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"Blessed are the rule breakers. They shalt inherit the Future.
We have always admired the great renegades of business, brave souls who dared to deny the status quo, defy the odds, and pioneer a new normal. Nicolas Tesla. Richard Branson. Tony Stark.
One thing all great titans of industry have in common is this: they were able to identify rules that don't exist and had the courage to break them.
Of course, there are plenty of rules that DO exist. If you commit fraud or neglect to pay taxes, I hope you look good in an orange jumpsuit. But the rules that DON'T exist greatly outnumber the ones that do. History is filled with examples of those who profited greatly by dispensing with so-called 'rules.'"
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"Globalization until very recently meant Western companies exporting their products, leaders and ways of doing business around the world. That is now changing and today executives face a bewildering level of uncertainty in the multi-polar world that is fast emerging. If you are doing business in Africa, you are now likely to face significant competition from local players, as well as from Indian or Chinese companies that have emerged onto the global stage. The leadership teams of many multi-nationals were often literally a pale reflection of the international community, but slowly increasing diversity is evident in boardrooms and senior teams. But how do you deepen this diversity and make it work productively? ... A range of convergent evidence from neuroscience, behavioral genetics, values surveys, as well as our own research with thousands of leaders globally, identifies certain Cultural DNA themes for each of the world's main societies and their associated leadership implications."
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"If you looked at the way entrepreneurs act, you would be tempted to conclude there is not a lot to be learned from studying them. You would have to be Bill Gates to start Microsoft and Oprah Winfrey to begin Harpo. But if you look at the way they think, you will discover amazing similarities.
When successful entrepreneurs head off into the unknown—and there is nothing more unknown than starting a new company—they ... reduce it to a formula. They: Act. Learn. Build (off that learning.) And Repeat.
But notice what is going on, because the steps are small, and so is what it puts at risk. It's a way of keep potential failures from being devastating."
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"The drugs that businesses are addicted to are discounts, coupons, BOGOs, off-price flyers, free-with-purchase offers... the list of ways to get that short-term sales high goes on. Too many good marketers are engaging in bad, self-defeating, costly behavior, with an over-reliance on incentives, and all the accompanying mass advertising required to promote them.
If you have to continuously discount your product or service, or scream to the largest possible audience in order to get people to notice you, and to care enough about you to buy—then your business isn't healthy. Either you're offering goods or services people don't really want, or your brand is failing to demonstrate a compelling value proposition that meets consumer expectations for your category.
Brand leaders across North America have become overly fixated on dealing with the symptoms of their pain, rather than addressing the core issues that cause them to have to resort to bribery just to get people to buy. And the proliferation of incentives and advertising has become so bad that many businesses are now overdosing on these short-term stimulants."
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"We started with nothing. Now we have something. The receptacle is no longer empty. This makes all the difference.
Through carelessness, inattention, or miscalculation, we may inadvertently overfill it to the detriment of the whole. Additions once led to improvement. Beyond a certain point, that is no longer the case. Additions begin to make things worse.
When our additions get out of control, the plot becomes jumbled, the colors muddied, the flavors discordant or overpowering. The new pieces do not simply add less than the previous pieces—they actually diminish the value of the whole."
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