Most Recent Ideas
The Power of Random Coffees
One of the biggest challenges in fast-growing companies is silos. Imaginary walls spring up between departments. Before you know it, the sales team and the engineering team, for instance, feel like two totally different companies. They’re not meshing socially and — just as worrying — they’re not collaborating or exchanging information on projects. This lack of coordination inevitably hurts the final product and the customer’s experience. This is a huge … [ Read more ]Author: Ryan Holmes | Source: "5 cheap old-school hacks for building company culture in 2017" | Original Publication: Medium | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Hootsuite
GOTE Framework for Maximize Meetings
Companies train people in their computer systems, HR policies, and more. They devote energy to optimizing production lines and supply chains. They invest in innovation workshops. Yet they seem to assume that the ability to effectively lead and participate in meetings is somehow embedded in the human genetic code. Perhaps it seems too basic a skill. However, if any organization adds up the amount of … [ Read more ]Author: Eric J. McNulty | Source: "How to Maximize Meetings" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Productivity/Work Tips
Whisper Courses
This reminds me of something our leadership-development team launched last year with behavioral nudging. We created what we call “whisper courses,” which were based on the premise that, as leaders, we have the best intentions yet get so busy and forget to do the many little things that matter so much. I recall us talking about how nice it would be to have this invisible … [ Read more ]Author: Tamara Ganc | Source: "Getting Ready for the Future of Work" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Productivity/Work Tips, Training | Company: Vanguard Group
OKR: An Agile Goal-setting Process
High-performing managers create simple goals, make sure they are clear and transparent, and revisit them regularly. Google, for example, uses an agile goal-setting process called OKR (objectives and key results), which was originally developed at Intel. The process is simple and effective: Each individual (from CEO down) sets ambitious and measurable objectives (like “launch Gmail version X by year end”) and are asked to define … [ Read more ]Author: Josh Bersin | Source: "Becoming Irresistible: A New Model for Employee Engagement" | Original Publication: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management | Company: Google
Surveying Your Employees about Your Strategy
Involve a larger part of the organization in a discussion on how the company is doing on strategy and execution. Like the annual employee survey, organizations should take the pulse around the most important strategic topics. Such a survey provides powerful insights about how well your employees — the people who know the company best — think it is positioned for success, how well they … [ Read more ]Author: Paul Leinwand | Source: "8 Tough Questions to Ask About Your Company’s Strategy" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy
Most Popular Ideas
The Premortem Technique
The premortem technique is a sneaky way to get people to do contrarian, devil’s advocate thinking without encountering resistance. If a project goes poorly, there will be a lessons-learned session that looks at what went wrong and why the project failed—like a medical postmortem. Why don’t we do that up front? Before a project starts, we should say, “We’re looking in a crystal ball, and … [ Read more ]Author: Gary Klein | Source: "Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management
Profit Mapping
A profit map, the core analytical tool of profitability management, displays the profitability and cost structure of every product in every customer in the company. Profit maps show exactly where profit is flowing and where it is lost.
A profit map is not especially difficult to develop, but it is completely different from the information developed for financial reporting. Many finance managers make the … [ Read more ]Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: "3 Steps to Turbo Charge Profits" | Original Publication: Business Finance | Subjects: Accounting, Finance, Management, Operations
Review Profitability Before Expanding Capacity
When faced with the need to expand manufacturing capacity and the inherent investment required, first perform a thorough profitability analysis (a profit map) of each product produced from the capacity-constrained factories (this includes profitable products being sold unprofitably to selected customers). Since many companies have a significant amount of unprofitable business, it is quite possible that stopping the unprofitable sales can free up enough capacity … [ Read more ]Subjects: Management, Operations
Deploy a Redeployment Pool
Intel monitors changing skill requirements and institutes a redeployment program when it becomes necessary to downsize a business. Under this program, managers effectively lay off people, and the head count of the business unit is moved off the payroll. These excised people enter a redeployment pool under the auspices of human resources. Once in the pool, employees generally have four to six months, and can … [ Read more ]Author: Bruce A. Pasternack | Source: "The Triumph of People Power and the New Economy" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Human Resources
Fiercest Competitor Workshop
One good way to get at these disruptive designs (innovations) is to do what we at my firm call a "Fiercest Competitor Workshop," which starts with the premise that you have been fired from your old organization but you have access to ample capital and talent. Your task is to design the fiercest competitor that could take the market from your old firm. In my … [ Read more ]Author: John Sviokla | Source: "Getting Started with Disruptive Business Design" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Publishing | Subject: Innovation
