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Emulation Isn't Innovation (Exhibit 947)

On a recent trip to California I (yet again) forgot to pack my iphone charger, so I was happy to find an Applestore in Mission Viejo...or so I thought.


Turns out this is a Microsoft store. The Apple-cloning was so embarrassingly cheesy that even most of the t-shirted genius-alikes looked uncomfortable.

When you're in the The Big Rut a real burst of innovation can sometimes reverse the downward slide, but mindless emulation won't.

Thankfully there was an actual Applestore 50 yards away. No-one looked embarrassed.

Yes, you can get a copy of Predictable Success today

After David Allen tweeted his 1,399,136 followers today (seriously - see the screenshot below) about Predictable Success, I received a raft of emails from new readers asking when my book "Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization Back On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There" will be available.



The answer is - right now.

Buy the ebook version of Predictable Success...and get the hardcover book free

The hard-cover print version of "Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There" will be published on June 7, 2010 - but for a limited time you can get the eBook (pdf) version right now, and get the printed version delivered to your door on publication day - absolutely free!

Simply click the link below to buy the eBook version of "Predictable Success" for $19.95 - you will be able to download it immediately to your desktop and begin reading it 5 minutes from now.

Then, on June 7, 2010, your very own copy of the hard cover book version will arrive at your door absolutely free of charge - we'll even pay the shipping!

Toyota's wider problem: a broken axle.

Toyota's recent woes are symptomatic of a wider dysfunctional pattern that most every organization experiences - even yours. Here's how it works:



Every organization rests on a 3-legged stool:

1. Sales (including the marketing function);
2. Ops (production, r&d, delivery, warehousing - whatever is involved in getting your product and service out the door), and
3. Admin (accounting, treasury, HR, IT, legal and anything else not in 1 or 2 above).

Part of the success in any business is to manage the innate tension between these three functions - if there is no tension, the business enters The Big Rut, becomes stagnant and will die.

However in extreme circumstances the tension can become uncontrollable with one of the functions 'going rogue', pulling itself out of the orbit of the other two and creating a wholly unstable business. At Toyota, the sales and marketing function pulled away from the orbit of the operations and admin functions (specifically, product quality control) causing its latest disaster:



But the sales function isn't the only candidate for 'going rogue'. We've all seen businesses become so infatuated with its product or service that an obsession on continually enhancing the product quality, product spec, and/or constant product 'innovation' takes over any compulsion to actually 'ship' something to customers. This is sometimes called 'the inventor syndrome', but big companies can fall prone to it, too (Wikipedia 'Xerox PARC' for a classic example):



And as you'll know if you've ever had the joy of trying to interact with a utility company, there are many businesses in which the admin function has gone rogue, drowning everything it does in red tape and isolating the organization's ability to successfully got to market, let alone provide a quality product or service:



Where's your axle problem? Which leg of your stool is most likely to go rogue?

Have you the courage to burst your own myth?

We all perpetuate myths - about events in our past, about people we know, about ourselves. It's a natural human trait.

Leaders aren't exempt this trait. Think of leaders in the news over the last six months - Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods, President Obama, Toyota - to name but a few...and think of the myths perpetuated about them (and sometimes by them). Brilliance. Discipline. Focus. Execution. Quality.

Then think of what has happened to their status as leaders as a result of allowing - often, encouraging - those myths.

I'm not being judgmental here, and I'm not suggesting that myth-making is necessarily bad, or wrong. I am saying that mindless myth-making, or heedless myth-making, always has consequences, and those consequences are almost always bad.

What myths do you allow about yourself as a leader? Which do you encourage, or at least condone?

What would happen if you stopped? What would happen if you actively, gracefully dismantled that myth?