Babysteps II – Jumpstarting Innovation in Your Organization
“Recently, members of the Innovation Leaders Community, a group of innovation leaders from around the world (for more information: [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: “Innovation Network” | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation
SAS Dares to Win Battle for the Airways
How many times have you heard someone say, “you must listen to your customers in order to succeed?” Scandinavian Airline SAS piloted a scheme that has shown how observing and listening to customers really can lead to successful product development and relationship building.
Content: Article | Authors: Anders Gustafsson, Bo Edvardsson, Frederik Ekdahl | Source: “ManagementFirst” | Subjects: Best Practices, Customer Related
Life Themes (a.k.a. Sophisticated Selection)
Fast Company offers a 5-part look at the “Life Themes” approach to candidate selection and hiring decisions.
1. How to Hire by wire – [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Len Schlesinger | Source: “Fast Company” | Subjects: Best Practices, Human Resources
Inside Job
Want to find one area where Internet technology is delivering more than expected? Look within. Intranets are boosting efficiency and creativity, and changing work patterns. Here are seven steps to the ultimate intranet.
Content: Article | Author: George Anders | Source: “Fast Company” | Subjects: Best Practices, IT / Technology / E-Business
Can This Off-Site Be Saved?
Skip the PowerPoint. Forget the whiteboards and butcher paper. If you want to organize an off-site that is energetic and memorable — an event that actually makes a difference — then follow our seven-point guide.
Content: Article | Author: Cheryl Dahle | Source: “Fast Company” | Subjects: Best Practices, Management
Digital Matters – Issue 50
First, focus groups were cool. Then they became the loser’s club. Now, thanks to the Web, they’ve become obsolete.
Content: Article | Author: John Ellis | Source: “Fast Company” | Subjects: Best Practices, Market Research
All Shook Up
Why does an entrepreneur reshuffle his entire management team at the peak of his company’s success?
Content: Article | Authors: George Gendron, Michael Bloomberg | Source: “Inc.com” | Subjects: Best Practices, People
Where is HR When You Need Them?
A look at yet another one of the interesting best practices of the US Marine Corps – this time their practive use of HR.
Content: Article | Authors: Dan Carrison, Rod Walsh | Source: “CEO Refresher” | Subjects: Best Practices, Human Resources
Automate or Die
Until it attains godlike profitability, reduces costs to zero, and hears the pathetic mewling of its last, defeated competitor, Dell Computer won’t stop remaking its business. Its three-part strategy for ultimate victory? Web, Web, and Web.
Content: Article | Author: Stacy Perman | Source: “Business 2.0” | Subjects: Best Practices, Operations | Industry: Personal Computer
Return of the Titans: Traditional Companies Storm the Web
This transcript of a presentation by Denis Nayden of GE Capital discusses how that organization approaches e-business. Offers some interesting insight into large businesses or “titans” and the e-world.
Content: Article | Author: Denis Nayden | Source: “GE Capital” | Subject: Best Practices
Conditions for Change Assessment
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
10X Value: The Engine Powering Long-term Shareholder Returns
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
Check Out The Gap
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
Downsizing: Who Is The Real Loser?
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
Steal This Strategy
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
Finding, Examining Lead Users Push 3M to Leading Edge of Innovation
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
Dynamic Competitive Simulation: Wargaming as a Strategic Tool
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
Process improvement by poka-yoke
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
Managing the Knowledge Manager
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
Customer Service: EMC Corp.
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