1297 Posts found for Source: strategy+business

At the heart of even the most mutually beneficial negotiation, there is always a haggle between two conflicting positions. A creative solution can clear a stalemate and produce agreement, but not by eliminating or resolving the conflict; rather, by suggesting new, acceptable concessions that make the conflict less intense. Making this happen is the art of negotiation.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Negotiation

…the moral, however relevant, is not what’s most notable to a student of storytelling. What’s remarkable is that when listeners hear the start of such a story – whether fable, personal remembrance, or corporate myth – they implicitly agree to a certain set of rules as an audience. Rather than judge the veracity of each fact presented, as they would in a traditional analytical presentation, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Communication, Persuasion

London, October 26, 2006 — The world’s most successful companies have discovered that to maximize the effect of corporate innovations, they must first identify an overarching framework, or purpose, for internal innovations. This conclusion is backed by a Booz Allen Hamilton study of 1,000 corporations, which showed little correlation between R&D spending and corporate success. Without a clear strategy it’s difficult to succeed regardless … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Nikos Mourkogiannis | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

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In purely top-down structures, key information and insights from below are often missed. Decisions take too long and are not as targeted and effective as they would be if information from front-line employees were taken into account.

But what governance system to use? Not a model based on consensus or democracy. Consensus often devolves into the least-common-denominator approach. People give in to what the largest egos … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Brian Robertson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Every chunk of knowledge has a limited shelf life; at some point that knowledge becomes obsolete, or, as we say, turns into “obsoledge” – ideas and assumptions that have been falsified by change and surrogates or proxies that are no longer appropriate to the topic at hand. In fact, given the acceleration of change, companies, individuals, and governments base many of their daily decisions on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Information, Knowledge

We keep hearing that OD is dead. We hear that change management has replaced it. But change management is about driving change from the top, and reasserting hierarchy. It’s a way of talking about change but not changing anything.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Teams are a way of making groups more comfortable for men by adapting the language of sports. Groups were about collaboration and learning, but teams can be focused just on winning. This appeals to organizations focused on the bottom line, but the ability of people to make breakthroughs is compromised.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Individual coaching is the death of the group. Working with a single person, you can’t see how his behavior affects the whole system. And giving people evaluations rather than creating situations where they can learn to evaluate themselves doesn’t really raise their awareness. Also, the coach is usually the instrument of hierarchy, a way of asserting behavioral control from the top.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Coaching, Organizational Behavior

Eskom, Africa’s largest electric company, has shown the world how to combine social leadership and business success.

Content: Case Study | Author: Ann Graham | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG) | Industry: Utilities | Company: Eskom

You need a performance/values matrix. Jeff Immelt says it very well: Performance, performance, and values. Without performance – I mean, that’s what the game is about. But it’s got to be values helping you to perform. Self-absorbed learning is different from taking my learning and feeling a sense of responsibility to bring it to you.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Values

The reliance on open borders, transnational alliances, and global markets for capital, goods, and services has generated a “just in time” economy, which, although remarkably cost-efficient, leaves companies open to a range of discontinuities that can affect operations, reputation, customer habits, legal standing, regulatory compliance, earnings performance, and ultimately shareholder value. We call these new vulnerabilities, collectively, interdependence risk, and define it as unanticipated risk … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: International, Risk Management

Firms are typically driven by the competing objectives of the marketing and sales departments. Sales personnel are rewarded for volume increases, yet marketing frequently owns the P&L. At many companies, an “iron curtain” goes up between these units, with marketing executives centralizing authority in a vain attempt to control and improve sales promotion and local marketing; meanwhile, out in the “real world,” sales pushes volume … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Addicted to a reigning ideology – that “persuasion is not a science, but an art,” as the renowned advertising executive Bill Bernbach once put it – marketing executives, almost from the beginning of mass marketing, have believed that they should intuit the “Big Idea,” and all else would follow. In fact, though, they have been trapped in a cycle of assumption, approximation, and acceptance.

They assume … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Marketing / Sales

A sales pitch based on rational economic efficiency is a supplier’s argument, not something that is compelling to a consumer.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Marketing / Sales

An idiosyncratic economist preaches the innate morality of business.

Content: Article | Author: Andrea Gabor | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, People

Companies have tended to concentrate on differences between different groups of customers. They have divided them into ever smaller and neater segments so they can customize their offerings to meet the needs of those segments.

We found that value innovators take a different approach. Instead of looking at differences between customers, they focus on the basic commonalities across customers. When companies create unprecedented value on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation

Personality, responsibility, and intelligence – attributes that have been in demand for at least a thousand years – still are the prevailing characteristics of leadership. Additionally, management skills should be enhanced with other characteristics: first, a blend of courage, nerve, and calmness; and, second, the ability to communicate internally and externally.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Leadership

The productivity boom benefits the U.S. more than Europe. Five reports explore why.

Content: Article | Author: Diane Coyle | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, International – Europe

Breakthroughs in brain research explain how to make organizational transformation succeed.

Editor’s Note: very interesting concepts…a highly recommended read.

Content: Article | Authors: David Rock, Jeffrey Schwartz | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior