Warren Evans
Directors Forum Group 2 enjoyed an excellent Friday morning peering a few years into the future with Warren Evans, a “Futurist” visiting us from Canada to speak to several groups in The Academy for Chief Executives. The members gave the session an overall score of 9 out of 10 – an accurate reflection of the quality of this session (and we had a guest present who immediately decided to join the group!)
Several points rang out for me:
- In this age of burgeoning social media and multi-channel communication our brands are increasingly becoming like personalities: it is not what we say that matters (advertising) as much as what others say about us (which is determined by how they perceive what we do).
- It is the leaders job to decide what personality we want (“how should customers describe us?“) and then communicate it so consistently internally that it shines out of all staff externally.
- A US electrical and electronics retailer, Best Buy, uses a phantom internal “stock market” to monitor new product and other projects. Staff invest their phantom capital in the projects they believe most likely to succeed (and can buy/sell throughout the year). The most successful investors get real rewards at the year-end. In the meantime the stock-market price of the individual projects give rapid feedback on what the staff think about their prospects of success. I have absolutely no idea of the details – but if I still ran an organisation running R&D projects I would certainly want to find out!
Peter Pritchett
Peter Pritchett is the chairman of a number of peer group learning forums for business leaders within The Academy for Chief Executives. To find out more about this group, visit www.chiefexecutive.com/DF02. To find out more about Warren Evans, visit http://wevans.com/.
Good business leaders, like you, often feel very alone. Running a business is tough. Key decision making, company direction, clarity of strategy, personal development; it’s a huge responsibility and it’s entirely yours. Little wonder you’re sometimes sleepless in the small hours or struggling to answer those really big questions.
Who can you turn to for totally impartial advice?
www.chiefexecutive.com