The Right Ideas in All the Wrong Places
How strategic intuition unlocks innovative solutions to your biggest problems.
Content: Article | Authors: Ken Favaro, Nadim Yacteen | Source: “strategy+business” | Subject: Innovation
You Can’t Build a Winning Strategy If You Don’t Know Who You Are
The road to sustained success begins with the answer to this simple question: “Who are we?”
Content: Article | Authors: Ken Favaro, Nadia Kubis, Paul Leinwand | Source: “strategy+business” | Subject: Strategy
We’re from Corporate and We’re Here to Help
Understanding the real value of corporate strategy and the head office.
Content: Article | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
How Leaders Mistake Execution for Strategy (and Why That Damages Both)
When leaders substitute visions, missions, purposes, plans, or goals for the real work of strategy, they send their firms adrift.
Content: Article | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subject: Strategy
Ken Favaro
When discussing strategy, executives often invoke some version of a vision, a mission, a purpose, a plan, or a set of goals. I call these “the corporate five.” Each is important in driving execution, no doubt, but none should be mistaken for a strategy. The corporate five may help bring your strategy to life, but they do not give you a strategy to begin with.
Nevertheless, … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subject: Strategy
Navigating the First Year: Advice from 18 Chief Executives
CEOs who took part in Booz & Company’s 2011 study of CEO turnover share their thoughts about the difficulties they faced, the successes they achieved, and what, in retrospect, they might have done differently in their first year on the job.
Content: Article | Authors: Gary L. Neilson, Ken Favaro, Per-Ola Karlsson | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management
Ken Favaro, Evan Hirsh and Kasturi Rangan
Any seasoned strategist knows that strategy is not just sloganeering. It is the series of choices you make on where to play and how to win to maximize long-term value. Execution is producing results in the context of those choices. Therefore, you cannot have good execution without having good strategy.
Content: Quotation | Authors: Evan R. Hirsh, Kasturi Rangan, Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Execution, Strategy
The Two Levels of Strategy
Business strategy is best distinguished from corporate strategy by the different perspectives that business leaders and strategic planners must bring to bear.
Content: Article | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subject: Strategy
Strategy: An Executive’s Definition
What is a business strategy? It is the result of choices made to maximize long-term value.
Content: Article | Authors: Evan R. Hirsh, Kasturi Rangan, Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subject: Strategy
4 Models of Corporate Management
Total Shareholder Returns
This measure of business performance is the best indicator of corporate success.
Content: Article | Authors: Greg Rotz, Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Finance, Management
Ken Favaro and Greg Rotz
Use a combination of three measures — revenue growth, economic profit, and free cash flow — to set business targets, track strategy execution, and evaluate management performance. These three measures capture virtually all the high-level financial information that is important for an operating unit. As long as internal management reporting processes are designed to report these measures accurately, they provide excellent feedback on whether the … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Authors: Greg Rotz, Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Finance, Management
Ken Favaro and Greg Rotz
A common pitfall is tying incentive compensation, such as annual bonuses, to performance against a predetermined plan or budget. This inevitably leads people to restrain their aspirations for the business in order to make it easier to “beat plan.” In turn, this is interpreted as sandbagging by corporate headquarters or investors. The end result is a time-consuming, soul-destroying, and ultimately unproductive gaming of the planning … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Authors: Greg Rotz, Ken Favaro | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Management, Planning
Getting Tensions Right
How CEOs can turn conflict, dissent, and disagreement into a powerful tool for driving performance.
Content: Article | Authors: Ken Favaro, Saj-nicole Joni | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management
Ken Favaro and Saj-nicole Joni
Every business faces the opposing forces of the pull for more growth against the pull for more profitability; the demand to show profit today against the need to invest in the company’s future; and the call for optimizing the whole against the tendency of individual parts to maximize their own performance. The three performance tensions — growth versus profitability, short term versus long term, and … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Authors: Ken Favaro, Saj-nicole Joni | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management
A New Angle on Adding Value
Most companies fail to add value to their business units. Typically, they end up choosing between improving performance vertically, by giving their business units greater autonomy, or doing so horizontally, by increasing centralization. To achieve greater performance, managers should focus on strengthening their company’s diagonal value.
Content: Article | Authors: Dominic Dodd, Ken Favaro | Source: “ChangeThis” | Subject: Management