310 Posts found for Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Transformations are here to stay—and they will always be difficult. Success comes down to a few key things. Manage your processes rigorously, and institute strong governance. Use a stage-gate methodology to maximize the value of your initiatives, and use software and data to keep those initiatives on track. Put a TO at the center. Perhaps most important, set the bar high—and then look for the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Connor Currier, Cordelia Chansler, Julia Dhar, Kristy Ellmer, Paul Catchlove, Simon Weinstein | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Change Management

Business strategy is usually born of a highly rational process, grounded in facts and analysis. Storytelling, often associated with fiction and entertainment, may seem like the antithesis of strategy. But the two are not incompatible. A clever strategy on paper is only the starting point for engaging those who will implement it. Strategies must also be communicated and understood — and they must motivate action. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Madeleine Michael, Martin Reeves, Roeland van Straten, Tim Nolan | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Storytelling, Strategy

Companies are responding to a number of headwinds by transforming their marketing organizations to achieve measurable improvement in performance and efficiency and to ensure future sustainable growth. Chief marketing officers (CMO) are pursuing long-term changes instead of short-term fixes by focusing on structure, talent, and operating models—in that order—as they reshape their organizations.

Content: Article | Authors: Joe Simon, Lachelle Trout, Raakhi Agrawal, Shelby Senzer, Siwei He | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Marketing / Sales

The theory that value creation comes solely from the act of making positive net present-value investments is of limited use in most modern public companies. Fundamentally, investors price a company’s shares on the basis of their views of the underlying business and the attractiveness of the available reinvestment opportunities. Because such expectations are priced into the stock today, the real value creation task confronting leaders … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alexander Roos, Ed Newman, Eric Olsen, Eric Wick, Gerry Hansell, Hady Farag, Jeff Kotzen | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Finance, Management

New ventures often fail—but digital capabilities change the odds. By following a business-building playbook based on your company’s strategic assets, you can accelerate growth dramatically.

Content: Article | Authors: Austin Gispanski, Beth Viner, David Tang-Quan, James Tucker, Jürgen Eckel, Ketil Gjerstad, Sylvain Duranton, Yoichiro Hirai | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy

Many companies are concluding that classic operating-model interventions just won’t move the needle anymore. Rather than attempting yet again to optimize the matrix, they are looking for new solutions. The reasons include the need to drive digitization, build resilience, and win talent. These companies are turning to platforms.

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Toma, Benjamin Rehberg, Jaap Backx, Julia Madden | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Reorganization

What does it take to succeed in M&A? For the past two decades, BCG’s annual M&A reports have explored the answers to this question. One constant in our studies is an emphasis on the elements that drive genuine, long-lasting deal success.

To mark the 20th anniversary of our M&A Report, we looked back at our rich history of analyses related to deal value creation. We refreshed … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Friedman, Dominik Degen, Georg Keienburg, Jens Kengelbach, Lianne Pot, Sönke Sievers, Tobias Söllner | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Best Practices, Mergers & Acquisitions

BCG has developed a unified pricing theory, manifested in a tool they call the Strategic Pricing Hexagon, by bringing all the disparate pricing ideas, and the drivers and forces behind them, into one master structure. This article shows how the Strategic Pricing Hexagon allows leaders to look beyond the numbers and develop a pricing strategy that can change the entire trajectory of their business and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Arnab Sinha, Jean-Manuel Izaret | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Companies have reinvented their business models, IT architecture, and ways of working. So why are they taking an outdated—and largely unsuccessful—approach to ERP?

Content: Article | Authors: Albéric Noël, David Bishop, Johan Sadie, Kasem Asghar, Marc Schuuring, Remco Mol, Sherif Choudhry | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

Instead of asking [executive leadership team (ELT)] members to summarize how they are doing (which usually only yields positive reports), one CEO we know focuses the conversation on “What keeps you up at night?” At executive team meetings, she asks her direct reports to share their biggest challenges. Then as a team ELT members help one another by sharing ways they have successfully overcome such … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Deborah Lovich, Henning Streubel, Joseph Halverson, Robert Werner | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management

How CEOs spend their time has an outsized influence on performance, engagement, and company culture.

Content: Article | Authors: Jeff Hill, Xavier Mosquet | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Productivity / Work Tips, Time Management

The initial 100 days are a time for boldness and clarity—a time when CEOs can express the purest form of their vision for the company.

• CEOs should create an integrated narrative that lays out their ambition as well as their plans for transformation, stakeholder management, talent assessment, and communications.
• In addition to laying out their ambition and plans, they also have an opportunity to step outside their

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Christine Barton, Jim Hemerling, Mrin Nayak, Tuukka Seppä | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management

When an organization embarks on a change of any magnitude, its leaders tend to think that they are facing a series of operational tasks that will, if executed successfully, result in a new state of being. They don’t realize that they will also have to face an onslaught of emotions and human dynamics. I have come to understand that emotions truly are data and have … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeanie Duck | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

This article presents some practical guidelines for executives seeking to design a high-impact innovation culture. It also outlines four areas of focus that offer a clear path for change, drawing on examples from leading innovators.

Content: Article | Authors: David Blanchard, Deborah Lovich, Hannah Lu Schmitt, Johann D. Harnoss, Justin Manly, Robert Werner | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Culture, Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Organizations tend to neglect or downplay the ingenuity component in change initiatives. Leaders often prefer instead a simpler, mechanistic view of the world, which assumes they can easily specify and control actions using project management techniques. Moreover, organizations are often averse to change. Ideas like “breaking the rules” or “reinventing the organization” are less accepted in typical projects—and a departure from the norm will often … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Adam Job, Arthur Boulenger, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Project Management

BCG has conducted in-depth research to understand the barriers impeding widespread customer adoption of sustainable offerings and behaviors and to discover how companies in different consumer categories can lower those barriers. We identified eight common barriers and found that these barriers and the most effective ways to overcome them can vary by industry. Although no one-size-fits-all approach will yield optimum results, a company can develop … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Fadi Makki, Julia Dhar, Kanika Sanghi, Lauren Taylor, Léa Turquier, Sarah Lichtblau | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

Reducing investments in brand marketing during downturns backfires in many ways. Such budget cuts are sound bites that may play well on earnings calls, but their effectiveness is dubious at best—and destructive at worst. CMOs and CFOs should instead see times of economic uncertainty as a marketing and sales opportunity to double down on the right customers, gain share, enhance the value of their customer … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alex Almeida, Chris Murphy, David Ratajczak, Emily Kruger, Leonardo Fascione, Mario Simon | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Strong deductive capabilities allow companies to go deep, applying insights from a single source across the enterprise. And strong inductive capabilities allow them to go wide and ask, “What might this outlying piece of data foreshadow?”

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alan Iny, Alison Sander, Hans Kuipers | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Today’s more uncertain environment calls for newer, more dynamic approaches to risk management and strategic planning. Successful companies foster a culture of strategic humility, anticipatory preparedness, and a willingness to act to own the future as it unfolds. And they have four critical characteristics:

• They see risk as a two-sided coin with challenge on one side and opportunity on the other.
• They explore the strategic implications of

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Alan Iny, Elton Parker, Jeanne Kwong Bickford, Nick D’Intino | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Risk Management, Strategy

A company’s culture is frequently at the heart of mismanaged planning, with management often rewarding the wrong behavior. Because financial incentives are still frequently tied to the achievement of short-term plans, employees can feel pressured to negotiate financial goals and to sandbag. Consequently, planning begins to feel like a bazaar instead of the organized, top-down process it should be. Employees may be motivated to reach … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alexander Roos, Fabrice Roghé, James Tucker, Marc Rodt, Sebastian Stange | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Culture, Management, Organizational Behavior