Lisa Hendrickson Leadership Takeaways

Innovation and disruption can elevate the human experience. Presenting disruption as a means that helps employees achieve personal goals as well helps lower resistance and increase enthusiasm and the appetite for change.

Ingenuity is often mistaken for innovation. That's because innovation is finding a wholly new way of doing something while ingenuity helps us do something better with the tools and the circumstances that we have.

Demographics, technology and globalization working together bring seismic shifts to even the smallest changes inside the organization.

Change the method, change the organization. Strategy leads us to think about change and how to do it while "blocking and tackling" in operations is where the change to the organization happens. It's in how you play the game that will tell whether your team and your people have the "stuff" to make changes stick.

The Lean Startup and the Lean Canvas approach using the MVP model is a powerful way to bring a product to market. Using the MVP methodology doesn't build a great company. Product designers need to know the difference between taking a product to market and building a company. Using the MVP methodology might be the start to bringing a great product to market but it doesn't design a great company. Entrepreneurs are still charged with making a great company.

Focus on value creation and the monetization of the value that your organization offers and transmit this value through your brand. It's the way to maintain your brand positioning in the New New Economy. During uncertain times, people want to know what they can count on. It's more important than ever.

Smaller enterprises and manufacturers attention to the P&L functions is critical to the success of the business regardless of how many years the company has been doing business. Large established companies and transactional industries like real estate and finance have balance sheet conversations that drive KPI's. No matter what kind of business you are, understanding the financial conversation of other sized businesses and other sectors will have you have a greater understanding of how companies operate and derive value.

COO Takeaways

Brand, Customer, Pricing and Product

Pricing is the intersection between sales, marketing and finance and doing this function well is at the heart of stable margins and creating a viable product or service. Freemium isn't a model that builds long lasting value or relationships.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs drives the deepest desires of consumers. Brands delivering the right products and promises aligned with the right tier in the hierarchy.

People buy from brands when brands connect with what their clients or customers aspire to. Or they buy from brands they think will solve a problem and make their lives easier. Getting unstuck from problems by solving them allows people to aspire to greater things. Either way, you end up in the same place--aspiring to what's next.

The advent of the Internet has changed the sales cycle and the product knowledge learning curve. Preparing your potential customers for the sale with knowledge and brand value through user-centric design, responsive marketing and social engagement readies them for the relationship and transaction stage. Human engagement still adds the intangible value that makes the difference between "liking" and buying. Relationship matters more than ever.