On Process Initiatives
“People who can think in ‘process’ really well tend to be perfectionists. They want everything to be perfect – they want to see every little piece of the business and how it fits together like a big puzzle. Senior leaders don’t really think that way – for them it’s more like a chess game. And as long as you have people putting together a puzzle talking to people playing a chess game, it will never work. It’s too big a divide.” It can be taken as fact that technical people and managers think different: both in terms of how they think and what they think about. And unless you’re speaking a language they understand, getting your executives on board will always be a challenge. So the key is understanding what outcomes your organization cares about and reframing what you’re doing as a strategic advantage - Diana Davis

On Benchmarking:

If you benchmark against other competitors you will, at best, only ever be as good as them, no better, most of the time worse and you will always be one step behind the trend. Rather than focusing on what your competitors are doing, focus on what the real need of the customer is and deliver that, innovate the customer experience, there is no easier way to become a market leader…let your competitors benchmark you - Steve Towers and James Dodkins