Recent corporate scandals and mishaps should remind us that what can feel like the creation of a pragmatic sense of urgency in the “C-Suite” can translate into deeply dysfunctional behavior farther down the organization. Just today, Samsung announced with (one presumes) deep embarrassment that rather than being able to fix their exploding Galaxy 7 note…
Strategy Execution
Lost that Lovin’ Feeling? Target (and other) CEO’s try to get the love back
In my column over at Fortune, I note that a common pattern for companies who get themselves into trouble is that they somehow ‘lose touch’ with their customers. I attribute this in many ways to the dangers of the ‘exploitation’ phase of a competitive advantage. When things seem to be going exceptionally well, it can be…
4 Ways To Improve Unproductive Meetings
In my Experts column at the Wall Street Journal, I describe the kinds of behavior that sap energy, time and general usefulness out of meetings, and suggest four specific remedies. Have a look.
Sustainable advantage, Transient Advantage and Organizational Change
In an insightful blog that is part of a series HBR is running on the intersection between Strategy and Innovation, editor Sarah Cliffe interviews colleague Don Sull, who argues that you can think of the “sustainability” school as the thesis, the “transient advantage” camp as the antithesis and the organizational change folks as the synthesis…
Continuous reconfiguration – commended paper by Emerald Insight
Emerald Insight commended the research behind a recent paper, Continuous Reconfiguration in the Transient Advantage Economy. In a nutshell, what I found was that firms that were capable of delivering consistent performance over a relatively long period of time did not tend to have dramatic downsizings, firings or major restructuring. What you see instead is…
Organizational agility: The CEO’s top concern?
Last week at the Managing Partners’ Forum held on March 12 in London, Caspar de Bono of the Financial Times opened this high-level conference for leaders of professional services firms with an observation about the biggest single concern besetting CEO’s. He argues that despite all the other things that could provoke a CEO’s angst –…
Can Your Career Survive Transient Competitive Advantage?
Theodore Kinni of Strategy & Business highlighted a chapter in Rita McGrath’s book dealing with career change: If our employers begin rejiggering their businesses’ portfolios at a faster pace, our jobs are going to get rejiggered more often too. And if that starts to happen, are you ready? McGrath offers the following 10 yes-or-no scenarios…
Ron Adner’s response to my “Better Place” question
As promised, I asked Ron what he thought about A Better Place, a company that I'm very struck with that has the potential to transform our relationship with energy. Turns out he'd given them a lot of thought already – here's what he said: To date, the electric car has been a poster child…
New HBR article: Living with Complexity and Link for Free Download
Gokce Sargut and I are working together on the fascinating subject of how organizations can sensibly and strategically cope with the demands of complex situations. One of the papers from our ongoing research project is out in this months' Harvard Business Review. We offer a perspective on why complexity is so hard to deal with…
Humanities Graduates Bring …well…Humanity to Bear at Work
I thought this extremely thought provoking blog post by fellow Harvard Blogger Tony Golsby-Smith was a great reminder that although analytical tools and frameworks can help solve certain kinds of problems, they are hopeless facing other situations. Among the advantages humanities training offers that Golsby-Smith points out are: The ability to deal with ambiguity and see richer…