This concept mirrors the Blue Ocean strategy approach wherein we are looking for alternative value propositions that are not just either “low cost leader” or “premium supplier”.  How else can we meet our customer’s needs? What do they really value – and can we provide that with a different feature/service set?

The idea of pursuing “Blue Oceans” has been around for a while. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne popularized the strategic planning technique with a book by the same name. They have a whole business built around the concept now with books, online courses, seminars, consulting, etc.

John R Childress wrote the best book on business culture that I have found: Culture Rules! The reasons it is the best book on culture are:

1. It provides an excellent, clear description of how cultures are formed.

2. It is not the usual fawning “culture is everything” ode to Zappos.

Drive comes from autonomy, mastery, and purpose. As Daniel Pink notes, all need to be present for maximum intrinsic motivation. Remote work can easily provide autonomy, but we need to make sure we also support mastery and purpose.

There is a lot of talk in the business press about technology, finance, insurance, and similar largely “white collar” industries discovering that their productivity is remaining high in spite of almost everyone working from home.

Merleen also talked a lot about “positioning” our products. As CEO, I got the general idea – but in retrospect – spent way, way too little time thinking hard about our product positioning. Product positioning is central to our business strategy, but done right, also central to how we then organize ourselves, our product roadmap, sales processes, etc.

McKinsey recently shared their top ten most popular COVID-19 related articles, which cover the full range of ways we’re needing to think about coming trends and our reaction to them.

We’re sharing them with you so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel - or get lost in Google. 😊

There is one last idea we want to share before we get to the nit and grit of building our way out to the other side:

• Being the boss can be incredibly hard emotionally – and lonely.

As we process the impacts and opportunities created by the pandemic, the old saying: “Think Global Act Local” seems particularly relevant.

We need to start thinking about the big, universal trends that will affect us in the near and long term.

The need for successful businesses to continually validate and refine their strategies – and align their organizations accordingly – is not new. Read any of a number of recent classic books like “Built To Last” or “Good To Great” to see these themes from the past.