Leadership Wise

CHAPTER 8Shaping the Company for Success

Throughout this book we've talked about making decisions as something that takes place in a context. We could think about that as if we're trapped in a prison and told to escape. We have the tools that we have, and that's it. How do we get over or under those prison walls?

But that's not the right metaphor for our context at all!

Why? Because as leaders, we shape our environment. We control our context more than we know! A prison isn't a prison if the inmates can move the walls.

In this chapter, I want to focus on two things we can shape to make our decision-making processes more effective: company culture and our people.

Company Culture and Values

Over the years I've worked on a lot of packaging and pricing efforts. As I mentioned earlier in the book, I helped build pricing algorithms for Fortune 500s to make sure their products were priced most effectively to maximize their revenue. For me, then, pricing always felt like a tool for the company; you can price an airline ticket at $200 or at $400, and either price might be best for revenue depending on the dynamics of the market and competition.

One day, I had an interesting encounter with an employee on my team when it came to the topic of raising some prices. We were looking at a company's prices and noting that they hadn't been increased in a long time despite having competitor data showing us to be at the bottom of the market and having survey data that showed customers to be ...