More sage wisdom from our friend Anon(ymous). I have to say, she (he?) really has a way with words—and a certain subtlety of thought.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals. (Just before you trip and fall!)
Education is what you get from reading the fine print. Experience is what you get from not reading it. (Assuming you know how to read.)
THINK—it gives you something to do while the computer is down. (It’s really quite fun, worth turning everything off on purpose.)
My Reality Check bounced. (Damn! I am so tired of that happening.)
Everyone has …read more

I took last week off, but today I want to wrap up the final chapter in IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy)
Chapter Five is called Genuine, Not Just Generous and refers to “an emerging generation of socially minded customers, workers, partners, activists and investors” who are demanding—through their wallets and their feet—a new commitment and level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from companies.
It’s not an accident that three of the nine drivers that continually moved higher over the last three surveys are all part of CSR—socioeconomic …read more

Continuing the focus on disruptive innovation as discussed in chapter four  from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) begs the question as to what is being disrupted? What are companies really doing to drive financial performance?
The most common approach is “revenue model innovations, nine out of ten are reconfiguring the product, service and value mix. Half are working on new pricing structures.”
Changes include offering more services; moving to recurring charges (as opposed to one-time payments); bundling or unbundling depending on products and industry.
The major change in …read more

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Chapter four from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) is about extreme innovation, AKA, serious disruption.
Innovative products and services aren’t enough any more.
“As one U.S. CEO explained, “We’re starting to think about things we couldn’t do before.” With the Internet, businesses can now find niche markets for rare, surplus or highly specialized goods — a virtual “garage sale,” as it’s often called. Business processes, as well as some products and services, are becoming more virtual. New delivery channels …read more

Chapter Three from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) is about being “globally integrated.” It may sound as if it’s strictly for giant multinationals, but it’s not.
“It was striking that CEOs of companies of all different sizes and geographic coverage were engaged and enthusiastic about these topics, which suggests optimization is crucial whatever the current geographic scale.”
Integration isn’t about selling products or outsourcing work or even doing lots of business in China and India—it’s about connecting, both internally and externally.
According to one US CEO, “We need …read more

From IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy).
The second of the five critical traits is innovative beyond customer imagination, which translates to giving customers what they truly want before they ask and even before they think of it.
It’s not about selling them what they don’t need; it’s about anticipating needs and innovating even when the results disrupt your current product line.
But to whom are you actually selling?
“In rapidly developing economies worldwide, the middle class is growing (sadly, that isn’t true in the US) and becoming progressively more …read more

Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: nookiez  CC license
Continuing last weeks conversation about change based on IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future.
Let’s start with the fact that change isn’t easy and well-managed change is even more difficult.
“CEO s rate their ability to manage change 22 percent lower than their expected need for it — a “change gap” that has nearly tripled since 2006. While the number of companies successfully managing change has increased slightly, the number reporting limited or no success has risen by 60 percent.”
The problem isn’t just change per se, but

the speed of change;
relentlessness of change; and …read more

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A week ago I brought IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future  to your attention and said I’d be discussing it in the future, but there’s so much material in the three studies that I decided to make it a Saturday staple for awhile.
Additionally, if you or someone you know, would like to provide a guest post based on or related to any of the three IBM studies (CEO, CFO and HR) I would love to have them.
In the Global CEO Study five critical traits needed for success were identified through conversations with …read more

Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: nookiez  CC license
IBM has surveyed 1,130 CEOs who are collectively responsible for 2.224 trillion dollars of revenue.
The 2008 study uses their “collective insights and wisdom” to formulate what IBM calls “The Enterprise of the Future”—an enterprise that encompasses these traits

hungry for change;
innovative beyond customer imagination;
globally integrated;
disruptive by nature;
genuine, not just generous.

“This Global CEO Study report presents findings related to each of the attributes of the Enterprise of the Future. It draws on the rich insights from our CEO s through statistical and financial analyses as well as the voices of the CEO s themselves. …read more