1297 Posts found for Source: strategy+business

In a highly unified system, if you have a Bill Gates—or a receptive emperor—at the top, the system, the output, is fine, and you’re not getting the latent disadvantage of the system. From the moment, though, where at the top is not Bill Gates or an outward-looking emperor but a closed-minded emperor, then things can go downhill immediately. Because one person making a wrong decision … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jared Diamond | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Many famous, successful people are at either of two extremes: Either they give nothing of themselves and they just want to know your thinking, or they want to do nothing except talk about themselves and they don’t listen.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jared Diamond | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Personality / Behavior

It’s not the case that you can look for the natural size of a business. Instead, what managers can profitably do is to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of big units, and then to be aware of a different set of advantages and disadvantages of small units, and to recognize that, at any moment, the challenge for the industry is to find what … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jared Diamond | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

…the more things you’re interested in and the more you learn, the richer the framework into which you can fit any new thing. So synthesis, if you do it at all, gets professionally easier with time. It’s no surprise that older people can do better at synthesis, because they’ve been learning their entire lives. It’s the opposite of, say, reasoning skills in mathematics. Synthesis increases … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jared Diamond | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Thought

Change management expert John Kotter argues that companies cannot adapt to change mainly because of their hierarchical management systems. These systems are designed to coordinate large groups of people in the consistent and efficient delivery of products and services—and they do it well. They are, Kotter says, “absolutely necessary to make organizations work.” Here’s the conundrum: You can’t jettison the hierarchical system that runs your … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John P. Kotter, Rita Gunther McGrath, Theodore Kinni | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Strategy

The technique of deliberate practice can dramatically improve performance, but knowing its limits is as important as understanding its value.

Content: Article | Author: Phil Rosenzweig | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

The best companies use culture as both a sword and a shield, to improve performance and reduce risk.

Content: Article | Author: Joel Greenwald | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Many leaders inadvertently stand in the way of superior performance. Here’s how to avoid the hindrance trap. And to check your own performance, take our interactive survey.

Content: Article | Authors: Kannan Ramaswamy, William Youngdahl | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

How’s your performance evaluation system working for you? There’s very good evidence to suggest it is ineffective. If performance evaluations were a drug, they would not get FDA approval—at least as they’re done in most organizations. About 20 percent of the time they make things better, 20 percent of the time they make things worse, and 60 percent of the time, meh. Yet we keep … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

You need to think local and act global. In other words, you need to constantly ask yourself, “What can I draw from a particular local environment that is unique and different, that is going to best make use of its capabilities and competencies, that is going to best leverage this uniqueness on a worldwide basis?” So the approach is very much to think about the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Yves Doz | Source: strategy+business | Subject: International

I think that most so-called knowledge management systems act like the Yellow Pages. They have been good at essentially two things: locating sources of knowledge internally, and tagging and cataloging existing knowledge in the company. But they haven’t been designed that well for prospecting and accessing knowledge outside the company. Most are fairly inward-looking, which is good for some consulting companies that have a lot … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Yves Doz | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Knowledge

Easily codified knowledge, the kind that knowledge systems manage pretty well, is probably the least deeply interesting knowledge, because it is not likely to provide very sustainable competitive differentiation. Learning by doing indeed leads to original operating knowledge, of a very valuable, hard-to-imitate type.

Content: Quotation | Author: Yves Doz | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Knowledge

Companies that link complementary partners, like dating sites or online auctions, can dominate for years or be swept away in an instant.

Content: Article | Author: Dylan Minor | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Business Model

The cofounder of unconscious thought theory explains how taking a break and distracting the mind can lead to higher-quality decision making.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Ken Favaro, Loran Nordgren | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Demographics, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

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As analytics exert greater influence in organizational decision making, the question of how to manage this essential asset is coming to a head.

Content: Article | Authors: Boris Abezgauz, Kumar Krishnamurthy, Tom Casey | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

When you are selling part of your company, don’t just offer buyers a potential asset; give them the capabilities to gain value from it.

Content: Article | Authors: Ahmad Filsoof, Eduardo Alvarez, Steven Waller | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

As companies evolve away from traditional hierarchies, a major cultural shift is required.

Editor’s Note: This article is partly a conceptual piece on the matrix structure and partly a case study of PepsiCo Mexico Foods (PMF). While the big picture topic covered is important, I found the case study to be a weak supporter of the argument and the conceptual component to be incredibly lacking. But, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Adam Michaels, Jon R. Katzenbach | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior | Company: PepsiCo Mexico Foods (PMF)

The AeroVironment story is not a playbook for other companies to follow wholesale—for one, its heritage cannot possibly be duplicated—but it’s a fascinating tale rich with lessons for any company. Most of all, AV shows how disruptive technologies can evolve and shake up their industries, even when multiple market forces exist to hold them back. It also offers companies guidance about when to evolve to … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Author: Lawrence M. Fisher | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation | Company: AeroVironment

The eight components of your organizational genome hold the secret to unleashing superior performance.

Content: Article | Authors: Ashok Divakaran, Gary L. Neilson, Jaya Pandrangi | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior