Session Information:

How Great Organizations Build Cultures of Excellence, Innovation and Value Creation

If culture eats strategy for breakfast, no wonder most organizational initiatives become “side dishes” and fail to meet their objectives. From safety improvement programs to high technology deployments, organizations are littered with great ideas and plans that were systematically chewed up by the jaws of culture.

In this session we will learn how great enduring organizations build cultures of excellence, innovation and value creation as their ultimate competitive advantage. 

Session Transcript:

Competitive advantage, for any organization. And how do, how does it look like for great enduring organizations when it comes to their culture, when it comes to their mechanisms, when it comes to how they actually use technology to become market leaders?

So, some of these concepts are a bit counter-intuitive.

So, what I'm going to do here, now, I'm going to launch my presentation And, And then I'm going to share that with you, so let me Launch it here.

And I will, there it goes. Now, I need to share that with you.

If you would give me a moment here.

And you should be able to see my presentation shortly here once I share my main monitor with you.

OK, can I make myself the presenter?

Very good. Now, I gotta get my the right screen for you here.

And, this is the screen that you should be able to see now.

So, the topic here is, how great organizations build cultures of excellence, innovation, and value creation. So, let's talk about that. and I'm going to start there by asking you a question.

And, well, before I even, the question is: What do you think matters most for this great, enduring organizations? Is it ideas? Is it methods, is it technology? We're talking about technology in this conference?

Or, is it about people?

Now, you may want to, you may want to answer that on the question box, or just reflect. Just reflect on that for a moment.

But, before we get into how important ideas, methods, technologies, and people are, if we think about the context of our conference, if we think about the context of this presentation, we certainly are focusing on technology here.

And, the digital transformations have accelerated as a result of Cove. At 19, there's no doubt about it. That first was a very fast move towards enabling a remote work, to allow that to happen with some level of productivity.

And then, other digital transformations that have been on the roadmap for quite some time were accelerated, because you need to build greater functionality beyond, beyond just remote work. How does the entire enterprise function and continues to grow and thrive in an environment like this?

So you start getting to automation of the key business processes. You start talking about the implementation of exponential technologists and real large scale digital transformations.

But here's some things to keep in mind, from some of the other technology conferences and some of the other experts in companies.

They share their expertise with us, and I want to go over that first with you, before we delve any deeper into this conference, this topic.

And the thing to keep in mind, and this was highlighted by some of our presenters before, that only 1% of businesses have the process management capabilities to realize the full potential of their digital transformation.

Wow.

So, you are going to hear, often people saying 70 to 80% of digital transformations fail.

And up several IT infrastructure and cloud strategy implementations fail.

And one of the reasons for that is that you can add them.

You can automate the business, But if the business does not understand how it best serves, its customer, it's not gonna work out very well. So that's one perspective. Let's see, another perspective for another corporate leader. This is Craig Meaner, this chairman and CEO of Home Depot. Home Depot planetary spanned $300 million on digital technologies to enable, call and collect services for customers.

And then we think six months, they realized they had to go back to the board. And they did an extra one point two billion dollars to build Neil distribution centers. And overhead overhauled their order fulfillment process.

Because they realized that just digitizing the processes that they had wasn't the right thing to do.

You're going to have one of our vendors in sponsors in this, in this conference, which is Lean I X, which is being doing wonderful work, talk to us about their experience across industry, several customers, and the fact that digital transformations are driving exponential complexity.

So today, organizations that have 500 processes, one thousand applications and over and greater than 2500 technologists in their ecosystem are going through digital transformations.

There are scaling, exponentially the number of processes, apps, and services, and technologies that they deal with.

So these are transformation, comes with cost and complexity associated with it. If you don't, if you just focus on the technology piece without understanding the full context.

And one last comment here, this is from what GE, Ford and Procter and Gamble. These are major players and they have poured over one point three trillion dollars into a transformation in these initiatives.

And 70% of their money, about $900 billion, was wasted on failed programs. And the biggest reason for that was a failure to effectively communicate their goals, strategy, purpose, and outlook with their employees. It wasn't about the technologies that wonderful technology, that they're introducing their business. So, the question again, one matters most. What matters most, when you're looking to achieve enduring greatness, not just implementing you know, a lot one cloud strategy or a basic IT infrastructure, any mediocre company can do that.

Even though many cannot. But on average, you're going to have companies that can do that.

The question is, if you're going to scale that tewa for an organization to achieve enduring greatness. How do you do that at scale, align with the business objectives, with the strategies and the culture of the organization?

And engaging all employees on the critical business processes And using those technologies to enable those key business processes to generate the most value for the organization, for its customers, for all its stakeholders? So, again, these are the concepts that I want to go a little bit deeper on, and they are not technical concepts. They are Organizational competence, and capability concepts.

So, what matters most? Is it about ideas, it about methods and about technology? Is it about people?

Well, you're going to hear me say that ideas are very important.

So they matter a lot, but at the same time, ideas are everywhere. Why are uncommon? Are people willing to put their reputation behind ideas?

And then you're going to hear me talking about the importance of methods.

And then I'm going to tell you that methods are important, but they're not that important, because methods do not transform businesses.

They do not do that alone.

I'm a certified Lean six Sigma, Master Black Belt, for most people. That sounds like a dangerous mental condition.

It doesn't help them to try to take their business to the next level.

So, so it must be about technologists, right, because we're talking about technology in the context of this conference, so technology must be it. Well, technologists can be wonderful if they enable your processes to be faster, cheaper, better, a greater quality. Wonderful!

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

And that's not what you want.

So, it must be about people while people are our most valuable asset, right? Well, that is true. But at the same time, it's not, it's not all the people. It is about finding the right people in your organization, if you're gonna become a great enduring organization. The amplifiers of innovation in your organization.

So as you can tell, the world of greatness is not an or world. The world of greatness is an and the world. And it's very complex, Because it has this forces that pull in very different directions.

In our intuition, winter, winter, when they're trying to. And the analyze options, is to look at Option A and look at Option B, and make a decision between Option A and Option B. And the world of greatness is about mastery. This complexities and this contradictions.

It's not about choosing A or B it's understanding how you bland A and B because these are inter connected components. They do not live in isolation. We cannot talk about technology without talking about ideas, methods, and people.

And any of those components cannot be talked about in isolation.

So there are great similarly, contradictions in the world of greatness. And that's the very first concept that I want to make sure that we're all aligned on.

And there is no greater contradiction than the contradiction of excellence, and innovation, because in the world you're going to have in one side, you have organizations they're striving for excellence. They set high performance standards, and they want to meet or exceed those performance standards, and that's wonderful. But if they only do that, eventually, they become obsolete.

On the other side, typically, you have this forces of innovation poorly. The most innovative organizations in the world are going to be the dominant ones, right?

Wrong.

The most innovative organizations in the world, they die a slow death.

They pursue multiple innovations and technologists without a clear purpose, without being consistent and disciplined with their purpose.

And it's not the most innovative organizations.

They become the great, enduring organizations of our time degrading and during your organizations of our time and through history are the ones who are able to master those contradictions, excellence, and innovation. They understand that it's not a balance. It's a blend of this forces that pull in very different directions.

If you're on the horse business in the world of excellence, it's all about squeezing efficiencies out of those horses.

Well, if you're an innovation world, you look at it and say, oh, hey, listen, Joe.

I cannot become dominant, and I cannot design cars by squeezing efficiencies out of horses.

Yet, you're not going to become dominant in design great cars either if you do not have a clear, consistent and disciplined pursuit of your purpose and you are unable to scale the innovations that you create if you don't have that.

So, the question becomes, oh my goodness, how do I scale innovation?

The way that great enduring organizations escape innovation is by applying excellence to the innovations that they create.

So, this is very complex. Because not about excellence is not about innovation, is about the intelligent blend of excellence and innovation.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, what I'm sharing you with you here is not some theory about how the world should function.

This are practical, empirical observations of great, enduring organizations. They have become dominant in their industries for periods of time. Because, like anything else, greatness is not guaranteed for life. You have to the hardest thing after achieving greatness is remaining. Great.

And the and this are five organizations where I'll add corporate excellence and innovation globally for 25 plus years.

Now, we have seems to work with more than 100 organizations across all industries, from high technology to banking, railroad and anything from startups to Fortune 50.

But, I want to spend a little bit more time on this five organizations, because they're the foundation for the create, for the foundation for the fundamentals of excellence and innovation acceleration in great, enduring organizations. And I'll be brief on this, but my background is in engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics, and with advanced degrees in investment, banking, and entrepreneurship.

And I started my career very excited at Sony back then, Sony was the technology leader in the world, in the world.

And we're designing and manufacturing the leading edge stuff.

And I'll, I'll just give you the key takeaway lessons from upfront their organization. And what I learned at Sony, on the great mentorship from she'd go Hayashi who is to this day, the leader of displays in Tokyo for Sony.

And what I learn from the best times when it comes to technology development of Sony is that innovation does not come from technology, innovation comes from people.

In the mind of an expert, there is only one way in the mind of the novice. There are many ways.

And it's the intelligent blending of those two mindsets that creates breakthrough innovations.

And innovation doesn't care about your gender. Your race, ethnicity, years of experience, how many certificates you have hanging on the, I love myself wall, innovation doesn't care about that.

The key driver for innovation accelerator is finding the right people.

And the right people are in your organization are only revealed by the test of innovation execution and the traits that they have, or not.

Easy to identify with doubt, the test of execution.

And those traits are purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience. And that's my first note to you.

If you want to accelerate innovation, if you want to scale innovation with excellence, to achieve enduring greatness in your organization, you have to start by finding your organization who are the people, who have the purpose, the passion, the disciplines, and the.

resilience.

And are willing to put their reputation behind ideas. To scale innovation that is aligned with the strategies of the organization, that is aligned with serving customers disproportionately well.

Now, when I left Sony, I was in the world, a very large corporation. And I felt it was my time now to learn from my startup.

And I joined a startup in California that, through great work and some luck disrupted, the World, ... was, there was a startup in the semiconductor industry that, in the mid 19 nineties, develop a technology that allow Moore's Law in the semiconductor industry to take place.

How do you shrink devices, two, half of its size, every 18 months at affordable cost.

And we develop, at that time, a technology laser technology that, should this day, drives Moore's law in the semiconductor industry.

The lesson from there is that just having the smartest people in the room and we did have those people at that time in the room, is not enough.

We must develop collaborative leadership, decision making skills and capabilities in our organizations, because the world's problems are becoming increasingly complex.

And we need to find the experts and create systems where those experts can collaborate effectively.

So that's another lesson to share.

And Nestle, while we develop, was a great respect for culture, because as innovation leader for Nestle, I had to identify ways to accelerate innovation in an eco system that worldwide has 350,000 employees, more than 585 business units.

How do you do that?

And the lesson is, culture is the ultimate lever for excellence and innovation.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

You have heard that any one of your other initiatives are just seditious on the meal.

If you do not align your initiatives with the culture of your organizations, it's not going to work.

And, and if you want to change the culture of our organization, you need to model those behaviors over a long period of time.

And lastly, and I won't spend as much time on that.

I spent the last 15 years of my career in the energy, in the global energy and infrastructure industry, at both Blocking Veatch and in Denver Corporation.

We're at in Denver Incorporation out off a tremendous financial disruption that happened in 2008.

A company that had a $2 billion market valuation in 2010 as a result of those tough economic times that they were facing, were able to build a culture of excellence and innovation over an eight year period. That increased the valuation of the company, 18 fold. And this company went from $2 billion in 2010 to a market value of $36 billion in 20 18.

Now, and that happened out of a disruption very much like a covert and like disruption that we have right now, difficult times.

But the D The key here is that the senior leadership team identified that their cultures their ultimate competitive advantage and they built that culture over eight years to deliver disproportional value.

And by year eight, the organization was identifying for ... and executing over shoot thousand innovation projects.

There were delivering over one billion dollars in additional, additional financially audited earnings for the organization, real stuff, And much of that was driven by technology, but I'll, but technology would not work alone. Without that, kind of the coach are connecting the components.

So, I want to think about mindset first, because we live in the world of very rapid change, an exponential change, but I will, our mindsets, in our view of the world, is very much a linear. So, I want you to think by yourself just quickly here. Give us some thought about where you are in the world, And I want you to think about your location, whether you're in your home, whether you're in your office.

Imagine yourself taking 30 steps and every step that you take a meter long, if you take 30 linear steps, you're going 30 meters.

Where would you be?

Where would you physically be?

My point to you is that the world that we live in in, for some time, is not moving. At this pace.

The world that we live in is moving at Moore's Law pace. Now, I say this, and I say the moon, the world is living on an exponential scale. But people don't really understand what that means, especially if you're not very closely connected, not with IT technologists but with fundamental, semiconductor technology.

It's hard to grasp what that means. You just see the results and the in society on the day-to-day activities of technology around you, but but it's hard to grasp because our brain is not an exponential brain. Our brain is a linear brain.

But my question to you is, if you put yourself in an explanation mind frame right now, and you follow Moore's Law, which basically says that every 18 months or so, I'm going to double my my capabilities and in semiconductors, the language, that means you're shrink your devices to half of their size.

So if you're doing that consistently, over a period of 50 years, which would be 30 cycles in the semiconductor industry, how far would you get?

So now, imagine that you're still taking 30 steps.

But every one of those steps now, you double when you take a step. So your first step is still one meter.

But the second step is two meters.

When you take the next step, you now have four meters. And you keep doubling the size of your step every time you take.

How far would you go?

So pause, Think about how far you had gone when you take carry mirrors in a linear fashion.

Now, think about how far you would go when you take 30 meters following Moore's Law.

And if you do that introspection for a moment, You don't have to tell me how far you think you'd be, but most of you would say, Man, I go far. I go outside my office. I go outside my, my neighborhood. I'm going to be outside my city. Some of you will go, Oh, I'm gonna go on the other side of the planet.

Wow, that's crazy, isn't it?

Well, not quite.

As a matter of fact, if you take Toady exponential steps like Moore's Law has, over the last 50 years, you're gonna be one billion meters away.

You're going to be going around Planet Earth 26 times.

Now, I don't know if any of one had that instinct to guess that you'd be that far out.

Most people don't.

Most people, including incredibly smart people, don't have that instinct, because it's not part of their brain structure to think that far.

So, technology has moved at that pace And it's important that we understand that. Because, even if we understand it from a from a somewhat rational standpoint, the rationalization is wrong.

It's much faster and much greater than we expect.

Now, if we go back to the foundation of Moore's Law in 19 65, doctor Gordon Moore said, hey, the number of transistors are doubling every year from 58 to 65. So we're doing a good job.

So, I say that we're going to continue to do that in the semiconductor industry for the foreseeable future.

And everybody said, that's crazy. I mean, we're not going to be able to keep that up. That's just too much.

So what happened then?

What happened is that that's the transistor in 19 58, 2 transistors on the board there by 1971, we had put 23, 2300 transistors in that same space.

And by 2018, we're putting over seven billion transistors in that same space.

So what we had over the roughly 50 or so years is a 27 billion fold in the price performance of integrated circuits.

That is scale is mind boggling. And by the way, it continues to happen to date. So it's not just about Moore's law and what it does, just semiconductor manufacturing, semiconductor capabilities.

But it is what it means for all this other technologies that have been around for a long time.

But, they have not being able to really scale because of the fundamental semiconductor technology and process capability was not there. Now, this other technologies that were not new, but they were dormant, they jumped on these explanations scale and they're all accelerating at the speed of Moore's law.

This has never happened before, and of course, if we contextualize to what we have in Cloud Cloud Storage as an example, know, this is a picture from 19 56 of an IBM 350.

This is up.

This is A five megabyte storage unit.

Being loaded into a pan am flight.

Talking about things that disappear and became obsolete.

Of course, nobody's paying $520,000 anymore for five megabytes of memory so that IBM device has gone away and the pan am airlines has gone away as well.

Now, if you fast forward, close to where we are today, and this is not even today, this is probably a couple of years ago, now you're looking at a terabyte of data.

That is 99 bucks or less.

And as you know, in Cloud Storage, you counting Sans four terabytes of data, which just a few years ago was unthinkable.

So we have had, on storage, alone, an over 10000 billion fold improvement in price performance.

That's mind boggling. And a lot of organizations don't know that that's going on.

A lot of IT and Cloud storage experts don't realize how much has changed.

Now, in 2011, I presented to organizations in conferences around the world about this level of disruption. And and at that point, the Babson, All School of Business had an article in Fast Company.

Data that talk about that in 10 years predicted that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies no longer will, no longer exist.

And that, and they got so much pushback. And I got so much pushback on that, because people are like, oh, this is fear mongering. and now we keep talking about this change that's happening but you know the the Fortune 500 companies aren't the best organizations in the world. They're not going to be disrupted at that level.

Hey, Rick, you're right.

Not, not 10 years later, nine years later before the global pandemic of 2020, more than 50% of the Fortune 500 companies no longer existed.

So, that prediction was wrong. Yes, was too conservative.

The change was faster than even the most audacious forecasters could come up with.

Now, this is not new. Again, this is pre pandemic ..., we're talking to CEOs and C suites around the world.

And what they are telling us is that the, they're most concerned about their culture, because they realize it's more important to performance than their organization's strategy or operating model, Or even technologists.

65% are more concerned about culture.

So, let's talk about those fundamentals, because, as we discuss, later in the next three days about IT infrastructure, Cloud Strategists, and we get into the rabbit holes with respect to technology implementation, tech knowledge capabilities.

It is important that we always keep in mind the big picture of culture in our organizations, because, without aligning our technology development and implementation with the culture of organizations, we will fail.

So, let's go back to basics: What is culture? We don't have months to talk about this.

So I'm gonna go directly to you on the empirical and practical approaches to culture, business, and digital transformation.

So to understand culture at its simplest level, culture is just the habits and behaviors of individuals and teams in the organization.

They're built over time behaviors, or a model over a long period of time. And there is not just a single culture, depending on the organization, have multiple cultures. You have levels of culture, So it's quite complex.

But the basic definition of culture is the habits and behaviors that teams and individuals exhibit in the organization. It takes time to build that.

The question is, what is a good culture, because you can debate that forever.

But I'm going to simplify for you and say that, you, there is a good culture. There is a universal good culture. And a universal good culture are, is a culture that exhibits value creation behaviors.

And you may be thinking, like, Oh, there's the Guide investment banker. And now this has to go to value creation behaviors, is thinking about financial value.

And the answer is yes, but also social value because this is the same formula whether a for-profit or your non-profit organization, value creation here is both financial and or social value creation.

So good cultures universally exhibit this value creation behaviors.

Now, when we talk about transforming a culture, that is hard. That is hard, because culture has many components and to build that culture as hard to transform A culture is even harder.

But I would like you to have this mental model of how cultures are built, so that you understand in your own organization, the components that you must address, Because just talking about, oh, we need to change our culture, is not helpful.

You need to understand the components of culture and you need to understand how your technological developments are affecting the components of culture.

So clearly, culture starts with a clear purpose, A clear purpose for the organization.

A purpose that the individuals in that organization can align with.

Now, that's not enough. You need to have a strong set of core values there, a line of those with, that with the purpose and the strong core value of the strong, strong set of core values.

And the clear purpose build the certain set of beliefs you have about your organization and your role in the organization, but that's not enough, because our moods and feelings affect those things.

So we need to create an environment where we're aware of our moods and feelings, and we're creating positive a more at least, a neutral environment.

When it comes to our moods, moods, and feelings, and hopefully a positive environment, but make no mistake with all the stresses of work and the world, the natural State is actually a negative set of moods and feelings, not an even a neutral one. So you have to work to create a neutral and a positive one.

But that's not enough because now you have to understand what matters most to your organization and create the mindsets related to what matters most to the organization.

And those mindsets could be a mindset of innovation. It could be a mindset of it.

Of value creation. Whatever mindsets you want to create an organization. You have to be intentional and deliberate about those mindsets.

And you need to understand, what are the key principles for those mindsets, if it is innovation acceleration. What are the key principles of innovation. Nawaz, someone wrote in a book and you thought it was a good clip on YouTube.

It's something that has been tried and done before, successfully, experimented with or something at a very minimum that you're willing to experiment with.

But you have to test yourself, and you have to understand it deeply.

But principles are not enough, because if our goal is to shift our culture, we need now to translate this principles into actions. So the question becomes, what are the mechanisms that you have in your organization? For example, to translate the principles of innovation into actions that showcase what organization looks like because it's the showcasing of those actions that set the behaviors that create your culture.

This is exhausting, because you see how many stages we have here, no one, no wonder culture can become the greatest competitive advantage for an organization.

Because it's incredibly difficult to set a good culture of value creation culture in an organization, changes in leadership, law, market disruptions, all sorts of things that happen.

So you have to be chronically consistent with the purpose to do this well, which is a very big challenge. And that's why greatness is reserved for the very few who have the purpose, the passion, the discipline, and the resilience at the individual and organizational level to consistently and and pursue their purpose in a disciplined fashion.

And then organizations that want to change their culture or transform their culture and their business, good luck with that.

Because transformations are the hardest thing you ever going to do, because cultures resist what they most need to change.

So this is important for you for us to keep in mind. Because organizations are not that much different from us.

As people, Organizations are not wired for change, they are wired for safety and predictability.

So it's important that we understand that, before we start telling that we want to transform anything, because our cultures are built to do something. And if we want to transform that, we saw from the previous slide, we have to address all those different components, and also be Prepare, because our culture is, like, people will resist what they most need to change. So if you think that your company needs most an IT infrastructure, and new cloud strategies, if that is true about your company, I guarantee you, you're going to resist that the most.

It's hard.

Culture transformations at a personal and an organizational level are incredibly hard, very good.

This sets up the stage for our discussion on on how do we predict the future, and how do we move forward?

How do we implement IT infrastructure, Cloud strategist in environments like this?

So first, we need to understand that the best way to predict the future is not via forecasting is not V or scenario. Planning is not be trying to force to predict where the next black swan events are going to happen. The best way to predict the future is to create it. That's not new.

And the way that you create the future is by using innovation as a mechanism for translating this principles into value creation for the organization.

So, for us, to achieve that with our strategies and infrastructure deployments, we must, we must set the stage for innovation.

And we must explain innovation to our organization in ordinary terms.

Because the only way that you can have extraordinary innovation your organizations, is by having ordinary definitions of it.

Definitions are understood and accessible to all in the organization.

So, if I ask, if I ask you to ask the people in your organization, what is innovation, why we're doing this, why we're trying to do innovation, you got a lot of different answers.

There's a lot of myths about innovation, what it means.

And unfortunately, a lot of technological myths that people live with.

So, let's go to the fundamental, ordinary definition of innovation.

So, the word INO means and this, the root word, inner from innovation means new idea, so, a new idea is important, but, a new idea is not sufficient.

I have lots of new ideas, most of them are not that good.

There may be a subset of those new ideas that will make things better, faster, and cheaper. Oh, maybe the new idea has now some value.

So you start saying, well, new ideas that create value. That's what innovation is all about.

But that's not either because we work with over 100 cross industry organizations.

And when we start working with them, every one of them has a big cemetery of new ideas that create value, lots of new ideas that create value, that have been buried in the parking lot.

So, so what happened?

What happened is that we they don't have the mechanisms. They don't have the people who are willing to put their reputation behind ideas, to actually execute on those ideas.

So, you cannot have innovation, in the definition of innovation, without implementation, without execution, because that's 90% of the battle.

So, an ordinary and simple, um, definition of innovation, to drive extraordinary innovations, is that it's the implementation of new ideas that create value. This sense, so common sense.

But common sense is the least common of the senses. In large organizations, and we have been flooded with noise from book authors and people who have never really practiced innovation at scale.

So, please absorb this and think about everything that you do when it comes to innovation.

It is only an innovation, when it's the implementation of a new idea that create value.

And by the way, when you talk about improvement, problem is the same thing. Is the implementation of an idea that creates value? It may not be a new idea. Who cares if I have an improvement that drives a billion dollars in new earnings, and an innovation that drives 100,000 new warnings. Which one year and go for?

And I would say both.

Because, remember, the world of greatness is at and the world, not an old world. Now it's great to have this concept of innovation, but we need more than that. We need to have mechanisms to translate this principles into action. And the mechanism for innovation acceleration demands. The integration of innovation of leadership development associated with that innovation acceleration and strategy for strategy execution and value creation.

And I'll give you a tag line of what the most of the great enduring organizations use very often create the most value in the shortest time and simplest means.

Now, you need methods, right? You need methods to translate this principles into action.

And then we discussed before methods are important, but methods are, alone, do not transform businesses. So you do need discipline methods for innovation execution. You have a discipline framework for that. And there are disciplines about innovation acceleration, Today.

There are very, a structure and very helpful in an organizational system teaching people how to think different and innovate on with a clear meritocracy of ideas and clear execution mechanisms. Then you have advanced business process management, understanding, end to end process ownership, because you cannot successfully do a digital transformation. If you do not understand your value creation processes and ....

And ultimately, you have efficiency methods like Lean. You have six sigma, that is all about building if the speed and the accuracy and precision in what you do.

So now all the strings are want their friends separately.

They can be effective, combined they are exceptional, But most important you have to remember that this methods alone do not transform the business.

The people do, so your goal, your ultimate goal is to mine for the right people.

So as I remember as a reminder on matters most ideas methods, technologists or people?

None of the above and All of the above.

It's about how you bring them together? That matters most So What I would like to do is to focus on the disproportional lever and amplifier for innovation in your organization and it's the people but not all the people. It's the right people.

And if I was running a quiz.

If you write, I will say, OK, tell me what are the traits and attributes of those, the right people, and what I would like you to think about are four traits that they have.

They have a clear sense of purpose, and the line of purpose of the work that they do, and the purpose of the organization.

They have a tremendous amount of passion, and that passion is not certain depth of love, is a lot more like an arranged marriage.

They have discipline and that discipline is not just following a regiment, a set of rules is about being chronically consistent with their purpose.

The ultimate definition of discipline is consistency with purpose, and there are resilient and resilience not stubborn, or they don't do anything to get it done. No, no, no, no.

Resilience Actual requires highly developed collaborative leadership skills to engage the resistance and overcome the challenge together, and the ability to pivot, when necessary, and take the longer road, because you have, You're pursuing a purpose. That's worthwhile.

So, how do you find this people in your ended in your organization? And this is the last portion that I want to cover today.

Before we wrap up here, the way that you find this amplifiers of innovation. Your organization is the following.

And this is fundamental for the system to work well over time and build a culture of excellence and innovation culture of value creation. You want to find who are the true value creation leaders in your organization. I typically, what I do, I come in and I say, I stand up Excellence and innovation acceleration. I do, I talk very much like the one we're having today and what you find an organization's even pre cove it, OK.

What you find is that 90% of the people in the organization regardless of their financial situation, there are going through the motions that are kind of sour facing individuals in their organization.

They are not really fulfilled about what they do. And there's about 10% or so who seem to have found some level of alignment between their life and the work that they do.

Or maybe they're just mentally unstable. I don't know, but they are fulfilled. There seem to be happy.

I don't, I make no judgements.

What we do is stand up a clear meritocracy of ideas with clear executioner mechanisms to identify, prioritize, and execute on what creates the most value for the organization.

So, we are looking for innovation leaders who are value creation leaders to build that culture of value creation.

So, inspire the self motivated individuals, and what happens, they will flock.

Should that Because they want to be part of that. That's not enough.

We now need to provide them with discipline, framework, and mechanisms for innovation execution.

And it is for those discipline frameworks that they will identify, prioritize what creates the most value for the organization. What's aligned with the strategy of the organization going forward, as well?

And what you find out of that, if you make this voluntary, because you cannot force people into greatness, you make this voluntary.

What you find is that those individuals who have the passion, the discipline, the resilience, they will get it done.

And what you do is those individuals, you showcase them to the organization.

Because now, those leaders and those teams are showcasing the behaviors that you want to have in your organization, the value creation behaviors that you want to have in the organization.

And with that, others who are more skeptical before start joining in.

Now this takes time because you're methodically showing to the organization what value creation and what innovation behaviors, lookalikes. And there are value in your organization.

And after, if you, as you do this multiple rounds over time, you shift your culture.

And Now, you're going to have a culture that's aligned with the purpose of the organization that's serving customers disproportional with value creation of serving the employees as well as professionals in that organization with value creation. This is an exciting place to work.

This is where great, enduring organizations live, very few ever get to this level around the world.

Now, I want to summarize for you.

If you want to grow, if you want to have great technology development, don't look outside, look inside the best people in your organization work for you right now. And there are being stifle because they do not have a way to express their capabilities in the systems that you have.

So create a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms, and this individuals will flourish.

And that's not enough. You need to equip them with delight, right, collaborative leadership skills, right, innovation, execution skills, and teach them to take different perspectives problem, because that's what the essence of innovation is.

It's not technology is the ability to use different perspectives or problems and then have the courage to step onto a new era, Intuit into new endeavors.

A lead with courage, because that's what's required.

Now you manage the risks, but you live with courage and you as a leader, your ultimate job and responsibility is to create an environment where great leaders and great ideas can connect. And you keep feeding the system.

And ultimately, if you're going to, you're not going to predict the future, because only two types of people predict the future, Those who don't know, and those who don't know, what they don't know.

So, you're not, you're nobody can predict the future, but if you build a culture of excellence and innovation in your organization, that's going to be the ultimate competitive advantage that you can develop, because that's how you're going to create the future.

So, I'll be with you for the rest of the next three days. And, we look forward to delve, into technology, to delve into cloud strategies, and IT infrastructure.

But, as we have those discussions, I want you to have the background, the entire system of how culture affects everything that we talk about. And as we talk about deep into certain technologists, we want to have that, that perspective, on the overall company, organization, or organizational culture, and, and the mechanisms that we have for making those technologies effective for the organization. So, this is me.

You can connect with me via e-mail, and, of course, on LinkedIn.

And we're going to be here together for the next few days. So, pleasure to be with you and I look forward to our next session and our next session is coming directly from India: Ram BRT is going to be with us. And ram is going to share is going to go deep into clouds strategists with us.

So thank you for your time. I'll see you back at the top of the Outer Hour with,  directly from India, discussing Cloud Strategists, and he's 28 years of experience working with Fortune 500 organizations on that subject, so thank you very much. We'll connect back soon.