Editor’s Choices for Week Ending Jul 20, 2012

Article of the Week
A Better Way to Manage Risk (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: Professor Kaplan is joined by his HBS colleague, Anette Mikes, in an audio presentation with slides covering the basics of risk management. As you would expect from one of the creators of the Balanced Scorecard, they explain how to incorporate their framework into strategy mapping and the strategic measurement system. Slightly under one hour.

Editor’s Choice Articles
Becoming more strategic: Three tips for any executive (McKinsey Quarterly)
Big Idea: Not all strategists are executive leaders but all executive leaders must be strategists. This is McKinsey’s conclusion and an inevitable one, I believe, following up on their article urging leaders to spend more time together focusing on strategy and its execution (see last week’s picks). Strategy is back and rightly integrated with operational execution at the top.

How Smart Leaders Translate Strategy into Execution (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: Strategic alignment calls for the CEO to become the Chief Execution Officer. Randall Russell succinctly summarizers what this means and he does it without mentioning either Kaplan-Norton or any of their standard methodology or tools even though he is Palladium’s head of research on the Balanced Scorecard methodology. For a comparable approach to strategy execution, see this article by Method Frameworks.

9 Metrics to Measure Social Media Marketing Success (Evergreen Search)
Big Idea: Social media is central to reaching and engaging customers these days and the strategically aligned organization must be able to measure its impact. Evergreen Search, the search marketing consultancy, suggests a starting point for measuring the impact of social marketing activities. Given all the data social media inevitably generates, here’s a place to start.

Exploring and Exploiting Your Way to Growth (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: How do companies exploit growth opportunities in mature businesses while exploring breakthroughs in new business units? One successful example is IBM’s strategy management process called EBO – Emerging Business Opportunity. Professor Tushman, one of the architects of the “ambidextrous” organization approach on which EBO is based, highlights the key principles IBM followed.