What do a business author, a financial journalist, a medical illustrator, and a software architect have in common? If I said advice on innovation, would it surprise you?

Practically Radical, William C. Taylor’s latest book, is a wonderful thought provoker, full of stories of companies and leaders taking a novel approach to improve profits and create new enterprises. One of Taylor’s main concepts addresses the idea of engaging customers and in some cases any interested persons for ideas for new products, for solutions to business and technical problems and even for product design. Although companies are constantly receiving feedback from customers, Taylor encourages reaching out beyond customers and well beyond the responsible employee group to consciously track, value and encourage participation from the human race.

This is very reminiscent of the “wisdom of crowds” data presented in detail by James Surowiecki, a financial journalist, in his 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Here, he suggests that ideas submitted by a wide range of people are of higher quality and greater innovation than those by a single individual or an ongoing committee of people. Continue reading…

In her June 16th article on The Whale Hunters blog, Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith reminded me of the importance of doing what you promise, what I call getting it right the first time around. Barbara’s story touched some of my own raw feelings about bad performance or a betrayal of trust. Companies touting quality and then delivering less are prime offenders.

Dr. Smith’s joy of creating something luscious for dinner was interrupted when she found that a premium grocery store had sold her husband rotten potatoes and mushrooms that were unfit to eat. She explains, “From a very expensive, high-end so-called “luxury” grocery story, I had two high-priced items on the same day that were unfit to eat.”

Despite the apologies and the manager’s gracious attempts to make her happy, Barbara raises the crucial question:

“So do we ‘trust’ them? The answer is unequivocally NO. Trusting them to rectify their mistakes is nowhere near to trusting them to deliver fresh, edible produce in the first place. When I shop in a high-priced store whose brand is all about superior quality, then superior quality is what I expect.”

She then makes an even more powerful point:

“There is a big difference between MAKING IT RIGHT after a big screw-up and DOING IT RIGHT from the get-go.” Continue reading…

“Don’t Just Cut Government, Reinvent It,” writes Louis Gerstner, a former CEO of IBM in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2011.  I couldn’t agree more, and the same principle applies to businesses. When things gets rough, the old guard cuts – budgets, bonus pools, and people, sweeping innovation and real transformation off the table for a perfunctory exercise in cost reduction.

Let’s face it: talking about cutting costs in government is a game-changer in itself. Unless those charged with a major reinvention initiative are radical visionaries  (please, I mean that in a positive sense), the change at best is government lite, rather than government reinvented. 

The difference between change and re-arranging the deck chairs is like night and day.   Continue reading…

The appointment of Cathie Black to the position of School Chancellor sparked a debate of sweeping proportions within the New York region. A New York Times’ headline cut to the heart of the issue: Can a Publisher Run the New York City Schools? The opposition appears to put Cathie Black, accomplished leader in newspaper and magazine publishing, into a neat little box called “Publisher.” It assumes that publishers are a homogenous lot, incapable of doing anything different – the same type of rigid thinking that permeates so many organizations that need to build anew. It’s the mindset that keeps organizations on auto pilot, unable to change course, while continuing to struggle.

Most Americans would agree that the issues of our time require fresh thinking and capable, new leaders. Nearly half of Likely U.S. Voters say the nation’s best days are in the past. That will be true unless American enterprises, educational systems, and governments change the way they organize and staff, even for highly visible jobs accountable to broad constituencies. Continue reading…