Article of the Week

Strategic Alignment  

Why boards fail to choose the right CEO

By Ram Charan

Big Idea:  If leadership is critical to strategic alignment then so is the leader. Ram Charan points out that the choice of CEO must begin with the Board understanding clearly the leadership requirements of the company. He contrasts the selection of Gerstner at IBM (success) with Apotheker at HP (failure). And it doesn’t have anything to do with vision!

Fortune

 

August 8, 2012

Editor’s Choice Articles
Retail 2020: Competing in a Changing Industry (BCG Perspectives)
Big Idea: Transformation trends in the retail industry provide much to ponder for any consumer-oriented business. BCG provides a detailed study for those in the business. For readers thinking about alignment issues beyond retail, check out the sections on customer focus and the top ten trends.

Corporate Strategy and Value Quadrants (Methods Frameworks)
Big Idea: Scorecard and strategy map practitioners always strive to link organizational culture and strategy but often end up with generalities. Method Frameworks reviews the Organizational Value Quadrant (OVQ) matrix, a good starting point to give more substance to defining the alignment of culture, structure, and service model.

Corporate Success vs. Failure – 30 Points of Distinction (Forbes)
Big Idea: Defining the strategic shifts required to execute a new vision and strategy is often a very useful tool to kick start the strategy execution process. Mike Myatt provides a “from/to” road map of change that summarizes the general themes of transformation that businesses face today. Pick what is relevant for your business and voila – a ready-made change agenda.

The Blue Screen of Death (Planninga from Nanninga)
Big Idea: A gummed up operating system is an apt metaphor for the inability of many organizations to get change implemented. Nanninga drives the analogy home in his usual fashion.  Mixing his metaphor with mine, I like the idea of applying some “corporate draino” to clean out the system occasionally.

Big Idea:  If leadership is critical to strategic alignment then so is the leader. Ram Charan points out that the choice of CEO must begin with the Board understanding clearly the leadership requirements of the company. He contrasts the selection of Gerstner at IBM (success) with Apotheker at HP (failure). And it doesn’t have anything to do with vision!

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Big Idea:  If leadership is critical to strategic alignment then so is the leader. Ram Charan points out that the choice of CEO must begin with the Board understanding clearly the leadership requirements of the company. He contrasts the selection of Gerstner at IBM (success) with Apotheker at HP (failure). And it doesn’t have anything to do with vision!

View Article

Article of the Week

Management Innovation

Managing Effectively in a Matrix

By Ruth Malloy

Big Idea: The skills needed for a leader to thrive in a matrix operating environment — empathy, conflict management, influence and self-awareness — can be identified, developed and honed. Organizations and individual leaders need to take the initiative to broaden their traditional notions of what it takes to succeed as a leader and start taking a closer look at measuring, cultivating and rewarding these crucial matrix-related leadership capabilities..

HBR Blog Network

August 10, 2012

Editor’s Choice Articles
The Problem With Performance Reviews (NYTimes)
Big Idea: At TerraCycle, a culture has been built where feedback is given often and evenly to all 110 employees. They do this through a weekly reporting that requires every department to submit a detailed biweekly report to the whole company (every employee). In other words, everyone in the company sees the same reports that top management does.

Corporate Success vs. Failure – 30 Points of Distinction (Forbes)
Big Idea: Businesses don’t fail – leaders do. So in an attempt to help leaders understand what it takes to make the shift from the old paradigm to the new Mike Myatt created an image to help leaders connect the dots – an image to conduct an assessment of your organization, and then use it as a leadership road map for change.

Blank Checks: Unleashing the Potential of People and Businesses (Strategy+Business)
Big Idea: In 2007, the leadership team of Kraft’s developing markets identified Tang as one of their top 10 focus brands, and came up with an unusual strategy for boosting the brand’s sales back into the stratosphere: Tang leaders in key countries such as Brazil were given a “blank check,” essentially urging them to dream big and not worry about resources. The results have been astounding.

Autonomy or Compliance? Navigating the Balance (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: How do you enable people to take the initiative to make needed creative decisions in their work with the equally important discipline needed to follow standard procedures?  The answer isn’t obvious.

Big Idea: The skills needed for a leader to thrive in a matrix operating environment — empathy, conflict management, influence and self-awareness — can be identified, developed and honed. Organizations and individual leaders need to take the initiative to broaden their traditional notions of what it takes to succeed as a leader and start taking a closer look at measuring, cultivating and rewarding these crucial matrix-related leadership capabilities.

View Article

Big Idea: The skills needed for a leader to thrive in a matrix operating environment — empathy, conflict management, influence and self-awareness — can be identified, developed and honed. Organizations and individual leaders need to take the initiative to broaden their traditional notions of what it takes to succeed as a leader and start taking a closer look at measuring, cultivating and rewarding these crucial matrix-related leadership capabilities.

View Article

Article of the Week

Prepared Minds

How is big data faring in the enterprise?

By Dion Hinchcliffe

Big Idea: With the hype sometimes seeming to reach a fever pitch, Hinchcliffe takes a look at how enterprises are really using big data along with the overall maturity of the new industry itself.    He examines adoption rates (more companies think big data will have an impact than are actually implementing big data solutions) and trends in technology, infrastructure, and business solutions.

ZD Net

August 10, 2012

Editor’s Choice Articles
Shopper Alert: Price May Drop For You Alone (NY Times)
Big Idea: Grocers are beginning to offer personalized pricing, varying the prices available to shoppers based on their shopping history.

Meet The Research Scientist Who Is Turning YouTube Into A Data Goldmine (Fast Company)
Big Idea:  Research scientist Louis-Philippe Morency scoured YouTube to find practical applications for the problem of reading human behaviors. Here’s what businesses can learn from how people behave on camera.

Microsoft’s Workplace Social Network Becomes Emotionally Aware (MIT Technology Review)
Big Idea: Bosses who want help gauging employees’ morale can now turn to Microsoft’s workplace social network, Yammer. A new feature offers managers a kind of emotional surveillance system, showing which feelings workers are expressing in messages posted to a company’s Yammer network, which has similarities to both Facebook and Twitter.

For Google, keeping search relevant means baking big data into everything (Gigaom)
Big Idea: Google has opened its Knowledge Graph to the English-speaking world and has made intelligent voice search possible on mobile phones. Underneath it all, of course, are ever more-complex methods of analyzing data to make search smarter and easier than it has any business being.

Big Idea: With the hype sometimes seeming to reach a fever pitch, Hinchcliffe takes a look at how enterprises are really using big data along with the overall maturity of the new industry itself.    He examines adoption rates (more companies think big data will have an impact than are actually implementing big data solutions) and trends in technology, infrastructure, and business solutions.

View Article

Big Idea: With the hype sometimes seeming to reach a fever pitch, Hinchcliffe takes a look at how enterprises are really using big data along with the overall maturity of the new industry itself.    He examines adoption rates (more companies think big data will have an impact than are actually implementing big data solutions) and trends in technology, infrastructure, and business solutions.

View Article

Article of the Week

Cultural Cohesion

Stop Fighting Your Culture

By John R. Katzenabach, Ilono Steffen, and Caroline Kronley

Big Idea: Because deeply embedded cultures change slowly over time, working with and within the culture you have invariably is the best approach. The overall change effort will be far less jarring for all concerned. Simply put, rather than attacking the heart of your company, you will be making the most of its positive forces as your culture evolves in the right way.

HBR Blog Network

August 10, 2012

Editor’s Choice Articles
Five Coaching Strengths that Produce Champions (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: Our experience suggests that as a manager/coach, you can help your employees live up to their promise by adapting the five Olympic coaching principles in the following ways.

Best Practices for Leading via Innovation (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: What do General Electric (GE), Procter & Gamble (P&G) and IBM have in common? All three companies nurture and energize talent, carving out the necessary resources to invest in recruiting, selecting and growing the people who will become their future leaders. Read about five practices that any company can adopt to create a culture of innovation.

Creative Leadership: Introspection (Forbes)
Big Idea: Doug Guthrie, Dean of George Washington University School of Business, shares his story and realization about the role introspection plays in leadership. He writes about how trust is built when you practice patience, you connect with people, and personally convince them that you care. For Guthrie, leadership isn’t gained by browbeating colleagues with a good strategy and economic success -  it can only be achieved when you believe in your people and respect their opinions and input.

How Leaders Build Trust (Fast Company)
Big Idea: “Trust me.” When’s the last time you actually believed those words on the job? If your answer is a long time ago, you’re not alone. In fact, many people instinctively recoil from those two words–especially when uttered by business leaders or professional colleagues. A sign of the times, perhaps, but there’s a ray of hope–good news, in fact, for leaders looking to make quick progress in building trust in their organizations.

The Olympics’ Greatest Feat: An Unpaid, Highly Engaged Workforce (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: When people interact with an enterprise, they don’t want to encounter mere role-players—no matter how skillful they might be in their roles. They want authenticity, a sense that people are personally invested in their work.