- Acrobatics
- Art
- Author
- Autodesk
- B2C
- bag gadget
- Barry Posner
- Being
- Board
- Book
- Books
- Bookshelf
- Bottega
- Business
- Carly Fiorina
- Cartier
- CEO
- Choices
- Cisco
- CMO
- Co-Creation
- Commitment
- Competition
- Competitive
- Competitive Advantage
- Competitive Plays
- Competitive Strategy
- consistent
- Consultants
- Consumer Marketing
- Creativity
- Culture
- Dave Hersh
- Developer Strategies
- Direction to Employees
- Emotional Intelligence
- Engagement
- Entrepreneur
- entrepreneurship
- Expansion
- Expectations
- Facts
- Failing
- Faith
- Fiction
- Fortune
- Gap
- GE
- Gold
- Growth
- Growth Strategies
- Hard
- Heartbeat process
- Hedgehog
- Horizon
- HP
- IDEO
- Innovation
- Inspiration
- Interpretation
- iPhone Market
- Jewelry
- Jive Software
- Keynote
- Lao Tzu
- Leadership
- leadership
- Level 5 (five) leadership
- Listening
- Lists
- Love
- Magnets
- Management
- Market
- market entry
- Marketing
- Marketing 2.0
- Marketplace
- Netscape
- New Markets
- Office Supplies
- Online
- Online transactions
- Open Source
- Organization
- Pakistan
- Passion
- Peace
- People
- Personal
- Personality
- Personality Marketing
- Personality Test
- Perspectives
- Power
- Power Source
- Product Managers
- Productivity
- Putty
- Red Herring
- respect
- Rome
- Rubicon
- Santa Clara University
- Schools
- Scott Sorokin
- self-awareness
- software trend
- Spirituality
- Strategy
- Striving
- Successful
- SuccessU
- SuperHero
- Team
- Things I love
- Top 10 List
- Tough Choices
- Travel
- Value Proposition
- Values
- Vendors
- Vertical
- Victory
- Vision
- VMWare
- Watch
- Web 2.0
- Workplace
- WSJ
- Yahoo
win markets:
other leaders:
- Influencer50
- OReilly
- Mace’s Mobile Opportunity
- Marketing Excellence by HP’s Kintz
- MarketingProfs
- Guy Kawasaki
- Joobie’s Blog
- Yet Another Software Blog
- Marginal Revolution
- Context Rules Marketing
- Brand Mantra
- Gaping Void
- Jaffe Juice
- Worthwhile
- Silicon Beat
- Wired Potatoes
- Dan Gillmor
- Reveries
- Creating Passionate Users
Journal Archive
Business Strategies
The Heartbeat Model
Much of CEOs I talk with spend a lot of time thinking about ways to drive growth of their business. Perhaps they never even stop thinking about it. And after they work on it a lot, they tend to engage their exec team on the topic. Once that level of discussion has happened, a group of incredibly talented c-suite people have figured out how to “grab” on to what it is they need to do. But the key question remains, how do employees “grab on” to the strategy?
Continue
What is this Strategy thing?
Because all the “right” strategies in the world could be applied to any business but what makes it right for them is really about leveraging their core strengths today. So it’s about discernment certainly to figure out what is a company’s strength today. And what are they clearly not able to do. And then to look at that clearly, without bias to think about what makes sense. I suppose in some way it’s the role of a parent to a child or a teacher to a student. The parent or teacher sees things the child or student doesn’t. Not because the child is stupid or the student ignorant, but both are learning and are too close to the situation themselves to have some perspective of what true gifts / strengths / abilities they should place their leverage.
Continue
CMOs: Lead a Revolution!
A CEO I was working with at a Fortune 500 asked if I could leave my company and join his exec team as their (latest) CMO. I loved the company, its customers, and the team so I was seriously tempted….
Continue
Some good reads …
I’d like to simply point you to some good articles with little commentary that I think are worth noting. Here, a great visual of every product Apple ever made since 1976. I became a customer in 1984, worked there from…
Continue
Affinity!
Affinity! That illusive icon in the distance that every company wants to attain. When you have it, you’re golden. When you don’t, everything’s a struggle. It’s that tight grouping and bond a customer has with a company, a brand. And…
Continue
Reaching Good Decisions
I spent a walk last week with a friend who is struggling to make a good decision. It’s more a personal decision rather than a professional one. And yet I think the decision process he’s facing is the one all…
Continue
Dinosaur Defense Strategy / Consumer Software Companies
A colleague who works within one of my company’s clients writes this email to me about a month ago: “I still find myself scratching my head at how to apply this line of advice (referring to a white paper…
Continue
2 Parts Enlightenment, 1 Part Truth, and a Smidge of Creation
A colleague (on the client side) is preparing a Microsoft defense strategy, and talked to my team recently about what to do to prepare. We helped him in terms of process steps: the need to build a common data set,…
Continue
When in Doubt, Pilot
Ever heard this? Let’s go 180 degrees in a different direction, at full speed, with everyone on board, and expect our current business to do great while we turn everything in a new direction. Yippee. Sound like a good idea…
Continue
Top 10 Trends for 2007
For work this month, I wrote some “top 10 trends” for what my team and I think should matter to those high-tech firms that want to win… details of all of these are available here. Top 10 Trends for 2007…
Continue
Technorati: Measuring Volume not Value
Technorati recently published a state of the blogosphere about 2 weeks ago. And I’ve wanted to write on it ever since as an example of being clear on what you are intending to measure and what you are actually measuring….
Continue
Employees Co-Create Brand
A bunch of writing has been done by myself and others about how “consumers now co-create the brand”. But what about employees? Are they co-creators, too? Many, many fortune 1000 companies are afraid to let their own employees blog. “What…
Continue
Top 10 Ideas from Web 2.0 Summit
My top 10 ideas or reflections from Web 2.0 conference this week in San Francisco. #1 There’s a real Heirarchy in Value Creation Apps beat features. Online applications beat packaged applications. “Open” applications beat online applications (meaning those you can…
Continue
Two types of Advisors: those that Critique and those that Create
Have you ever had the feeling that the people around you are there to tell you how something won’t work? Those are called critiques. Having a critique around as an advisor would be like being in the middle of the country and lost trying to get to NYC let’s say, and having someone come by to say, “this freeway won’t take you to there”. Okay, fair enough. But don’t just leave me there, dude. Tell me which one does!
Continue
Dash used Stealth just Right
Is there ever a good reason to not tell everything to everybody? Yes, there is. Surprise you that I would say that? In relationships, power is not the key to connection. So, don’t deceive or cajole in personal relationships, where…
Continue
How are Synergy and Ajax Technology related?
When buzz starts to happen in Silicon Valley, the same terms are used over and over again, with a completely different definition for the same words. Yesterday, a client of ours came in for a quick-stop ‘consultation’ to review a…
Continue
Churn and Burn or Ways to Go?
It is true that, over time, strong technology consumer companies will win market share from weak companies. However, there’s one nearly surefire way to make sure you don’t fail. Focus. You got know enough to know if you’re going to…
Continue
Give me that thing called [customer] Love
Just got published on MarketingProfs for what will be a six-part series or “Summer Bootcamp for Business”. For those of you that aren’t familiar yet with MarketingProfs.com, it’s a great source for content and real-know from people in the field….
Continue
10 Ways to Convince Other Execs to Follow YOU!
At a speech last month at a women’s exec group, one audience member asked “how do I build a business case so I get heard”. Great question. In my day job, I help execs form business cases all the time,…
Continue