4 Posts found for Author: Kevin Whitaker

Map and understand the larger system in which you operate. Businesses operate within larger economic, social, and environmental systems, which have feedback loops in both directions — businesses’ actions affect the larger systems, and vice versa. Though predicting the exact behavior of such systems is rarely feasible, leaders can improve their understanding by explicitly mapping out the most impactful forces (accelerators or inhibitors of the system’s workings) … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Business strategy has traditionally considered only a narrow set of issues (such as customer needs, operating model effectiveness, and competitive advantage), a limited range of timescales (most notably the annual planning process), and a limited number of stakeholders (customers, employees, and competitors). Such simplification may have made sense when contextual change was slow, and when the only expectation of businesses was that they would aim … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

In the current model of corporate capitalism, each company is treated as an economic island to be optimized individually. While this simplifies management and accountability, it masks the extent of economic and social interdependence between different stakeholders. In contrast, resilience is a property of systems: an individual company’s resilience means little if its supply base, customer base, or the social systems upon which it depends … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, Management, Operations

Companies and shareholders often focus on maximizing short-term returns. In contrast, resilience requires a multi-timescale perspective: forgoing a certain amount of efficiency or performance today for the sake of more-sustained performance in the future.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management