In this week’s thought leadership roundup, we take a look at the critical importance of organizational design, why so much thought leadership content still goes unread, and how becoming desensitized to the familiar can be deadly for business innovation.
10 Principles of Organization Design
From Strategy+Business:
“Today, the average tenure for the CEO of a global company is about five years. Therefore, a major reorganization is likely to happen only once during that leader’s term. The chief executive has to get the reorg right the first time; he or she won’t get a second chance. Although every company is different, and there is no set formula for determining your appropriate organization design, we have identified 10 guiding principles that apply to every company. These have arisen from years of collective research and practice at PwC and Strategy&, using changes in organization design to dramatically improve performance in more than 400 companies across industries and geographies. These fundamental principles point the way for leaders whose evolving strategies require a different kind of organization than the one they have today.”
Why Read It: Organizational flexibility is becoming less of a choice and more of a necessity as industry change becomes more rapid. But, even knowing that doesn’t make it a simple thing to do, or make it easy to convince the people who can do something about it that it needs to be done. Long-term research, such as that presented in this piece, is the key to proving what’s necessary to stay competitive and why.
Six Reasons Thought Leadership Content is Often Left Unread
From The Drum:
“Thought leadership presents a challenge to the best and brightest of organisations. It’s hard to generate and even harder to fully leverage.
Hard to generate because good content is a rare thing and because organisations tend to rely on their most senior and, therefore, busiest people to come up with the goods. Harder to leverage because once a piece of thought leadership content is created, many organisations discover that it’s not creating the impact they were hoping for. An often resource-intensive process leads to a modest bang when the content is released and ends with a whimper.”
Why Read It: No matter how often content gurus preach best practices, the folks that care the most about creating thought leadership pieces — marketers and industry experts — still get wrapped up in selling products, regurgitating opinions, and trying to appeal to everyone instead of a specific audience. But you have to ask yourself: is it even worth the effort of producing comprehensive content if it has no staying power?
Game Changing Innovations are Right in Front of You
From Innovation Excellence:
“In scientific terms, habituation is the process of becoming desensitized or unresponsive to non-threatening stimulus because of repeated exposure to it. That annoying mark on the wall that you stopped seeing; habituation. That annoying clock tick-tocking in the background that you don’t hear; habituation. That horrible odor your colleague left behind that you no longer notice; habituation. That billion dollar frustration which you could easily solve but no longer notice; habituation.
Habituation is an amazing form of learning. It has been shown in essentially every species of animal. So it must be essential to every species’ survival and have arrived early in the evolutionary game. It allows us to save energy and reduce stress by not wasting full-blooded survival antics in the face of a gust of wind. It also plays a role in less life threatening things such as when you’re eating, giving you the feeling of being full when you’re not.
For companies and individual it is a bane. It stops us from noticing those itches which are worth a fortune. If you could turn off this learning process, then all of a sudden you would notice all the things people tolerate because they have learned to ignore them. However, if you were to draw their attention to it, they would notice the annoyance and gladly pay for your solution. A lack of habituation is a catalyst for game-changing innovations.”
Why Read It: Learning is such a double-edged sword, isn’t it? On the one hand, building expertise is a powerful way to effect change — but on the other, the deeper you dig into a subject or industry, the easier it becomes to forget the basics. But being aware of this unavoidable truth is the first step to overcoming it. This piece from Innovation Excellence explains when, why, and how to override the natural instincts that can keep us from breakthrough discoveries.
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