Predictable Success®
Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization Back On the Growth Track - and Keeping it There
Les McKeown's Predictable Success® Blog: December 06
Archives
Watching Microsoft Battle Treadmill
For organizations in Treadmill, a vital step in recovering Predictable Success is to institutionalize an entrepreneurial, creative, risk-taking culture - diluting the dependence on individual charismatic 'E's.This is a particularly difficult step for founder/owners to take, as it often feels like their very identity is being threatened. As it is also usually achieved by external appointments - recruiting new (often younger) executives to head up divisions, departments teams and groups - the process, if successful, is also accompanied by large, if slow, shifts in the corporate culture (if the culture doesn't change, the new appointees are usually 'rejected by the organism' over time, and the organization remains in Treadmill, or worse, slides down into The Big Rut).
It's fascinating to watch Microsoft - locked in one of the classic Treadmill / The Big Rut struggles of all time - play this out in real time.
The recent (last 24 months at time of writing) appointment of new managers from organizations such as aQuantive Brian McAndrews, Senior VP, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions), Electronic Arts (Don Mattrick, Senior VP, Interactive Entertainment Business), Ask.com (Steve Berkowitz (Senior VP, Online Services) Groove Networks (Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect) shows that they're certainly trying to make this happen. Time will tell whether or not they will be successful.
My own view? I think it might be too late for them to succeed - but I sure as heck would never bet against them.
If you want a road map to get the the next stage with your organization, I urge you to get on board with Les McKeown.
Quite simply - there is no better, more intuitive, results-focussed business growth process than Predictable Success.
I learned more from Les than in my cumulative 15 years previous business experience.
Les came in from the outside and was able to both accurately identify our current and future business challenges as well as provide us with strategies and solutions for dealing with them effectively. It was like he had been there all along!