BLAST FROM THE PAST -
How Companies Behaved In 2008
Is How A Lot Of Them Are Behaving Now
Thought Sparks
Rita McGrath
INTRODUCTION
In October of 2008, I wrote about a company that had a reputation as a paragon of good management that was its own worst enemy when it came to sustainable efforts to innovate and transform. With economic uncertainty in the air, a lot of firms are falling right into those same old patterns.
F-INFLECTED WOUNDS
pse of Lehman Brothers in er 2008 triggered a severe al financial crisis. It led to a ecession, financial market nd a massive government out of banks and financial titutions. This brought the orld of Wall Street right to s doorstep and left a lot of le angry and disillusioned.
INNOVATION LEADERS THAT WON THEN AND ARE WINNING TODAY
Discovery Driven Growth did indeed get published in 2009, the following year. Quite delightfully, the book has since gone on to be accorded a “management classic” by Global Management ranking Thinkers50.
The book’s central message is that firms that figure out a way to keep their innovation programs healthy, even in the face of difficult times, benefit. They don’t succumb to the panic of the moment and over-react by lopping off everything deemed non-essential.
AND THE ORIGINAL, “WELL MANAGED” COMPANY?
The barriers that I wrote about back then got worse, despite things looking great to the outside world.
In an unfortunate turn of events, a program that I’d been running to help them create a more entrepreneurial mindset got mixed up with a faddish but not very well thought through effort to do something similar. It could have potentially worked, but the teams doing the facilitating didn’t have bigcompany experience. Predictably, the thing went down in flames, a victim of an inability to manage “mothership” issues, all represented in the list above.
Rita McGrath | Thought Sparks
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