New times, new skills for leaders: How to curate the crowd to drive business growth

Until recently,  leadership models featured a heavy dose of character and charisma-building tips (for inspiring others), sport-analogy-filled guidance (for leading teams) and mindfulness (for thinking deeply before acting).  Because companies were thought to be a combination of well-oiled and efficient machine + high performing competitive team + congregation of loyalists + inspired assemblage of visionaries, their leaders had to be well-equipped to handle all of the twists and turns associated with each of the business models and learn to be tough, popular, in-touch, inspiring, insightful, and forward-thinking, all at once.

New Times call for new leadership models beyond "Father Knows Best"

Get Ready to Lead Differently in 2011
But, these are new times. As we turn the corner from 2010 to 2011, we are less likely to need the skills of a 1950s father (who knew best) and more likely to find inspiration from the talents of a fine editor + conductor + moderator + curator—someone who assembles the very best ideas, innovations, people, and processes, and molds them into something that drives the company forward.

To prepare to be great leaders in the coming year, we need to turn up the volume on an entirely different dynamic—the dynamic of the crowdsourced world, where everyone’s input in the webosphere is visible to many (like customer comments on Yelp or TripAdvisor) and where ideas for our next business innovation can be inspired by brilliance among many, sometimes outside our own organizations.

Learn to Curate the Voices of the Crowd

Worst nightmare: a crowd of Homer Simpsons designing a power plant for my neighborhood

Crowdsourcing is a term that was coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe to describe the phenomenon where the wisdom of crowds drove innovation. I’m not a fan of asking everyone to vote or contribute to everything as a way to build a compelling business strategy. (Worst-case scenario—a crowd of Homer Simpsons designing a nuclear power plant in my neighborhood.) But, businesses preparing for 2011 need to get with the program and try at least one crowdsourced initiative (even on a small scale) to test “the power of many” as a source for ideas somewhere within the organization.

There are entire business models based on crowdsourcing and large-scale polling, like Victors and Spoils, an ad agency that sends creative projects out for bid to people all over the world, InnoCentive, that creates contests to solve problems, and Wikipedia, that relies on contributions of everyone to hone their encyclopedia’s content. And, there are tools like Quirky that help a crowd to collaborate on a group-led design of a product. Quirky’s crowds have already designed grocery store bags that don’t squish or break tomatoes, iPad cradles, and composters.

So, what’s the role of a leader in this new world of many voices? Our recommendations are simple:

1. Put crowdsourcing on your 2011 to do list.
2. Identify an area in your company where casting a wider net of input could lead to a better widget or where reaching out to your customers could provide valuable insights, before you set out on a new course.
3. Commit to a small-scale, crowdsourced project.
4. Develop your own list of leadership attributes that make you great at listening to new voices and responding to crowd-inspired ideas.

Let the crowd’s voice be heard—what are the traits that matter when you’re the curator, and not the one who always knows best?

MUSICAL CODA
New Times by Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes: New Times

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

I’m the guard. At one time

This was rather pleasant

The poets they still had to muse

Over the classicism of clean shoes

But who today still knows a button stick

Well, that’s the new times

That’s the new times

That’s the new times

Umami, the fifth sense for business leaders: How to build a business based on what customers want but can’t tell you

Umami represents the fifth sense in the science of the physiology of taste. Although long-recognized in the East as a flavor sensation that augments the taste dimension that westerners have defined as salty, sweet, bitter, and sour, umami has only recently gained traction in the rest of the world.

Translate the concept of a formerly unnamed “sense” finding a name to the world of business and you have one of the Business Genome’s core lessons on how companies can uncover formerly unnamed consumer preferences. These preferences, sometimes called “latent customer needs”, are elusive to many, yet open a world of opportunity for business leaders charged with developing new products or services with legs in the marketplace. The Business Genome offers the how-to’s of uncovering “customer umami”–the fifth sense for sensing what the market is ready for, but cannot name.

Business School of Rock, aka, you say you want an evolution: How to yield the economic benefits of invention and creation

David Bowie’s Bowie Bonds represented a 1997-style innovation designed to shift the balance of power in the economics of music creation and distribution. Bowie’s original idea allowed individuals to buy asset-based bonds linked to the future value of his songs. Fast forward to 2009 and a new seismic shift in the creative landscape is starting to rumble where the dollars for ideas are up for grabs again–this time with books and their authors. Amazon’s Kindle and a new gadget in the works at Apple both threaten to take the power away from once-secure distributors and publishers. If the current direction of electronic book distribution continues, there may come a day where electronic book distributors outstrip the traditional publishing house’s ability to command the lion’s share of distribution dollars, thereby cementing a closer relationship with the authors. How might that affect the future economics of publishing? Business Genome’s Rules to Avoid Fossilization are the best bet for publishers and others whose lock on distribution will be threatened by new technological alternatives.

Free at last: How to navigate a business world where “free” is an option

How can a business leader navigate a world where “free” is an option? How can value be understood and price determined if everything from news content to navigation services that once commanded a premium price are now being traded for free? Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” explains his theory on the new pricing ecosystem and warns companies that commerce has a pull toward free exchange of goods and services. The Business Genome takes a slightly different perspective, offering the warning signs that your business might be heading toward commoditization and that what was once highly sought-after might no longer command a premium price.

Business heroes, oxymoron, or not: How companies can (and do) change the world

The age of the Business Hero is upon us. Despite numerous examples of corporations with less-than-stellar records related to doing the right thing, there is an emerging new American hero with a 2-pronged punch: 1. the business leader is being viewed as an agent to fundamentally change the products and services that their companies produce, 2. the business leader’s influence is beginning to be seen as an agent for social change, by changing the lives of their employees and the customers they serve. Years ago, Ralph Nader predicted that the key to world change would be for corporations to use their vast resources to make a difference in the world–for example, Coca Cola could insert nutrients in their soft drinks to address world hunger. At the time it seemed like an absurd notion. Yet today, there are numerous examples of this new business hero (for example, Walmart is spearheading global sustainability standards.)