Tag: Performance

decision making, Management, transformation

How declining organizations get used to mediocrity

[version en Français ici]

Companies rarely collapse all at once. The collapse is often only the visible phase of a decline that started long before and developed insidiously. Like the famous frog that does not react when the temperature of the water in which it is placed rises, this slowness makes it more difficult to react: the signs of decline seem disparate and it is difficult to link them together to build a picture of danger. At the heart of this difficulty is the silence about the situation within the organization, and the tacit acceptance of mediocrity.

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Management, transformation

The Creosote, this High-Performing Manager Who Destroys Your Organization

One of the important factors of organization decline is the type of managers it recruits and promotes. Among them is what I call the ‘Creosote manager’, the one who kills life all around him to flourish. Creosote people populate just about every organization that I encounter and that have so much trouble innovating. Would there not then be a causal link?

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innovation

Why Holding a Disruptive Technology to a Standard of Perfection is a Mistake

Recently, Erik Brynjolfsson remarked, about artificial intelligence (AI), that we tend to hold it to a standard of perfection, and therefore can be pessimistic about its prospects. It is a very common mistake in the case of a disruptive technology. In fact it is not so much that we hold disruptive technologies to a standard of perfection as we judge their performance based on the existing technology’s dominant criteria. Let’s explore this and see why it matters, and how it leads to disasters.

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innovation

Five mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project: 4- Failing to properly measure the progression of the project

This article is the fourth part of a series of fives articles on mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project, extracted from my new book “A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation”.

A well-managed company measures its performance, and measuring the progress of disruptive innovation projects is extremely important. In this area, two mistakes can be made. The first is to manage the disruptive project like a sustaining innovation project, whereas a disruptive project is fundamentally different. Handling a disruptive project in the same way kills the momentum. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a specific system of measurements to manage its development. One approach might be to monitor the acquisition of new stakeholders and to evaluate them according to the nature of the project (in the case of the Airbnb site, the critical stakeholders were those who first listed their apartments).

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