The False Promise of the Single Metric. Managers and boards are often pushed by investors, fund managers, and analysts to focus intently on a single measure of success, such as shareholder value or profit, and then they do everything they can to maximize it.
As a result, they tend to overlook other important measures — for instance, customer satisfaction, employee motivation, and supplier support — and their narrow view of the organization can do long-term damage. Consider “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, infamous for his profit-at-any-price approach to corporate turnarounds. What VCs Can Teach Executives About What Drives Returns. Executives tend to turn toward fellow executives for advice.
Historically, best practices on hiring, manufacturing, and sales all emerge when talking to someone else who has sat in the trenches. But the ways we do business have changed dramatically over the course of the last decade, and it’s become more necessary to reach outside of your expertise – or industry — to gain perspective on your business and leadership style. Being a Business Leader Amid Historical Events. There was an overwhelming torrent of news last week.
The two Supreme Court decisions and the response to the tragic church shooting in South Carolina are among the most indelible events of our time and all three will be memorialized in history books and discussed for decades to come. Last week, a CEO friend (Jen Medbery of Kickboard) asked me a series of great questions that I've been thinking about these last few days: What Makes FC Barcelona Such a Successful Business. “Blue and claret blowing in the wind.
One valiant cry. We’ve got a name that everyone knows: Barça, Barça, Baaarça!” So runs the battle hymn of FC Barcelona (aka Barça), the Catalan soccer club that won the UEFA Champions League — the world’s most prestigious inter-club soccer championship — earlier this month, defeating Italy’s Juventus 3-1. With 23 Spanish League championships, 27 Copa Del Rey titles, and, after this last victory, as many as five Champions League trophies under its belt, Barca has earned a unique place in the annals of soccer. It’s also a successful business: the team’s net worth, according to Forbes, was $3.16 billion, making it the world’s second most valuable sports team, while its revenues touched $657 million, the fourth highest among soccer clubs (after Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Bayern Munich) in 2014.
Why Companies Need Novelists. PricewaterhouseCoopers: Global: Insights & Solutions: MoneyTree™ Survey Report. Push Your Team to Think Globally - Video. What I learned from my first startup. I joined my first startup in the summer of 2000.
Not a good year for tech, but nevertheless a highly ambitious and inspirational group called NST. NST, or Nordic Speech Technology, was developing next generation speech recognition software and human-machine interaction via speech. Why You Should Take the Blame - Peter Bregman. I was at a party in Greenwich Village in New York City.
It was crowded, with about twice as many people as the space comfortably fit. There was a dog in the mix too. But it was a casual event and we all spent a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning. I was at the sink washing dishes when I heard the dog yelp behind me.
Great Leaders Know When to Forgive - Rosabeth Moss Kanter. By Rosabeth Moss Kanter | 8:00 AM February 26, 2013 Leaders must be firm and foster accountability, but they also must know when to forgive past wrongs in the service of building a brighter future.
One of the most courageous acts of leadership is to forgo the temptation to take revenge on those on the other side of an issue or those who opposed the leader’s rise to power. Instead of settling scores, great leaders make gestures of reconciliation that heal wounds and get on with business. A More Productive Way to Think About Opponents - David L. Shields. By David L.
Shields | 12:00 PM February 22, 2013 When scandals rock the business world, we all go scurrying to find big causes. Human greed.
Cultural Diversity. Giving Feedback Across Cultures - Andy Molinsky. By Andy Molinsky | 8:00 AM February 15, 2013.
HR. Why the World Needs Tri-Sector Leaders - Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas. By Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas | 1:00 PM February 13, 2013 The critical challenges society faces — such as water scarcity, access to education, and the rising cost of healthcare — increasingly require the business, government and nonprofit sectors to work together to create lasting solutions.
But this is only possible if the senior executives of our leading institutions are what Dominic Barton, Worldwide Managing Director of McKinsey & Company, refers to as “tri-sector athletes” — leaders able to engage and collaborate across all three sectors. Our research at The InterSector Project shows that these leaders often have prior experiences in each sector and a unique ability to navigate different cultures, align incentives and draw on the particular strengths of a wide range of actors to solve large-scale problems. Take water scarcity. A potential 40% gap between global freshwater demand and supply by 2030 puts billions of lives — and dollars — at stake.
Strategic questions – rethinking winning « doCollaborate. I spent today talking strategy with a guy who lives and breaths it – intent on using it to push through a lasting change to the way his company serves its community. And so a post by Roger Martin on the HBR blog today came at me at a useful time. Roger says that strategy is making of an integrated set of choices – positioning the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage relative to competition and deliver superior financial returns. He encourages people to answer 5 simple questions in a strategy – and he makes a separation between building budgets and delivery plans (which most people confuse as strategy) from the informed clarity of a strategy that sets direction for a period ahead.
Rogers questions are familiar – its the ‘Traditional Strategy’ view – about resources and winning – which Nilofer Merchant has declared as dead. “They didn’t care that they had seen it work in practice becasue they already knew it wouldn’t work in theory” Don't Let Strategy Become Planning - Roger Martin. By Roger Martin | 8:00 AM February 5, 2013 I must have heard the words “we need to create a strategic plan” at least an order of magnitude more times than I have heard “we need to create a strategy.”
This is because most people see strategy as an exercise in producing a planning document.
Treat Everything as a Case Study - Robert Plant. By Robert Plant | 10:00 AM January 30, 2013 I was driving past a Volkswagen dealer during a 15-hour drive from Miami to New Orleans when my 9- and 10-year-old kids excitedly pointed out the old Beetle that was parked alongside a row of brand-new models. Ah, yes, I said, a clear case of brand reinforcement through product differentiation: The odd thing stands out. At another point in the trip, their $8 headsets broke at the plug. Sometimes Negative Feedback is Best - Heidi Grant Halvorson. By Heidi Grant Halvorson | 8:00 AM January 28, 2013 If I see one more article or blog post about how you should never be “critical” or “negative” when giving feedback to an employee or colleague (or, for that matter, your children), I think my head will explode. It’s incredibly frustrating.
This kind of advice is surely well meant, and it certainly sounds good. After all, you probably don’t relish the thought of having to tell someone else what they are doing wrong — at minimum, it’s a little embarrassing for everyone involved.
Can Companies Both Do Well and Do Good? - Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra, and Urs Peyer. By Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra, and Urs Peyer | 9:00 AM January 7, 2013. How to Manage Conflict in Virtual Teams - Keith Ferrazzi. By Keith Ferrazzi | 10:00 AM November 19, 2012. New Research: How Employee Engagement Hits the Bottom Line - Tony Schwartz.
Why Minnesota CEOs Said No to Banning Same-Sex Marriage - John G. Taft.