Do You Publicly Reward Failure?

Create a safe, open environment that gives employees the confidence to share ideas, failures, and the learning points in between. 3M holds formal meetings called “failure forums,” which gathers together staff who worked on unsuccessful projects to discuss barriers to success. When plastics company W.L. Gore & Associates kills a project, they host a celebration with beer or champagne, just as they would if the … [ Read more ]

Kill the Stupid Rules

“Kill the Stupid Rules” is an exercise that focuses attention on non-essentials that get in everybody’s way. Most stupid rules are enshrined policies that, over time, become “how we do things around here” — that is, part of the culture. Often they’re minor but familiar irritations: expense documentation requirements, IT departments’ blocking of access to useful websites, monthly operating reports that eat up significant amounts … [ Read more ]

Kill the Company

“Kill the Company” is an exercise which asks participants to step into their competitors’ shoes and think up a detailed strategy aimed at driving their own company out of business. This is achieved by encouraging people to identify weaknesses in their company — or their business unit or division — and show how a savvy competitor could exploit them. The most useful insights surface when … [ Read more ]

Kill the Company: Identify Your Weaknesses Before Your Competitors Do

Kill the Company is about having an out-of-company experience. It’s about examining your weaknesses so that you can make them your strengths. In most businesses each year, we do a SWOT analysis [to examine] our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Most people use it as a political construct to say where they are strong and [to say that] they are not really weak — … [ Read more ]