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The
GE Leadership Effectiveness Survey (LES)
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Demonstrates broad business knowledge /
perspective with cross-functional /
multicultural awareness...
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Pearls of Wisdom |
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East
The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at
every point but does not move.
–
Rabindranath Tagore
We join screws in the wheels, but it
is the hole in the wheel that drives the vehicle.
–
Lao Tzu
I see true innovation to be made up of
three 'creativities' – creativity in technology, product planning, and
marketing.
–
Akio Morita
West
You can't do carpentry, you know, if you
only have a saw, or only a hammer, or you never heard of a pair of
pliers. It's when you put all those tools into one kit that you invent.
– Peter Drucker
Most great ideas are really combinations of
other ideas.
– Paul Sloane
The simple secret of my genius is that I
created something new out of the ideas and inventions of others.
–
Henry Ford |
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Build Your
Cross-Functional Excellence
to Achieve
Your Objectives: |
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As a
Corporate Leader
and a
Business Architect:
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To build and manage your
complex organization as a balanced
business system
– a system of
interrelated factors of strategy, owners, investors, management,
workers, finance, processes, products, suppliers, customers, and
competitors
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To become an effective
business architect who can
tie several silos of business development expertise together, create
synergies, design winning
business
model and a
balanced business system
and then
lead people who will put their plans into action
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To master
enterprise-wide business process management
(EBPM) by
focusing on the whole, not
the parts, of a complex system.
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To establish
institutional excellence
– to lead
organizational restructuring and
change
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To master the
results-based leadership
by balancing the four types of results: customer results,
organization results, investor results, and employee results.
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To develop and implement effectively your
corporate strategy
by mastering the modern
resources-based model
to build your
sustainable competitive advantage
through finding the best fit between the external market context in
which your company operates and its internal resources and
capabilities.
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To achieve
sustainable corporate growth by balancing
venture strategies and
continuous improvement practices
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To build and effective
innovation system by
balancing its six core elements:
leadership & management, strategic alignment,
innovation process, organization
& people, metrics, and
corporate culture
As an Innovation
Project Leader
As an Entrepreneur
(in the broad sense of this word)
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Cross-Functional Technology Managers |
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are skilled technologists
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value the contribution from
other functions
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play an active role
integrating these functions during the
innovation process
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Maintaining a Fresh
Perspective with Your Employees
10 Tips |
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Encourage employees to learn a variety of
skills and develop cross-functional excellence...
More
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Case in Point
Attributes of the
Super Smart Sought by Microsoft |
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Best Practices
HP Values |
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We attract highly capable, diverse, and innovative people and
recognize their efforts and contribution to the company....
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Why Do You
Need Cross-Functional Excellence?
Innovation is a pervasively cross-functional process.
Although innovation is driven by
technology, required competence extends beyond technical know-how. In the
new knowledge economy and
knowledge-based enterprises,
systemic innovative solutions arise from complex interactions between
many individuals, organizations and environmental factors.
The boundaries
between products and services fade rapidly too. If you wish to be a
market leader today, you must be able to integrate in a
balanced way different types of know-how that would transform
stand-alone technologies, products and services into a seamless, value-rich
solution.
10 Commandments of Innovation
Synergize.
Build your cross-functional expertise
and systems thinking skills...
More
No Idea is Wasted!
Your mind
can accept only those ideas that have a frame of reference with your
existing knowledge. It rejects everything else. If your knowledge is
functionally focused, you'll be open to new ideas related to your functional
expertise only and will miss all other learning and innovation
opportunities.
If you develop a broad cross-functional
expertise, no new idea is wasted. It will immediately connect with the
existing knowledge and inspire you, energize you, and encourage your
entrepreneurial creativity.
The broader your net, the more fish you can catch.
The Danger of
Categorization
"It's a pity nature isn't divided into the same
categories as universities."
We need categories to be
able to handle the huge amount of information we use and control.
That's why we have a
hierarchy of folders and files in our computer, and that's why universities
are categorized into faculties and departments. Categorization helps you,
but can also prevent you from using what you know about one field in
another.
There is a well known
problem in education called the transference problem. If you teach something
in one context, students most likely will not be able to use that knowledge
in another6 and build synergies...
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Combining the Unusual
The vast majority of new ideas are not original
but derived from something else. Most great ideas are really combinations of
other ideas.4
When asked about the secrets of his success,
Henry Ford answered, "The simple secret of my genius is that I created
something new out of the ideas and inventions of others."
Learn Playing More Than One
Note
If you learn not one, but the whole spectrum of
notes, you will not have to play mono-tone music all the time. Your will
discover much more opportunities and, by engaging your
lateral thinking,
self-motivation,
and systems thinking arts and skills,
create
great symphonies and improvise whenever necessary.
Leading an Organization
We all start our careers as
specialists – men and women with narrow corridors of functional expertise.
The goal of specialists is to optimize individual effort. Technologists want
to design the best products. Salespeople want to develop the most effective
marketing strategies... and on and on. But "to raise to the ranks of senior
management, you must forgo this quest for personal perfection, seeking
instead to balance the skills and capabilities of
the specialists working for you."1 You need to apply the
balanced business system
approach and consider your business as a system of interrelated factors of
strategy, owners, investors, management, workers, finance, processes,
products, suppliers, customers, and competitors.
Strategic Cross-Functional Management
Strategic cross-functional
management
is central to capitalizing on functional excellence, and in order for
functional specialists to make the greatest possible contribution, they must
take a broader view of their functions and understand how they fit into the
web of the organizational processes and, ultimately, into the overall
strategy...
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Value Chain Management
Making
breakthrough improvements in your value chain requires
out
of the box, cross-functional, systems thinking. You have to see
the
value creation
process across the entire flow of work, not just single points...
More
Driving Radical Innovation
"Here is the paradox: You need a
great team of people with diverse skills to perform a symphony well, but no
team has ever written a great symphony!".3
While
cross-functional teams are
key players in defining and implementing incremental innovation projects,
cross-functional disruptive individuals tend to be key players in defining
radical innovation projects. Individuals who are likely to excel in a
radical innovation project, besides
having superior technical capabilities, should be goal-oriented, broadly
educated, creative, extremely bright, not afraid to be different,
integrative, flexible, passionate, entrepreneurial, aggressive, eager to
learn business, able to take risks, and inquisitive.3
Managing
Technology
In the new era of
systemic innovation,
cross-functional technology managers are in high demand. In the Silicon
Valley, for instance, many companies found that when they moved to a flatter
organization, they had plenty of top-flight technologists but too few
technology managers. "These managers are skilled technologists who also
value the contribution from other functions, and who play an active role
integrating these functions during the
innovation process".2
Managing
Knowledge
The explosion of
knowledge growth, combined with its rapid distribution, makes it
difficult to stay on top of the available knowledge in any industry. Thus, a
global knowledge economy rewards not only creators of new knowledge but
also those who can identify and integrate knowledge effectively.2
Case in Point
The Rise
of the IT Architect
IT architects are in growing demand. They
are cross-functionally excellent people who can "tie several silos of
expertise together," relate to business problems as well as technology, and
then sell their ideas upward and downward in the corporate hierarchy. The
position of IT architect has become increasingly important to the
ever-changing IT industry, and is one that established corporations and
start-ups are seeking.
"As IT positions become more specialized and
include increasingly detailed responsibilities, there's a need for someone
who can tie several silos of expertise together," says Al Volvano, a product
manager for Microsoft's Learning Group. "Enterprise architects aren't just
technology experts; they are leaders with broad IT knowledge, the savvy to
apply it to business problems and the
communication skills necessary to coordinate the people who will put
their plans into action," says Bill Liguori, senior vice president and
co-founder of the placement firm Leadership Capital Group.7
Case in Point
Microsoft
Bill Gates believes that the greater the human
"bandwidth" that he employs (in other words, collective intelligence
Microsoft hires and develops), the greater the strength of his company.
Narrow-minded technologists have never fitted Gates' broader ambitions.
Gates uses the word "bandwidth" to describe people's intellectual
capacity...
More
Case in Point
Ten3
Business e-Coach
Ten3
Business e-Coach, a new-to-the-world product and the world leader in
business e-coaching is a great illustration of the power of cross-functional
expertise as a source of sustainable competitive
advantage. The e-Coach integrates synergistically and systemically
many various expertises to inspire innovation
and entrepreneurial creativity. Launched in 2001 initially as a
hobby and later on as a home business, by 2005 it has customers in more than
70 countries. This global success created no direct competition to Ten3
Business e-Coach however. Why? Because potential me-tooers had no
cross-functional experts to develop a competitive systemic e-coaching
service and keep upgrading it continuously with the same speed.
Thriving in
a Complex Business Environment...
Advanced Management Program (AMP)...
Managing Rapid Growth...
Real-time Business Development...
Diverse Routes to Innovation...
Strategy,
Product, and Process Innovation...
Leading
Innovation...
Value Innovation...
Business Innovation...
Organizational Innovation...
Creative Marketing...
The Power of Taking a
Different View...
Entrepreneurial Creativity...
Managing
Innovation by Cross-functional Teams...
Case in Point
IDEO...
Case in Point
AT&T: Developing New Credit Card Service...
Case in Point
Silicon Valley Companies...
Case in Point
Genetics...
Case in Point
Printing Press...
Case in Point
Hewlett-Packard...
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