Dr. Evans Baiya, fastcompany.com, October 2020
The business world has been significantly disrupted by the pandemic. During situations of macro disruption, most people look for ways to first survive and eventually emerge from the circumstances stronger and better. As they do this, most leaders attempt to re-create past success—to go back to what life and business were like pre-disruption.
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Dr. Evans Baiya, allBusiness.com, September 2020
Major world events create disruption, and COVID-19 is no different. Many industries are experiencing disruptions—in the way they do business, in the sustainability of their systems, and in the engagement of their customers.
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Experiments Aren’t Just for Scientists, Use This Proven Tool to Improve Your Offerings
By Dr. Evans Baiya
Any business that is looking to launch new offerings, improve processes and solutions, or simply grow should be running experiments. There is an effective way to conduct experiments, and there are many not-so-effective ways. Throughout my career I have been on both sides of that fence—once running hundreds of experiments in an attempt to prove that the product my team had created was right, when other experiments were telling us it was not.
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Dr. Lisa Aldisert, Hr.com, September 2020
An opportunity for leaders to sharpen the saw and up their game.
Virtual leadership is now an essential skill as a result of living through the pandemic. Recent announcements by large tech companies such as Google and Salesforce.com that they expect their employees to work remotely until next summer are harbingers of what we can expect in the near term.Read More
Dr. Evans Baiya, Innovation Management, August 2020
In this article, we’ll look at three ways to engage customers and create products they want to buy right now.
If you have an idea for a product or service but are uncertain about launching something new during the pandemic, rest assured that people are still buying. They are looking for solutions to the unique problems they are experiencing today, and if you have the solution they need, they will buy it. The biggest challenge for business owners right now is breaking through the noise.Read More
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
Two Activities for Working Remotely
By Trish Candler
For those normally working in an office setting, you may be working remotely, somewhere other than a designated office building setting. Your remote location may be full of different people these days. Perhaps it’s one or many children in your “new office” or maybe a partner, or perhaps you’re completely alone, actually remote-remote.
All the news outlets and online resources, even celebrities, are highlighting what it’s like to work remotely. And it looks great, doesn’t it? You’re getting a glimpse into their homes, perhaps checking out their décor for some fresh ideas for your own home.
By Ron Price
One of the advantages of being 66 years old is that I don’t get as anxious I used to when unexpected, negative events occur. Depending on how each event is interpreted, the current coronavirus disruption is, at a minimum, the seventh crisis I have experienced over the past 45 years while in a variety of leadership roles. These crises have included a major fire, negative front-page press coverage, a debilitating breakdown in our supply chain, regulatory abuse, major contracts broken, the great recession, and the tragedy of 9/11. And we have survived every one of them!
What to do? How are we to respond when our world is disrupted so dramatically? As I reflect on this and shift gears into problem-solving around a seventh major crisis, here are things that guide my thinking:
Get above the noise. There are businesses (such as the media and others) that thrive on crisis. It actually increases their “product inventory” and compels their customers to engage. I’m not one who thinks everyone in the media is evil with ill-intent. However, it is a fact that they get better ratings (and more income) the more we engage with what they are selling.
By Ron Price
One of the primary jobs of a leader is solving problems. We often joke that if all the problems went away, we would be unemployed. Some problems are quick and easy to solve. Scheduling conflicts, customer complaints, and equipment failures are examples of problems we can often fix quickly and move on. However, there are also many problems that are much more complex and tedious to solve. It is these tougher problems that test and demonstrate our skills as problem-solving leaders.
In The Complete Leader, Randy Lisk and I wrote about two basic kinds of problems that leaders encounter on a regular basis. The first are linear problems. These are problems that have a clear root cause. By applying a scientific approach, whether asking “why” over and over again until you uncover the original cause, or by completing a more complex root cause analysis such as the fishbone model of identifying several potential contributors, one or more causes can be identified and solved. This is often the work of process engineers and is most effectively applied with problems are primarily connected with tangible parts, processes and results.
Event: The most nerve-wracking moment of my career
Location: The conference room of a massive social media company
I was looking at twelve angry eyeballs. Two of those eyes belonged to my client’s Treasurer. The other eyes belonged to my client’s Lead Auditor, Treasurer, Accounting Manager, and two other accounting staffers.
Forty-eight hours earlier, my firm and I had made a seven-figure mistake. A mistake that could force my client to re-file their quarterly “10-Q” filing with the SEC.