‘How To Spot Inflection Points In Business Before They Happen’

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Snow melts from the edges. The changes that are going to fundamentally influence the future of your business are brewing on the periphery. To avoid being taken by surprise by an inflection point, you need to be exposed to what is happening at the edges.’

An inflection point happens when a 10X change alters the basic assumptions upon which a business is built.’

Start defining your arena by asking which pool of resources- typically revenues- your business currently relies on. What other players might be trying to grap those same resources, even if they don’t make or offer products and services similar to yours.’

Practices that displease or even enrage customers can create an opening for a disruptive player to come into your markets and cause customers to defect.’

Even when you see an inflection point on the horizon, it can take a lot longer than you think for it to actually arrive.’

Creating a plan for fast learning is something successful serial entrepreneurs do almost by instinct.’

‘Good ideas are … important, but the initial ideas that innovators pursue are seldom the ones that make it to market.’

We tend to imbue CEOs and senior leaders with supernatural powers when they succeed and with damning deficiencies when they fail.’

Internal friction and competition can undermine even the correct response to changing times. Managing politics is a key task for any would-be change agent.’

Big changes are often signaled by seemingly small and incremental shifts that nonetheless release a constraint in an existing model, opening it up to an inflection point.’

Source

Rita McGrath (2019). Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before they Happen

Leading In A Chaotic World

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Leadership is not for everybody. Great leaders know that. That is why they don’t take it for granted.

Leading other people is not about control. It is not about being the boss. It is not about who has more power.

Leading other people is about vision. It is about care. It is about being a good person, a good follower, and a good farmer.

According to George Binney, Philip Glanfield and Gerhard Wilke, ‘The authority to lead is not something given from above; it is negotiated, day by day, between people as they work together.’

‘Organizational politics and leading is not just about being a good boss; it’s also about being a good subordinate, and a good citizen of a living community.’

‘Constant negotiation and adaptation is needed, as people and circumstances change. The key is to ‘get real’ about yourself and the group.’

‘Knowing what works well in different parts of the organization (or other organization) can provide useful data, but we still have to do the work to make it our own.’

‘Leadership groups that cannot hold their differences end up in ‘group think’ because they have developed a shared and fixed view of the world.’

Paying attention to feelings is not a luxury or a diversion. The feelings are there for a reason. If we can face them and consider them, then we can be of service to the group.’

‘Leaders need to pay attention to the social fabric of the group and ensure that it legitimizes their authority and develop a sense of secure attachment to them. People work for people, not abstract documents or perfectionist, fanciful targets.’

‘If leaders see themselves as separate from the people they are leading they are not only kidding themselves, they are seeing themselves and others only as a means.’

‘Without the courage or the commitment to act, you are part of the problem.’

‘Leaders need to stick with the vision and strategy when the going gets tough- as it inevitably will.’

Source:

George Binney, Philip Glanfield & Gerhard Wilke (2017). Breaking Free of Bonkers: How to Lead in Today’s Crazy World of Organizations