Most Recent Ideas
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
Communications and Messaging Guidance for Your Managers
I’m a big believer in teaching leaders to fish. That’s why we’ve rolled out a weekly(ish) email for leaders … that summarizes all the things they need to be thinking about in terms of managing and messaging to their team. We break it down into a few sections: things to know, things to do, things to share. It sounds simple, but let’s be real, leaders … [ Read more ]Author: Terra Carmichael | Source: "The Top Comms Mistakes Startups Make — And How To Avoid Them" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management
Upward Feedback and Culture Feedback Surveys
Managers must be evaluated both on what they get done and how they get it done. The “how” is often overlooked and undervalued. In terms of the “how,” determine whether the person works well cross-functionally, represents the company‘s values in both word and deed, receives strong upward feedback, and whether their team of reports has a high level of satisfaction working at the company. To measure … [ Read more ]Author: Mike Brown | Source: "What I Learned about Management and Culture from Growing Uber’s Asia Business from Zero to Billions" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subject: Management | Company: Uber
Skip-Level Meetings
If you manage managers, it’s very powerful to set up a recurring catch up with their direct reports. These are commonly referred to as “skip-level” meetings, and they're the only way to get an accurate sense of how your direct reports are leading — and how people on their teams are feeling about the business and the strategy you've set. It's also an efficient way … [ Read more ]Author: Mike Brown | Source: "What I Learned about Management and Culture from Growing Uber’s Asia Business from Zero to Billions" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subject: Management | Company: Uber
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
