Over the past few years there have been several excellent publications about the concept of “reading weak signals” in business. One of my favorites was published about 3 years ago by McKinsey called “The Strength of Weak Signals” by Martin Harrysson, Estelle Métayer, and Hugo Sarrazin. Published in The McKinsey Quarterly, this piece is similar to others and points out how critical it is for leaders have the Business Acumen skills needed to analyze market trends to anticipate changes and get in front of competitive threats. The McKinsey article by way of example suggests that senior leaders should spend time looking at trends about their company in social media. What are customers saying about us on Twitter? Is it good or bad? Are there patterns in complaints that we can fix? What are customers saying about our competitors? Are there things competitors are doing and customers like that we should be doing? Once business leaders gather the information from Social Media they should digest it and map actions for change and evolution of the strategy and value proposition to their customers.
Read More >
If you Google “Leadership”, you will get 772,000,000 hits in 1.01 seconds so defining leadership is statistically, emotionally, and conceptually impossible. But that doesn’t mean you stop trying. All Advantexe Business Leadership learning journeys start with our interpretation and definition of leadership which we believe is simply “Leadership is equal to the execution of your business strategy.”
Read More >
Building organizational capabilities to anticipate customer needs rather than react to them
Too many business leaders and Sales and Marketing professionals think that understanding Voice of Customer (VOC) data and then reacting to their interpretation of the data is an effective approach to business success.
Read More >
We all know and expect that continued advances in technology are changing everything about business and the way we sell. If the United States is ever going to become “great again” through increased manufacturing jobs, advanced robotics are going play a prevalent role in the comeback. The real challenge to the US workforce is acquiring and using the skills needed to program the robotics, analyze the data, and keep the factories running as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.
Read More >
As the lead Consultant on hundreds of Business Acumen learning engagements, I have often heard the following request from our Senior Leader and Executive clients – “I don’t think our company has a strong sense of urgency…what can you throw into that Business Acumen program to get our people to move quicker and develop a sense of urgency?”
Read More >