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Considering a major change? Identify potential problem areas first with this quick assessment.

Content: Article | Author: Rick Maurer | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Best Practices, Change Management

What does it take to grow shareholder value at world-class rates? For many years companies have successfully focused their efforts on cost reduction through increased labor and asset productivity and have achieved short-term increases in shareholder value as a reward. Today, with their businesses re-engineered and running efficiently, these companies have refocused their energies into developing long-term growth strategies. Aggressive revenue-oriented strategies are the most … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Charles E. Lucier, Leslie H. Moeller, Raymond Held | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy

Use this quick quiz to check out your perceptions and intentions vs those of those who report to you. Compare the perceptions; talk about the differences; identify the opportunities; and close the important gaps.

Content: Article | Author: Rick Sidorowicz | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

Studies reflect fewer than 30 percent of downsizing efforts have achieved anticipated profitability. This statistic suggests the real downsizing losers are organizations and stockholders.

Content: Article | Author: Freda Turner, Ph.D. | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Best Practices, Human Resources

A 25-employee company, fittingly called Best Practices, routinely plunders big-company ideas and prunes them for its own use. Its methods for doing so are yours for the taking, too

Content: Article | Author: Ilan Mochari | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Best Practices

3M has taken the whole “innovation company” thing one step farther. It has found an innovative way to be innovative, applying the Lead User process (developed by Eric von Hippel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management).

Content: Article | Author: Craig Henderson | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation

Drawing on military wargames to simulate battlefield conditions, commercial wargaming simulates a set of business conditions and challenges executives to design successful strategies that are able to evolve with the changing nature of the environment. In a corporate war game, senior managers play their own company, a select group of their competitors and the marketplace. A control team plays all other entities that affect the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Amy Asin, George E. Thibault, John E. Treat | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy

Shigeo Shingo is credited with creating the concept of zero defects and the techniques of poka-yoke (Japanese for mistake-proofing). The approach seeks to remove the causes of defects, or, where this is impossible, to inspect each item simply and inexpensively to determine that it passes the quality threshold – with no defects.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Fisher | Source: ManagementFirst | Subjects: Best Practices, Operations

What can be done to ensure that the CKO unlocks a company’s latent potential? To find out, we asked CKOs at various companies for their views about the make-or-break factors. Although the CKOs had different experiences, all concurred that success depends on two things: first, on the ability of senior management to agree about what it hopes to gain from managing knowledge explicitly and from … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Eric Matson, Nathaniel Foote, Nicholas Rudd | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Knowledge Management

Under the leadership of Mike Ruettgers, EMC bounced back from a near-death experience to become one of the “four horsemen of the Internet.” At the heart of EMC’s rise has been its fanatical devotion to customer service. The company has benefited from this critical insight: If you want service to pay off, don’t treat it as a profit center.

Content: Article | Author: Paul C. Judge | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Best Practices, Customer Related

Content: Book | Authors: Dave Nelson, Jonathan Stegner, Patricia E. Moody | Subjects: Best Practices, Operations

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Start with the people who are closest to the customer, then alphabetize, organize, summarize, save time and tempers, finalize, publish, sign and celebrate.

Content: Article | Author: Bernard DeKoven | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy

Units let retailers expand offerings and provide customers with more information.

Content: Article | Author: Terry Sweeney | Source: InformationWeek | Subjects: Best Practices, Industry Specific | Industry: Retail

This interesting article can be thought of as an industry piece (Gambling), a marketing piece (how a company/industry famous for poor service and nonexistent customer loyalty turned things around), and an IT piece (the undertaking discussed was major in IT terms). Worth a read.

Editor’s Note: read “Gambling on Customers” in The McKinsey Quarterly, which interviews Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman
Content: Article | Author: Meredith Levinson | Source: Darwin Magazine | Subjects: Best Practices, Marketing / Sales | Industry: Gambling

Interesting look at QVC’s online retailing operations and the lessons the company has learned about marrying their two primary channels.

Content: Article | Author: Paul C. Judge | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Best Practices | Industry: Retail

Intel averages 3 million email messages per day. That’s enough to choke even the fastest-moving company. Here’s a short course on how the Silicon Valley giant gets the most out of those messages.

Content: Article | Author: Alison Overholt | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Best Practices, Productivity / Work Tips

Can hundreds of research teams working together rewrite the way we manufacture? [A look at the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) – program]

Content: Article | Author: Adam Aston | Source: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Best Practices, Operations | Industry: Manufacturing

Most companies underestimate the importance of intangible assets such as knowledge, creativity, ideas, and relationships. All these account for more value in our economy than the tangibles. Yet it’s difficult for companies to get their arms around intangibles, so they rarely protect them as carefully as they do bricks and hardware. What would you do if your smartest people suddenly left? How can you ensure … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Best Practices, Knowledge Management