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“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”
― Erma Bombeck

Building a Culture of Digital Fluency for Innovation and Growth

A few weeks ago I was speaking with a prospective client who had recently sold his consulting firm to a larger, global firm. He wanted help persuading the parent company to invest in growing a niche SaaS product that his team created. He was frustrated by the parent company’s inability to understand why it would be useful to supplement their consulting services with this SaaS product. At one point in the conversation, I asked him to drop a hyperlink into the chat. He said, “I don’t know how to do that.” 

Digital fluency and product innovation
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Can Incentives Help You Productize?

One CEO recently shared with me, “We need to restructure our incentive plan. Our consultants are all incented on short-term revenue, which is making it very hard to get traction with our new products that have lower price points but better margins and more revenue visibility.”

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How Product Reviews Can Be a Trojan Horse for Change Management

Our product review board meetings are less about improving the performance of the product portfolio and more about getting people to buy into our productization strategy. They allow people to come with ideas, source ideas, and get involved in the process. They give us a chance to see who is willing to raise their hand, come on board, become true believers, and take that back to their own teams."

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How to: Structure Your Organization to Support Your Product Vision

The most successful productizing companies have a product organizational structure that is driven by and aligned with a well-articulated vision and goals for the productization strategy. A product org structure that is misaligned with the goals of the productization strategy puts great product ideas at risk of lackluster performance, racking up costs, or never making it to launch in the first place. 

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What Summiting Mount Kilimanjaro Taught Me About Overcoming Fear

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is helping people overcome fear. I help clients overcome the fear of uncertainty as they try to innovate and develop new products. I work with my team to overcome the fear of not being liked when they have to deliver unpleasant market feedback to a client. And my co-founder and I talk a lot about our own fears of failure as we try to grow, but also protect, our business.


I’ve also watched brave colleagues, friends and family stare down fears when the stakes are much higher - a cancer diagnosis or a sick child, for example. And I think of their ‘fearlessness’ when my smaller work-related fears can feel all-consuming.


This summer, I had the opportunity to practice fearlessness in a new way. On August 3, I summited Mount Kilimanjaro with my 16 year-old son, David.


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