CONTENTS
What Does It Take to Create More Value?
Where Do You Find the Opportunities to Create More Value?
How Do You Build the Capability to Deliver More Value, Year after Year?
SECTION ONE Elevated Perspective
CHAPTER 1 DEFINE: Discover Your Edge of Disruption
Have the Courage to Challenge Assumptions
Explore the Unanswered Questions
CHAPTER 2 LEARN: Establish Your Point of View
Take Intelligent Risks in the Real World
Co-Create with Your Customers and Your Market
Move from Ideas to Insights
CHAPTER 3: SHARE: Be Known for What You Know
Share Abundantly
Focus on Value, Not Volume
Be Provocative
Make Thought Leadership a Way of Life
SECTION TWO Elevated Relationships
CHAPTER 4: INFLUENCE: Play High
Invest Your Energy in the Right People
Align Your Go-to-Market Approach
Learn to Say No
Set Clear Standards
Be True to Your Future Self
CHAPTER 5: PARTNER: Engage Like You Mean It
Create Intimacy and Understanding
Convert Insights into Application
Vest Your Interests and Remove Barriers
CHAPTER 6: CONNECT: See the Whole Board
Connect the Dots
Connect Broadly
Influence the System
SECTION THREE Elevated Impact
CHAPTER 7: LEAP: Be the Disruptor
Orient around Outcomes
Lean into the Complexity
Create Organizational Alignment
CHAPTER 8: LIVE: Answer the Call
Take a Stand
Lead the Charge
Be Worthy of Your Position
CONCLUSION
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT KARRIKINS GROUP
“The purpose of life . . . It is to be useful, to be honorable.It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it makesome difference that you have lived.”
—Leo Rosten
DOES YOUR COMPANY REALLY MATTER? Has it moved beyond the commoditized and substitutable solutions readily available in the market, and created more value for its customers, communities, investors, and employees? It could!
Is your team focused on doing the work that really matters? Are team members solving the most difficult challenges your internal and external customers face, and going above and beyond to create more value for your organization? They could!
What about you? Does your work matter? Are you just working hard, or are you focusing on the hard work that moves the needle in the areas your team most needs, generating more value for them and for your organization than if you just stuck to the basics? You could!
Just ask Doug Woods, Jeff Moore, and Angela Ahrendts. In their own ways, in their own industries, each has taken on work that matters. The world is different because of the challenges their companies have solved for their customers, their partners, and their employees.
Doug Woods and his team at DPR Construction matter because they build great things. Their relentless pursuit of powerful and effective ways to collaborate in the construction process has changed their clients and partners forever. The construction industry is evolving because of their leadership.
Jeff Moore and his team at transportation management company Lakeside matter because they had the chutzpah and the vision to be something no other trucking company had imagined. They decided to move beyond the competition, challenging embedded practices that historically had plagued the logistics industry, and in doing so became a trusted partner to their clients—capable of reducing costs, freeing up resources, and lowering carbon emissions in the process.1
Angela Ahrendts and her team at Burberry matter to the legacy of the 160-year-old brand they helped to resurrect by leaning into the digital disruption that threatened the viability of not just the Burberry brand, but retail as we know it. She and her team committed to reinventing the brand, the shopping experience, and the customer base in an ambitious and bold way. The result? Customers are back, investors are back, the brand is set up for the next 160 years—and retail has a new shining beacon for thriving in an omni-channel, digital world.
The work you, your team, and your company choose to do on a daily basis matters. It matters to the people you serve because of the problems you solve, and it matters for your own sense of pride, progress, and achievement. People want to buy from companies that matter. People want to work for companies that matter. People want our communities to be filled with organizations and people that matter.
This book is about building companies that matter—companies that create more value, that move beyond the competition, and as a result become the obvious choice in their markets. It’s also about teams that matter, and doing work that matters to you. The observations and lessons we have provided here work at any level for people who want to matter more through the work they do.
You will meet big companies, small companies, B2B companies, and B2C companies. You will even meet a spy agency along the way. And you will meet some exceptional individuals. We will dissect the journeys the individuals inside these organizations took as they sought to escape the morale-crushing cycle of commoditization to become the obvious choice for their customers, their most talented employees, and the investors and communities