682 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business Review

Better management is not a secret and is not out of reach. It is a matter of: 1) setting performance targets; 2) having clear incentives that reward high performance; and 3) collecting data to monitor performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

In this HBR webinar, Stanford economics professor Nicholas Bloom shares the critical insights from this research and from his co-authored November 2012 HBR article. He … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Jason Sylva | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

How predictable are competitive conditions in your industry? How much power does your company have to shape its underlying competitive environment? These questions are critical to strategists, since clearly the kinds of strategies that work in predictable industries are likely to be worlds apart from those geared to shaping highly volatile environments.

Content: Article | Author: Martin Reeves | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Leadership is about change, but what is a leader to do when faced with ubiquitous resistance? Resistance to change manifests itself in many ways, from foot-dragging and inertia to petty sabotage to outright rebellions. The best tool for leaders of change is to understand the predictable, universal sources of resistance in each situation and then strategize around them. Here are the ten I’ve found to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Rosabeth Moss Kanter | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

How do you find out how much your customers will pay? It’s simple: Ask them. Of course, you can’t ask customers directly how much they are willing to pay — they’ll likely shade the truth (by giving a lower price) to their benefit. That said, there are a variety of ways to better understand how your customers think about your price. In my work, I … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Rafi Mohammed | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Pricing

There is one thing that profoundly and consistently changes lives — what’s generally referred to as the 360-degree feedback process. Here’s what they do that makes the difference.

Content: Article | Authors: Jack Zenger, Joseph Folkman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Business leaders face a challenge to keep their firms competitive amid constant turbulence and disruption. Companies such as Borders and RIM have recognized the need for strategic change, but couldn’t drive the organizational change needed to sustain business success.

It often plays out the same: an organization, facing a real threat or eyeing a new opportunity, tries–and fails–to cram through a major transformation using a change … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: John P. Kotter | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Really smart people have the hardest time learning. They are so very smart that they are also very “brittle.” When something goes wrong, rather than reflect on what they might have done to contribute to the error, they look entirely outside themselves for the causes and blame outside forces — irrational clients, impossible time pressure, lack of adequate resources, shifts beyond their control. Rather than … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Argyris, Roger L. Martin | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Learning, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

A new study just out from James Gross of Stanford University and six other researchers has shown that the higher people go as a leader, the less stress they experience. It turns out that being the CEO is less stressful than being a senior manager. It’s an intriguing idea, as it flies in the face of the current thinking about leadership, which has supported the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: David Rock | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The oldest, shortest words — “yes” and “no” — are those which require the most thought.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Communication, Decision Making

Instead of better tools for better organizing, people want their organization done for them. Organizing is wasteful; getting its benefits is productivity. …the new economics of personal productivity mean that the better organized we try to become, the more wasteful and inefficient we become. We’ll likely get more done better if we give less time and thought to organization and greater reflection and care to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael Schrage | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Productivity / Work Tips

Corporations should have early warning systems to detect emerging competitive threats that have long-term potential to affect their business. Strategists can look back at past transformations to inform their own analyses and they need to understand how tomorrow’s industry could be structured. The work of two of the most important scholars in the field, Clayton Christensen and Richard N. Foster, suggests considering five questions.

Content: Article | Author: Scott Anthony | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

With fresh faces in organizations and new interns flooding offices, it’s time to really think about what the first steps are for bringing a new employee onto your team.

Content: Article | Author: Dick Grote | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Almost 50 years ago Ernest Dichter, the father of motivation research, did a large study of word of mouth persuasion that revealed secrets of how to use social media to build brands and businesses. The study was reported in a 1966 article in HBR.

A major Dichter finding, very relevant today, was the identification of four motivations for a person to communicate about brands.

Content: Article | Author: David Aaker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Because of the structure of their compensation, CEOs are rewarded for share price volatility not performance. So the volatility of the past four years has served them very well indeed. To understand how, let’s model stock-based compensation in two possible worlds: A CEO whose stock has followed the S&P more or less exactly and a CEO whose stock has remained steady over the same period. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Roger L. Martin | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Corporate Governance

Moonwalking With Einstein, the current bestselling book by Joshua Foer, deals with a subject close to the pounding hearts and minds of every public speaker or presenter: how to remember what to say. Speakers and presenters rely on a number of devices — from low-end three-by-five index cards to expensive high-end teleprompters — to aid their memories. Foer offers an even higher-end but lower-cost technique: … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jerry Weissman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Personal Development

The article details the latest insights on what changes organizations can take to have the greatest impact on executing their strategies to achieve results. The HBR article demonstrates the importance of decision rights and information flow in driving effectiveness and how enterprises succeed or fail at execution depending on whether they focus on these power drivers or, instead, focus solely on “structural reorganization.”

Content: Article | Authors: Elizabeth Powers, Gary L. Neilson, Karla Martin | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Rather than think of white space as external — as some indistinct but desirable land outside your company’s walls — I suggest that it’s more productive to view it as an internal signpost — as a way to map your company’s ability to address new opportunities or threats. So by white space, I mean “market opportunities your company may wish — or need — to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mark Johnson | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

The firms that have enjoyed years or even decades of life with no or weak competitors have created barriers that inhibit or prevent competitors from entering and becoming serious customer options. Here are some twelve routes to real barriers the last six of which involve the brand.

Content: Article | Author: David Aaker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Choosing which innovative ideas to pursue is often an exercise in guesswork. But by using existing management tools in a new way, executives can effectively gauge an innovation’s potential along two crucial dimensions: Can it withstand market pressures from competitors? And can it deliver more economic value to customers than alternatives?

In this article for Harvard Business Review, Monitor partner Geoff Tuff outlines this distinctive approach: … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Geoff Tuff | Sources: Harvard Business Review, Monitor Group | Subject: Innovation

The concept of shared value—which focuses on the connections between societal and economic progress—has the power to unleash the next wave of global growth.

There are three key ways that companies can create shared value opportunities:
– By reconceiving products and markets
– By redefining productivity in the value chain
– By enabling local cluster development

Every firm should look at decisions and opportunities through the lens … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Mark R. Kramer, Michael E. Porter | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy