investiledysfunction

So I just finished reading the Wall Street Journal Report on their All Things Digital Conference which features interviews with Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Jerry Yang, Sue Decker, Tom Rogers (Tivo), Melinda Gates, etc.  Jeff Bezos was also interviewed and as I’ve noted many times in my blog, the guy just has the right outlook on innovation, management, etc.  There is some talk that I may have a “man crush” on him and A.G. Lafley of P&G with which I disagree.  (more on that below)

In any case, the conference website has some pretty interesting stuff so I wanted to include a link to their site for all to check out - All Things Digital.

Back to the man crush comment.  According to Urban Dictionary, a man crush for those who don’t know is defined as follows ” A man having extreme admiration for another man, as though he wants to be him.”  This maybe overreaching a bit (don’t want to be either Bezos or Lafley) but the admiration point is pretty on point.

Fortune’s March 17 issue contains an excerpt from a book entitled The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation which is by P&G CEO, A.G. Lafley, and management consultant, Ram Charan, which has a couple of passages which are brilliont (nice, eh?). Before I share Lafley’s awesome insights, it is worth looking at P&G’s stock chart since he took over in 2001. So take a look at the chart below and notice the stocks dismal to pathetic performance until 2001 and then look at when Lafley took over. That is some chart, eh? So how did he do it?

Organic Growth

“We made sustainable organic growth the priority. Organic growth is less risky than acquired growth and more highly valued by investors…Adding a few points in market share can mean hundreds of millions in new revenue.”

Instead of chasing inorganic growth through M&A, Lafley astutely realized that optimizing their portfolio of internal investments in product development, marketing, etc could drive significant value in a much less risky. And the price chart shows the fruits of this effort. This really is one of the best examples I’ve seen of the power of organic growth and the fact that it works. Managing your investments as part of a corporate portfolio really drives performance.

On Innovation

“Long known for a preference to do everything in-house, we began to seek out innovation from any and all sources. Innovation is all about connection, so get everyone we can involved: P&Gers past and present, customers, suppliers, even competitors. The more connections, the more ideas; the more ideas, the more solutions. And because what gets measured gets managed, we established a goal of that half of new-product and technology innovations have some contribution from outside P&G - such as licensing or buying a technology, finding a partner, or making an acquisition. We are already beyond that figure, compared with 15% in 2000.”

I’m really beginning to like this Lafley guy. On the topic of innovation, he hits on so many key elements of innovation and the best part he actually did this in his organization - didn’t theorize or pontificate on it. Let’s dissect his most brilliont points.

• Set goals and measure it - Innovation doesn’t happen. And proclamations about innovation are just that - proclamations. You have to set goals and put them into people’s objectives and then make sure they are achieved. They did this.
• We’re not the smartest guys in the world - Innovation doesn’t happen because the top 10 people in the company think of an idea and go do it. There is no monopoly on ideas. And so opening up the organization and being receptive to ideas from everywhere is smart business.

I hope to meet Mr. Lafley at some point. In the meantime, I’ll settle for his book. For more info on the book, check out it’s Amazon listing by clicking here.