Harvard Business Review 5 years 2004 – 2009

for benefit.

The companies that move fastest can often operate within competitors’ decision cycles, so competitors are always responding to them.

Social Strategies That Work by Mikotaj Jan Piskorski
Many companies seem to want to build social strategies, with vastly different outcomes. Those who failed in the effort focused on their business goals and paid less attention to customers’ unmet social needs. These strategies didn’t effectively help people with relationships, so they were unwilling to do jobs for the company.

Creating social strategies will require fundamental changes in the way companies approach strategy development. As social platforms become even more central to customers’ lives, companies that don’t figure out how to appropriate their value and create true social strategies will find it harder and harder to compete with those who do. Starting this process even in small steps, is both a critical defensive and offensive move.

/ Surveys show 40% of people suffer from loneliness – being lonelier than they would want to. And being bored is more common than being stressed. Up to 2/3 of almost any grouping of people are either lonely or bored or perhaps both. Business that can attach an antidote against loneliness and boredom onto their service or product offering has a vastly greater chance to build business – I have had this as a core message of my presentations the last three years – remedies; try to offer out genuine friendship on all levels and operate with humor and delight as much as possible /
Cloud Computing by Andrew McAfee
This article argues the merits of Cloud Computing, i.e. This is likely to lead to corporate computing environments very different from today’s. The only way to start to learn about it first hand is to start moving into the cloud.
Notes by [e-mail] 4^th November 2011

Harvard Business Review October 2011

The theme of this issue is ‘The Talent Issue.’ There are two concepts or rather choice of words which I don’t like. One is share of wallet as an expression of how much of any one customer’s need you are satisfying. Share of wallet to me sounds self serving as if you are trying to steal your customer’s money, rather than being exited about what you can do for your customer. It is like the difference between a customer focused organisation and a shareholder Wall Street/ analyst focused organisation. For sustainability your energies should go into what you can do for the world and your customers, not into what you can suck out of them. The other issue is ‘war for talent’. Business is not war. Business is a dance or should be like one. War is about suffering and death and destruction. Keep all war analogies away from the discussion please. We have far too much war in real life and in entertainment to allow it to also infect the way we do or think about business. Otherwise, as always, there were a lot of interesting thoughts in this issue, a few notes below.
If You Want Your Team to Win Tell Them They Are Losing (a Little) by Jonah Burger

Most energy is brought to the fore by people who are in second place but see it as within their reach to move up one notch. Bonus structures typically reward the best performers but there better ways to motivate people.

The Cure for Horrible Bosses by Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

It is not insults that cause the greatest harm, but rather callousness about other people’s time. The best cure for horrible bosses is wonderful colleagues.

The Sustainable Economy by Yvon Chouinard, Jib Ellison and Rick Ridgeway.

The value of many vital aspects of our world, traditionally considered priceless, are being quantified, so that they can be factored into economic equations. Socially responsible investing has matured beyond negative screening to become a value-seeking discipline and positive impetus for change. Industries are converging on standard indices by which to rate products’ sustainability and seek improvements throughout their value chains. Progress in each area spurs progress in the others, to the extent that the long-sought alignment of a firm’s prosperity with the best interest of the planet seems not only possible but inevitable.

The Art and Science of Finding The Right CEO by A G Lafley; foreword by Noel M. Tichy

Four core responsibilities of the board are CEO succession (and executive leadership development) followed by strategic oversight at the corporate level, overall governance, and enterprise risk.

P &Gs criteria for senior executives: Character, values and integrity / Proven track record: business, financial and organization performance / Capability and capacity builder / High energy and high endurance / Visionary and strategic leader / Inspiring, courageous, and compassionate / Productive relationships with colleagues, partners, and other external stakeholders / Embraces change. Leads transformational change / Calm, cool, and resilient in the face of conflict or criticism / Institution builder. Prioritizes greater good and longer-term health of the company.
How to Hang On to Your High Potentials by C Fernandez-Araoz, B Groysberg and N Nohria.

The desire to have an impact on others for the good of the organization is a key predictor of executive potential.

/ this is the article which uses the concept ‘war for talent’ which in my view should be the ‘quest for talent’ – it also talks about ‘making the list for talent’ – my view is you have to be very careful with publicly elevating the expectation of a select few as it may be a put off for others – it all needs to be done subtly and with diplomacy – a successful company needs energy and commitment from all, not just some chosen few /

Horses for causes – a firm focused on emerging markets needs flexible people who can handle the unfamiliar; a low cost firm needs disciplined people.

Make sure you don’t overload people. There is a fine line between a challenging assignment and an overwhelming one.
Making Yourself Indispensable by J H Zenger, J R Folkman, and S K Edinger Good leaders can become exceptional by developing just a few of their strengths to the highest level – but not merely doing more of the same. They need to engage in the business equivalent of cross-training – that is to enhance complementary skills that will enable them to make fuller use of their strengths. Adding communication skills to technical skills can be very enhancing.

/ the concept of bimetallism or alloys refers... Alloys usually have different properties from those of the component elements – new combinations can prove superior to the qualities of either component on its own – the art of combining things, often counter intuitively to have superior results – for example when sanding a winter road to make it less slippery, adding water can improve the results – my comment/

Often executives complain there are not enough good leaders in the organization. The challenge is not to replace bad ones with god ones; it is to turn people who are hardworking and capable and reasonably good – into something excellent.

/the analogy here is from card games – some people constantly complain they are given bad cards – there is no such thing as over time it equals out – what separates winners from losers is not what cards you are dealt but how you play your cards – my comment/

The Toyota Principles can also be effective in operations involving judgment and expertise by Bradley Staats and David Upton

Conventional wisdom holds that the Toyota Production System’s approach to making operations lean cannot be applied to knowledge work which unlike car assembly is not repetitive or easily defined. The article suggests that even though knowledge jobs involve expertise and judgment, they can be made lean if organizations draw on six principles:

Continually root out all waste / Strive to make tacit knowledge explicit / Specify how workers should communicate / Use the scientific method to solve problems quickly / Recognize that a lean system is work in progress / Have leaders blaze the trail /

Often even advanced workers are solving the same problem over and over. How many emails clutter your in-box because someone cc’d you unnecessarily? How long did the meeting have to wait because people trickled in? How many reports are created that nobody reads?

Turning a knowledge operation which has fewer repetitive codifiable processes than manufacturing into a lean operation is difficult. But it can be done, and it is very difficult to for any competitor to replicate. This is its power.
Hot or Not? Attractive people are more successful at work. Should we do anything about it? by Alison Beard

The article comments on three books ‘Erotic Capital,’ ‘Beauty pays,’ and La Seduction.’

/ It is obvious that the more positive qualities you have the better. However, there are always ways of increasing your ‘attraction’ through building self confidence, energy, ingenuity and trying to be a caring and an ‘interesting person.’ Beauty resides not only in the skin deep qualities but just as much in what kind of person you are. My comment /
Notes by [e-mail] 12.10.2011

Harvard Business Review September 2011

In the face of dubious quality of much that hits the news about American government and policy, the HBR comes through with consistency in terms of visionary high quality thinking and articles. The September 2011 issue is no exception. Key ideas that stuck with me are: Put Teddy bears in board rooms and try to ensure and formulate your organizations contribution to society. Please find below a few notes from this issue.

Are you a collaborative leader – comment by Kare Anderson

At least one person in the group must be able to speak credibly to the sweet spot of shared interest to pull people into seeing the same situation. The group’s members must agree on a few rules of engagement to provide comforting boundaries for enthusiastic innovation. The team needs to overcome the inevitable friction that happens when members with different talents and temperaments attempt to work together. A diverse group of people is best for collaboration, but its members must be motivated to work through differences, to understand one another, and to trust that the effort to develop an ‘us’ feeling and behaviors is worth it.

Disrupting higher education comments

If universities are in the business of delivering information, they are doomed. What about learning to think, learn, collaborate, and communicate?

Are the best schools producing the best graduates simply because they admit the best students, not because they deliver education to the highest quality? Are they thriving primarily because of the reputation they have earned? In a world where disruption is routine, past glory is at best en ephemeral thing to rely on.

Why Your It Project May Be Riskier Than You Think by Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier

67% of companies failed to terminate unsuccessful projects; 61% of managers reported major conflicts between project and line organizations; 34% of companies undertook projects that were not aligned with corporate strategy; 32% of companies performed redundant work because of un-harmonized projects

Adults Behave Better When Teddy Bears Are in the Room by Sreedhari Desai

Adults are less likely to cheat and more likely to engage in ‘pro-social’ behaviors when reminders of children, such as teddy bears and crayons are present. The number of people who cheated dropped by 20% when subjects were near children’s toys or engaged in children’s activities. The best thing HBR could do for pro-social behavior is to put a Teddy bear on the cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-fJlykpGjY&feature=related

Management a Profession? Where’s the Proof? by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Before management can be considered a profession, its practitioners will have to see themselves as part of a larger purpose. But it took more than high aims to move medicine beyond quackery. It took science and its application to practice. In a world afflicted by complex problems, we should have more assurance that managers will also draw on knowledge greater than their own.

Innovating the Business for Social Change by Pierre Omidyar (ebay’s founder)

Many people don’t distinguish between charity and philanthropy. The former is about alleviating immediate suffering but philanthropy is much more. It comes from Latin and means ‘love of humanity.’ One of the things I have learned in more than a decade of this work is that you really can make the world a better in any sector – in non-profits, in business, or in government. It is not a question of one sector struggling against another, or of ‘giving back’ versus ‘taking away.’ That is old thinking. A true philanthropist will use every tool he can to make an impact. Today business is a key part of the equation, and the sectors are learning to work together.

How to Solve the Cost Crisis In Health Care by Robert S Kaplan and Michael E Porter

Providers of health care lack understanding of how much it costs to deliver patient care. Thus they lack the knowledge necessary to improve resource allocation, reduce delays, and eliminate activities that don’t improve outcomes. A new approach measuring cost at the level of the individual patient with a given medical condition over a full cycle of care – and compare those costs to outcomes – can be demonstrated to have a transformative effect.

US health care costs exceed 17 % of GDP and continue to rise. We are struck by the sheer size of the opportunity to reduce the cost of health care delivery with no sacrifice in outcomes. Accurate measurement of cost and outcomes is the previously hidden secret for solving the health care cost crisis.

Learning to Live with Complexity by Gokce Sargut and Rita Gunther McGrath.

We are hampered by cognitive limits: Most executives think they can take in more information than research suggests they actually can. In an unpredictable world, sometimes the best investments are those that minimize the importance of predictions. By taking steps to mitigate risks, making measured trade-offs that keep early failures small, and gather diverse thinkers who can deal creatively with variation, we can approach decision making in our complex organizations with more confidence and increase our chances of success.

Smart Rules: Six Ways to Get People to Solve Problems Without You by Yves Morieux

In complicated organizations, managers spend 40 % of their time writing reports and 30 – 60% of their time in meetings.

Real cooperation is not a matter of getting along well; it’s taking into account the constraints and goals of others.

Smart rules allow companies to manage complexity not by prescribing specific behaviors but by creating a context within which optimal behaviors occur – even though what is optimal cannot be defined in advance. This approach leads to greater organizational diversity, because voluntary frontline cooperation breads creative, customized solutions to problems.

Embracing Complexity by Michael J Mauboussin

We tend to listen to experts, although it has been well documented that expert predictions are quite poor. But they are authoritative, so we listen to them even when we know these people are predicting something that’s fundamentally hard to predict. A difficulty is coming up with different skills and experiences because we have a natural inclination to hang out with people who are most like us.

Key is to make sure that as a leader, you are not just tapping, you’re actually extracting this unshared information from everybody and putting it on the table to be evaluated. And that’s where a lot of organizations fail. One rule is that no one speaks twice until all have had the chance to speak once. It is important to constantly learn and expose yourself to diverse points of view. If you can find areas or markets where there is lacking diversity it almost always represents an opportunity for successful competition.

The Higher Ambition Leader by Nathaniel Foote, Russell Eisenstat, and Tobias Fredberg

A small group of CEOs share a higher ambition: to create a long term economic value, generate wider benefits for society, and build robust social capital within their organizations all at once. As they are pursuing this ambition, they are realizing more of their organization’s potential. Shared values, strong emotional attachment, and high levels of mutual trust and respect enable organizations to operate at levels long enough to allow these visions to take root and come to fruition.

It is very important that you don’t talk about Frenchmen as Frenchmen, or Americans as Americans. You need to talk about them as brilliant development engineers.

The article suggests that organizations lead by people who think of benefits beyond self and shareholders and their organization will on balance be more sustainable and successful. It is motivational for staff, customer, suppliers and all traditionally identified stakeholders to see that the organization takes its ability to contribute more to society seriously (my comment).

Global Capitalism at Risk, What are you doing about it? By Joseph L Bower, Herman B Leonard, and Lynn S Paine

To preserve market capitalism, business leaders must spearhead entrepreneurial activity on a massive scale.

Business leaders asked to identify issues of deepest concern to them pointed to forces that could disrupt the global market system in the coming decades: inequality of income within countries and across regions, migration, deterioration in the environment, a fragile financial system, and the inability of local, national, and international institutions to mitigate the problems. Neither governments nor international institutions are set up to deal with systemic failure.

We believe that if business does not lead the mitigation of the forces disrupting our market system, then we may well lose it.

How to Cultivate Engaged Employees by Charalambos A Vlachoutsicos

To be successful, managers must see themselves more as catalysts for problem solving than as problem solvers per se. Six rules to consider: Be modest; Listen seriously and show it; Invite disagreement; Focus on the Agenda; Don’t try to have all the answers; Don’t insist that a decision must be made. All these six points show, your behavior as a manager can reinforce or destroy a sense of mutuality with your employees. Stop trying to control your subordinates and instead engage, empower and motivate them to contribute their knowledge and experience to a consensus approach.

[e-mail] 28 Aug 2011

Harvard Business Review July-August 2011

This issue of HBR is a double issue coinciding with the holiday season in the northern hemisphere. I found it an exceptionally worthwhile issue with several great articles. The issue focuses on building a culture of trust and innovation. COLLABORATE. The whole business climate needs to change to one where the need for and the desire to collaborate must be recognized and encouraged. The assumption over last century that people are self maximizers, driven essentially by financial incentives is a stereotype which is less and less useful and accurate. There is a great opportunity to win on all fronts by encouraging transparency, communication and collaboration. Smart organizations will align structures and strategies to open collaboration and reap rewards when well implemented. I expect one article to be high among HBR classics and encourage all to read it in its entirety. And the irony is that it only says that which many of us have known for a long time, but even the obvious sometimes need to be backed up with scientific research, lest the power of status quo win the day.

Please find below a few notes from his issue.

CEO Pay is up…is that good? By Adi Ignatius, editor in chief.

Disney CEO Robert Iger made US$ 28 million last year in salary, bonus and stock options but conceded there is too much emphasis on short-term stock results, and remunerations committees should rethink their approach. Wall Street’s fixation on quarterly earnings – and on consensus market expectations concerning them – distorts how a company’s performance is viewed and creates dangerous incentives for executives.

What’s Your Social Media Strategy? By H James Wilson, PJ Guinan Salvatore Parise, and Bruce D Weinberg

With everything else being equal, the social transformer strategy can have the largest impact on an enterprise, affecting everything from R&D and operations to channel partners and customers. Twitter and Face book are only five and seven years old, respectively. Who knows what new technologies lay ahead? The future requires an understanding of how company strategies are evolving to use social media to guide managers as they adapt to platforms developed in the years to come.

Collaboration for the Common Good by Thomas J Tierney

Collaboration among competitors is an unnatural act – but sometimes it’s the best way to reduce cost, leverage strength, accelerate scale, or amplify influence in order to generate results. When peer organizations honestly embrace shared goals and clearly articulate how they will achieve them, collaboration works. Most important is believing that a group – even of ‘competitors’ – can accomplish what no one member could do alone.

Making Financial Markets Work for Consumers by John Y Campbell, Howell E Jackson, Brigitte C Madrian and Peter Tufano.

This is a great article with advice to the new US regulatory agency The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and anyone active in consumer or retail finance will do well to read and consider this advice. The mirror image of the things the authors suggest be monitored and controlled is what lenders should beware of, such that they act ethically and with integrity at all times to avoid the risk of significant financial or reputation losses.

Prioritize problems that put large numbers of households at material financial risk. You should be concerned when the consumers routinely misunderstand the terms. When a number of consumers regret the decision they have made this indicates need for more education. Certain consumer behaviours are so widespread and so contrary to best practice that they should attract your attention. Naive (poor and uneducated) customers often end up subsidizing sophisticated customers. Beware of rip-offs.  

The Age of Hyper Specialization by Thomas W. Malone, Robert J. Laubacher, and Tammy Johns

Hyberspecialization will force managers to master a new set of skills: dividing work into assignable micro tasks; attracting specialized workers to perform them; ensuring acceptable quality; and integrating many pieces into whole solutions. It resembles today’s web, except that instead of enabling the exchange of information and goods, it will convey a pulsating, world spanning flow of knowledge work.

Are You a Collaborative Leader? By Hermina Ibarra and Morten T Hansen

Leaders need to shed the command-and-control and consensus styles in favour of collaborative leadership. Collaborative leaders need to do four things well; make global connections that help them spot opportunities, engage diverse talent from everywhere to produce results, collaborate at the top to model expectations, and show a strong hand to speed decisions and ensure agility.

Many companies spend inordinate amounts of time, money and energy attracting talented employees only to subject them to homogenizing processes that kill creativity. The chance for new ideas is much greater when you have people from different countries and backgrounds in the same room. Leaders need to make a concerted effort to promote this mix: left to their own devices, people will choose to collaborate with others they know well or who have similar backgrounds. Static groups breed insularity which can be deadly for innovation.