1297 Posts found for Source: strategy+business

Who is better equipped to set the corporate agenda: a small and homogeneous top management team of like-minded individuals, or a larger, more heterogeneous team of individuals from a wider variety of backgrounds and perspectives?

There are many opinions on this issue, but very little hard data exists to recommend one approach or the other. As a result, in collaboration with the Center for Effective Organizations … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Madelaine Pfau, Max Landsberg | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Organizational Behavior

Marketing organizations that don’t meet their companies’ needs are distressingly common these days. A new joint study by Booz Allen Hamilton and the ANA identifies six types of marketing organizations — each with its own strengths and challenges — and provides a free, five-minute test to help you identify where your company stands and what can be done to up the performance ante.

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Tipping, Brodie Dixon, Edward Landry | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior

Healthy companies are hard to mistake. Their managers have access to timely information, the authority to make decisions, and the incentives to act on behalf of the organization. The organization, in turn, carries out those decisions. We call these organizations “resilient,” because they can react nimbly to challenges and respond quickly to those they can’t dodge. Unfortunately, most companies are not resilient: Fewer than 20 … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Bruce A. Pasternack, Gary L. Neilson, Karen E. Van Nuys | Sources: Harvard Business Review, strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Jay Forrester’s computer models show the nonlinear roots of calamity and reveal the leverage that can help us avoid it.

Editor’s Note: Forrester is the father of system dynamics.

Content: Article | Author: Lawrence M. Fisher | Source: strategy+business | Subject: People

If we are to learn from the experience of others, surely we have to understand their thoughts and actions in the particular situations in which they found themselves. When it comes to human action of any kind, context matters.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Experience, Learning

For each technological revolution to flourish, you need a lot of new investment in infrastructure. If you don’t have railroads, who can build locomotives? If you don’t have roads or electricity, how can you sell cars or refrigerators? But if you don’t have enough cars or refrigerators, you can’t justify the roads or power plants. The solution comes through asset inflation. As money flows into … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, IT / Technology / E-Business

Business leaders cannot pretend that what they do is value-free, even if they want to. The individual who aspires to be a leader must throw off traditional typecast roles: the wealthy entrepreneur or investor, the famous deal maker, the tough chief executive, even the charismatic leader. These roles have become commodities – they can be adopted at will by individuals, and even bought and sold … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Mission

When no clear moral purpose is articulated, a company acquires a de facto amoral purpose: expediency. It becomes the kind of company that professes, “We are here only to make money.” This can be very successful in the short run, but companies without a clear moral purpose cannot endure; they do not survive the changes they will face in their markets or business environments. Even … [ Read more ]

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

We cannot achieve fulfillment simply by aiming for it, Aristotle taught; instead, we must cultivate traits of character (which he called virtues) that will lead us to behave automatically in a way that contributes to our success.

Aristotle also writes about vices. For every virtue there are usually two vices – one representing too much and one too little of the virtue in question. The vices … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Character, Philosophy

The Brazilian CEO and best-selling author transformed his pump plant into a model of participative management, and launched his company on 14 straight years of double-digit growth.

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Lawrence M. Fisher | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Management

Once, companies thought it would be hard to build partnerships with environmental groups. In fact, that proved to be easy: DuPont and McDonald’s have maintained close working relationships with the Environmental Defense Fund (now called Environmental Defense) for almost 20 years. The truly hard part turns out to be forging and maintaining relationships with other companies, especially competitors. In fact, there is a direct clash … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Art Kleiner | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

You cannot fight norms solely with laws. You need to fight norms with other norms.

I think that our culture is biased toward laws and rules. Cultures work best when there’s a thick layer of moral norms – shared values and habits of behavior – undergirded by a relatively thin base of law. In the United States, we’re over-lawyered, overregulated, and under-normed. We’re attempting to deal … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Ethics, Personality / Behavior

The preoccupation with self led many people from repudiating unnecessary sacrifice to discarding the ethic of sacrifice altogether. The emphasis on relative values, as opposed to absolute values, left people somewhat bereft of common agreement about right and wrong. The current explosion of religious belief represents a search for something absolute to believe in. But in the larger culture, particularly the business culture, there is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, Ethics

I define dialogue as having three indispensable elements. First, park status outside – so that people feel free to interact with each other as equals. That’s not easy to do. Second, suspend judgment while listening. Dialogue is the opposite of debate. You can’t win or lose. You don’t rush to judgment; you leave yourself open to actually hearing with empathy what other people say. Third, … [ Read more ]

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

The Toyota Production System has revolutionized industry. James Womack and Daniel Jones believe it can transform the world.

Content: Article | Author: Art Kleiner | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Operations, People

A Communist car monopoly turned Volkswagen subsidiary is now becoming an entrepreneurial global enterprise.

Content: Case Study | Author: Jonathan Ledgard | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Industry Specific | Industry: Automotive | Company: Skoda

Balancing relationship building and opportunism leads to a strategy for all seasons.

Content: Article | Authors: Elliott Weiss, Tim Laseter | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

By implementing market-driven management, cost centers get what has eluded them: respect and results.

Content: Article | Author: George Tillmann | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management

The Nobel Prize-winning German economist says understanding hindsight will improve foresight.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Matthias Hild, Tim Laseter | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Management

How do you snatch a company from the brink of bankruptcy and restore it to profitability? As demonstrated in the mid-1980s by Caterpillar, the world’s biggest maker of heavy equipment, the key lies in reshaping its “organizational DNA” — the decision rights, motivators, information flows, and structures that determine an organization’s behavior. By retooling its corporate culture to make it align better with its overall … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Authors: Bruce A. Pasternack, Gary L. Neilson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Caterpillar Inc.