Evans Baiya PhD Archives - Page 6 of 8

Validate Your Pivot with Innovation

By Dr. Evans Baiya

When planning or navigating a pivot, how do you know if you are pivoting in the right direction? Answer simple questions to validate your pivot and execute on four actions to help create speed-to-market.

We are hearing the word “pivot” a lot these days. The idea is that business conditions have changed dramatically and, therefore, we need to change course. Companies are finding that they must shift business and adjust the game plan in order to survive or thrive. What we often fail to do is ask ourselves what we are changing the plan to. What, how, who and where are vital questions that need to be answered for a successful pivot. Simply assuming you will find your answers along the way creates complexity and can lead an organization to adopt what is easy, not what is strategic and value-creating.

During Crisis, Don’t Neglect Your Company’s Most Critical Asset: Ideas

By Dr. Evans Baiya

It has been said, the best way to find your way around a new location quickly is to ask for ideas. As many of us are working from “new locations,” ideas are more important than ever. What is the best way to manage those ideas? How do you continue to engage your employees so they give you the best ideas?

Ideas are critical for survival, especially during crisis. The goal is to survive smartly and position yourself for growth. One of the most important actions a company can take during times like this is to ask for ideas from all stakeholders, in order to make timely and impactful decisions.

Why Agility is Key to Companies Surviving the Pandemic

Dr. Evans Baiya, Fast Company, June 2020

One of the key lessons coming from the COVID-19 pandemic is the need to create more resilient companies. Many organizations think they are resilient, but they are not. The U.S. has lost more than 100,000 businesses due to the virus, seen millions lose jobs, and is experiencing dismal short-term financial and economic outlooks. How does an organization survive and even thrive? Resiliency is the key.

What does being a resilient company mean? How does a resilient company look and what differentiates it from others? How do you create a resilient restaurant or professional services company? Read More

How to Know When it’s Time to Change Course

Dr. Evans Baiya, Fast Company, May 2020

What happens when you run an experiment and the outcome is not what you had planned?

One of the traps of experimentation is expecting the testing to validate your thinking. It is natural to want the experiment to say yes—even to think that if it doesn’t confirm your idea, it is a failure. Read More

From An Inventor to Becoming a Master Innovator

By Evans Baiya, PhD & Ron Price 

Being an inventor is a great achievement. After all, you are the one who comes up with the ideas, or a new discovery. From incandescent light bulbs to the internet of things (IoT), inventors have made untold numbers of improvements to our lives.

We have been privileged to work with many people who are truly world-class inventors; scientists, engineers, and other forms of disrupters or technical experts. Confidentiality agreements prohibit us from sharing details, but we have been awestruck by some of the advances we have watched emerge into the marketplace by people we were privileged to coach.

Finding Opportunity in Times of Worry

By Dr. Evans Baiya

We can all agree that we are facing challenging times. COVID-19 and public precautions to slow the spread of it have left businesses in a space full of unknowns. And for many people, unknowns equal worry. It is natural for leaders (all people in fact) to feel overwhelmed during moments of crisis, especially crisis that is unpredictable and with many factors they cannot control.

Yet there is possibility, even in times of uncertainty. In times like these, we encourage leaders to work through a very simple model that helps to identify priorities and define proper resolutions within those priorities, which ultimately leads to successful outcomes. It is the Worry-Opportunity-Barrier Model.

Effective leaders embrace the mindset that crises are guaranteed, but how you deal with a crisis is an integral part of leadership. Ultimately, great leaders learn through crisis. The situation either gets better or it gets worse, based on how you handle the most stressful moments. Every crisis brings with it some stressors. It is common for leaders, especially those who feel the added weight of responsibility on their shoulders, to worry. But you cannot worry yourself out of a crisis!

Focus on Value-Creating Investments

By Dr. Evans Baiya

One of the challenges for growing a company is knowing exactly where to focus your investment, time and resources. When you introduce a new value (innovation) to the market, there are many processes you must have in place such as sales, marketing, delivery, and of course financial processes. These all require investment in the form of money, people, effort and research.

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is to try to invest in all of these processes right away. Remember, to invest in an operational system requires a lot of resources. It takes up the leader’s time. This is time you should be spending on delivering increased value to customers. It is impossible for an entrepreneur to do everything early on, so the tendency is to have a bulky budget and to hire people to help you do all these things. This leads to a variety of issues: getting into early debt, promising features to potential customers that you cannot deliver, even getting paid but losing money. This can be a fundamental problem.

It’s Time to Innovate

Featuring Ron Price and Dr. Evans Baiya, InTrust, Winter 2020

It’s a new year, which often signals it’s time for a new start – time to put into play some of those ides percolation around your brain. But many a business owner often feels too overwhelmed with the daily task of keeping everything running to think about how to change things up. Many don’t know where to start.

If the word innovation causes little beads of sweat to form on your forehead, you’re not alone. You know you need to innovate, but carving out time to do it seems impossible, and implementing change seems like such a long road.Read More

Innovation And The Future Of Performance Reviews

By Dr. Evans Baiya, HR.com, July 2019

In today’s fast-paced world, innovation must be the future of any company looking to compete and win market share. You simply cannot grow and thrive by doing what you’ve always done. Therefore, it is a natural conclusion that innovation will be a key component to the future of performance management.

Over the past several years, my co-author Ron Price and I have seen an increasing number of companies embrace innovation as part of their strategic plan, even going so far as to create new company roles such as chief innovation officer, innovation analyst, innovation engineer, and more. In fact, a 2018 CB Insights State of Innovation study reported that 85% of executives see innovation as an important initiative.  Read More

How to Build a Team That Will Transform Your Company

By Dr. Evans Baiya, allbusiness.com, July 2019

Are you looking for the next big thing? Searching for an idea that will attract new customers, improve your offerings, or simply give you a leg up on your competition? The good news is you probably have most of what you need already at your fingertips: Your employees will be the defining factor to your success. And creating new value can be easier than you think if you get the right tools and processes in place.

You may have the inspiration or the original idea, but it is your employees who will execute that vision—and maybe even improve upon it—if you give them the right tools. It is impossible for a leader to single-handedly transform a company, thus the adage: “Leadership is the art of getting things done through people.” Large-scale change requires the work of a team.Read More

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