Hide the Cat

Next purchase for my kids: a gene splicing kit.  I don’t care if their room is a mess but somewhere in there, they better be growing something cool.  On purpose. 

The idea of using recombinant DNA to attach DNA from one source to another is perfect training for my little evil scientists.  

And let me tell you, there is no sound quite as sweet as your child’s first muahahahaha. 

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So why post this on LinkedIn?  What’s the #business relevance?

I actually think that a large part of a senior leader’s job is to splice programs/products/processes together; to be CRISPR for the enterprise.  

We tend to put our most execution-focused leaders on our largest, most critical programs.  Because they excel at heads-down delivery. 

But when you have dozens of those programs, you risk producing disconnected outcomes.  Because being heads down doesn’t lend itself to looking up and connecting to the dots in the distance. 

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Quick example.  Your sales systems should be capturing *all* the client data that your account opening processes need… that your KYC and AML processes need… that your contracting and billing systems need.  If those dots were connected, your clients wouldn’t be constantly irritated that multiple people from multiple departments are asking them for the same information multiple times. 

As obvious as that sounds, no one on the Street has gotten that right yet. And it’s not for lack of execution-focused leaders. 

You'll find a ton of examples of high potential dots if you train yourself to look for them.  Loan processing.  Payments processing.  Risk and compliance.  And that’s if you limit yourself to only one vertical.  

Once you stop thinking in terms of your line of business, it's actually hard *not* to find examples.

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So… feed your inner Doofenshmirtz.  Build the Only-Ask-The-Client-Once-inator. 

Encourage the muahaha in your leaders, in yourself, in your kids.

Give them the tools to splice it up. 

And hide the cat.