The Invisible Government

When the president signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913] the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized" — Charles A Lindbergh Sr. U.S Senator, Minnesota

Charles statement still holds a lot of truth even after a century; cashflow is still king for many companies and government. The MBA Oath, now invoked at graduation includes a provision about being a good steward of entrusted resources.

However, great leadership and good management should be about the visible government and it is a series of well thought-through actions including phases, communications, checkpoints, customer-impact-testing, metrics, contingencies, and feedback loops, designed to produce specified results on time and on budget, based on known circumstances. Where circumstances are unknown, as with innovations, then good management proceeds with a flat organizational structures that encourages series of pilot tests, rehearsals and rapid prototypes.

The visible government is practical as well as visionary and cares about efficiency. The leaders might not be the ones to roll up their sleeves for the tasks of execution, but they know what to ask of those who do and they grow with experience.

China seems to have borrowed a lot from this concepts and it should not be hard to see why. When a country’s governance is structured in such a way that incentives for the political elite are aligned with the economic interests of the country, the country is likely to grow rapidly and in a healthy way, and with minimal political disruption. When they are misaligned, however, there are likely to be significant strains and pressures that resolve themselves through political conflict.

China makes massive change possible; from one child policy to the state owned enterprises while the government is willing to partner and learn from other governments and businesses.

We can also learn a great deal from China while we maintain an exposing pressure on the negetive aspect of corruption, human rights and intellectual property violation.

For instance; When you introduce yourself in the West, you say "Hi, my name is Mike Stuart, CEO of Nike, from Boston, United States." In China, you would say "Hi, I’m from China, Shanghai. I’m Nike’s CEO, Mike Stuart." That speaks volumes on the importance of the collective versus the individual.

Here is a big dream worthy of our attention, from China's, Alibaba, CEO

The company [Alibaba] will remain a ‘start-up’ no matter how long it has been in existence. Whatever has been stable, I will disrupt that stability. The company needs to continue to innovate and grow. I want the employees to believe that we are a small company, no matter how big we get. I believe we can create a system and culture to perpetuate this culture of entrepreneurial and start-up spirit.

Follow your Dream

 

If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, you will meet with uncommon success in common hours..............Emmanuel Sodipo

Dreams and visions are fascinating phenomena that provide us with unique insights into the workings of our mindset. While they both involve the generation of images and information within our consciousness, they are adopted differently.

The great minds do something special. The great minds combine, in an artful way, logic with intuition. Great insights are made by people who combine deduction with feel, structure with improvisation and sciences with the arts..............

I think the Japanese term “ikigai” sums it up best. Ikigai is the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. The reality is that most people don’t have a job that hits those four things. Many people don’t even get two. I had some great experiences with this. I consistently dabbled in something creative, but my heart was always elsewhere. I loved tech and I loved writing and didn’t believe I could make a living writing. I certainly didn’t know I could combine both of those worlds. 

The idea is to find a balance and overlap among these four elements. When a person aligns their passion, vocation, mission, and profession, they are said to have found their ikigai—a sense of purpose and fulfillment in their daily life. The concept encourages individuals to explore the deeper meaning and satisfaction that comes from living a life that integrates these aspects.

Ikigai is often depicted as a Venn diagram, with the overlapping area at the center representing one's ikigai. This visual representation helps people reflect on their lives and make decisions that lead to a more purposeful and harmonious existence.

It's important to note that ikigai is a personal and subjective concept, and it may evolve over time. It encourages self-awareness and the pursuit of a meaningful and fulfilling life dream that goes beyond mere financial or career success.

See You at the Top

Follow with Ideas

 

The lack of innovation is not sudden, obvious or dramatic. It does not make headlines, you do not see or feel the dangers on a daily basis, It develops slowly over time, you become aware of them only when you realize you are stuck in an unprofitable business.

　

                       

The fact is that good — and even great — ideas aren’t always accepted with open arms. In fact, new ideas are often met with fear, and sometimes anger. What is there to say? We like comfort and control. Risk, even if calculated, is not our thing

Follow with Innovative Ideas; Use the following 3 strategies

Convergence Thinking. A process by which the boundaries across industries, businesses, markets, geographies, customer experiences is pooled for ideas, resulting in new business opportunities and customer value.By leveraging on technology, competition and customer you can provide leadership and design a future for your industry.

Orthodox Overturn. By learning new tools, techniques, and methods, you can Identify old organizational labits and legacy systems that serves as bottlenecks to innovation and growth. These allows for breakthroughs in applications and management.

Challenging orthodoxies can provide clarity needed to improve your business model, products, services, processes, customer experience, or brand. Starbuck has this one checked

Frugal Thinking. Scarcity of time and resources is the primary driver for frugallity that forces individuals and companies to be highly creative. It is not about being cheap, it is about the origin of successful start ups.

Even large companies can be successful corporate innovators by tapping into the right internal and external resources. You dont need a big budget R&D to be innovative.

Teach and practice these skills to keep your innovation pipeline full.

Twitter StatisticsTwitter Advertising Revenue 2013 (Projected)     $399,500,000
Twitter Stock Market Valuation (Projected)          $20 billion
Total number of registered Twitter users              554,750,000
Number of active Twitter users every month      115 million
Number of new users signing up everyday          135,000
Unique Twitter site visitors every month             190 million
Number of tweets that happen every second     9,100
Average number of tweets per day                       58 million
Twitter search engine queries every day              2.1 billion
Percent of users who use their phone to tweet  43 %
Number of people employed by Twitter              2,500

Great entrepreneurs, innovators, marketers, you name it, know that a good idea won’t stand alone on its own merits; it needs to be accompanied by an argument of equal or greater value.

The Global Top Brands

 

Apple just ended Coca Cola 13 years dominance as the most valuable brand.

What did Apple and Google Do Right?

Customer Experience:

Positive interactions and experiences with a brand contribute to a favorable brand image.

Customer service, responsiveness, and post-purchase support impact perception.

Brand Consistency:

Maintaining a consistent brand image across all touchpoints (online and offline) reinforces brand identity.

Reputation:

Public perception of a brand based on reviews, word-of-mouth, and media coverage.

The brand's behavior in social, environmental, and ethical contexts can affect reputation.

Brand Personality:

Human-like characteristics attributed to a brand, influencing how consumers relate to it.

For example, a brand may be perceived as friendly, innovative, or trustworthy.

What to learn from effective branding:

In situations with insufficient information to make a good decision, you must minimize the 

impact of making a bad one. To do so, you must create an environment that simplifies reversals and course corrections in response to new context. This “iterative governance” 

is antithetical to how our institutions run today.

 “Admire talent but cherish character.”

Rely too much on experience and you close yourself off to the new. 

Rely too much on understanding and you lose a risk tolerance that brings big upside, whether investing or otherwise. 

Rely too much on gut and you are shooting in the dark. 

So somehow, you navigate the balance, hopefully better and better, and that’s the process of improving. 

See you at the Top.

Innovation Culture

 

"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; ...who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it; ... who has never lacked appreciation; ...who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had..." ~Ann Landers

70% of successful entrepreneurs got their business idea while working for a previous employer. Innovators can transform an organization more quickly and effectively than others because they are self-motivated free thinkers. They are not always your top talent or the obvious rebels.

You can spot them, and they can help you build your next business.

Here is how............Innovators are.

Strategic - highly engaged on strategic projects privately.

Motivated - motivated by freedom and not necessary money

Pivotal - courageous to make a shift from the norm.

Authentic - believes in integrity and honesty.

The unfair reality of today's business world is that success hates the weak, despises the meek and ignores the uninformed. Successful companies must learn to build their own innovation engines by grasping how to find, develop, and retain innovators.

Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon recommends these three books to his top executives.
Bezos was kind enough to share the titles.

• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
• The Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen
• The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

If you are trapped in failed leadership, you can begin your entrepreneurial journey.

Here are some project management tools:

Activecollab - open-source project management tool

Zohoproject - full featured tool including Gantt chart.

Producteev - works well with Gmail or google apps to create task from emails.

ActiveInbox - free plugin to managing your inbox.

Smartsheet - online spreadsheet that can allocate task to a specific row.

Liquid Planner - advanced project management tool with the ability to analyze the ripple effect of a change on multiple projects on a Gantt chart.

Web based process mapping tools include: Bubble.us, Griffy, Creately, Lucid Chart, Smart Draw and MindJet

"The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration,
Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication."

-- Harold S. Geneen

See you at the Top.

The Way Back

The Way Back

About 86% of all wage earners in France enjoy "contrats a durée
indéterminées," permanent contracts that make layoffs extremely expensive
and time-consuming.

France now has half as many exporting companies as Germany or Italy.

German industry benefits from 19,000 robots, five times the number in France.

French spending on R&D has also dropped 50% in the past four years.

The result is a steep fall in French manufacturing and the services that
support it, everything from consulting to logistics.

What is the way back up?

Lets take consulting for example:

The business model for management consulting is based on selling knowledge and skills by transforming these two intangibles into tangible best practice and case studies.

This business model can open the door to "disruptive innovations" at the bottom of the market. An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of leaders, innovators and consumers at the bottom of the market pyramid get access to new "knowledge and skills" that was historically the previlege of a few firms with deep pockets.

If you take professionals in the developed world, chances are that many of them will create less wealth than their parents as oppose to professionals in developing countries and emerging markets, who are probably going to generate 100 times the wealth of their parents.

Some of the best engineers and scientists working for top innovators are actually located in their offshore technical centers in the BRIC countries; these are often called "captive" R&D centers or offshore R&D locations. Engineers from emerging countries will play an increasing role in global innovation. While Some will continue to work for their current western employers, others will lead startups that will become an invaluable index to the innovation value chain

For example, many notebook computers are designed and built by Compal Electronics of Taiwan. The company's clients include Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Siemens, Sony, and Toshiba.

Innovation often happens away from the centers of organizations in emerging countries that can help transform the society and organization as a whole.

In France it's actually possible to recruit, engage, motivate, and retain the very best talent, by creating a more purposeful, collaborative, ethical, and diverse company with a clear mission and purpose.

Investors are Optional

Entrepreneurs with small ideas can also build great companies, your business can grow organically, with revenue and profits by selling to customers as early as possible from the idea incubation.

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." --Bill Gates

Business incubation involves the nurturing and mentoring of new businesses, often referred to as startups or entrepreneurs, to help them succeed in their respective industries. Incubators provide various forms of support, including physical workspace, access to networks, mentorship, training, and sometimes funding.

Objectives:

The primary objective of business incubation is to accelerate the growth and success of startups by providing them with the necessary resources, expertise, and support systems. This helps reduce the barriers to entry and increases the likelihood of survival and sustainability for new businesses.

What incubation stage are you? Are you Chasing customers? or are you Chasing Investors?

Consider these Equations:

Customers = Validation, Revenue, Profits, Valuation, Funding

Investors = Distraction from chasing customers, outside capital

A good strategy:

Business = Customers (Revenues + Profits).

In this equation, outside financing is Optional.

There are several entrepreneurs who built great companies using this strategy.

Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho built a $200milliion a year revenue starting this way.
　
Examples of established companies also using this strategy:
Amazon, where CEO Jeff Bezos often insists on leaving an empty chair at meetings to represent the "customer's voice," encourages employees to build experiments based on customer insight. Innovations such as shopping cart recommendations and behavior-based search were first implemented by an intern, resulting in a three percent revenue increase. Zara, the Spanish fast-fashion company, analyses observations from store managers daily to better understand what customers want. Every day, store staff chat with customers, asking questions like, "What if this skirt was longer?" or "What other colors would you like for this item?" This has allowed Zara to meet customers' expectations 99% while producing ten times the number of products as its largest competitors. Business incubators measure success based on various metrics, including the survival rate of startups, job creation, revenue growth, successful exits (e.g., acquisitions or IPOs), and overall economic impact on the community.

As an entrepreneur with a proven business model and execution capacity you will have no capital gap

It may take time, sweat and tears, but like every dream you live, it comes with invaluable benefits including personal and business growth.

I Wish You Great Success