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The Value Creators Podcast Episode #27. Mark McGrath on Entrepreneurship Versus Managerialism

Adaptive entrepreneurship refers to a dynamic approach to business leadership and business practice that embraces continuous learning, rapid adaptation, and the creation of novel ideas. Mark McGrath and Hunter Hastings discuss the critical aspects of adaptiveness in dynamic environments. They explore the aftermath of failure to adapt to nonlinear external change. The conversation emphasizes the importance of the shift from traditional management to adaptive leadership, as defined by a fusion of entrepreneurial economics and John Boyd’s unique approach to “the whirl of reorientation”, and focusing on the importance of influencing and inspiring collaboration, as contrasted with managerial control.

Mark McGrath highlights the role of appreciation leadership, recognizing the worth of ideas, and fostering human interaction. He advocates for continuous reinvention and the active creation of mismatches to outpace competitors. Entrepreneurs need to embrace adaptive systems, prioritize human-centric leadership, and leverage novel ideas for sustained success in ever-changing business landscapes.

Resources: 

AGLX – Consulting & Coaching Group:

aglx.com

The Adaptive Entrepreneurial Business Model Graphic:

Mark McGrath on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1/

Show Notes:

0:00 | Intro

01:50 | Rethinking Management Amid Uncertainty

04:23 | Entrepreneurship: Navigating Uncertainty for Value Creation

06:38 | Entrepreneurship as a Continuous, Never-Ending Process

08:50 | Massive Mismatch: Preserving vs. Exploring New Futures

14:16 | Disruptive Innovation

15:19 | Entrepreneurial Method as Continuous Ongoing Loop of Value Creation

20:21 | Idea of Entrepreneurial Intent

22:42 | Positive and Negative Feedback: Feedback Loop

25:12 | Organizational Structure and Empowerment in Business and the Military

34:56 | Quantification VS Qualitative Analysis

38:02 | Rethinking Management VS Embracing Adaptive Systems

39:20 | Wrap-Up: Mark McGrath’s Concept of Leadership

Knowledge Capsule:

Defeating Linear Thinking::

  • Failure in business often stems from an inability to adapt to nonlinear external change.
  • Possessing resources is insufficient without the right frame of thinking.
  • Success requires constant adaptation to unpredictable challenges.

Boyd’s Leadership Philosophy:

  • Emphasis on leadership quality over command and control.
  • Leadership is defined as the art of influencing and inspiring collaboration.
  • Appreciation leadership focuses on recognizing worth and understanding how things work.

Reinventing Management:

  • Hunter Hastings proposes to replace the term “management” with an adaptive system.
  • Mark’s response: we don’t use the term “management” and don’t think about it. Leadership quality, not a title in a hierarchy, is crucial for success.
  • Advocacy for a mindset shift away from traditional management approaches.

Continuous Adaptation:

  • Organizations must continually reinvent themselves for sustained success.
  • Industry leaders like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett exemplify the importance of creating novel ideas.
  • The ability to adapt to changing landscapes is paramount for thriving in dynamic environments.

Human-Centric Leadership:

  • Appreciation leadership promotes human-to-human interactions.
  • Recognition of worth and understanding of how things work are crucial.
  • Contrasts with isolating command and control approaches.

Creating Mismatches for Success:

  • Mark McGrath encourages the cultivation of mismatches or novel ideas. 
  • Adaptive systems recognizing value and fostering continuous learning are keys to success.
  • Gaining a competitive edge involves disrupting the status quo with innovative thinking.

Customers don’t have problems to solve. They have imagined futures that are better than today.

One view of how businesses succeed is that they solve the problems that people need solving. That’s the “jobs to be done” school of thought, popularized by Clayton Christensen and embraced by many others. This school of thought pictures people’s lives as being full of problems, and the role of entrepreneurship and innovation as fixing them.

Do consumers buy a subscription to Netflix because they have the problem of being bored or repulsed by alternative content? Do startup companies buy cloud services from AWS because they have a computing problem to solve? Does Mom buy frozen dinners to solve the problem of what to feed the kids?

No. It’s the wrong mental model – the wrong way to think about the demand side of economics and the role of businesses in our lives. The energy of economic growth derives not from the negativity of thinking about problems but the positivity of thinking about opportunities for betterment. The capitalist business system is powered by customers’ imaginations. They see the possibility of a better future, a set of circumstances that is different from and preferred to the current state. They imagine this desired state, not so much as a set of features, but as to how they will feel in it. Today’s circumstances may be fine, but there’s always that inner voice that thinks, “Things could be better.” When it’s really important, “Things that matter to me could be better.”

It’s purely an act of creativity. It’s what social scientists call “counterfactual”. People are imagining a future that doesn’t yet exist, yet they can conjure up the future feeling in their mind. There might not even be the possibility of it existing today, because it requires an innovation to bring it about. How brilliant is that? It’s the same level of imagination that Einstein employed to think about relativity and  Niels Bohr used to think through quantum physics, when relativity and quantum theory didn’t yet exist.

It is cognitive acts of counterfactual imagination that drive civilizational advance, the unrelenting seeking of human progress. And the same counterfactual imagination drives commercial innovation, from the iPhone to new flavors of breakfast cereal. Things could be better. Our phones could cease to be tethered so that we can talk on them while walking. They could cease to be clunky so that we can enjoy the elegance of design. They could help us do multiple tasks so that we can carry one device instead of many. Users didn’t invent these functions. Users made them possible by imagining the world as a better place – more convenient, more amenable to our preferences for convenience and speed and aesthetics. By being open to new value propositions, users bring new value into being. 

The other face of the customer’s imagination of future value that’s better than today’s is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the business function that turns the customer’s imagined future into commercial new reality. Entrepreneurship is the second stage of innovative genius, the stage that responds to the customer’s initiation. Entrepreneurship is the imagination of not just the future feeling of satisfaction that the customer feels, but also of the product or service or proposition that delivers the satisfaction. Entrepreneurial imagination becomes more and more substantive over time. It starts with an idea – “what if we were able to….” – that’s framed in an incentive: there could be a significant economic reward from the customer if we are successful in realizing the idea as a deliverable product or service. The process moves from idea to concept to some kind of early-stage artifact (the sketch on the back of a napkin) to prototype and MVP and test market. At every stage there’s a check-in with the customer who is imagining a better future: is this idea / concept / artifact / prototype / MVP aligned with your imagination? Is this what you were thinking? (Because, of course, they don’t “know” what they were thinking. What they had in mind was an abstract desired state. But when prompted with an artifact, they can respond – yes, that sorta/kinda points in the right direction. Such encouragement is sufficient to fuel the entrepreneurial development process.)

There’s an ultimate test of the alignment of the new value proposition with the imagined future state. It’s willingness to pay. If the customer is willing to make an exchange of something valuable to them – usually money or some derivative of money like a credit card payment, but also their time and effort – in return for the new product or service, it must, by definition, feel to them like it will bring about their imagined future state, or at least part of it, or, at the very least, provide a useful test of the viability of reaching that desired state through commerce.

People buy Tesla EV’s. Businesses buy AWS cloud computing services and harness Microsoft’s AI tools to help them succeed. These are all innovations that stimulate the customer’s imagination of a better world – an emissions-free transportation system that counters the trend towards climate change; a world of easy access for all businesses to the most advanced and robust computing power; a world of new learning and experimentation. These are all imagined first by customers – “these things that matter to me could be better” – and then by entrepreneurs in response. It’s not a linear progression, of course. Perhaps the first act of imagination that ultimately led to EV’s was the thought that air pollution from tailpipe emissions is unpleasant. That meme becomes a vector in a complex system where EV’s emerge from an unfathomable number of interactions and consequences and further interactions and new experiments and news cycles and conferences and scientific advances. We can’t untangle it. Reductionism no longer applies. There’s no cause and effect. But EV’s wouldn’t happen without customers imagining a better world in the future.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #25. Jacqueline Porter on The Power of Visual Design

Visual design is an important element in value creation, especially in telling a brand’s or a business’s story in a way that engages with customers and communicates shared values. Visual designers are multi-talented artists and storytellers with an acute understanding of customers and their emotional responses to visual cues. Our guest this week is Jacqueline Porter, an accomplished professional in her field and a very successful business owner in her own right.

We explored the business of design and creativity from the challenges within design education, and the drawbacks of rigid design frameworks and the value of subjective, creative approaches. A notable reference to a transitional figure in design Steve Jobs shows how simplicity and creativity – rules and no-rules – can work together.

The conversation moves to the realm of implementation in branding, exploring the delicate and shifting balance between fixed and flexible elements. Jacqueline advocates for constant evolution, telling a story with a dynamic interplay between exploration and exploitation for sustained success. Consistency is achieved with creativity, empathy, and adaptability.

Resources: https://www.jacquelineportercreative.com/

Shownotes:

0:00 | Intro

02:28 | Jacqueline’s Defines Visual Design: Inclusions, Exclusions and Importance

03:54 | Nike Example: What Represents a Good Design?

05:32 | Jacqueline on Branding: Advertising’s Impact

06:54 | Professional Approach: Visual and Wood Synergy in Business

09:28 | Clients Don’t Know What They Want: Process VS magic

11:02 | Lum Spirits Story

15:51 | Color Palette: First Step for Visual Representation of Lum Brand

20:09 | Visual Design Mastery: Empathy, Psychology and Branding

21:23 | History of Rules VS No Rules

22:54 | Newtonian Economic Thinking and Bauhaus Analogies

24:42 | Steve Jobs Simplicity is a Transitional Example

26:27 | Designer Examples: Getting Outside of the Box

29:05 | Crack is Wack

32:22 | Implementation of Design

34:50 | Wrap Up: Fixed and Flexible Idea

Knowledge Capsule:

We can all think of excellent elements of great visual design:

  • They become an important part of our lives, our thinking, and our engagement with the world.
  • Jacqueline chose the Nike swoosh to illustrate.

Subjectivity in Design:

  • Design is a field where the subjectivism we advocate in value creation is uniquely valuable.
  • Every customer will respond personally and idiosyncratically to visual design stimulus. It will mean something different to different people.
  • Understanding the psychology of subjective value is a skill for designers.
  • Breaking traditional rules can generate more acute emotional responses..

There was a 20th century movement to make design obey objective rules: “good design”.

  • Bauhaus is associated with the “good design” concept, with prescriptive rules about function, simplicity and order.
  • When these rules were taught in design schools, it raised concerns about students becoming replaceable, like interchangeable parts, due to strict design boundaries.
  • New approaches like the Stanford D School approach left these rigidities behind, introducing the same empathic process for design as we use for value creation: understanding customer emotions, preferences and contexts comes first.

Steve Jobs as a Transitional Example:

  • Steve Jobs, despite being rules-oriented, broke conventions creatively.
  • Achieving simplicity in design while incorporating complexity in technology.

Examples of Breaking Design Rules:

  • David Carson’s defiance of good design ideals led to influential graphic design in Ray Gun.
  • Exploration of unconventional layouts, upside-down pages, layered typography, reflecting punk culture.

Great design can have huge social impact:

  • “Crack is Wack” : Keith Haring’s appeal from the heart about the crack cocaine epidemic..
  • The powerful impact of design in raising awareness and creating a call to action.

Empathy and Emotional Storytelling:

  • Hunter and Jacqueline discuss the recurring theme of empathy in effective design.
  • Emotional storytelling through research and understanding user experiences.
  • Jacqueline described the storytelling journey of Lum vodka seltzer from “illuminating the night” to “illuminating life” led to a major visual rebranding.

Brand Design and Implementation:

  • Discussion on the balance between fixed and flexible elements in branding.
  • The need for consistency in brand recognition while allowing for creative evolution.
  • Embracing constant change and evolution in design.
  • The balance between exploration and exploitation for sustained brand success.

Visual design parallels value creation in its leverage of creativity, rule-breaking, empathy, and constant evolution in the field of design and branding.

The Value Creators Episode #24. Amanda Goodall on The Power Of Expert Leaders

In our ongoing series investigating leadership in business – coming from the skeptical perspective of “Is there such a thing?” – we meet Amanda Goodall, a professor of leadership at Bayes Business School, City University of London, specializing in the influence of leaders and managers on performance, shares insights from her book “Credible: The Power of Expert Leaders.” 

She has a new perspective on business leadership. It’s not a general management function that can be taught in an MBA course. It can’t be learned from leadership courses. It can’t be implemented by management consulting firms. Leaders must first be experts in their field and the core business of the firm.

Amanda shares the importance of experts in providing a clearer sense of purpose and fostering a longer-term organizational perspective. The dialogue concludes with a call to establish expert-friendly environments, and emphasizes the removal of impediments to harness expertise for organizational success.

Resources:

https://amandagoodall.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63251919-credible

https://www.amazon.com.au/Credible-Expert-Leaders-Amanda-Goodall-ebook/dp/B0BS3FS9XH

Knowledge Capsule:

Evolution of Management:

  • Amanda discusses the historical transition from individuals working their way up through the industry to the influence of Taylorism in the 1940s.
  • Taylorism introduced a hierarchical structure, separating workers from managers, marking a significant change in organizational dynamics.

Role of Business Schools – making leadership generic and generalized:

  • Highlighting the initial existence of business schools that provided specialized education tailored to specific industries.
  • Business schools transitioned towards offering more general degrees, such as MBAs, contributing to a generic approach to leadership and management.

Management Consulting Firms – promoters of generic leadership:

  • Management consulting firms became promoters of generic leadership principles, differing from business schools.
  • The irony is that these firms, despite promoting generic leadership, are led by individuals who are internal experts, having worked their way up within the organization.

Metrics Obsession and Bureaucracy:

  • Amanda emphasizes that metrics and measurements control more and more aspects of the business. Where non-experts don’t understand the core business, they use metrics for assessing performance.
  • This results in a metric-obsessed and bureaucratic approach, impairing decision-making processes.

Importance of Expert Leadership:

  • Expert leadership contributes to a clearer sense of purpose within organizations.
  • Expert leaders win the respect of those they work with, precisely because of their expertise, and create a more collaborative and collegial workplace.
  • Expert leaders are more likely to invest in research and development, contributing to a longer-term organizational perspective.

Creating Expert-Friendly Organizations:

  • Amanda emphasizes that expert-friendly organizations recognize and cater to the needs of core workers, valuing their expertise.
  • Expert-friendly organizations can remove unnecessary barriers to expert direction, such as excessive rules and bureaucracy, to create an expert-friendly work environment.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #22 Cynthia Kay on Small Business, Big Success

We live in a video age, which opens up a vast array of entrepreneurial pathways. Video is a field for open-ended free creative expression, as well as for tightly managed business tools built for ROI. It’s the ideal field for creative entrepreneurial small business innovators. Cynthia Kay of CK and CO is both a business founder and CEO of a video production business, and a consultant and advisor to small businesses. She shared some of her insights and a preview of her 2024 book Small Business Big Success. 

Resources: 

CK’s business resources site: https://cynthiakaybiz.com/

Books you can buy now: https://cynthiakaybiz.com/books/

Cynthia Kay’s upcoming 2024 Book – Small Business, Big Success:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CFWFZQTS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1700618573&sr=8-3

Knowledge Capsule:

Value Proposition:

  • Like any other entrepreneurial business, a video production business needs a compelling value proposition.
  • A value proposition is always about meeting customer needs – what need are they filling by paying for video production?
  • No matter how creative, video production must offer a customer value that exceeds perceived costs. It must make customers feel proud and fulfilled, and give them a sense of standing out from the crowd.
  • This often includes educating them on how to use a supplier’s services, e.g. the many different benefits and values available from one video shoot.

Operational Excellence:

  • High creativity does not in any way reduce the need for a video production business – or any small businesses –  to prioritise operational excellence.
  • Customer expectations of excellence are high, no matter the size of the supplier they choose.
  • CK advocates the use of top notch systems, procedures, and automation to enhance overall efficiency. Build the back room to be as strong and dependable as possible. Every business can deploy the best systems.
  • Owners must be in the operational trenches.

Return on Investment (ROI) Challenges:

  • Calculating  ROI in creative fields is a challenge – but must be done as part of the customer value proposition.
  • There’s such a thing as subjective calculation – e.g. recognizing the role of anecdotal evidence in demonstrating the value of creative services.
  • Focus ROI on the things that matter for customers.

Being the Best in Business:

  • Whatever business you are in, set out to be the best.
  • Making – and living up to – such a claim can be based on multifaceted performance.
  • Consider factors such as understanding client needs, building strong relationships, and optimising the utilisation of budgetary resources.
  • One of CK’s propositions is to be the best at getting the most of a client’s budget, whatever size it is. That’s an excellent “best” claim.

Small Business Success Strategies:

  • Pick your customers carefully – pick those who will love you and those you can grow with.
  • Commit to building relationships over time.
  • Build great teams that are right for the client, and turn them loose.

Supporting Small Businesses:

  • Cynthia Kay not only runs a small business,she plays a big role in helping others and in supporting small businesses in general.
  • She’s actively involved in associations and support groups, and urges other small businesses to do the same.
  • She gives her time to the facilitation of roundtable discussions, and offering advice on common challenges faced by small businesses, including scaling and team development. These kinds of discussions can yield enormous value for participants just by sharing experiences.
  • It’s good for small businesses to support other small businesses and build the business backbone of the neighbourhood, the town, the city, the state and the nation.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #21. Forging New Relationships Between Entrepreneurs and Capital with LaSean Smith

LaSean Smith outlines a business investment partnership built on permanent capital, emphasizing long-term commitment and trust-building between an investor/source of capital and a business. The discussion covers disciplined methodologies, leadership transitions, and a unique compensation approach using Phantom Stock Shares. LaSean predicts a rise in smaller, values-based companies, and underscores the significance of audience and automation in acquiring and revitalizing brands. 

There can be a shift towards stable, smaller businesses connected to communities, challenging the trend of dominance by larger and larger corporations.


Resources:
CAGR Investments: https://cagr.com/

Knowledge Capsule:

Permanent Capital Strategy:

  • There’s an investment strategy and a business strategy based permanent capital. It’s not widely used but has broad potential. It emphasizes the importance of long-term commitment by both the investor and the business. Short-term operational demands are entirely left to the business CEO.
  • LaSean Smith explains the advantages of having an investment structure that accommodates a longed shared journey, building a high degree of trust and confidence.

Operational Approach:

  • LaSean highlights a disciplined methodology to tighten business processes and leverage content-based marketing to assist companies. 
  • Small and mid-sized businesses often miss the great efficiencies available by automating processes. And they waste resources on direct sales and inappropriate marketing tactics.

Leadership Transition:

  • Permanent capital is a long-term investment; it works when there is a corresponding long-term commitment of current operators.
  • Some CEOs may want to avoid continuing in the business, especially in cases where technical founders find themselves dealing with aspects like sales and marketing, which they may not enjoy. Relieving them of that burden may extend their tenure.

Phantom Stock Shares:

  • Permanent capital embraces a unique approach to leadership compensation using Phantom Stock Shares – aligning incentives by granting bonus or dividend shares that compound in value until the leader leaves the company. This helps in providing a simple ownership structure and shared incentives without diluting ownership equity for the investor.

Cash Flow and Value Creation:

  • The conversation delves into the concept of cash flow and value creation, discussing how businesses can fade over time if not innovating. Lasean emphasizes the importance of adding technology and content marketing layers to ensure longevity.

Audience and Automation:

  • The concept of audience and automation is highlighted as a critical factor in the success of businesses, especially those acquiring old brands. Engaging content marketing towards a target audience allows for driving brands through existing supply chains, reducing customer acquisition costs.