The executives I work with are not looking to hand their responsibilities over to the latest fad method or philosophy. They are looking for good people to help the business thrive. They are focused on leadership, capabilities, and strategy.
They may want help in refining their strategy or more clearly defining their company’s purpose, but many have these worked out before meeting me. What I find most executives are looking for is help in making sure their organization is fulfilling the promise made to their customers and to make their strategy a reality.
I suppose productized solutions are still popular because they best fit at the point where ideation needs to become a reality; where most executives are looking for help. The majority of my career is making strategy a reality and ensuring organizations reach the full potential of their unique way of creating value. To be successful leaders should learn all they can about strategy, marshalling capabilities, and being an effective executive, because those things always show up where ideas turn to action.
Who do I turn to when I want to learn? Some of the great thought leaders that articulate executive leadership, business capabilities, and strategy are Peter Drucker, David Teece, Roger Martin. Following are some snippets about them.
Effective Leadership
If you have not read Drucker’s “The Effective Executive”, I highly recommend it. You can find leaders anywhere in an organization and leadership has a different purpose than management. This is a great read because it is about improving leadership skills versus handing them over to a productized solution.
Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. – Peter Drucker
The Right Capabilities
David Teece has written a great deal about Dynamic Capabilities. One of the highest levels of capabilities a leader can learn. Dynamic capabilities allow organizations to free themselves of productized solutions by putting why you need to make changes ahead of how you will make them.
Developing a framework as you are defining why you need to change, requires dynamic capabilities. They allow organizations to develop frameworks as part of advancing, improving, and innovating instead of trying to follow someone else’s scripted result.
Check out “Dynamic Capabilities & strategic management” – David J. Teece. He goes into great detail how dynamic capabilities, business models, and organizational design are the effective big levers available to leaders.
Dynamic capabilities, which are underpinned by organizational routines and managerial skills, are the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal competences to address, or in some cases to bring about, changes in the business environment. – Teece et al., 1997, Teece, 2007.
True Strategic Intent
There is good deal of Roger Martin’s work that resonates with me. He has mastered an effective approach of making strategic choices and turning them into strategy. I took part in one of his strategy cohorts in 2022, it helped me be more effective in my strategy practice.
Two big take aways are leaders don’t do strategy very well because most strategic decision are based on past performance. The problem is if you want customers to behave differently you must imagine a new way for your organization to behave. Do not shy away from new activities that have not been measured yet in your organization.
The second is about the mental models we use to navigate our lives for predictability. Martin challenges popular business models without getting into all the psychobabble. What he asks his readers to do is to revise or improve our routines so that our fast brain works more effectively. Some believe that slowing down or thinking through something increases chances of success. The fact is, our fast brains and slow brains are equally susceptible to error. It is our biases and heuristics that create fallible thinking.
Get copies of “Playing To Win: How Strategy Really Works” by A.G. Lafley & Roger Martin AND “A New Way To Think” by Roger Martin. They offer a new way to think about strategy and business models.
Strategy is not a long planning document; it is a set of interrelated and powerful choices that positions the organization to win. – Roger Martin
Using these thought leaders as guides and remaining true to your purpose for being in business, staying people-focused, and understanding your unique way of creating value will get you to the future version of your company. Productized solutions, no matter how tempting, are more trouble than they are worth.
Additional Reading
Read my articles on why productized solutions will lead you astray: Productized Solutions, Lean… Just Another Productized Solution and If Not Productized Solutions, Then What?
