Excellence => Innovation => Change => Business results

I'm sure lots of folks already know the causal linkages below ...

Excellence => Innovation => Change => Business results

Why am I recording it here? Because: (1) It does not appear to be highlighted in literature and training (2) It is a path through which I have personally journeyed and therefore know that it works.

Excellence is a concept frequently used in academia. But, it is not commonly associated with business. Even when a business launches a "Center of Excellence," a high level of academic intent and content are suggested in the label. Also, not much is expected in terms of business results.

On the other hand, there is so much evidence out there showing the connection between excellence and business results.

Therefore, if you think excellence sounds too "academic" for use in business, borrow an idea from Columbia Business School, which presented me a Certificate in Business Excellence ... try "business excellence" instead.

FROM innovation-driven change TO business results

Recall cases of innovation driving change. Most examples involve a company introducing a new product, which creates change at the customer end.

How about a company's innovation requiring the company itself to change? Typically this happens when employees come up with process innovations.

How does an innovation-driven change create business results for the company? Do you have some examples to share? For my personal case, please read Article 1 and Article 2.

It's that time of the year to say "Thank you, America!"

While America has several things to fret about at the time of her 234th birthday, "we still lead the world in pretty much everything," says Tom Peters. Tom didn't list everything. I'm not going to attempt, either. But, I do want to highlight one thing. And that is: The education America delivers to the World. Not just the university education, but also the new knowledge shared through books, journals, blogs, TV (think Discovery, National Geographic), etc.

The instant competitive advantage my former employer Cognizant Technology Solutions enjoyed when I set up India's first software usability lab in the late 90s was possible because ... I had earlier taken a usability course at University of California, Berkeley ... and received free and sincere mentoring from course instructor and ACM Lifetime Award winner Richard Anderson for several years since then.

Today, about 95,000 Indians alone are studying in the US.  Like me, each one will have a success story regardless of where they choose to live. Wouldn't it be a nice gesture to turn around and say "Thank you!"

Note: the gray-colored phrases in this post are links ... go ahead and try them.

Innovators, be ready to lead change!

Coming up with an innovation is important. But, it is often only the first step toward success. The challenging next step is: making change happen.

Some ten years back, I came up with a business process centric approach to architect user interfaces for business software. Prospects and customers loved it, but I was faced with the daunting task of gettting software teams to change from their traditional technology centric approach.

This switching demanded a fundamental change in how people thought about enterprise needs, business software, and software projects. It required them to fit the new approach and a new-breed practitioner into their existing software process.

Thankfully, change did happen (and I learned such big lessons at the School of Hard Knocks that I've been doing some preaching too on the topic!).

Well, this is just a first-hand experience that shows how innovations drive change. Lots of other great examples exist in literature.

What does this mean to the innovator? Be ready to lead change.

Pursuit of Excellence makes Innovation happen

That innovation can drive business growth is pretty well-known. People also have ideas about what drives innovation. A need ... an innovation culture ... an innovation process ... creative people ...

The important question is: What really makes these creative people to innovate (assuming culture, process, etc exist)?

To me, the simple answer is: Excellence.

Innovators are pursuers of Excellence.

This connection between Excellence and Innovation is not often shown or preached (of course, Tom Peters has always done that).

The link also shows that where there is no pursuit of Excellence, innovation can hardly happen.

Pursuit of Excellence makes good business sense

Does Excellence have a place in the business world, which is busy chasing higher everything ... revenues ... profits ... stock price ... market capitalization ... etc?

Tom Peters has not only researched Excellence in dozens of companies, but through 25+ years of preaching, practically introduced the Excellence mindset and practice into the business world.

What does Tom say? He says that Excellence is a profitable aspiration. And he adds that an "unwavering pursuit of Excellence ... provides the basis for an unmatchable competitive advantage."

I hope to share some thoughts in future articles on how Excellence translates to business results.

Tom Peters: who comes close?

Many of my actions -- and perhaps yours -- have been translations of the voice of Tom Peters. I haven't seen or heard of anyone in history with the Tom kind of passion to push people toward excellence. Isn't excellence the best goal anyone could pursue in life or business?

I've read Tom's books, with The Circle of Innovation being a favorite. And I've been consulting his blog every single business day. With Tom deciding to drastically slow down (to focus on his health), I'm wondering where further inspiration might come from.

Seth Godin comes to mind. Seth is inspiring too. Today I put his blog in my Favorites Bar.

It might not be fair to compare Seth and Tom. Seth is a marketing guru, while Tom is more of a generalist distinctly driven by excellence.
 
In Re-imagine, Tom has talked about his different personas ... "Maryland Tom" ... "California Tom" ... Right now, he's perhaps changing into another new persona. So, thousands including you and me would be trusting that he'd continue to share and inspire the world.

In the meantime, who do you think comes close to Tom?

Cut to 1996 . . .

Leading a discussion about whether or not to "hide" one's earlier professions, I "revealed" my earlier professions in the previous post. Here, I add a couple of "unusual" things I did in the past, which were nevertheless important to my employer . . .

Today, Cognizant Technology Solutions is an 80,000-person company. Cut to 1996: you see a "promising venture" as it described itself back then.

During those early days, the company had a rudimentary webpage. Having picked up user interface education at University of California, Berkeley and combining that with my writing experience, I (with a colleague's help) produced the company's first real website.

Drawing on my Journalism & Mass Communication training, which I took in the 80s at Madras Christian College, I also produced Cognizant's first professional employee newsletter. I labeled it AWARE. I particularly like the label because I think it is meaningful, easy to say/spell, memorable, ... and "synonymes" with the word cognizant!

And, yes, my team also helped create the company's first Intranet under then CTO Deb Mukherjee's leadership.

Related article: The early days of a company and the significance of your contribution.

Should you "hide" your earlier professions?

An HR professional, who had hired for my team, moved on to another company. There, he switched to a different profession. During a casual conversation, when I mentioned his hiring expertise, he said something as if I never knew him before: "No, I'm not an HR expert. Actually, I ..."

This guy perhaps wants me to forget him as a former HR professional. He believes that he should build his personal brand around his current new profession/discipline. I appreciate it because I've had my own similar experiences. In terms of disciplines, I moved ...

From Technical Writing in the 1980s (here, I innovated a software usability driven approach, which I published and presented at conferences) ...

To User Interface Design (here, I innovated a business process centric approach, which differentiated former employer Cognizant Technology Solutions and gave the company competitive edge right from its early days) ...

To Business Process Management (here, I created a business process centric software approach, a brief note about which you'll find at the Columbia Business School website).

Not only was I moving into different disciplines, within each discipline, I was "moving into" a different approach.

At each move, I wanted to eliminate the potential for confusion with my previous profession/approach and wanted to strengthen my current brand.

Excellence guru Tom Peters, who is also master of personal branding, says in Re-Imagine:

"I was very proud, I tell you, of the persona called ... California Tom. And quite willing to bury Maryland Tom back in Maryland."

If you have switched disciplines, how did you deal with the associated challenges?

PS: By talking about my earlier disciplines/approaches, have I confused readers about who I am today?

Meg Whitman: Scale or fail

Sure, Meg Whitman has just won the Republican party's nomination for California Governor. But, that's not why I'm writing. This event simply reminded me of one aspect of her leadership as eBay's CEO.

Back then, eBay's infrastructure could not keep pace with the exponential growth in the number of users. A huge 22-hour outage sliced $5 billion off the company's market capitalization.

PC-maker Gateway's CIO Maynard Webb was considered just the talent to get eBay out of the mess. And here's what Meg promised while wooing him:

• All resources required to set things right
• More than double her salary
• Plus a bonus of $108,000
• An extra $300,000 if all went well
• And options to buy half a million shares of eBay stock.

Maynard took the offer and by the end of the year, outage was in mere seconds a month.

PS: Interestingly, another former high-tech business leader Carly Fiorina has also won nomination (for Senate seat). And you knew this too :-)