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Reprinted from my internal, IBM blog, "Learning to Lead":
Reprinted from my internal, IBM blog, "Learning to Lead":
"That's why they call it leadership," were the final remarks of Oxford Professor Marc Ventresca
at Oxford's session on "Beyond Disruption: Ideas with Impact". He was
referring to how enterprises need a purpose and not just a mission, and
specifically, provided the examples of CVS, opting no longer to sell
tobacco products, since it's a healthcare company [I could argue that it
shouldn't sell candy in that case either], and to Unilever, vowing to become an environmentally sustainable firm. At IBM, our purpose is to be essential. And in our [behind-the-firewall, internal-only] 1-3-9 Purpose, Values and Practices
site, we can review, "What does 'being essential' look like to our
clients? It’s seeing our passion for going above and beyond to meet
their needs by applying our Practices to every aspect of the client
experience."
What does being essential look like to our IBM Learning
clients? Surprising and delighting IBMers, and increasingly IBM Business
Partners, clients and prospective IBMers with learning experiences that
help them build their skills. And how do we do keep doing what we
already do well, that is, training leaders and sellers while in parallel
venturing into training people for new roles, for example, Watsoners
and Offering Managers? Or how do we keep doing what we already do well,
e.g., face-to-face, classroom courses and online learning while at the
same time experimenting with Virtual Reality, social technologies and
Watson-powered robots for learning?
What is IBM Learning's purpose? It needs to go
beyond our mission. Professor Ventresca quoted Lenovo's CMO, "The
mission statement [merely] has to make sense; purpose has to resonate."
Is our purpose to build skills of the new IBM? Let's try it: IBM
Learning's purpose is to build skills of the new IBM. That resonates
with me. How about with you?
Professor Ventresca started his remarks by using
Kodak as an example of exploiting its core business while insufficiently
exploring its new business opportunities. He explained that Kodak had
patented 28 percent of digital technology, but didn't see the disruption
of the web coming. If it had, it would have seen that the web made
sharing electronic photos wildly easier and that they had viral
potential. "Disruptive technology is not great initially, and then it
becomes good enough, and then coupled with other things, it becomes
transformational." Kodak was a relatively old example compared to his
next, Uber, which is already moving from being a better taxi service to
starting a driverless car venture. Why did Google buy Waze, asked
Professor Ventresca, too. "To craft it's driverless strategy." And
Tesla, he said, is not a car company as much as it's really trying to
become the home battery company, trying to solve long-term battery
storage.
On driverless technology, Professor Ventresca said, "It
won't necessarily even be the best. It'll be the winning consortium."
Another word for consortium, he explained, is ecosystem. "Be more of an
ecosystem player and talk with groups from other organizations ....
Establish disciplines for selecting, experimenting, funding and
terminating new growth businesses .... Purpose," said the professor,
"builds bridges across ecosystems."
Prior to the session, with beverages in our hands,
participants did a bit of mingling. I was fortunate to talk with the
head of Digital at Citi, along with the head of Oxford's Custom
Executive Programs, and eventually the professor himself. I asked the
Exec. ed. leader if she knew our own IBMer Michael Coleman,
an Oxford alumnus, who does IBM recruiting at Oxford, and she said,
"I've been in my role for just two months, but Marc [the professor]
might."
Unfortunately, by the time the professor joined us, I
missed the opportunity. In fact, as I write this, I wonder if Michael
made our VP Guillermo aware of the event and if that was the genesis(!)
During my pre-session conversations, I *was* able to learn that the head
of Citi's Digital group had been an IBMer in Australia in the '90s, in
the days of O/S2; that the head of Oxford's exec. ed. group had done her
Doctorate on rocks on Mars -- and I mentioned that I had adored rocks
and minerals as a child, and at 10, with my best friend Amy, had been
the two youngest members of the Stamford Mineralogical Society;
and that the professor and I both loved Chicago. We had lived there
around the same time -- in my case, more than 20 years ago. The Citi
leader exclaimed, "You're the best networker here: You found a
connection between the two of us with IBM, with Elaine [the exec. ed.
head] as a fellow lover of rocks and with the professor around Chicago."
I wonder, if IBM, Oxford and Citi were introducing a disruptive
technology together, what could it be, and would our ecosystem help us
win over any competitors, introducing a similar disruptive technology?
For fun, here's a reminder of how easy it is to share
photos over the web; I snapped this shot of the marvelous Chrysler
building while approaching Oxford's offices on Fifth Avenue from 42nd
Street:
Follow the professor on Twitter, like I now do, if you're also intrigued by his remarks.
