Advisor
Geoff works with executive and middle-management teams to address challenges in strategy, organization, and execution. Engagements are organized like seminars around one or more frameworks from his books and blog posts. The goal is for everyone to leverage the insights from applying the frameworks in order to promote actions that increase impact and improve performance.
Strategy
Market development and go-to-market programs for disruptive innovations. As categories proceed through the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, at each stage market development and go-to-market efforts need to adapt in dramatic and counter-intuitive ways. Teams often fall out of alignment at these junctures, causing execution to falter. This workshop ensures that team members converge on the right playbook with the right metrics for the stage they are currently addressing. For further context see Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado.
Company positioning strategy in an era of disruptive innovation. Technology shifts change the trajectory of established categories and disrupt the prevailing pecking order, creating both opportunities and challenges for incumbent players. This workshop will engage your team in assessing the landscape of power and determining how best to secure the most advantageous place with it. For further context see Escape Velocity.
Pressure-testing the operating plan given a significant change in strategy. Shifts in strategy call for disruptive changes in resource allocation whereas the annual budgeting process tends to reward incremental changes to the prior year. This workshop engages executive leadership in a zero-based budgeting exercise that prioritizes transformation about business as usual while still maintaining a balance to meet current market and customer commitments. For further context see Escape Velocity.
Organization
Portfolio management in an era of disruptive innovation. Established enterprises are expected to deliver performance in the current fiscal year while at the same time pursuing next-generation initiatives that will have negative returns for some time to come. This creates conflicting priorities that call for different operating models and accountability metrics. This workshop engages executive leadership in a zone management model that creates clear and distinct marching orders for delivering revenue performance, productivity improvement, next-gen incubation, and portfolio transformation outcomes. For further context see Zone to Win.
Resource management strategy for middle managers. Middle management is where all the work gets done, which puts these teams under constant productivity improvement pressure. This workshop shows how organizations in any zone can employ “nested zoning” to maximize their effectiveness and increase their efficiency. For further reference see Zone to Win and relevant best practices blog posts on nested zoning on LinkedIn.
Executive development and building bench strength. Cross-functional initiatives are not only critical to strategy execution, they are also superb opportunities for executive development following the single accountable leader model. This workshop engages middle managers in defining this role, recruiting the right profile of person to fill it, and managing performance around a win or learn accountability model. For further reference, see relevant best practices blog posts on single accountable leaders on LinkedIn.
Execution
Return on innovation. Innovation creates returns through three different and distinct pathways—differentiation to create competitive separation, neutralization to overcome competitive separation, and optimization to maximize current returns. This workshop engages product teams in taking a portfolio approach to allocating resources across all three pathways and creating playbooks with appropriate metrics for each approach. For further reference see Escape Velocity and best practices blog posts on return on innovation on LinkedIn.
Sales plays for emerging markets. Emerging markets require the go-to-market team to create, or at minimum to redirect, budget before they can actually compete to win it. This calls for account management plays that follow a five-act framework to access the target customer, engage the relevant personas, close the deal, enable the implementation, and ensure value realization. This workshop engages marketing and sales teams in planning, creating, and executing these plays. For further reference see best practices blog posts on the Five Act Sales Play on LinkedIn.
and programs that are intended to change state, and working through how these two very different playbooks can be applied to their organization. For further reference, see Zone to Win and best practices blogs on the Productivity Zone on LinkedIn.
