Photos du journal. New WorkPlace / Office Trends @ Scarlet Opus Trends Blog. A while back I met Stuart Martin of Walker and Martin when I was presenting a trend seminar at one of Steelcase’s fab events at their London WorkLife space. Afterwards Stuart sent me designs for a really exciting corporate workplace concept and he has kindly granted permission for me to share the project with you today. WaM is an award-winning architecture & design practice that encourages the exchange of ideas with other disciplines, artists and people interested in the built environment.
Known for their interesting and innovative design solutions they have worked on projects for the likes of Skype (pictured below), AVIS, Thomas Cook and BBC Wales as well as being invited to produce a scheme to reinvent the offices of Ministry of Sound in London. It transpired that both Stuart & I are big fans of The High Line in New York and in Stuart’s case the elevated park (as well as Central Park) provided inspiration for a new Walker and Martin project called ParkLife.
Let’s take a closer look… How to see into the future of your business. (MoneyWatch) Of all the topics I teach in the USC Executive MBA program, the one that gets many students the most excited is organizational life cycle. Boring title, yes, but here's why you should keep reading: If you apply this model, you will see exactly what steps to take to make your company more effective today, how to prepare it for challenges it won't face for years, and how to position yourself as the leader for decades to come.
Applied correctly, the model will make you one of the top 1 percent of leaders in your field -- no exaggeration. The thanks for these insights goes to Professor Larry Greiner, one of the pioneers of the Executive MBA at USC's Marshall School of Business. Not only did he write the definitive article that is the basis for this blog post, but he also took the time to explain its nuances to me, so that I could teach them to a new generation of leaders. Starting up There are four major phases to how organizations age.
Day of the expert Learning division. Advantages & Disadvantages of Matrix Organizational Structures in Business Organizations. Google Grows Up: A Necessary Evil? - Joshua Gans. By Joshua Gans | 11:52 AM March 19, 2012 James Whittaker left Google and wrote about it. Long story short: Google came under “new” management (which was actually really old management returning) and started focusing on its core products rather than being “all about the technology.” The staff — and this is surely not a shock — don’t much like it. As Whittaker wrote, The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again.
But. The Old Google apparently died around the time Steve Levy released his great book about the old Google — last year. But Facebook has given people a reason to link again — to share information with friends. Enter, Google+. And so that is when, like others before it, the start-up turned into a corporation. Stop Talking About Social and Do It - Nilofer Merchant. “Leadership” has changed when a decentralized group of people can take down a government. “The Value Chain” has changed when the customer is no longer just the “buyer” but also a co-creator. “Human Resources” have changed when most of the people who create value for your organization are neither hired nor paid by you. “Competition” has changed when individuals can create value through a centralized network of resources: for example, designing a product from anywhere, producing it through a 3D factory, financing it through community and distribution from anywhere to anywhere.
Yet our business models have not changed to keep pace with these shifts. This five-part series has shared case studies and examples of how the social era affects all areas of the business model: how we create, deliver, and capture value. (See part one, part two, part three, and part four.) Here’s a quick visual summary of what we’ve covered so far: From paid to purpose-driven. From centralized to distributed. Why Porter's Model No Longer Works - Nilofer Merchant.
Imagine that you wanted a new home theater system. But instead of spending hours in Best Buy or on Amazon comparing configurations and assembling the parts you needed, you could signal what you wanted and a company would create it for you. You might simply Pinterest the elements you liked, including information about your space or noise limitations (“One-bedroom apartment on busy street in New York,” or “suburban space that needs stuff protected from little kids”), and then have a retailer give you a personalized, optimal configuration.
Right now, social is largely seen as a way to amplify messages (“Like” us on Facebook!) Or to create conversations around customer service (“We’re so sorry you’re having a problem,” the persistent tweet from @ComcastCares). But the social era can — and will — be more than that. Big Isn’t Enough This is the third part of a series on what it takes to win in the social era: being fast, fluid, and flexible. Generic vs. Social Becomes Central to What We Build. Strategy Essentials You Ignore at Your Peril - Joan Magretta. By Joan Magretta | 10:59 AM December 22, 2011 Michael Porter, the world’s leading authority on competition and strategy, is sometimes the victim of his own success.
We use his terminology every day — competitive advantage, the value chain, differentiation, value creation. We think, therefore, that we “know” his work. But in fact, most managers don’t. They talk the talk, but they have turned his powerful ideas into business buzzwords. Competitive advantage, for example, is often used to mean “anything we think we’re good at.” Any plan or program is called a strategy. That’s more than just too bad. My goal was to present the essential Porter in a form that could be more easily digested and put to work than the original. So as I worked on this book, I kept a list of those insights. Competitive advantage is not about beating rivals; it’s about creating unique value for customers.
Do these seem self-evident when you stop to think about them? Five Questions That Should Shape Any Change Program - Scott Keller and Colin Price. By Scott Keller and Colin Price | 11:48 AM December 2, 2011 Most organizations will shrink or disappear in the long term: only a third of excellent companies remain excellent for decades, and when organizations try to transform themselves, even fewer succeed. But as economic, political, social, and technological change continue to accelerate, and competitive pressure grows more intense, leaders can’t afford those odds. The likeliest way to overcome them, we found as we wrote Beyond Performance, is to address the underlying problem: organizations that focus too much on short-term financial performance, at the expense of organizational health, are those that most typically need transformational change; but, unfortunately, the change programs they create are similarly shortsighted.
Change programs that succeed, we’ve seen, put an equal emphasis on both performance and health in answering five basic questions that should shape any change program. 1) Where do we want to go? 4. 5. Five Common Strategy Mistakes - Joan Magretta. By Joan Magretta | 1:15 PM December 8, 2011 I just finished a two-year project looking at Michael Porter’s most important insights for managers. Connecting the dots between his classic frameworks (the five forces, for example) and his latest thinking (the five tests of strategy) gave me a new understanding of the most common mistakes that can derail a company’s strategy.
In a previous post, I focused on the fallacy of competing to be the best. Here are five more traps I’ve seen managers fall into over and over again. Understanding Porter’s strategy fundamentals will help you to avoid them. Mistake #1. Correction: A value proposition isn’t the same thing as a strategy. Correction: Building on strength is a good thing, but when it comes to strategy, companies are too often inward looking and therefore likely to overestimate their strengths. Mistake #3: Pursuing size above all else, because if you’re the biggest, you’ll be more profitable. Mistake #4. 5 ways a business plan can come back to bite you. We've all heard the expression, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. " And few people disagree on the importance of a business plan.
But too many business plans risk turning against their authors (and often do) because of one or more of these potentially fatal flaws: 1. Being too attached to a product or idea. The "everyone will want this" phenomenon, where you love an idea so blindly that you don't even consider the possibility that the world might not beat a path to your door. Gut feelings, experience and a willingness to take risks certainly count, but don't get too stubbornly attached to your ideas. 2. It seems reasonable -- hey, just 1 percent -- but in many industries getting 1 percent market share is a Herculean feat. 3. Determined people with big ideas and dreams often have faith that the missing pieces will just come together. 4. Another wise piece of advice I got years ago was to separate goals from estimates. 5.
I'd love to hear your own business-plan pitfalls or advice. Building 2012 Sales Projections in Uncertain Times | BNET. Last Updated Oct 17, 2011 6:17 PM EDT It's almost that time of year -- time for the annual "Battle Royale" of sales forecasting and planning for next year. It is usually linked to that other cherished event, annual budgeting.
I have architected, led, and suffered through these processes for 25 years of my career. During that period, I don't know if I ever had to create a picture of the future during circumstances of greater uncertainty than we are in now. I imagine that to those either going through it or preparing to go through it, you may feel like buying lottery tickets has just as much potential of accuracy as this process. In a world of uncertainty, I advocate making adjustments to your sales planning and forecasting process for the sanity of those sentenced to it and for those seeking increased certainty from it. Reality guidelines for making 2012 sales projections: 1. 2. 3. If you are a small to mid-size company the secret is that the game is changing in our favor. The Cure for the Not-for-Profit Crisis. What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Growth - Nilofer Merchant.
By Nilofer Merchant | 1:46 PM September 22, 2011 This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. Finding that first market — a few customers willing to pay for your early product — is hard enough. But there’s one thing that may be even harder. And that’s finding the second market. In 1996 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, I was in charge of an industry-recognized channel program for the company that was responsible for growing a $2M business to $180M business in 18 months. So, as I went into the full business review, it never occurred to me that Jobs wouldn’t appreciate the channel program. And he was right. As you become successful in something, you develop a feel for how to do it.
In the late 90′s and early 00′s, a good channel strategy made the key difference between a $100M and a $2B company in the tech world. But Steve wasn’t willing to play that game. There are plenty of examples of companies who’ve used the past to determine in the future. Master unlearning. The Three Questions That Lead to Profitable Growth - Chris Zook. By Chris Zook | 11:40 AM September 27, 2011 This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. Self-awareness is not always pretty. We go to some lengths to avoid it, tucking our stomachs in as we pass a mirror, weighing ourselves at the most favorable times, and favoring people who compliment us. No real harm done. However, when management teams do the same in their businesses, great harm can occur, for self-awareness is the first building block of successful growth strategies.
Hubris, false confidence, and the tendency to downplay contrary data are at the root of many of the great growth blunders and missed opportunities in the history of business. 1. The three biggest determinants of that advantage are The companies that have all three are not always the most glamorous, but they are usually the ones that adapt and endure. Yet, how much effort do most executives spend in deep reflection on the true underlying drivers of competitive advantage? 2. 3. 4 Signs You’ve Got a Bad Strategy | BNET. Last Updated Jul 7, 2011 10:21 AM EDT Contrary to what you may think, bad bosses are not the biggest problem facing business today (numerous national surveys show workers are largely satisfied with their supervisor).
The more serious threat-- one that can derail your career, as well as the company--is bad strategy. In the new book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, author Richard Rumelt, a professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management and well-known management consultant, says a strong corporate strategy is razor sharp and cuts through corporate doubletalk and jargon. He notes: "good strategy is coherent action backed up by argument, an effective mixture of thought and action with a basic underlying structure I call the kernel. A good strategy may consist of more than the kernel, but if the kernel is absent or misshapen, then there is a serious problem. " 1. 4. Have you seen bad strategy in your firm or at a competitor's? Related: Photo by Mustafa. 5 Reasons to Bootstrap Your Startup | BNET. Last Updated Jun 4, 2011 9:02 AM EDT Swagbucks is an online rewards destination where users earn virtual currency redeemable for real-life rewards for performing the everyday actions they already take online - like searching the web, playing games, shopping, watching videos, etc.
The Los Angeles-based company, which has 3.5 million registered users, does over $10 million in annual revenue and COO Scott Dudelson is predicting close to $20 million by the end of this year. Sound like a classic Internet startup? It's not. Dudelson started his company, Prodege, (Swagbucks is the brand) with three of his best friends five years ago and he did it the old fashioned way - by bootstrapping. Ignorance is bliss.
What's your view on bootstrapping? You might also like these posts: Shopkick's Cyriac Roeding: How to Crack Your Startup's Chicken and Egg ProblemHow I Turned a Simple Home-Based Business Into a Multi-Million Dollar Company5 Surefire Tips for Hiring the Best College Grads. Why American Management Rules the World - Nicholas Bloom, Rebecca Homkes, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen - The Conversation. Building a Shared Mental Model to Rekindle Collaboration - Jason Green - The Conversation. By Jason Green | 8:01 AM June 14, 2011 This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Making Collaboration Work. Imagine being trapped high on a mountain during a blizzard or being adrift at sea in a life boat for weeks on end.
Is there any way to increase your odds of surviving? In fact, research into why some individuals and groups survive these types of disasters while others don’t indicates that the ability to adjust one’s “mental model” to reflect the new realities of an extreme situation is a critical survival skill. In Deep Survival, author Laurence Gonzales writes: “Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.”
That deadly confusion begins with a flawed mental model that fails to reflect reality but still serves as the basis for taking action. Like people in survival situations, the ability to develop an accurate mental model often separates successful companies from organizations that do not survive. So what exactly is a company’s mental model? Radical Change Is for Losers | BNET. The ‘Tom Sawyer’ Strategy: How to Get Free Labor | BNET.
Wanted: Adoptive Parents for Orphaned Ideas | BNET.