Strategic Invention Points, SIPs, are an creation of former CEO and Founder of Intel’s Andrew Grove. SIPs are not always easy to spot, but you can’t hide from them. Intel’s first SIP was when the Japanese started producing better-quality, low-cost memory chips. It took Intel three years and huge losses to recognize, to rethink and to reposition the company to become, once again, leader in its field.
Narcissism is widespread at the top in both private and public companies as well as in non-profit organizations and the public sector. Narcissism is a necessary element for effective leadership, but it can, however, also become a negative trait. So we may therefore speak about positive and destructive narcissism. Examples to be emulated are Steve Jobs (Apple), Michael Eisner (Walt Disney), Jack Welch (GE), Ingvard Kamprad (IKEA), Henri Ford (Ford Motor Company), Freddie Heineken (Heineken) and Richard Branson (Virgin).
In the fall of 2015, we published our book “Big Boys Big Egos and Strategic Intelligence”, the fifth book in a row on business-, competitive- and strategic intelligence since 2000. Scientific research on narcissism lies at the basis of this book, which is based on a sample of 950 CEOs of the S&P top-500 companies during the period 1992-2009.
“Why don’t companies last forever? Why do so many companies face serious problems after years of success? Why does management not react if the success rate of organizations comes to an end?”This is because your company’s internal business intelligence dashboards, your big-data analytics, and the managers with titles like market insights, customer insights, marketing intelligence and market intelligence do not deliver the right intelligence!
Peter Diamandis founded the prestigious US Singularity University, active in research on new technologies and author of the bestseller “Abundance”. One of his visions is that technology developments do not just follow the linear curve of growth, but do, however, follow the curve exponentially. Many Boards underestimate the speed of technology change and when this happens exponentially the company loses ground. There are numerous examples where this occurs, the latest being Blackberry and Nokia.
As a result of hindsight, people who did not see an event coming, (think for example of Black or Grey Swans), will manage to convince themselves that they predicted it, before proceeding to convince others. According to Taleb, after every event there will be many more postdictors than true predictors. Think about this statement: “Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast or recommendation. Just ask them what they have or don’t have in their portfolio”.