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See Sooner, Act Faster

January 10, 2020 / 27:34

This episode features George D and Paul Schumacher discussing their book, See Sooner, Act Faster, which focuses on organizational vigilance in the digital age.

George D, an emeritus professor of marketing at Wharton, defines vigilance as a heightened sense of alertness within organizations. He emphasizes the importance of leadership teams that are characterized by candor and curiosity, which helps them recognize weak signals of threats or opportunities.

Paul Schumacher, CEO of Decision Strategies International, adds that vigilant organizations can significantly increase their market capitalization compared to vulnerable ones. He explains that vulnerability often stems from leadership teams that are short-term focused and resistant to change.

The discussion includes examples of vigilant organizations, such as Adobe, which successfully transitioned to a subscription-based model, and the Canadian government's investment in artificial intelligence. They highlight the need for a culture that encourages curiosity and the identification of weak signals.

Both guests conclude with advice for CEOs on fostering vigilance, emphasizing the importance of rewarding curiosity and maintaining openness to new ideas and signals.

TL;DR

George D and Paul Schumacher discuss organizational vigilance and its importance in navigating digital turbulence in their book <i>See Sooner, Act Faster</i>.

Episode

27:34
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our guests today are George D and Paul
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Schumacher George is an emeritus
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professor of marketing at Wharton and a
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senior fellow at the Mac Institute for
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innovation management Paul founded and
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has been the CEO and chairman of
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decision strategies International and
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he's also served on the faculty at
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Wharton and at the University of Chicago
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we are speaking with them today about
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their new book see sooner act faster how
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vigilant leaders thrive in an era of
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digital turbulence George and Paul thank
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you so much for joining us today
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acknowledged at Wharton thanks for
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having our pleasure George maybe we can
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start with you what do you mean by
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vigilance and why is it so important
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well let's start with individual
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vigilance which is a heightened sense of
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alertness and we take that and bring it
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up to the full organization and the idea
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of a leadership team which is our our
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primary focus
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that's vigilant is one that's
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characterized by candor high curiosity
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openness because they receive a lot of
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weak signals and they're open to them
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and and interestingly we have found in
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the ten years we've been working
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together on this that whenever an
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organization missed a weak signal of
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either a threat or an opportunity that
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there was someone in the organization
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that in fact knew about it but the
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leadership team didn't know about it so
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we built on that kernel to come up with
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this notion of a vigilant organization
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in in short one that is able to see
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sooner and the the the the reference
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point is the rivals both potential and
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current I could just add to that what
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what's the payoff for a vigilant
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organization in terms of
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being more vigilant tennis rivals and
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sanctioned rivals so the payoff we've
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were very fortunate to have some
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colleagues in Europe do a study based
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upon part of our survey and they
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actually ask the question what is the
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payoff but as contrasted with much
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management research which is
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cross-sectional they actually defined
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vigilant and vulnerable organizations
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those that continually are surprised and
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wrong-footed and they tracked 85 large
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European multinationals over eight years
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and the payoff was that the Vigilant
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organizations had an increase in market
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capitalization that was double the
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increase in market cap of the vulnerable
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organizations to find the way we do it
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which is you know investment in
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foresight capabilities and leadership
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commitment what is vigilance so
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important especially at a time of
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digital turbulence as you see in the
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subtitle of your book yes I think
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because you have these different
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combinations of technologies they may be
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emerging technologies and already
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developed technologies but when they
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coalesce to make something possible and
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could be a new electronic digital
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product it could be over it could be air
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B&B did they people don't see it coming
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quickly because it is not in the
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traditional mold and it may not be in
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the space that where people are looking
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so that the feature of these digital
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technologies and after they are
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disruptive but not always would be that
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they don't respect industry boundaries
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the way normally is the case they do
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allow for very fast scaling so these
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light asset kind of things and they
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become new entrants who don't want to
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compete with the old business model but
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they bring in a new one and to to
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destroy maybe did the old one or find
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a hybrid of these things but each of
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these technologies it may be five four
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six seven technologies if you think of
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autonomous cars as twenty different
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technologies now to predict when
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everything is at the right point of
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reliability cost functionality in order
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to make the car function and forget for
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a moment regulations that is very hard
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to predict so it seems that these
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happens suddenly in fact there's a long
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gestation period but this combinatorial
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complexity or well that is an express
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exponential explosion if you have twenty
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thirty technologies that make coalesce
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how do you get a fix on that so is that
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the reason why turbulence is so hard to
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predict yeah I think there's an
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unpredictable element to it and and so
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your vigilance has to respect the fact
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that it cannot all be analytically
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predicted as you you mentioned a very
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interesting term in your earlier comment
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which is vulnerable organizations I'm
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sorry vulnerable organize oh yes yeah
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and I was wondering what factors matter
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most in explaining the difference
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between vigilant organizations and
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vulnerable ones so the the vigilant
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organizations we've already talked about
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now why would you be vulnerable well we
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have discovered that in this study that
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we talked about where the market cap
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increase was so much lower for the
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vulnerable organizations that
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vulnerability starts at the top and it's
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that's a consequence of the leadership
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team being a very short term oriented
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operational stick to the knitting to use
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the old term and very comfortable in
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their familiar surveys so they don't
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step outside the bounds of their
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industry they don't challenge themselves
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they stay within their comfort space and
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as a consequence there's not a lot of
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curiosity they don't invest in foresight
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which is the second big factor
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they don't do for example discipline
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searches for
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our opportunities using techniques like
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lead user analysis they tend to be more
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inside-out thinkers that is say okay
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I've got this capability this resource
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what do I do with it now
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and so that sets them up to be always
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reacting and that's the definition of a
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vulnerable organization it's always in
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react mode it never has a chance to get
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ahead Paul do you have something to add
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about why why it is that if
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organizations need to be vigilant all
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the time that vulnerability seems to be
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the norm do you have some of your
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thoughts yeah because I think the
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day-to-day pressures really command a
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lot of attention it's almost like grass
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Ohm's law of planning where you know
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that the the less important stuff drives
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out the more important stuff which has
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to do with the longer term which always
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can wait people think but in fact of
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course you using a precious time it has
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to do where the attention goes attention
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now we focus in our book on the
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leadership team we don't think it's one
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person one CEO a board member who can
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say this is how you become vigilant we
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ask the question what master leadership
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team do at the corporate level
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divisional level functional level SBU
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level in order to be vigilant and they
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become vulnerable the moment they get
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sucked into either protecting turf or
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the politics of organizations and they
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don't really fully anticipate once you
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have a shorter term focus how much how
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the scenarios for the future may be very
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different from the status quo and those
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are discomfort level with that the
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version two ambiguity so people that
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want to go there so what they have to do
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is often counterintuitive you have to
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almost say as a leadership team so what
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are the anomalies what is happening in
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our environment that people are curious
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about they wonder why is this happening
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and most of the time that's white noise
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people people themselves who maybe
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observe that a price is increased or
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that something happens they want to
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raise it unless they have a good
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rationale for it so you need a leader
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sort of what's Andy quoted at Intel sort
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of through this paranoia that you're
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looking for the reasons why things may
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break and that you're also willing to
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challenge the current model when he
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became CEOs was well-known of course
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then he challenged the business model
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and he said if we had taken over
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this company through an acquisition
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would we really stay on the current
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course and here legitimates now
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questions about whether they have the
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right business model still but in light
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of signals that are weak
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so in signals a weak it's hard to build
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a strong case that you should make a
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bold move so George is building upon
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what Paul just said could we talk a
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little bit about some of the features
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that define a vigilant organization and
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if you have an example or two of
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companies that demonstrate that I think
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that would be great yeah there's a lot
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of nonprofit as well as for-profit but I
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will start with Adobe which is a
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masterful example of a vigilant
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organization because way back we all
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remember the shrink-wrapped image
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building photoshop capability and when I
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talk to my students about shrink-wrapped
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software they say what what they don't
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understand that concept but it was only
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15 years ago that that's the way
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software was sold and you bought your
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software and you got full rights to it
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Adobe could see over the horizon
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actually ahead of almost all their
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rivals that cloud storage was going to
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dramatically change the way images are
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stored and made available and so they
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made the decision to shift to a
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subscriber based model where all the
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content was lodged in the cloud and and
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of course their customers objected
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strenuously because they liked having a
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physical object is it
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what's this cloud up here we we don't
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feel comfortable having our images out
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of our control but they persisted
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because they were confident with what
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they had done in testing the proposition
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and what why we use the term see sooner
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then act faster acting faster is doing
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probin learn studies a lot of
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experimentation and buying real options
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it doesn't mean acting in the full sense
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of jumping into the market it's getting
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yourself ready so when the time is right
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you have all the pieces in place and
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Adobe did that superbly but in another
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domain entirely
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I think the Canadian government was very
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farsighted in realizing that the future
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digital technologies was going to be
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inextricably linked to artificial
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intelligence and they made 10 years ago
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a major commitment to investing in
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keeping the science at home as in Canada
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and making it very attractive for people
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to come from the states to Canada they
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took a lot of the risk out but this
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required some pretty farsighted
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vigilance in our term and a lot of
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initial investments to get proof of
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concept make people comfortable with it
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and now we see the payoff in fact it's
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interesting you mentioned the Canadian
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government because we some time ago
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featured the vector Institute and
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interviewed page Dickey from there who
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explains some some of these things in in
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detail Paul you referred to in your
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earlier comments the importance of
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reading weak signals and I was wondering
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you know why is it so important to for
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companies and leadership teams to pick
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up on weak signals what exactly does
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that mean and again like George could
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you give any examples of companies that
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have done it well yeah so the first
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question is what is a weak signal and I
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would say it's something that on its own
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doesn't have a lot of meaning but if it
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is combined either by understanding in
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the context of the signal
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or by combining it with other signals
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through triangulation that in fact holds
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a lot of informational value so it
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requires a culture that is curious about
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anomalies or things that are contrary to
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expectations so one pharmaceutical
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company to give an example was working
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on and dermatological drug and they ran
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and standard controlled experiments and
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the volunteers had to come in for
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medical check-ups and the person who
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registered them and noticed that some of
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these were very cheerful more so than
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others and this is a woman and she
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mentioned that the secretary to the
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people running the trial and they were
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also sufficiently curious it starts with
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this culture of curiosity that they
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wanted to look into this and as you can
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imagine it turned out that many of these
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cheerful folks happen to be in the
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treatment group not in the control group
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and even though this particular drug
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failed as a dermatological drug it
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became a very successful antidepressant
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now how often is it the case that weak
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signals from customers or from
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volunteers from inside the organization
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die at the point where it is seen it
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stays in the reception area right rather
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than make it all the way up the
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organization and so it would show you
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need champions for weak signals
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otherwise they will just die and they
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won't be noticed I do think that the
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future foreshadows itself and there's
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many warnings but it's not presented on
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a gold platter it's distributed you know
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to lay out your organization and beyond
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the organization some of the signals may
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be in other industries and if you go too
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far out it may become very complex or
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what Canada this is a great example when
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Japan tried to do something along many
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decades ago in anticipating its future
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mitii and sort of industrial policies
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they had identified artificial
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intelligence and supercomputers as the
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two big pillars and that turned out to
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be not so easy to do because they were
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very far into the future so it's a very
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fine balance between where can you still
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not only understand it but act on it in
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and responsible you know financially
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speaking waves interesting let's be be
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ready to act when the time is right yes
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and that was probably the problem with
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Japan let's go back to the the digital
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turbulence problem which it just
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increases the amount of data and
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information
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the last date I saw was our last
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information was that the amount of data
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is doubling every 18 months that means
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the signal to noise ratio is
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deteriorating rapidly
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so the important week signals the
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threats and opportunities are often
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shrouded in all of the noise and so we
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spend a lot of time in the book helping
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leadership teams think about how to
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allocate that scarce resource of
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attention and then focus on a few areas
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that will be ultimately extremely
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critical and so we have come up with the
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concept of guiding questions one of the
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six or eight questions that you've got
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to keep your eyes on and make sure the
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whole organization is aware of them and
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these questions come out of looking at
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where you missed things in the past
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diagnosing the future I mean diagnosing
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the present and anticipating the future
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and so we come up with two or three
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questions that the whole organization is
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aware of is widely communicated you have
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task forces working on them for example
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a medical device company some years ago
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was very concerned about the likelihood
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that a drug would displace the function
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of a peacemaker and it's not implausible
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and they were very concerned about it
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so they said their guiding question was
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what drug pharmaceutical drug could
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possibly displace an obsolete our our
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product and so they created a task force
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they made it highly visible all of the
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weak signals on that particular topic
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flowed into this one central node and
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interestingly just as a sidebar they
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learned an enormous amount about the
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drug industry and they found some
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amazingly effective drugs to enhance
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the capabilities of not only their their
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stents would say also sold but of the
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peacemakers that's in great that's a
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great story
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so based on everything both of you have
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said so far I wonder if I could ask each
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of you how can companies become more
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vigilant or as you put it in your book
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how can a company increase its vigilance
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quotient the quality won't start with
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that yeah I think a very good starting
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point is to and if I may just comment
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briefly on what George was saying what
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was in the medical example striking is
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that it was many signals having
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receptors where they can be interpreters
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so it's seldom that it was one weak
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signal but it is this combination and
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the CEO of DuPont was famously in the
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news for having identified early before
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the you know the Great Recession three
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different signals of a cash flow problem
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with the customer in Japan and then the
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the hotel in Wilmington DuPont hotel not
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being fully occupied and unusually low
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and GM not being able to give production
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numbers to them as they normally would
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he triangulated these and they all
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happened at different times not within
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the context at all of may there be a
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recession or whatever and he said are we
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gonna hit a wall and saw that early so
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that is the hard part to do so one I
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think is to really identify cases where
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people were prescient in some sense they
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saw the future and as importantly look
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at the past so we start with an audit
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and say let's look at what you missed in
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the past must be years what you saw
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early was it more a threat it's an
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opportunity and when we did that with
00:19:09
olympus for example there were things
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that they've really excellent that they
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saw underwater cameras at opportunity
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before others did but there were other
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things that there endoscopes which were
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high-end endoscopes would be replaced by
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the displaced by disposable endoscopes
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they were like there was a blind spot
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and at Shell we did this one I worked at
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the Planning Group in shell in London
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and we said well what is shell missed
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and it turns out they miss of course
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stuff in economics but they don't miss a
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lot and systematically in in in the
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other domains except for one in public
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relations and media they didn't have a
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good sense they had to Brent's Peres
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Fiasco at one point in the North Sea
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there in Nigeria they had made payments
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to schools that ended up in the pockets
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of corrupt officials and then they
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overstated though their oil reserves
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just have to big companies look very bad
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and I had a vnp lost his job over that
00:19:56
issue so once you start to study the
00:19:59
profile you identify well is the
00:20:00
organization systemically weak and once
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you understand that you can then say
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well how can we fix that and of course
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the past doesn't predict the future in
00:20:07
that sense unless you have a starting
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point and then the other way maybe
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George can talk about that we have tests
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lots of surveys to measure the requisite
00:20:16
conditions for being vigilant in place
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and we have survey that has you know 30
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questions that and we have benchmarks
00:20:22
tokens which that can be compared so
00:20:24
those are Diagnostics that can help so
00:20:26
we offer at the the end of the book a an
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action agenda that is consistent with
00:20:34
all the examples we talked about there's
00:20:36
a lot of research but especially our
00:20:39
research says there's two big factors
00:20:42
and that is leadership commitment to
00:20:45
vigilance it's highly visible signal to
00:20:48
the organization and then significant
00:20:52
investments in foresight activities so
00:20:55
leadership commitment is signaled by the
00:21:00
amount of time you spend for example
00:21:03
thinking about the future and an a
00:21:06
vulnerable organization will spend less
00:21:09
than 20% vigilant organisations spend up
00:21:13
to 50 percent of the leadership time
00:21:15
thinking about the future
00:21:18
they also Network very widely they're
00:21:22
open they signal that they're ready and
00:21:27
open to weak signals Andy Grove was a
00:21:31
magician at that he gave permission to
00:21:36
people at the way out on their periphery
00:21:39
to come to him directly with a concern
00:21:43
and and that kind of openness
00:21:47
curiosity and candor is is critical
00:21:53
because it vigilance is a team sport and
00:21:58
then you follow that with very visible
00:22:01
investments in foresight activities
00:22:05
including what we find is the 3m and
00:22:11
companies of that sort invest an
00:22:13
enormous amount in looking for
00:22:15
opportunities they don't wait for them
00:22:17
to come but they use lead user analysis
00:22:20
to pursue interesting needs of their
00:22:25
lead customers they do a lot of
00:22:30
experiments and they have a lot of
00:22:34
investments in small startups for
00:22:38
example that might have a but go back to
00:22:42
the medical device company they invested
00:22:44
a lot in small stakes in many many
00:22:48
companies to get visibility into what
00:22:52
was the next generation rather than
00:22:55
having it appear as a product they knew
00:22:58
the basic science and then they
00:23:02
communicated that widely through the
00:23:04
organization and finally just one of the
00:23:09
things that is so consistent through all
00:23:11
of our studies and examples is that when
00:23:15
information is not shared you're
00:23:18
vulnerable yeah now we've talked a lot
00:23:23
about for-profit companies and I wonder
00:23:25
if vigilance and vulnerability are also
00:23:29
applicable to other kinds of
00:23:30
organizations like nonprofits
00:23:32
foundations and so on yeah yes sir we
00:23:35
also samples in particular foundations
00:23:37
American foundations with the help of
00:23:39
the Council on Foundations and also
00:23:42
Credit Union's American credit unions
00:23:43
the corporate study was actually global
00:23:46
in this world a lot of time of global
00:23:48
companies but we do can see a comparison
00:23:50
and indeed the weight that some of these
00:23:53
factors that we mentioned in terms of
00:23:55
vigilance differ but and it differs as a
00:23:57
function of size and the difference of a
00:23:59
function of how the degrees of freedom
00:24:01
if you're highly regulated as credit
00:24:03
unions are there is of course less scope
00:24:04
for really farsighted leadership
00:24:06
foundations likewise for some small
00:24:08
Community Foundation's some other
00:24:10
MacArthur Foundation's very big and so
00:24:12
there is a lot of
00:24:14
you need you need to understand the
00:24:15
contingent factors why when is a certain
00:24:18
foresight capability a certain
00:24:21
attitudinal shift critical in that
00:24:23
sector so it's hard to sort of have
00:24:25
here's the recipe the five things they
00:24:27
always work they work but two different
00:24:29
degrees and so I think you cannot I
00:24:31
think it says still a research topic
00:24:33
about why vigilance varies and what are
00:24:36
the determinants of it because it
00:24:38
depends on time place culture all these
00:24:41
kinds of things George would you like to
00:24:43
add but one interesting finding was that
00:24:49
the large foundations had the same
00:24:53
attributes and and the the vulnerable
00:24:57
foundations and the vigilant foundations
00:25:00
were very similar to our sample of
00:25:04
global organizations but only for the
00:25:07
large foundations the small community
00:25:10
foundations with the restricted mandate
00:25:13
may be only in a region say southeastern
00:25:19
Pennsylvania with a very limited
00:25:24
periphery the that they had a totally
00:25:28
different as Paul said those very
00:25:32
restricted entities didn't have much
00:25:38
need for vigilance because they they
00:25:40
knew what they had to do they had very
00:25:42
few resources and so we we only really
00:25:48
began to appreciate how applicable the
00:25:50
model was when we started looking at the
00:25:52
big foundations I'd like to end with one
00:25:56
question for each of you that is that
00:25:58
let's imagine there is a CEO who comes
00:26:01
to you and says what's your one piece of
00:26:04
advice to make my company's leadership
00:26:08
team more vigilant what would be your
00:26:10
top recommendations Paul I would say
00:26:13
reward it if you see it and share the
00:26:16
best practices and and instill a culture
00:26:20
of curiosity and hypothesis testing
00:26:23
George the
00:26:26
litmus test is openness and and so
00:26:30
that's almost the other side of the
00:26:33
curiosity coin but you also have to be
00:26:36
open and make it clear to the
00:26:39
organization that you're open to weak
00:26:41
signals nagging concerns anomalies that
00:26:45
you can't explain
00:26:47
rather than having them bottled up in
00:26:50
the at the point of contact with the
00:26:54
marketplace for example or the
00:26:57
technologists people feel comfortable
00:27:00
forwarding that up and that openness is
00:27:04
is in a critical part of the curiosity
00:27:09
well George Paul thank you so much for
00:27:11
speaking with knowledge it working about
00:27:13
your book it's been a pleasure talking
00:27:14
with you likewise thanks as always for
00:27:18
more insight from knowledge at Wharton
00:27:20
please visit knowledge Wharton UPenn edu
00:27:27
[Music]
00:27:32
you

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Episode Highlights

  • Vigilance in Leadership
    George and Paul discuss the importance of vigilance in organizations, emphasizing curiosity and openness.
    “Vigilance is a heightened sense of alertness.”
    @ 00m 44s
    January 10, 2020
  • The Payoff of Vigilance
    Research shows vigilant organizations see a significant increase in market capitalization compared to vulnerable ones.
    “Vulnerability starts at the top.”
    @ 05m 48s
    January 10, 2020
  • Weak Signals Matter
    Recognizing weak signals can lead to significant opportunities, as demonstrated by a pharmaceutical case.
    “The future foreshadows itself; many warnings are distributed.”
    @ 14m 28s
    January 10, 2020
  • The Importance of Sharing Information
    Information sharing is crucial; without it, organizations become vulnerable.
    “When information is not shared, you're vulnerable.”
    @ 23m 15s
    January 10, 2020
  • Advice for CEOs
    Experts recommend fostering a culture of curiosity and openness to enhance vigilance.
    “Reward it if you see it and share the best practices.”
    @ 26m 13s
    January 10, 2020

Episode Quotes

  • Vigilance is a heightened sense of alertness.
    See Sooner, Act Faster
  • Vulnerability starts at the top.
    See Sooner, Act Faster
  • The future foreshadows itself; many warnings are distributed.
    See Sooner, Act Faster
  • When information is not shared, you're vulnerable.
    See Sooner, Act Faster
  • Reward it if you see it and share the best practices.
    See Sooner, Act Faster
  • Openness is a critical part of curiosity.
    See Sooner, Act Faster

Key Moments

  • Vigilance Defined00:44
  • Leadership Vulnerability05:48
  • Importance of Weak Signals14:28
  • Vigilance and Vulnerability23:25
  • Curiosity Culture26:20
  • Openness Matters27:04

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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