299 Posts Found

Create a safe, open environment that gives employees the confidence to share ideas, failures, and the learning points in between. 3M holds formal meetings called “failure forums,” which gathers together staff who worked on unsuccessful projects to discuss barriers to success. When plastics company W.L. Gore & Associates kills a project, they host a celebration with beer or champagne, just as they would if the … [ Read more ]

Author: Lisa Bodell | Source: Why You Didn’t Meet Your Innovation Goals in 2014 | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

Bank of America … has created an onboarding program for executives one to two levels below the C-suite. The program aims to ensure that the new executives understand role expectations, quickly develop a network among key stakeholders, build relationships with their team, and learn from other leaders what it takes to succeed, especially in their particular role. To achieve these objectives, the program must transfer … [ Read more ]

Author: Dorothy Leonard | Source: How New BofA Executives Learn its ’Deep Smarts’ | Original Publication: HBS Working Knowledge | Subjects: Human Resources, Knowledge Management, Management

Perhaps the biggest challenge for companies seeking to take advantage of its data resources is how few non-IT managers possess robust data skills. A consumer products company addressed this issue by requiring its MBA hires to go through an intensive orientation on data and its use, which includes placing recruits on the data team for some time. This program has enabled the company’s business side … [ Read more ]

Author: Ramesh Nair | Source: The Quantified Self Goes Corporate | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: IT / Internet / E-Business

When Merck KGaA, the German chemicals and pharmaceuticals concern, acquired US biotech equipment supplier Millipore, managers drew up a two-by-two chart representing every group in the organization on two dimensions: their importance in achieving the integration goals and the degree of disruption they would experience from the upcoming change. That allowed the leadership team to focus on supporting the people who were most important to … [ Read more ]

Author: Patrick Litre | Source: Results Delivery: Managing the Highs and Lows of Change | Original Publication: Bain | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

Many less-successful companies approach cost reduction with blinders on. They may look at only one part of the P&L, such as general and administrative (G&A) expenses. Or they may confine their efforts to individual business units. They fail to view the business as a whole, often because they rely on metrics that reflect part of the business rather than the entire P&L.

Consider an Asian telecom … [ Read more ]

Author: Peter Guarraia | Source: Sustained cost transformation: Delivering savings that stick | Original Publication: Bain | Subject: Management

At Honda, employees wear white pants and white shirts with their first names embroidered in red on the upper right side. It’s the uniform that every Honda Motor Company employee, whether pipe fitter or president, wears on the job at every factory or office. This is intended to diminish the influence of rank; in the moment-to-moment give-and-take of Honda workers’ daily responsibilities, all points of … [ Read more ]

Author: Jeffrey Rothfeder | Source: For Honda, Waigaya Is the Way | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

As commodity prices increase, suppliers come knocking, pushing through commensurate increases. But what happens when those same commodity prices fall? Too often, purchasers fail to get a break. Consider the situation of an aerospace and defense supplier. As key metal prices rose, the company grudgingly accepted its suppliers’ price increases for machined parts. Trouble is, the company lacked good tracking data on commodity indexes. So … [ Read more ]

Author: Clinton Anderson | Source: A fresh look at procurement | Original Publication: Bain | Subjects: Finance, Management, Operations

Organizations can become obsessed with short-term results. But Harvard Business School professor emeritus Michael Beer believes that the intense focus on quarterly results can impair an organization’s ability to create long-term value both for investors and society. By asking about a longer time horizon, you can encourage someone to contemplate issues and unintended consequences that could result from trying only to satisfy one group of … [ Read more ]

Author: Michael Beer | Source: Lead by Asking | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Management

Develop your “stump speech” or “talking points” among your management team before any of you heads out to give your version to the rest of the organization. This generally includes messages around your Change Drivers, Focus and Context (vision, values, and purpose), key goals and priorities, change/improvement plans, and such.

Author: Jim Clemmer | Source: Education and Communications Pathways and Pitfalls | Subjects: Change Management, Leadership, Management

Develop highly visible scoreboards, bulletin boards, or voice mail, electronic or printed announcements of progress toward team and organization goals and priorities.

Author: Jim Clemmer | Source: Education and Communications Pathways and Pitfalls | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Share all core strategic measurements (including “confidential” financial, and operating data) with everyone in your organization. Treat people like full-fledged business partners and they’ll act that way. But don’t snow them under with a blizzard of meaningless reports and numbers. Train everyone how to read these data. Show them how to relate the measurements to their daily operations and improvement activities.

Author: Jim Clemmer | Source: Education and Communications Pathways and Pitfalls | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Employee resistance is the most common reason executives cite for the failure of big organizational-change efforts. Companies need to develop strong change leaders employees know and respect—in other words, people with informal influence. But there’s one problem: finding them. How can company leaders identify those people beforehand to better harness their energy, creativity, and goodwill—and thereby increase the odds of success?

One way we’ve found … [ Read more ]

Author: Lili Duan | Source: Tapping the power of hidden influencers | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Not all roles are created equal. Many companies don’t take the trouble to understand which are their linchpin roles—as distinct from high-performing or high-potential people. These are roles that have a big influence on the customer experience or that provide critical support or coaching to employees who shape the customer’s response. Given scarce resources, targeting these roles can be an efficient way to raise employee … [ Read more ]

Author: Domenico Azzarello | Source: The Chemistry of Enthusiasm | Original Publication: Bain | Subjects: Customer-Related, Human Resources, Management

Leading companies like FedEx and others have found that a daily metric that tracks occurrence of errors that frustrate customers can be a simple and easy way of measuring and predicting when a customer might leave and never come back. By holding focus groups with customers from a variety of industries and locations, FedEx gathered a long list of things the company had done to … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Graham Brown | Source: The Customer Aggravation Index: Predicting Customer Loyalty Without Surveys | Original Publication: Business Finance | Subjects: Customer-Related, Management

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

To foster staff longevity, organizations can arrange for group members to switch roles with one another. Google, for example, encourages employees to leave their positions and take on “bungee” assignments for three months to one year in different areas of the company. Employees can acquire new skills and find out whether they like a new job (or are good at it) before committing to it. … [ Read more ]

Author: Daniel McFarland | Source: What Is the Secret to a Happy Collaboration? | Original Publication: Stanford University | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

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

Leaders can reduce the risk of losing good people for the wrong reasons by working with them to understand their passions and career goals and serving up challenging assignments that help them grow from where they are to where they would like to go.

Customizing opportunities to each employee requires understanding that person’s goals, motivations, and values. It’s a simple process, but very few … [ Read more ]

Author: Susan Cramm | Source: Align with Your Star Employees | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

If your organization is suffering from a plague of projects, stopping a few of them only fixes the symptoms of the plague. Your first step should be to change the way projects are started. One of the best tips is to make sure all projects are launched with a kill switch of some kind—that is, tangible metrics and milestones defining when the project should be … [ Read more ]

Author: Paddy Miller | Source: Kill Your Darlings | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Management, Project Management

Within any department there may be dozens of plans and forecasts, and they’re usually kept on desktop spreadsheets that don’t match up with one another. Our research finds that the connections between these various forward-looking activities are limited. Although companies are not completely uncoordinated, gaps routinely occur. (“Manufacturing never knows what promotions marketing is planning until it’s too late” is one common complaint.) The impacts … [ Read more ]

Author: Robert Kugel | Source: Create a Telescopic Lens for Your Finance Function | Original Publication: Business Finance | Subject: Finance