Trend: Switching from cutting back, to focusing on growth
In a whirlwind of activity over the last ten days, I’ve been the keynote speaker for conferences that probably represents the vast majority of global Fortune 1000 organizations, speaking to the trends that will impact the future of ‘corporate facilities.’
These have included keynotes for the Professional Retail Store Maintenance Association annual conference in Orlando; the CoreNet Global Summit in New Orleans, and the International Asset Management Council Spring Summit in Colorado Springs. With these groups, we’ve got the folks who manage facilities for a good chunk of the world’s biggest retailers (including Apple, the Gap, Costco and others); commercial real estate executives for Fortune 1000 and government; and the senior executives who manage the same for large industrial and manufacturing organizations (Alcoa, Caterpillar, Whirlpool).
What are they thinking about? Adjusting to an economy that is more and more turning to growth. And to do that, I covered a wide variety of trends:
- they need to actively shift their role from tactical (managing costs in a downtown) to strategic (‘how do I help my organization to scale and support growth strategies?’
- ensure that the organization has the flexibility in terms of facilities and workforce to adjust to more rapid market and product innovation, faster competition, and more rapid change in consumer demand and choice
- take advantage of emerging opportunities with intelligent building management infrastructure
- be willing to challenge process and assumptions as to operations. I consistently used my story of broken business models, vs. business models built on rapid change – my Honda vs. Chrysler story
- adapt to a reality in which skills flexibility and innovation will be a key success factor. These folks need to access a lot of unique skills that are in short supply (i.e. green engineers), and so increasingly their success will come from their ability to access the right skills at the right time for the right purpose
Are people really thinking about growth? Here are the live results from a text message poll that I ran from the stage at the IAMC conference in Colorado Springs yesterday:
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At many of my keynotes, I focus on some of the most successful creativity and innovation attributes that I see within organizations. Here’s a list of guidance from a recent keynote for a group of executives in the consumer goods sector:
Here’s a blog post that ran over at the
I spend a lot of time speaking to global financial organizations — some of the world’s largest institutions — helping them understand what they need to do from an innovation perspective to stay ahead of fast paced change.
I was in Chicago earlier this week; I had a keynote for the leadership team of a company that’s involved in a sector of the construction industry.
Another report on my keynote for 4,000 at the annual meeting of the National Parks & Recreation Association, putting into a concise summary the key trends that I covered (from the Parks & Rec monthly magazine).
I’ll be shutting down through the next several weeks from today; I’ll still be picking up email, but my blog posts will slow down till the New Year.
Expectation gaps create tremendous opportunity
Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of executives for a financial institution in Sydney, Australia, live via a fibre optic link — a distance of almost 10,000 miles (or 15,000 kilometres)
Over the next several weeks, I will be speaking at a series of events sponsored by Microsoft related to their Windows 7 launch. The audience includes key executives (CIO’s, CFO’s, CTO’s and IT managers) from a wide variety of industries.
When you walk off stage, you always wonder how you did!
Shaping Tomorrow is one of the world’s leading trend watching services, observing on its home page that:
I head to Salt Lake City next week; I’ll be the opening keynote speaker for the annual conference of the National Recreation and Parks Association.
Next week, I’ll be in Jacksonville, as the lunch time keynote speaker for the
Two weeks ago, I was featured as the closing speaker at the 2009 Governor’s Conference on Economic Development, the 51st annual event of this type. Governor Jay Nixon addressed the crowd on Thursday, Sept 10th, noting in his keynote that:
I’m thrilled that Microsoft has asked me to be the opening speaker for a number of events this fall, related to the Windows 7 launch. We will be talking to CIO’s, CFO’s and CTO’s for a wide variety of organizations from multiple different industries.
Summer’s over, and things are happening fast!