A number of companies suffer from the onslaught of excessively well- drafted language that fails to tick the reality boxes. Boards draft the perfect corporate strategy document, but the execution fails. Instead o using the excess jargon, team leaders must instead focus on empowering their team members. This is a very good ploy towards the right talent management, as the employees feel motivated, so the resources may be rightly allocated. This flexibility lets the people seize the opportunities that present themselves. American Airlines for instance has suffered form this use of jargon, as opposed to Southwest Airlines, which gives crisp, clear and unambiguous communication to all stakeholders. The objectives need to be limited to a few only. Midterm results can’t be ignored. Focus has to be on the future. The hard decisions need to be made periodically. The critical vulnerabilities present need to be worked on. The right guidance has to be provided when needed. The top management needs to be in sync with how the execution is actually taking place.

Source:https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-to-turn-a-strategic-vision-reality

Uploaded Date:27/03/2019

Populist strategist inevitably fail. This is because trends that work in some places, especially the big- ticket companies, tend to be widely adopted by all. Little due diligence seems to be conducted while adopting these fancy terms. Instead of blindly jumping on to these terms, boards must adopt their corporate strategy while framing their organization’s condition against a set of relevant questions. One of them is about the line of business or more that the company find itself in, or should it change. The next is, how value could be added to the same. The target customers then need to be etched out. The right value propositions need to be identified to approach to this customer base. Finally, the board must clarify what capabilities does the company have to execute the value propositions claimed.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-Popular-Strategies-Always-Fade?gko=8e3c9

Uploaded Date: 27/03/2019

A book written by the former CMO of P&G, titled Grow postulated on the significance of purpose. The book argued, that the right focus towards purpose leads to enhanced economic success. To start with, talent management and retention, needs to be top priority as it leads to increased engagement, and thus productivity at work. Similar focus has to be made towards retaining the existing customers, and to attract newer ones. Once all this falls into place, naturally the focus has to be on increasing shareholder returns. In order to find such purpose, the right balance needs to be found between three pulls. Those are towards personal desire, business direction and the customer dreams. To gauge whether one is on the right track towards finding the said purpose, one can follow the RATE formula. It expands to Radical Agile Transformation Exercise.

Source:https://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2019/03/02/from-why-to-what-to-how-whats-your-purpose/

Uploaded Date:27/03/2019

Companies need to reinvent their business models to remain relevant in the consumers’ minds. They mustn’t cling to past held ideals, that may not be of great relevance now. A key example of this is IKEA, which on paper is a furniture retailer, but actually is a lot more. They bring added convenience to consumers’ lives. Three more companies can be listed that succeeded in their efforts at the art of inversion. One is Amazon, another is Instant Pot, while the third one is Nestle. One, that got away and could not do so is Ford Motor Company. The company launched a business innovation titled Chariot, which was a van shuttle service. Thankfully for Ford, the company realized soon enough that this was going to be a cropper, so the idea got replaced by Spin, which allows transportation via scooters.

Source:https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-ikea-and-instant-pot-can-teach-us-about-competition?utm_source=mitsloantwitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=instantpot

Uploaded Date: 26/03/2019

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) do not always succeed. The transition is often painful. But there have been some notable cases where this has been seamless, and turnarounds successful. These are worth looking up as business lessons. One such successful M&A was between automotive companies Opel and PSA. Another was in the bio pharmaceuticals between Genzyme and Sanofi. Yet another case abounds from the media line between the trip of Charter Communications, Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable. The industrial equipment industry saw something similar during the coming together of MHPS and Konecranes. Coop Norge and ICA Norway had a likewise impact in the groceries, while Turku Shipyard did well to combine with Meyer Werft. Office Max and Office Depot too came together, as did Dynegy and Vistra, within the energy space. In all of these, the buyers leverage the entire potential of the sale, and not just the seemingly synergetic parts. Successful buyers already have the corporate strategy and its blueprint in mind when going for the acquisition. This blueprint is then executed with speed and rigor. Once the acquisition or merger is done, the new team proactively handles the new entity’s culture. The talent management systems are put in place to build accountability and a sense of collaboration.

Source:https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/lessons-from-eight-successful-mergers-acquisitions-turnarounds.aspx

Uploaded Date:27 February 2019

Setting up of ambitious targets, backed by specific and measurable goals, is a key ingredient to establishing the corporate strategy of any company. This said strategy then needs to be communicated throughout the organization, with periodic progress reports displayed. In most organizations, even individuals set their own goals, such has been the hold of this concept. Companies often commit the mistake of setting conservative targets, just to ensure that employees reach their goals. Critical interdependence across silos is necessary, as it enables course corrections along the way. More than SMART, it is FAST which is more trending nowadays. While SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time- bound, FAST goes for Frequent, Ambitious, Specific and Transparent.

Source:https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/with-goals-fast-beats-smart/

Uploaded Date:27 February 2019

When it comes to investment blunders, two kinds stick out. One is over estimating the buyout, as happened during the acquisition of Sears by Eddie Lampert. The other is pushing aside an opportunity that existed, as in the case of Blockbuster giving away the chance to acquire Netflix. Over- analysis is often the root cause behind such errors. One of the reasons for such errorsto take place, is confirmation bias. Here, a common trait is finding analogies of other such failures or successes. Two more types of errors are to do with “sins of omission”. The first of these is when the business intelligence captured, fail to take into account the consumer passion associated with any brand or future business model. The other is the very opposite. Here, the passion and emotion are well accounted for, but the practical realities behind them, not so well. The ‘Super’ Geo’ model is the best one to look past these obvious flaws.

Source:https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-its-so-hard-to-predict-the-size-of-new-markets

Uploaded Date:20 February 2019

Customer Experience (CX) is now seen as the differentiating factor for several service- oriented industries. Some leaders of the CX space, have shared their views on what will keep this field ticking in 2019. The President of Customer Bliss exclaims that the quality of leadership will make a massive dent on the CX this year, as they will need to be at the forefront of changing the company’s culture towards a more customer- first attitude. The author of “Customer What?” feels that brands will need to actively understand the entire Customer Journey Management. Once the customer journey gets well- mapped, the brand will be able to eke out authentic business intelligence, and respond accordingly. Another author, who has written The Convenience Revolution says that the one thing CX leaders really want to hear in 2019, is how easy the brand is to work with for the customer. The writer of More is More wishes to see more of personalized experiences being broadcast. Showcasing more of this will do wonders for the brand’s digital marketing footprint. And to top it all, the Founder of Convince & Convert, wants all key players this year, to adopt just one practice which they feel can be done better. This one practice alone can carry a brand’s CX from the level of mediocre to magnificent.

Source:https://smartercx.com/what-5-customer-experience-leaders-are-loving-in-2019/

Uploaded Date:18 February 2019

Several newer capabilities have been identified that go a long way in developing the 21^st century organizations under agile leaders. At such places, the leaders need to transcend as well as tend their set of capabilities. During this transition phase, the team needs to shift from a reactive to a creative mindset. This involves three fundamental shifts, beginning with fostering innovations. It also involves fostering collaboration as leaders more from an authoritative mode to one of partnership. They will also need to work in conditions of abundance. Not all who do well under conditions of scarcity, do well when blessed with substantial resources. Teams need to embrace design thinking, as this will help in applying the principles of agile organizations. Culture has to be at the forefront of the transformation. Systems also need to be built in for leaders to be developed to work in such environments. Management training sessions must be curated specialty to develop enterprise agility coaches. The executive team needs to get involved in such development, so that the entire leadership experience becomes immersive. Leaders have to be invited to roll out these capabilities with an agile tempo.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/leading-agile-transformation-the-new-capabilities-leaders-need-to-build-21st-century-organizations

Uploaded Date:13 February 2019

Eight shifts have been identified which will ensure that the corporate strategy drafted, can actually yield great results. For a start, the annual planning needs to be replaced by a continuous journey. Instead of getting approvals from all, the management needs to debate the real alternatives to any scenario. Businesses will also need to adopt the one- in- ten approach common to fashion, venture capital, movies and oil exploration. This explores the big hits, rather than the mere regular success stories. The top leadership needs to be dedicated towards these big wins, rather than merely in approving budgets. The resourcesneed to be channeled in such a manner, that the inertia regarding budgets gives way to liquidity. Instead of the carefully plotted projects, one needs to think big and work on open risk portfolios. The talent management and performance review schemes must be allotted in such a way, that it measures a holistic brand of work, rather than merely an enumeration of the numbers achieved. Strategy is ultimately not merely about the long- run, but small steps, one at a time, leading up to the bigger picture.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/eight-shifts-that-will-take-your-strategy-into-high-gear

Uploaded Date:02 February 2019

Traditional large companies, gained their advantage thanks to their massive deployment of scale. That however, no longer necessarily holds true. This is because of the emergence of the platform economy, and the availability of technologies that can be rented out anytime. Investments on scale has been the norm for about a century now, thanks to the development of mass media tools such as radio and television. The addition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the mix has reversed the trend, with economies of unscale set to the ushered in. An appropriate example of this is the tailored map route provided by the app Waze. Due to the lower needs of scale and size now, companies can also remain nimble. This allows them to embrace business innovations, with lesser effort committed, and at lower costs. Stripe, Airbnb and Warby Parker are examples of such unscaled companies.

Source:https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-end-of-scale/

Uploaded Date:25 January 2019