Linchpin Labs

 Below are some of the key practices to grow in the professional jourrney.  Align with your manager ;boss or senior management and make them WIN Work with them closely.  Ask your manager, how do I help you win? Help them achieve their goals and organization goals. Do it Consistently Not just once; but repeatedly.  Remember, its the Results that matter, not just the effort. Especially, this is very important once you reach the mid-level management (~12 years+ onwards).  If you are working as junior employee, effort matters.  Become visible and popular in the organization through the results and impact created either internally (within the company) or external (clients). Try new things; experiment new ideas.  Generate Money (₹ $ €) . This is the ultimate forever.  Generate opportunities where you can expand your unit and organization Win deals  Understand how business works; what is your business-model Make trend your friend ´What´s trending ...

  Open on Google slides here -  Notes and Summary - What I learned about investing from Darwin by Pulak Prasad Download the PDF here -   Notes and Summary - What I learned about investing from Darwin by Pulak Prasad

A summary and key pointers from the classic international bestseller book titled "How I raised myself from Failure to Success in Selling" By Frank Bettger

No.1 thing we should solve for today in order to increase the likelihood of a customer buying a high quality low regret deal is "Customer Confidence". It's not customers confidence in supplier, or its brand, product or sales professional. It's customers confidence in themselves. Their ability to make large-scale decisions on behalf of their company. i.e.  Have we asked the right questions Have we looked at the right information Are we even agreed how confident are we that we even agree on the right problem i.e. this is the best solution 4 significant forces eroding Customer Confidence on an ongoing basis Decision Complexity - B2B buying decisions have become increasingly complex as more and more stakeholders have gotten involved in that purchase decision with competing priorities competing metrics Information Overload - Its not a customer struggle with a high quantity of information but they struggle with high quantities of high quality information. Everybody's ...

The excerpts are taken from  Five Commandments for Faster Growth by Peter Cohan, Lecturer with Babson College published at Knowledge at Wharton (A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania).  Companies can find growth along five dimensions, ranging from the most basic to the most challenging. These dimensions can either be the same as those in a company’s existing practices, or reflect new and different parameters. Customers, Geographies, Products, Capabilities, and/or Culture. 1. Find growth from current or new customers Segment your current customers. Identify how much of your revenue comes from each segment. Analyze the broad trends – such as evolving customer needs, changing economic conditions, or new technology – that might boost (or contract) growth in these segments. Estimate your company’s share of the most important segments. For saturated segments, identify new segments that would be interested in buying your product and interv...

A deeply insightful course on Digital Strategy and Action by Dr. Peter Cohan , Lecturer of Strategy at Babson College , Massachusets, USA. Check the lecture by Dr. Peter Cohan - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9WdNKsx970McydQpJlJ9l59tiQzr39Al  Below given slides capture key pointers from the course. 

This is the excerpts from Gartner´s 4 publications for Sales and Accounts Growth mentioned below.  Three Buyer Behavior Myths Debunked   Why Accounts Aren't Growing, and What To Do About It  Win More B2B Sales Deals - How sales delivers more value to today’s B2B buyers The Sense Making Seller - How High-Performing Sellers Help Today’s Overwhelmed Buyers   In essence - Growing Accounts When it comes to growing accounts, customer improvement has a great impact on retention as ensuring customers get maximum value from the solutions they have already bought Provided customers with unique, critical perspective on improving their business Laid out a vision for improving customer’s business Outlined the ROI of their commercial relationship Driving growth Growth is ultimately about asking the customer to do something differently in the future than they have done in the past. And doing something differently moving forward naturally requires a new decision altogether, not simp...

 Please go through the presentation by globally renowned CEO Coach and Management Guru - Prof. Ram Charan on Digital Leadership.  Disclaimer: This presentation was delivered at FICCI@90 event  available in Youtube. All the content and ideas belong to Prof. Ram Charan. The slide is prepared as a reference material and for community contribution and not for any commerical purposes. 

Here is an interesting webinar  presentation from Gartner based their CEO survey 2021. This reveals lots of information and key insights.   N = 465 business leaders   Key summary 2021 will have 2 very different halves.  i.e. 1H21 – is expected to be tough and dull.  2H21 is going to be boom and growth. ‘Technology related’ has become strategic business Priority no 2 for CEO/Business executives after Growth (no.1). in 2013, Technology related  was positioned in 11 rank. Growth is expected through Geographic expansion, Increasing Sales Revenue (by more of same not delivering), New markets/ new needs, Market share and existing customers. IT was savior and quite hero in 2020. But not in 2021, because it was a Compelled Reactive Catch up not Strategy Acceleration. 2020s need a much harder push. Executives in North America and Europe see more opportunities in North America, Europe, APAC and LATAM. They do not see any growth in Middle East and Africa. Digita...

Check out the key summary of the latest and emerging topic on sales called ´Sense Making´ .  this is summary of the talk / podcast between Brent Adamson (Distinguished Vice President at Sales Practice - Gartner and Victor Antonio (Sales Trainer and Consultant)  For more details, check out the publication by Gartner titled How Challenger Sales Organizations Make Sense of Sense Making   Dig deeper to find the meaning. Only when you go deep inside the water, you will find beautiful corals.  Key summary Help customer to identify signal and clear noise.  Too much information out there in market. Help customer Reconcile conflicting information.  No.1 depressant of big deals is - customer confidence . this is not lack of confidence in sales, vendor or brand, product/service.  this is the lack of confidence among themselves to make a decisive decision in the face of so much uncertainty  How can you help customers make big disruptive decisions without havi...

This is the summary of the book titled 'Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers' published by Geoffrey Moore  (Silicon Valley Technology consultant) .  This is a legendary and proven framework that emerged during the early 1990's.  Key summary Technology adoption in any of the community is based on their psychological and social profile. High tech innovation and marketing expertise are the 2 cornerstones of U.S. strategy for global competitiveness. High degree of unity required at different teams while chasm crossing. Many of the AR, VR, Holograms, MOOCS not gained mainstream attraction because of poor marketing. Sometimes, a less successful product is often arguably superior with its feature to feature comparison. Technology enthusiasts influence corporate buying decisions. Every company has them. You cannot ignore the tech. guy! Pragmatists buy the whole product based on its benefit, even if the core product is inferior. E.g....

This is the summary of the book titled 'Doing Agile Right - Transformation without Chaos' published by Harvard Business Review Press 2020. The authors include Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez who are the Partners at Bain & Company, Inc.  This captures the essence of a roller coaster ride for every organization undergoing Agile. The ideas in the book are not only just applicable to enterprise IT and also to the Business side of it. The book not only provides ideas, but also stimulates thinking and creates an urge.  It does not stop by covering just one aspect like Innovation, but also encompasses different angles such as budgeting (i liked most), funding, reviewing, customer loyalty and obsession, functional silos and bureaucracy and GOLDEN MEAN. 

Here are some of the hard truths about innovation cultures and challenges faced by organizations when it comes to managing innovation.  5 challenges to Innovation Innovation is episodic (Go to Silicon Valley; Burn post-its in a room) Resources are trapped and held hostage by incumbent businesses Trying to fit innovation into the structure you have today Too little diversity of thought; too little access to customer experience  Treating assumptions like knowledge The hard truth about innovation culture is, its more and more a discipline and not a random act.  5 harsh realities of innovative companies Tolerance for Failure but No Tolerance for Incompetence Willingness to Experiment but Highly Disciplined (A willingness to experiment does not mean randomly throwing paint at a canvas) Psychologically Safe but Brutally Candid Collaboration but with individual accountability Flat but strong leadership Courtesy, Inspiration & more details at  Prof. Gary Pisano at Harvar...

Here are some of the questions on Strategic Planning Foundations for leaders while they embark on their journey to transform their organizations.  Ask yourself the following. and  Map How to Win.   Identify and prioritize initiatives for enterprise strategy that drive Innovation Growth Competitive advantage Productivity Help CIOs / CXOs articulate (value) how IT enable the business capabilities for success of the organization ?  Help functional leaders and executives on How to set objectives Prioritize the initiatives Measure the objectives Assess capabilities Allocate resources Execute the plan Measure your progress against the plan Adopt Purpose-driven budgeting / funding / planning (for the strategic initiatives) Move from Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) to Driven Based Budgeting i.e. Scenario Based Budgeting is a remedy How are helping the business units achieve their goals? Describe / draw Current state & Future state Decide on 'Stop' doing - 'Burn the boats' f...

Dual Transformation framework will help incumbent organizations stay ahead and not get into obsolescence. One of the interesting thing, I learnt or observed from Proctor and Gamble (P&G) is  Problems of predictability and How US$ 10 Billion (as of 2017) sales making Pampers was born.  Story of Pampers - “One top P&G executive said, we’re organized to deliver consistent, reliable results and that’s exactly the problem. P&G’s leaders were worried. They peered into the development pipeline and saw a problem . Line extension and incremental ideas crowded the pipeline. That prospect a declining growth not next or next decade. Beyond that. P&G leaders decided to systematically and reliably create ideas that the potential to create new brands and new categories.” Dual Transformation approach is proved by solid examples from various companies such as Aetna, Adobe, Singapore Post, Amazon, GBS Bank and many more.   Transformation A = Change the ‘How’ you deliver i....

Here is a quick summary of the IT Spending Forecast, 1Q20 from the Gartner webinar held yesterday, 7 th May 2020. Check out more details at http://public2.brighttalk.com/resource/core/268689/may7jlovelock_597531.pdf Good news! Global Cloud Spending Growth is UP by 5.1 % amidst Covid-19 attack. In Communications industry alone, Cloud spending grows by 11.63% in 2020 In Government services, Cloud infra spending is expected to increase by $2B   Not so good news! Dr. Fauci says America getting back to normal…'might not ever happen' without a vaccine (said on April 6,2020) Comparing the 4Q19 and 1Q20; IT spending in industry verticals such as MFG is reduced by $110B ; Banking & Securities is reduced by $57B ; followed by Retail - reduced by $40B and Transportation - reduced by $37B Not much impact is observed at Utilities sector followed by Wholesale trade and Government services. Overall IT Spending is ...

Growth chart from new service lines and products Index 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Legacy core service lines 8 7 7 5 4 3 2 2 New core service lines 1 1 1 2 2 4 4 4 Revenue (Growth) $ (million) 1 2 3 4 12 18 26 40 Inference from the above chart We have repositioned our core business with a quickly growing new growth business We have got a new identity while respecting our past core service lines In the early days, we convinced our sr mgmt. and top talented team members that there remains a viable future in one of our service lines (which was small contributor in few years back).

From creator of Disruptive Innovation theory, and HBS prof. Late. Clayton Christenson answers this. Refer to his deck and watch his talk @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHdS_4GsKmg