Archives for August 2013

Leadership in Small Companies vs. Big Companies – Hiring for Passion

Earlier this week I was presenting in front of a group of successful entrepreneurs, each of whom had built a business from scratch and turned it into a $10m+ company.  As they talked about their businesses you could see the passion for their company oozing out of their pores.  They had “made it” by almost every definition of the word but you could tell that their entrepreneurial spirit hadn’t waned.  Their success had afforded them more control over their time but they certainly weren’t resting on their laurels.  They were passionate about growing their businesses.  This post is my first in a series on Leadership in Small Companies vs. Big Companies and covers how small companies can be more focused on hiring for passion.

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Innovation Excellence: Five Ways Organizations Lose When They Cover Up Innovation Failures

When executives are allowed to hide their innovation failures the entire organization suffers.  False expectations are set for the entire group of executives, innovation leaders see their careers scuttled, and every other employee fails to learn from the failure.  Without clear organizational expectations of documenting, sharing, and learning from our failures we will continue to see them covered up.  Left to our own devices we will naturally seek to avoid our failures and move into self-preservation mode.  In my work helping organizations to build strong innovation processes this is a common issue but it can be resolved.

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Why Bezos Will Find Success – He’s Stubborn on Long-Term Vision but Flexible on Details

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on how Jeff Bezos creates opportunity for vast discovery at Amazon (my post Amazon Drives Innovation by Creating Opportunities for Vast Discovery).  I had actually been working on this post at the time when I found a great quote from Bezos on the culture of “pioneering” that he was trying to create at Amazon.  It made for such a great story that I just had to run with it and push this story aside.  Well, Bezos has done it again.  He threw the world another curveball yesterday with the announcement that he is purchasing The Washington Post for $250 million.  The pundits are in a whirlwind discussing whether or not Bezos will be successful with this big gamble.  Knowing Bezos and his long-term orientation I would give him better odds than most that he will find success.

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