Tying the Knot: IT Systems in a Merger
Two senior J. P. Morgan Chase executives explain how a worldwide team set the stage for transforming the merged firm’s IT organization.
Content: Case Study | Authors: Bradford Brown, Vikram Malhotra | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business | Industry: Finance / Banking | Company: J. P. Morgan Chase
Purchasing Department Roles
Brand Differentiation vs. Relevance Matrix
Solving the Solutions Problem
Companies can earn higher margins or increased revenues by selling integrated offerings-if they don’t merely bundle their products.
Content: Article | Authors: Chandru Krishnamurthy, Henry E. Schlissberg, Juliet E. Johansson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Strategy
How Global Is the Automotive Industry?
Marvin Bower
The competitive executive seizes and exploits opportunities. He is more interested in building on strength than in shoring up weaknesses. He devotes more time to building his own company’s position than to countering competitive moves.
Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management
Marvin Bower
Like so many other management concepts…the value of the fact-founded approach depends on the degree and effectiveness of its use. My observations convince me that only the most successful companies really use facts adequately and with full effectiveness in developing strategic plans and making decisions. Too many executives get fixed attitudes on common issues, typifying the cliché, “My mind is made up-don’t bother me with … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Credit Cards Come to China
Marvin Bower
The business with high ethical standards has three primary advantages over competitors whose standards are lower:
1 . A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence. When there is any doubt about what action to take, they can rely on the guidance of ethical principles. Inner administrative drive emanates largely … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior
Marvin Bower
The results of organizational planning are pictured in organizational charts, with their boxes and lines of authority. But organizational planning really deals with the actions, ambitions, emotions, and personal effectiveness of people. Whether or not the actions of individuals are effectively harnessed to achieve the purposes of the business depends largely, I believe, on how well the plan of organization is fashioned and how resolutely … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Marvin Bower
Organizational planning is concerned-in management jargon-with the duties, responsibilities, authority, relationships, and personal requirements of positions. This kind of planning harnesses and legitimizes power. It also helps to contain illegitimate power.
Even a perfect organizational plan won’t control all the imperfections of human nature. But a defective plan can be counted on to bring out the worst in people and to raise costly havoc in … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Numbers Investors Can Trust
What counts isn’t the bottom line but rather how it is calculated.
Content: Article | Author: Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Accounting, Finance | Industry: Investing
Marvin Bower
To be sure, an organizational plan is restrictive. In fact, all managing processes are restrictive, for their purpose is to guide people’s efforts toward effectively attaining the objectives of the group, and in a sense all guidance is restrictive. If people are to pull together rather than work at cross-purposes, some harness is needed-and better a planned harness than a tangled one. With a soundly … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Organizational Lessons for Nonprofits
Teach For America learned the importance of building organizational capacity the hard way.
Content: Article | Author: Jerry Hauser | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Industry Specific, Nonprofit | Industry: Non-Profit
Pricing New Products
Companies habitually charge less than they could for new offerings. It’s a terrible habit.
Content: Article | Authors: Craig C. Zawada, Eric V. Roegner, Michael V. Marn | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Pricing, Strategy
Getting IT Spending Right This Time
Smart IT investing doesn’t require a return to the spendthrift ways of the late 1990s.
Content: Article | Authors: Allen P. Webb, Diana Farrell, Terra Terwilliger | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business
Best Practice Doesn’t Equal Best Strategy
Best practice doesn’t always equal best strategy. Best-practice benchmarking, rightly viewed as one of the most important tools for improving operational efficiency, can be a double-edged sword. Managers must guard against transforming what is a purely process-related technique into the overriding goal of strategic decision making. When industry competitors begin to herd around a single strategy, declining margins are bound to follow.
Content: Article | Sources: CFO Publishing, McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy
Good Management Matters
Three Dimensions of Top Team Performance
When Reorganization Works
Even a corporate revamping inspired by state-of-the-art design principles won’t succeed if not driven by a powerful, well-timed business idea adapted to social realities.
Content: Article | Authors: Emily Lawson, Jonathan D. Day, Keith Leslie | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior