Do you have Florida winning the NCAA tournament? Here in the U.S. we are in the middle of March Madness. Even if you’re not a college basketball fan, you can’t avoid the phenomena: stories of Cinderellas, upsets, and comebacks dominate the media. The NCAA basketball tournament has entered the national consciousness to such a degree…
Unlocking human potential. It’s a manager’s most important task, but also the hardest to measure and understand. How can leaders empower employees to be free of bureaucracy and top-down management, while maintaining consistency and efficiency across the organization? Gary Hamel, co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), and I discussed these issues and others during…
After weeks of weather on steroids, the twittersphere has been blowing up with tales of the snow-pocalypse. My favorite is the story about a Mister Mom who t-boned his own home with a snowblower because he was taking a selfie while twerking. Hashtag awesome. Yes, it’s that time again. Lake Superior State University (LSSU) released…
Imagine you’re sitting on your couch on a Friday night and decide that you want ice cream. Since you don’t have any in your freezer, you order a pint using your mobile device. Your personal fitness tracking device notices your glucose level is high, predicts that you are unlikely to work out for the next…
The buzz around big data is deafening but I believe that much of the conversation has missed the point. Big data is not just a technological challenge; it’s a cultural challenge. Collecting and analyzing data is not enough. We need to start with business outcomes to truly leverage big data. Culture trumping technology was the underlying…
In collaboration with author Gary Hamel and the Management Innovation Exchange (The MIX), SAP launched a crowd-source initiative which poses the question: What is the one thing you’d change to help organizations unleash and organize human potential across boundaries? As I was researching my own answer around the notion of “empathy in business”, I found a Washington Post article titled: A New Model…
In the military, a force multiplier is a capability that significantly increases the potential of a combat force, enhancing the probability of a successful mission. Many CEOs are looking to marketing to assume the role of force multiplier across their organizations, using customer insights to influence business strategy. It’s an uphill battle. Most large organizations are designed…
When apparel retailer Gap releases a new clothing design, marketing analysts look to a key customer segment as an early indicator of the product’s popularity: the people who work in its stores. “Our employees are also our target audience, so we know quickly by those first-day employee purchases if we have a hit on our…
For Scotts Miracle-Gro, social media has proven to be an effective brand fertilizer. According to Beth Dockins, director of customer service, many of the company’s customers prefer to tweet or Facebook a picture of their issue over having to talk about their lawn problems on the phone. But social media can just as quickly open…
Comedian Richard Lewis claims to have coined the “_______ from hell” phrase, but Carnival Cruise Lines has lived it. In 2012, Carnival spent $61 million advertising its “fun ship” brand positioning. But by the end of last year, #cruisefromhell was trending on Twitter after one of Carnival’s ships had an on-board fire that left passengers…