This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.
Interpretation
Focusing too closely on current customer demands can hinder innovation and long-term success.
Clayton Christensen highlights a paradox in management where being overly attentive to customer needs can stifle creativity and limit the development of new ideas. Good managers are often advised to stay closely aligned with customer feedback, but this can lead to a reactive approach that neglects visionary thinking and innovation, ultimately jeopardizing the future of a business.
In practice
In a business seminar about innovation, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of balancing customer feedback with visionary thinking.
You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.
...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.
Disruptive innovations create jobs, efficiency innovations destroy them.
Focus is scary—until you realize that it only means turning your back on markets you could never have anyway. Sharp focus on jobs that customers are trying to get done holds the promise of greatly improving the odds of success in new-product development.
Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.
Whenever we have thanked these men and women for what they have done for us, without exception they have expressed gratitude for having the chance to help - because they grew as they served.
The true leader - the genuine world-builder - lives to the point. Acutely concentrated on the few high priorities that will deliver the life of their greatest aspirations. At the end.
There's a road that runs through our humanity and it traverses political and partisan lines, and my job as a U.S. senator is to do everything I can to point to that road that connects our collective humanity and to push forward legislation that's good for everybody.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Most people don't like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.
When you are on the management side, you still have to understand the artistic sensibility so that there is a dialogue with the creative side.
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.