20 Most Recent Ideas
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
Assess Your Organization’s Bureaucracy Mass Index (BMI)
An excess of bureaucracy costs the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion in lost economic output per year. When you look at all 32 countries in the OECD, the cost of excess bureaucracy rises to nearly $9 trillion. To dismantle bureaucracy, the first step is to be honest about how much it’s costing your organization. These costs fall into seven categories:- Bloat: too many managers,
Authors: Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini | Source: "Assessment: Do You Know How Bureaucratic Your Organization Is?" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Identify the Current Constraints on Your Company’s Progress
Imagine you are a new CEO, looking at your company with fresh eyes. Ask yourself: What function or resource most constrains our progress? Where would the smallest improvement yield the biggest impact on our business? In other words, you need to identify your “Herbie-group.” Are you limited by how well field staff in sales, operations, or customer support translate new offerings, new markets, or improved … [ Read more ]Author: Elizabeth Doty | Source: "Finding the 'Herbie' in Your Change Initiative" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Change Management
Create a Sales War Room for Better Post-Merger Integration
After a merger, it is a mistake to expect sales reps on their own to address all of the inevitable questions from customers and tactics of competitors. Unfortunately, sales managers are often too preoccupied with integration issues, so the front line is left to its own devices. To resolve this problem, successful acquirers create a temporary sales war room, or interim leadership group. Led by two … [ Read more ]Author: Matthias M. Bekier | Source: "Merging? Watch Your Sales Force" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Mergers & Acquisitions
New Leader Tip: Learn What Is and Isn’t Working
One of the first things I did when I joined [Philips], in late 2010, was to write an open letter to about 700 people—basically, the group we call the Consumer Lifestyle leadership and a layer below them. I invited them to tell me what they thought was working well in the business and what wasn’t. This gave me a pretty good idea of what was … [ Read more ]Author: Udo Kopka | Source: "From Bottom to Top: Turning Around the Top Team" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management
Introduce a Secondary Domain for Better Email Inboxing
By creating multiple sending domains, email marketers have a great opportunity to increase inboxing as a result of segmentation. First, marketers can use multiple domains to mail different subscriber segments (more and less engaged) or different types of campaigns (one domain dedicated to marketing campaigns, another dedicated to support emails, a third dedicated to triggered, etc.) Domain separation also helps maintain a consistent deliverability rate by setting … [ Read more ]Author: Ivy Shtereva | Source: "Five Tips for Increasing Email Engagement and Improve Inboxing" | Original Publication: MarketingProfs | Subjects: IT / Internet / E-Business, Marketing / Sales
Developing Perceptual Acuity
There are several tools you can use to develop perceptual acuity for yourself and your organization in this way. One of the most valuable is a simple exercise at the start of any staff meeting. Allocate the first 10 minutes to learn about and discuss anomalies in the external landscape. Ask a different staff member at each meeting to present to the team a structural … [ Read more ]Author: Ram Charan | Source: "20/20 Foresight" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation
Marshall Goldsmith’s Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be
Every night, Marshall Goldsmith forces himself to do one of the most difficult things imaginable. He has a friend call him and ask the same 22 questions. These questions all start with the phrase, “Did I do my best [today] to,” and the endings may be strategic (“Did I do my best to set clear goals?”), professional (“…preserve all client relationships?”), philosophical (“…be grateful for … [ Read more ]Author: Art Kleiner | Source: "Are Marshall Goldsmith’s Triggers the Only Way to Change?" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Personal Improvement
Questions to Facilitate Collaboration
Collaborating effectively requires helping others. And helping others requires compassion, which in turn means learning about who they are and what they want. So in order to help my clients, at the start of each relationship, I devote two or three hours to asking the following questions:- What are your proudest accomplishments and biggest disappointments?
- Which activities energize you and which drain you?
- How do other people
Author: Susan Cramm | Source: "What’s Love Got to Do with Business?" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Improvement
Don’t Leave the Interviewing to the Bosses!
In every interview I’ve ever had with another company, I’ve met my potential boss and several peers. But rarely have I met anyone who would be working for me. Google turns this approach upside down. You’ll probably meet your prospective manager (where possible—for some large job groups like “software engineer” or “account strategist” there is no single hiring manager) and a peer, but more important … [ Read more ]Author: Laszlo Bock | Source: "Here's Google's Secret to Hiring the Best People" | Subject: Human Resources
Do You Publicly Reward Failure?
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
Onboarding Program for New Executives
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
Developing Non-IT Managers with Robust Data Skills
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
An M&A Integration Matrix
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
Get the Metrics Right
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
Diminishing the Influence of Rank
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
Look at Suppliers’ Input Prices with a New Lens
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
What does this mean over the long term?
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
