Session Information:

IT Infrastructure & Cloud Strategies: How Great Enduring Organizations Build Value Creation Cultures

In a world disrupted by exponential technologies, how do you build a culture of Excellence & Innovation where extraordinary performance becomes ordinary? Organizations that consistently deliver exponential leaders, growth, and value creation.

We will explore how enduringly great, cross-industry organizations build their cultures as the ultimate engine for value creation and sustainable competitive advantage. 

Session Transcript:

Strategists, I am excited about being the next speaker to share with you, our journey off for great and three organizations. So I'm going to change hats here because the, my topic will be IT infrastructure and cloud strategies.

How great and during organizations build value creation cultures. So with that, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go from chair to speaker now, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna change my background to reflect the topic that we're going to discuss. This topic that we're going to discuss here, is culture and its culture on organizations that have achieved cultures that give them the ultimate, competitive advantage in the marketplace. So, let me change that background, and we're going from our homes, our offices, to the designing and implementing corporate culture. So, let's go right into it, and I want to start by sharing with you that everything that I'm going to be talking about here today, is not my personal vehicles on how things should be.

Those personal fields are interesting, but, but I am not a visionary who can predict the future. I will start by telling you that there are only two types of people who predict the future, Those who don't know, and those who don't know that they don't know.

And so I'm, I'm in one of those two categories like you are, like everybody else, is, what we have learned through three decades of practice.

In a very non-linear, fast changing environment that we have experience, is that visionary leaders, they are not able to predict the future, either.

What they do is they are highly empirical. They experiment constantly with their organizations in very thoughtful ways, and sometimes in very small ways. And what they do, is that they see? What doesn't work, and they let go?

Of it, and then they find things that work, and then they try to understand. Why it works, and then the scale that and and this great leaders and organizations that we have learned so much with. I'm indebted to all of them. Not enough time to thank all of them over 100 across industry.

Organizations and leaders who have built this concept with us, and they apply it at different levels of the organization to create disproportional. Improvements and innovations for their organization for their partners and for their customers.

So, let's start by saying that there is no such thing as just digital transformation.

If you're talking about, you know, digitizing systems, that digitization is does not necessarily mean that there is a transformation associated with that.

Now, to be fair, for, if there is an attempt to do a digital transformation, then there is no digital transformation with doubt, business transformation, and there is no business transformation without culture transformation. So let's go back to the root of all successful transformations. And let's understand, in very simple terms what culture is.

We could debate this for a graduate level, classes for months, if not years, but we're gonna take everything from a very practical approach. And from a practical approach, a culture is just the habits and the behaviors of individuals and teams in the organization.

So let the mystify, let's demystify culture. Let's simplify what it is.

And it's ultimately, what you see in terms of the habits and behaviors of individuals and teams in your organization, of course, is influenced by a lot of different things, but ultimately, the behaviors of individuals and teams establish the culture in an organization. Now there then, the follow-up question is, OK, good, so we can be intentional about that culture, if we're going to transform into something else. We need to know, what do we want to transforming chew?

And that's not trivial question. And there are no trivial astra's the frightening, ... standpoint, if I look at the subset of great, enduring organizations, organizations that are only have done this successfully for 1 or 2 years, they have done it successfully for 10 or more years. And this is very important. Because the context of our discussion today is for those organizations who have been chronically consistent with their purpose and executed on transforming their culture over 10 or more years.

Again, any mediocre organization or leader can do it for a few months or 1 or 2 years, but very, very few can be chronically consistent with their purpose over 10 over a decade or more. And remember this, the signature of mediocrity is not even an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency, is chronic inconsistency with your purpose as an organization, and certainly, as an individual, as well. So, this is all about setting the background here, setting the stage, that culture, what well, we need to know, what we want to transform into. We need to be chronically consistent with that.

And I will pause it that every successful culture, every good culture, is a culture that exhibits value, creation behaviors.

And you may look at that and say, Well, OK. But, well, that isn't that an oversimplification? And I'll tell you at it, it's not.

Because if you look at successful cultures, they have value creation behaviors, value creation can be financial value creation, and can be social value creation depending on the type of organization you are.

So, this is, but it is true for all successful cultures that they have developed value creation behaviors for their context. And that's what defines a good culture in the long term. So keep this concepts in mind. Now, it's very hard to set and design culture.

It's much harder to transform a culture, because culture and business transformation requires the culture's to go against what they most need to change.

Because these transformations are hard, because cultures in their initial state, they will resist often what they most need to change what they most need to transform into something else. So, no wonder that most transformations are not successful. It's, it's like, it's a spring system, and the spring wants to coil back to its original state. And, at the end and you're going against that grain, that structure, that, that that has defined the current culture. And, remember, and you have to be empathetic to this, Cultures are an extension of people.

Organizations are an extension of people, and they are not wired for change.

At a fundamental level, people and organizations are wired for safety and predictability.

And when we want to try to transform, we are trying to, we are going very much against the nature of people, and organizations, and establish behaviors.

So with all of that in mind, it's important that we understand how difficult the challenge is. But it's even more important that if we're going to face this challenge, that we understand the components well. Because most organizations and leaders don't even understand what it takes to transform a business center, transform a culture.

So I'm giving you here a summary kind of the cliff notes, if you will, on how great, enduring organizations do it, they start with a very clear purpose on what they want to become and why they want to become that.

And that is followed by a strong set of core values that they live consistently with, on a daily basis, and the belief system that supports those core values.

Then you need to have moods and feelings associated with the core values and beliefs. Aline.

And then you need to develop the right mindsets related to what is that you want to become. Let's say you wanted to become more innovative as part of your culture. You need to have develop innovation mindsets. And that's not enough, because now, you need to understand, what are the key principles associated with what you want to become. Again, if you want to become innovative, if innovation is a mindset you want to have, what are the key principles of innovation that you must develop in the organization?

And that is not enough. Because, honestly, up to that point, it's kind of an intellectual exercise. The real difficulty is, is, what are the mechanisms that you have in your organization to translate this principles into action?

Because, remember, it is, for those actions that you're going to exhibit.

The behaviors there are going to dictate what the new culture looks like, because culture is the behaviors that people exhibit in the organization.

So, this is like common sense to those who know. But common sense is the least common of the senses in large organizations. And most leadership teams, and I know this from practical experience today, most leadership teams don't have a good understanding of culture for formation and transformation and what it takes to go through each one of this stages successfully. So, keep this picture in mind.

It's very important to guide you in your own transformation, then let's get even a little bit more tactical because that's kind of high level stuff, so let's get more tactical about it. So OK, so how do I deal now joza from an execution standpoint on this transformation on, on, on what is most important on driving this journey? Is it about ideas? Is it about methods? Is it, about technologists, or is it about people?

What are you going to hear me saying? Is that, ideas are very important because you need to new ideas you need.

If you want to have a good idea, need lots of ideas and you need, you need systems for those ideas, But, but I will also tell you that ideas are everywhere and what are uncommon?

Are people willing to put their reputation behind ideas, OK, Shows that, So, it must be Methods, right? Methods are most important, because methods gives you that discipline, framework for execution, and execution is so important.

When it comes to this transformation, Yeah, it's true that you need that.

But, at the same time, remember, the methods alone do not transform businesses, people do.

I often say that, you know, for nearly three decades, I have been a certified Lean six Sigma Master Black Belt, but for most people, it sounds like I have a dangerous mental condition. It's not really helping them to get things done. So methods are important, but they do not transform businesses alone.

They know that people do that, OK, OK, soldiers must be technologists, right? I mean, look at where we are today, we're talking about IT infrastructure and cloud strategist. Our next guest will be the global leader for sap technology. So, it must be technologists exponential technologies. I know you'll do all of this conference is on an exponential technologies. That's it, right, that's the deciding factor.

Well, it's not!

Because technologies are wonderful when the the right technologies enable your processes to deliver value to the customers, to the enterprise, to society, and they allow you to do that faster, cheaper, and better. Wonderful.

But also, technologists can make stupid happen at the speed of light.

It is not trivial to know what is the right technology and what is not the right technology for a certain organization.

So, So, technology, again, is not a, it's not a slam dunk. Oh, so I got it, it's must be people because people are most important asset.

That sounds very good. That sounds very noble. But through a lot of M&A experiences in three decades, why is that? I see people getting pushed out of the door very fast, but the assets of the organization remain intact during the mergers and acquisition process.

So if people are most important, Asad, why is that?

So often, there are Let Go.

So he sounds noble.

But we, I'm not here to make you feel good. I'm here to share with you empirically what we have observed in the behaviors of organizations.

And ah and while we see is that, while all people must be respected, that all people have intrinsic value to the organization.

There is a subset of the people in the organization which I will refer to the right people that disproportionally impact, anything that you do in the organization, and you have to know. So it's about those right people. So remember, I said all of these things here. Ideas matters, technologies, And people are important. But I also said on the other breath that every one of these things don't matter that much.

So what is it, Dan, Joseph?

And there comes one of the greatest lessons.

Great, enduring organizations are masters of contradictions. Great, enduring organizations know that the world of greatness is not an or world. The world of greatness is a and world, where you have forces the poor in very different directions. And when you have option A or option B gradient during organizations do not choose either one of those options. They choose the halogen blending of those forces that pull in different directions.

And there is. and there are no greater forces of contradiction, than the forces of excellence and innovation in this great enduring organizations.

And what typical mediocre organizations do first is that they look at excellence. And they say, Wow, we're going to be the best at what we do. We're going to be the most excellent operational excellence, business, excellence, customer excellence, whatever excellence you have, you. I'm going to set high performance standards, and I'm going to consistently meet and exceed those performance standards.

That sounds wonderful.

But if you just do that, you're going to become obsolete.

Eventually, you're going to be leapfrogged. You saw the presentation from Agnos Banker before about the S curve cycles that every industry, every business model, has.

And I don't care where you are and what you do, you will get disrupted if you just do that.

You cannot design cars by squeezing efficiencies out of horses at one point. You need to have a different perspective at the transportation problem.

And you need to come up with some innovations. Otherwise you become obsolete.

So you may hear that and think, oh, there we go. And a lot of organizations do this and a lot of leaders do this. Innovation is what it is. Degrading doing your organizations of our time are the most innovative organizations.

That is wrong. That is absolutely not true, the most innovative organizations of our time. You don't even get to hear about them, know why? Because they just die.

They, they, they, they, they scatter like fireworks, a flash in the pan, because they believe that being innovative is most important, and they become passionate about innovation. They fall in love with innovation, and they fall in love with technology.

Often, in the die is low death, because they lose track of their ultimate purpose. They don't even know what that is sometimes, because they are so ingrained in the act of innovation and technology alone.

So the greater than three organizations are not the most innovative organizations. And there is plenty of empirical evidence to support that. Now, I don't want you to believe anything that I say, I want you to try yourself, because it's only by observing and practicing yourself, that these concepts are going to internalize and you're gonna understand the depth of this concepts. Consider this, just a cheat sheet.

So, with that, so, what is it than just a is it excellence or is that innovation?

It is both.

It is the intelligent blending of excellence and innovation forces by the way that despise each other. The world of excellence doesn't like innovation. The world of innovation doesn't like excellence.

But, in great, I'm doing your organizations, what you see is that they have mastered this contradictions.

They have the intelligent blending of this forces.

Typically, what they look like is that at their core, they are excellent organizations, They have set high performance standards, and they have they are very disciplined about meeting and exceeding those performance standards. That is no small task, by the way. Most organizations don't have that.

But great enduring organizations have that, but that, that is, that is necessary, but not sufficient for greatness.

Great. Enduring organizations also have the discipline to step away from the excellence they have created. Look at it from a different perspective and say there's gotta be a better way. They come up with those better ways in parallel.

And here is the difference, that is the innovation piece, right? Once they come up with those innovations, they just don't fall in love with those innovations, and they don't don't just continuously innovate on that. What they do, they scale the small innovations that they created.

They scaled that better than their competitors do in their industry.

And, they become dominant in their industry, but if you look under the hood on how they scaled those innovations, they scaled those innovations by applying the principles of excellence to the innovations that they created.

This is not by no means intuitive.

You requires the mastery of the contradictions of excellence and innovation. But they realize that is intelligent blending of the two that allows them to be enduring only, great. Now, with that, let me go a little bit deeper, Not in the organizations that I have collaborated with over 30,000 excellence and innovation leaders in more than 20 countries. And, and, you know, hundreds of organizations. That's wonderful.

Just say, But the reality is that, what if I had to live with the consequences of my advice, what it will be like. So, what I want to share with you are 25 years of leading excellence and innovation as an organizational leader for this organizations that you see here on the screen. In one more that's going to come up.

So, I was born in Brazil. I was educated in the United States with a background in interdisciplinary engineering, mechanical, Africa, engineering, mechanical engineering physics, and later on, graduate studies in investment banking and entrepreneurship.

Highly educated, no practical experience.

Went to work for Japanese giant, Sony electronics in the design group, one of the most prestigious design and process engineering groups of Sony. With the most technologically advanced settings that we had at that time with Sony was truly a technological leader.

And what I want to share with each one of these organizations very briefly because of our reduced time here, is just some of the key lessons that, should this day drive the performance of great enduring organizations, The lessons of excellence, the lessons of innovation.

So the lessons from Sony, short story there, my Japanese boss, she go High Ash. High Ash Hassan's spoke very little English and my Japanese with super crappy. So we're communicating and gene glitch.

And he was a man of few words, and when I first started he, he asked me to identify 100 innovations between the research center and the advanced manufacturing facility.

I was completely overwhelmed, because I thought I was going to go for some training program for new engineers.

And this man just asked me for identify 100 innovations. And, I look at him, and I say, you know, can I get some training? And, he looks at me and says, no training. You must do.

So, here's the lesson. First of all, I thought I was going to get fired and the first week. And, at the end of the week, I came up with 100 innovations. Most of them were no good, probably 10 or 20. There were decent he'd, grill mill, and every one of them. And then the next week, instead of getting more training that I was hoping for, he told me that I should do 200 innovations.

So, why did he do that? To resist?

Ah, In the mind of the expert, there is only one way in the mind of the novice. There are many ways he was looking for innovation from me.

So, he was looking for me to have the mindset of the novice for a short period of time big before I got train and indoctrinated and develop the mindset of the expert.

But, here's the tricky portion, Ah.

The mindset of the novice alone is not enough as much as the mindset of the expert alone are not enough.

You need to have the bland.

Imagine that of this mindsets, the pull in different directions, you need to find individuals and developing your organization both the mindset of the novice and the mindset of the expert, because the mindset is pretty good. They might, the novice, is pretty good at coming up with innovations, and usually terrible at scaling and innovations they come up with.

The experts are typically pretty lousy at coming up with new innovations, But they are usually pretty decent at scaling innovations. So if you can blend those mindsets, that's wonderful.

Now, the second lesson is probably even more important for you to accelerate excellence and most important for you to accelerate innovation your organization.

You need to find what we call the amplifiers of innovation in your organization. The true innovation and value creation leaders.

And this individuals, you cannot find them. By looking at their gender, their ethnicity, their race, their experience, or how many certificates they have hanging on the I love myself wall.

You only find this people by creating a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms for innovation and value creation because they are revealed by the task of innovation execution.

And once they are revealed, if you do this for 30 years, what you'll find is that these individuals have common traits.

And the traits are four unique traits. They are not unique, But there are traits that they have in the, in the right combination to make them successful. And the traits are, purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience. These are the right people.

People with purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience in your organization. The amplifiers of innovation for value creation.

How do you find this people?

If a meritocracy of ideas have clear execution mechanisms, the innovation execution test will reveal them.

Purpose is alignment between the individual purpose and the purpose of the work that they do.

Passion is not romanticize, love. Passion is more like an arranged marriage. You work your face off on things. You develop an appreciation and respect for it, and you enjoy it over time.

Discipline is not following a regimented, set of rules.

Discipline is consistency with us and ultimately, resilience, it's not just being stubborn and never giving up. That's just stupid.

Resilience, Resilience is understanding that you have a purpose that's worthwhile, and your have, and you are willing to overcome the resistance collaboratively or pivot, accordingly as needed to overcome challenges and achieve your goal.

Purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience is what those individuals have, and they are revealed by the tests of execution.

When I left Soni, I joined a startup company in California because I was idealistic and I wanted to change the world, I don't know if I changed the world, but I think we had an impact.

This company is, ..., was the fastest growing semiconductor Manufacturing company in the history of the semiconductor industry, in the mid 19 nineties, with develop excimer lasers, that should this, they allow Moore's law, to continue in the semiconductor industry. Moore's law is about reducing the number, the unit area per transistor on a semiconductor chip. And we did that with laser systems.

Now, that's just the technology. Here is the real challenge.

We had the smartest laser scientists in the world, in one building in California, and this people could not get anything done for a long time. Why? Because they spend all their time arguing and trying to prove that they are smarter than the next guy or girl in the room.

So, we could not really move and towards enduring greatness until we're able to master collaborative leadership skills.

Collaborative leadership skills are specific methods and techniques that you can use to move groups of highly intelligent people towards a common purpose.

This is not trivial, and the development of collaborative leadership skills is the biggest lesson from that organization.

I went on to work with Nastily as their innovation leader in North America, an organization with 585 business units, 350,000 employees all over the world.

How do you even get started?

The lesson from nastily is that you must have empathy and respect for culture.

We all know that culture eats strategy for breakfast, excellence, and innovation, or whatever initiative that you have are just side dishes.

They'll get chewed up by the jaws of culture, and spit out, so, what is the solution? The solution is patience. The solution is meeting people where they are at, seek to understand their culture.

Why it is that way, before you have the audacity, to try to change it and wants to show the respect and you see, from their perspective, you bring them along the journey with you.

Anything short of that, you're going to fail.

So, culture exists a multiple levels in an organization, so be aware of it, be empathetic to it, be respectful of it, and then bring it along with respect. And you have to be patient. Anybody who tells me that we had a cultural transformation and ..., I'll say that you're aligned, or you're just not aware on how fast that culture will revert back to its original shape. If you do not continue that journey.

So, it's an ongoing journey. It's a never ending journey because you're probably never finished with your transformation.

Now, left, nastily to lead an organization with over 100 years of success in the engineering and construction infrastructure world.

More than 100 years, wow. Thousand pure engineers building the greatest infrastructure projects in energy, water, and telecommunications in more than 100 countries.

So the, the challenge there is that, How do you change a culture that has been successful for 100 years? Why would you even change it?

So besides just talking about platitudes and concepts, let's go see what actual look and, well, let's see what the data looks like for organizations like that. There was nothing wrong with this organization. For six years, I personally led a global program for them to accelerate improvements and innovations.

And the first six years, we deliver millions of dollars of benefit for the organization. We're focused on ideas. We're focused on methods.

Wonderful, But any or six, I said, You know why, this is good.

But we're not great.

We're not great. If you want to be great.

I mean, we have 12,000 people in this organization, we have 500 people right now who are kind of, like focused on doing this things. We need many more than that. We can be so much greater than this. Then this and there was a tough financial time for the organization as well, because we had just hit around, you know, a financial crisis and the macroeconomic macro economics for a large infrastructure projects.

So I came to our CEO and said, listen, I've proven to you that over six years that we can do this. But I think we can do this better. But you have to allow me to change. You have to allow me to experiment. And he asked me, what do you want to do? Just that?

And I said, well, what I want to do. Instead of trying to select pre-select the right people in our organization, I don't want to do that anymore. I want to create a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms. I'm gonna make it accessible to everyone at once.

And I'm not going to ask, or for anybody to do anything. It has to be 100% volunteer.

And he said, That's crazy.

Because people are not gonna do anything. People are busy. If you don't structure, and you force them to do things, they're not going to do it. I said, please, let me try this.

Now, this is a big challenge, because let me tell you, we got to your six successfully, 50% of organizations who try to accelerate innovation.

They die. Their programs die within 18 months to three years.

And 99% of them die within five years, so we're already part of the 1% club. Why am I going to tinker with that, right?

Well, because we're good, but not great, and you need to have courage to experiment, and we did. And what we did, when we said, let's find the right people, the people with purpose, passion, discipline, resilience, let's develop collaborative leadership skills and innovations, execution skills, across the board, without demanding people to, to, to lead anything.

Because you cannot force people into greatness. And while we saw, in the subsequent years, was not only a growth and value creation, we saw there was an 800% improvement in value creation. We had over a 10 fold improvement in voluntary engagement globally in this organization, went on to win multiple awards for leadership development, for global business transformation, for global excellence, for global innovation, blah, blah, blah.

So, the lesson here is that we focus on the things that I talk to you about: purpose, passion, disciplinary resilience, and a clear execution mechanism for the best ideas that come up in your organization. This is easy to say, but it's hard to do. Didn't do it for 1 or 2 years.

We did for more than 10 years, So I didn't have time to go write a book about it, because most of the great practitioners, today, they are busy executing on these things, and they are doing the real life real time, strategy, execution, and value creation now.

When I left that organization, I joined a Fortune 100 organization that was going through a similar journey. They had gone through a very difficult time financially in relative terms, in the energy industry, and they had a new CEO who came in and said, You know what, we're gonna go for extraordinary.

That was a big call.

You want to go for extraordinary. Where, everything that you have right now is nothing but ordinary.

This is a, this was at one point, a Fortune 100 organization, and then in 2010, there were like a $2 billion market valuation.

Because the market look at that company and, and basically prices below the value, the book value of its assets. That is, this origin areas you get.

So comes a new leadership, and the leadership says, You know, what, we don't have a comparative advantage of. technology on geography, on client, segments. We, I don't know what our competitive advantages are. We need to build a true competitive advantage. And we're gonna build that on our culture.

We're gonna build a culture of excellence, We're gonna build a culture of innovation, We're gonna build a culture of entrepreneurship, We're going to build a culture of value creation, and what they did relentlessly for the next eight years is to implement a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms.

They did developement Y development of collaborative leadership skills and innovation execution skills.

They didn't force people to do it. They let entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in the organization, step up to it.

And by 2018, they were identifying, prioritizing, and implementing to full solution over 2000 innovations per ear. everything for IT infrastructure and cloud strategist, that were way ahead of its time, to very mundane things really related to refining logistics and marketing of their products and services.

By 2018, they were delivering over a billion dollars in financially validated an additional IBA for the company. And by 2018, the market valuation was $35 billion.

In a company that had nothing, but it's culture as a comparative advantage.

So if there is a takeaway, here, is that your ultimate competitive advantage is to build a culture of excellence and innovation and use that you are leash the power of your people to go for extraordinary.

Because if you're going to zoom in in each one of these pictures, you'd see me as a global leader for the scope for this organization next to every one of our 14,000 employees, wherever they are in the world, identifying, prioritizing, and executing on innovations for value creation.

Now, listen, the world of innovation and excellence, and it's not new, But very few people understand it completely because they pick one or the other, and not both.

10 years ago, we predicted we're supported the prediction. That 40% of the Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist.

And we were told that well, that's fearmongering because these are the best companies that we have.

Well listen, Joel where we are today and when we're, we're in 20 20 not today but in 20 20 before the pandemic, So not 10 years, nine years after this prediction, what we saw is that more than 50% of the Fortune 500 companies had ceased to exist.

So this thing that we, things are changing fast now, things have been changing fast and non-linear for quite some time.

And remember, when we are in a non-linear, fast changing future, it's very hard to predict it.

But companies like to do it, they like to attempt to do it. So they get into this big meetings. You have them in your organizations. The bigger the organization, the bigger the meeting, to predict the future, a bunch of bureaucrats, bureaucrats sitting around where anyone in this room can object and say no to anything, but really. no. one can say yes to anything.

But it sounds good because they're all have high titles and they seem to have earned their position. And what they do then because they cannot make a decision. They hire other people to make decisions for them. They pay them millions of dollars on experts to tell them what the future looks like. They paid millions of dollars for experts to do the right forecasting for their industry and they pay millions of dollars for scenario planning.

I'm not against experts, forecasting us, and they're planning. All that I'm saying, is that that's a best directional guidance. This, people cannot predict the future any better than you can.

Because, in a world that is not changing linearly in a world that's changing, non-linear, and fast, the best way to predict the future, the only way to predict the future, is to create it.

So, let's go from, OK, proof of concept, high level, high level strategist, to how do we actually do this, shows that, how do you put this together? So, you need to set the stage for innovation in your organization.

You, and I'm not saying someone else in the organization, you, who is in this session right now.

You need to have the courage to lead with purpose, with passion, with discipline, and resilience.

And you need to hedge, if you're gonna go for extraordinary, step number one, define innovation in ordinary times, Define innovation in a way that's accessible to everyone in your organization. And that simply means that innovation is the implementation of new ideas that create value.

This looks simple, it's incredibly hard to do.

This is like Supreme Court rulings. Every word has meaning.

So, please note that with innovation is inextricably linked with value creation.

You must great value.

Innovation is not about new ideas. Innovations are about new ideas that create value and most important innovation is not just about new ideas that create value. It's the implementation of those new ideas that create value.

If you have not implemented, and you have not created value, it is not an innovation, yet, you're still nurturing and maturing it. But please don't talk about innovations that if you don't have how it was implemented and how will you show the value that was created, it's a nice concept, keep going, but it's not an innovation yet.
This needs to be accessible to everyone in the organization.

Now, that's not enough. If you want to be a great, enduring organization, you have to mature your innovations processes and you have tree and the innovation for value creation has different maturity levels.

And what we see is that really, most bright individuals and organizations can create a successful business, a multi-million dollar business, built on just the principles of individual brilliance There that is built on passion, discipline, and resilience. Lots of startups, lots of, you know, organizations, multi-million dollar organizations, with 100 to 100, 600 people, maybe a few thousand people, even, that can do that just with this.

Wonderful.

But if you want to be a multi-billion dollar organization, that's not enough.

Now you have to scale that individual brilliance. And you scale that individual brilliance with innovation systems and mechanisms. And when you look under the hood for those organizations, now you're gonna find out other things, other components, what they have in there is that they have clear governance for innovation. They have clear structure and roles for the system of innovation that they have. They have core innovation, they have adjacent innovation.

They have disruptive innovation mechanisms and they have growth and technology accelerators that support that, that is wonderful.

There is what the overwhelming majority of organizations in the world, should they are, striving to be at, most of them will never get there, because they don't, They are not chronically consistent with this.

And if you want to be a multi trillion dollar organization, you need to develop additional capabilities. And those capabilities across the board for multi trillion dollar organizations is widely available, understood, and practice, collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills.

This is widely available and distributed in your organization and those organizations.

Their innovation for value creation is characterized by a clear purpose, a culture and a strong set of core values. There are aligned with that purpose and people in their organization live those core values on a daily base basis exemplifying then the behaviors that build their culture.

The behaviors of inner exxon's, the behaviors of innovation, the behaviors of value creation, the behaviors of strategy execution.

So with them, building a culture of innovation, collaboration, innovation, of value creation, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

So I'm going to go race through here and tell you of how these companies do it, and how they do it is the intelligent blending of ideas, methods, technologists, and people altogether, with a greater emphasis on the right people who are the right people, the right people. Are the people in your organization that have purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience.

Off course, they are intelligent. Of course, they have high, high integrity. Of course, they have high energy, but that's not enough. They need to have purpose, passion, disciplinary resilience, to see through the hard task of innovation execution.

Typically, in an organization, you have all this people who are going through kind of sour face, if you will. And you have some they have found the level of alignment between the work that they do and their individual purpose. You make no judgements, your job as a leader, is to inspire self motivated individuals to pursue a higher purpose of excellence of innovation. Those individuals will gravitate towards the systems and mechanisms that you create. And you must create now clear execution mechanisms for them to identify prioritize and execute on what creates the most value in the shortest time. And simplest means they are going to lead with courage.

The ones there are successful, which will be a percentage of this subgroup.

You're gonna find that in that group, you have individual leaders with purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience. Your job as a leader is to make a big deal out of those teams and out of those leaders so that you exemplify to others in your organization, the behaviors that you want to have in the culture that you are striving to achieve.

So if you do that, not for a few months.

If you do that chronically consistent to consistently for the next few years, which very few people have the fortitude to do.

And, by the way, that's the ultimate leadership value, And it's called stewardship that you're leading a purpose driven organization. You're in the store for that organization, and you're chronically consistent with that purpose.

She'll do that over a long period of time.

You will become Doug, Great Enduring Organization, No wonder why, So, few get to that level, it's incredibly hard.

Now, let me reveal the great innovators.

The great culture builders and amplifiers in your organization. You're not going to hire them from Tesla, Facebook or, you know, AI companies, whatever they are with you, already, they already understand your existing culture.

And your job is to create a meritocracy of ideas of clear execution mechanisms and inspire them to lead positive change, which towards a very clear view of the culture that you want to have that you want to transform into.

And your job as a leader, is not only to create this mechanism for them to execute, but also to equip them with the ability to take different perspectives.

The problems, which are innovation methods and the discipline frameworks to take those different perspectives are problems, also equip them with collaborative leadership skills.

And then you can't force them to do things.

What you need to do is just step out of the way and demand, not demand.

And challenge them to lead with purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience, because, at that point, it's up to them. They have to own it.

They have to show courage because they're going to step into new territory and that they have to, you have to manage the risks, but without courage, they will not be effective leaders in your cultural transformation.

And that's a self selecting process. And you're gonna see those who come through and deliver innovation, and deliver strategy execution for value creation.

And, again, you continue to maintain your system and you maintain your system and you accelerate innovation by creating an environment in your organization. Where great ideas and great people can constantly connect. That's your job as the, as the ultimate leader for this organization.

And, now, remember, I cannot predict the future.

But, I can tell you that based on the empirical evidence that we have on the last 30 years and certainly currently. And this and this principles, there are not time dependent. They are not industry the pattern.

They're, in my opinion, they are, eternal principles aren't you? I see them disproved.

Building a culture of excellence and innovation together is going to be your ultimate competitive advantage. So, keep that in mind. I'm going to wrap up by just to give you my, my how to connect meet with my journey. I retire from corporate roles.

A few years ago, I'll never retire from the journey of excellence and innovation acceleration until the day that I die.

And the reason for that is because that's my journey. That's my gift. And that's how I translate that gift, entering power, and multiply, and leadership for others like you to make a difference in our work environments to make a difference in society. So you can follow our journey this way. I'm not going to take questions now. I'm just going to take your questions on LinkedIn. If you have any LinkedIn question, questions, go to LinkedIn, I'll post the link to that on the next segment. And that will continue our discussion at that time. So thank you for going sticking with me for the journey of greatness of great enduring organizations, and building cultures of excellence and innovation. So, I wanna set up for our next guest now, who will come up at the top of the hour.

We're going to have the global leader for SEP discussing IT infrastructure, and cloud strategist with us will be a gift to all of us, We're gonna go from culture. We're gonna get back into, into the implementation and the tactics and the strategist of a great organization, that's been doing this for successfully for quite some time. So, with that, thank you for now, I will see you back at the top of the hour.