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The Chief Outsider
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Outsider Insights | From Hustle to System: Why More CEOs Are Rebuilding Their Sales Function
Outsider Insights
Across Chief Outsiders, we talk to hundreds of CEOs every month. In this new series, we explore the trends and challenges we’re hearing from these discussions – and what you can do if you’re facing the same issues in your business.
Leveraging Market Change to Drive Growth: Four Steps to Becoming an Agile Organization
Tue, Jul 24, 2018 — In a 2017 letter to his shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos cautioned, “Day 2 is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death. And that’s why it is always Day 1 (at Amazon). The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them, and you have a tailwind.” Your business environment is rapidly changing and more uncertain than ever. If you follow the lead of companies like Amazon that are committed to achieving high levels of organizational agility, you can leverage market changes to create a competitive advantage – and fuel growth. Put simply, a company’s organizational agility is its ability to renew itself, adapt quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous, and turbulent environment.
A New Model of Leadership for the 21st Century
Fri, Jul 13, 2018 — The role science is playing in transforming leadership skills is profound. Recent neuroscience research is becoming key in transforming much of what we thought we knew about leadership. Insights gained are dramatically changing the way companies deal with the accelerated pace of change, changing nature of work, generational differences, demands for organizational performance and how we deal with performance issues and performance management systems.
Disrupting Your Marketplace: Are You Ready for What the Future Delivers?
Tue, Jul 10, 2018 — In 1907 – at a time when we as a nation weren’t that far removed from receiving mail via “Pony Express”– a visionary young fellow named James “Jim” Casey borrowed the princely sum of $100 and founded a small company called American Messenger Service in his hometown of Seattle, WA. More than a few years – and millions of package movements later – Casey’s company grew into the hugely successful United Parcel Service – forever changing the way packages were delivered with frequency, and setting a new standard by which Ben Franklin’s venerable U.S. Postal Service would struggle to meet.
When do I need to Hire a Product Manager?
Thu, Jun 28, 2018 — Over the course of my career I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside some really good product managers. The good ones tend to be easy to spot even though many don’t like attention cast on them and are quite content being behind the scenes. Like the conductor, they’re focused on keeping the trains going on time. The “trains” in this case are the products or services a company offers. There is a cadence to product management done right and the frequency they operate under is tuned into by the entire organization. Think of Max Weinberg, Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band drummer. It’s said that drummers are the heart and soul of bands. While Springsteen was clearly “The Boss”, Weinberg set the beat and always had his eyes constantly fixated on Springsteen during live performances and could make adjustments in a microsecond that allowed the band to be at its best.
The Role of People and Organizational Structure in Digital Growth for Small- and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs)
Thu, Jun 21, 2018 — This is the third in a series of articles focused on helping executives in small- and mid-sized businesses utilize digital technologies effectively to assist in accelerating revenues and profits. If you missed the first two articles, you can find the first one here and the second one here. The previous articles included an introduction to four major ways digital technologies can help your business, described a spectrum of technologies and a possible implementation roadmap, and associated digital proficiency with enhanced business performance. The second article also took a deep look at how business process needs and priorities should help guide your digital paths. In that article, I also introduced the “USA” model for digital transformation.
How Platform Capabilities Sustain Business Growth
Tue, Jun 19, 2018 — If you have been following this series of articles on sustainable business growth, you know that we have arrived at our fourth topic: Platforms. If you missed the previous articles in the series, you can read Article 1 (The Difference Between a Growth Plan and a Growth Engine), Article 2 (Best Practices in Processes) and Article 3 (People and Organizational Best Practices).
Why Growing a Business is Harder Than Ever
Mon, Jun 18, 2018 — One of my daughters recently read Of Mice and Men in English class. Since I also read it in high school, it was fun to chat about the story as she progressed through the book. I wondered how Steinbeck came up with the title. It turns out he used a quote from a poem written by Robert Burns in 1785. The contemporary translation is, “the best-laid plans of mice and men.” The two main characters, Lennie and George, have a plan for a new life. Unfortunately, their reality ends up being far from what they hoped.
Find Your Road to Growth: How to Identify and Move Beyond Random Acts of Marketing
Tue, Jun 12, 2018 — When I meet with CEOs in my role as a fractional CMO, it’s usually at a time when their company’s growth, revenues, or market share – or some combination of the three – have flattened. Often, these CEOs are finding that their current marketing efforts aren’t delivering the results they expect. And in most cases, their companies are in “scale-up” mode with substantial emphasis on sales and operational excellence. An unintended consequence of this critical stage in a business’s maturation process is that marketing is often relegated to a meandering series of one-off tactics such as glossy sales sheets, the occasional trade show, search engine optimization, and a basic website with the intent of meeting in-the-moment needs. We call these types of tactics “random acts of marketing,” and while company leaders mean well in creating them, the reality is they cost money, don’t get results, and divert attention of the marketing staff from higher-value activities. Worse yet, they consume precious resources that could fund and execute a strategy to support growth and build value.
Finding the Value Proposition Bullseye For Your Business
Mon, Jun 11, 2018 — Recently, the management of the Tsukuba Express train line, between Tokyo and the city of Tsukuba in Japan, had a serious problem. This “problem” was grave enough to warrant a public apology and touched off a wave of social media attention, in Japan and around the world. What was this grievous issue that required a public issuance of corporate regret and captured the attention of a global audience? Astonishingly, the “offense” was one that would be lauded in about 99.99999 percent of the remainder of the world: One of Tsukuba Express’s trains had departed Tokyo 20 seconds earlier than its scheduled departure time. Worldwide reaction ranged from amazement at the commitment of the Japanese railway to service times, to surprise that such a minor deviation from precision would be headline-making news.