trained online classes with a German company from my home office in the Eastern U.S. and it required some flexibility on my part. I’ve also facilitated classes in a nursing home at midnight because the third shift deserves stress management skills as much- or more!- as day shift. It doesn’t happen every day, but my business calls on me to meet the needs of a global 24/7 workforce.

Pay for professional services

Make a few wise investments in your business by paying for accounting and legal services.

Accountants and lawyers understand tax rules and good contract language for agreements. In many cases, you will only use their services a few times or once a year, but it is money well spent.

A good accountant who specializes in small business can tell you about important tax write-offs and help you make good decisions about whether to buy or lease equipment, the best allocation of retirement savings and other advice that will save you far more than you spend. A lawyer can help you write good contract language for getting paid and for defining your relationships with your clients.

Starting your own successful coaching business takes discipline and time to transition from a conventional job. However, with a little planning you will find that it is worth the effort to put some rules and structure around your new enterprise.

When you establish a few boundaries, your personal life will benefit from the freedom you have on your time off, and your clients will benefit from your undivided attention during your working hours.