Brushing teeth- Best practices

Is brushing teeth daily , a strategy or best practice or an intervention ? Its basic hygiene.

Cost management in businesses is similar. You don't look at costs just when revenues are flattening/ growth is slowing or when pricing power is reduced in the market place.

Managing to be a lean/mean cost operation is to be in everyone's DNA irrespective of topline issues.

In the same way, it should not be ignored when you have scorching growth rates and bumper profits.

Keeping costs as variable ( to the revenues) as possible, hawkish watching of cost spikes /exceptions, revenue leakages, pricing controls, Year on Year cost base reductions --- all part of the hygiene!

While doing this , keep in mind that cost control does not increase revenues.

Hype vs Value

We were promised flying cars and instead got social networks!!! - Peter Theil, venture capitalist 

Over the last four decades, labor productivity growth has been painfully slow - one of the reasons for stagnant wage growth in rich world.

How much of the innovation is touching bulk of the population? Mobile is enabling  millions get ' connected' and hence get benefited economically. At the same time, social networks are killing creativity, productivity at an equally alarming rate.

The winners of digital race are so few that many startups end up being ' hype pushers' rather than 'world changers'. 100s of them follow the same idea that makes you wonder if it's innovation at all!!

As each of us participate, work, invest in in these, it's critical to separate true value from hype.

Sparks at the fringes

Driving innovation is not easy. Most times it happens at fringes, pockets, derided by the majority and systems are designed to frustrate.

Pivoting is a key skill in demand for innovators. Entrepreneurs are known to be passionately and doggedly married to their ideas even though the market place has rejected them.

The open mind that got them the bright idea in the first place, eludes them when they see poor response. Pick your battles, find the sweet spots, look for early adopters, sharpen or customise the idea and if nothing works, ..... Pivot.

Life is short and mortality rates of ideas is high. 

Pivot....

Jerks and saints

Bulk of the world economies are now dominated by services. Manufacturing is perennially moving to cheaper countries and agriculture is getting automated.

Services are people intensive. You better be good with people first if you want to do well in services. The deliverables are intangible, methods of selecting and evaluating a services partner are fuzzy at best.

Its not enough to be an expert. Don't be a jerk. Most people choose their services partner based on their comfort and then justify that with rationality.

Relationships, working in cross cultural, virtual teams, handling conflicts, team wins are more critical than individual brilliance. 

Many a time, it is a popularity contest rather than a talent show!!!

Simple is beautiful

In the world of business agility, where speed overrides everything else given the short career spans of executives, shorter gaps between epic shocks etc, what's increasingly becoming critical is ' simplicity'.

Simpler solutions are easy to understand, implement, course correct, cheaper, less likely to fail( less complexity), less likely to be misunderstood....

Keep the solutions, projects, ideas simple. 

Anything else and you have already lost the plot, in the world of business agility.

Crisps

Why are crisps the most favorite snack on the world for all ages?

Taste, convenience, compactness, easy to handle.....

Crisps are the most favorite in the business world as well. Not the food item. With shorter attention spans, shorter performance windows ( quarter or less), shorter product cycles, shorter customer loyalties etc, all stakeholders in business are now able to absorb things in bite sizes only. 

All the digital channels and media demand things to be simpler, shorter and quicker.

Can your messages, business ideas, project plans, decision support communication get as crisp as those  you eat?

Anything more complex takes longer to implement, harder to measure, costlier to resource and more likely to fail.

No wonder crisps are world favorites!!!

Questioning the question?

A wise person once said ' if I stop asking you questions, it means I have given up on you!'

Some of the best discoveries, inventions, ideas and improvements have come from  starting with the right questions. Many of us are not comfortable in being questioned. We see it as questioning our competency, judgement and credentials. 

Because it's unpleasant to ask tough questions, if everybody remains nice and polite to each other, soon the customers will ask those tough questions. In some time, customers also will stop asking those. Because they give up!!!