
insights
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2012: Movie Quotes To Lead By!
Leaders look for inspiration in many places. In books. In Nature. In their spiritual practice. In movies. Movies can grab us, can make us see another point of vie, can linger with us. They can shape our ideas about what we want to be. They can launch flights of fancy about what can be achieved. They…
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2010: Succession Success: Lessons on CEO Transitioning
Leaders spend their careers preparing for the moment they are offered a CEO role; boards and owners give serious attention to their selection. But CEO tenures are not always successful. Part of the problem is the transition process itself. There are steps to take to ensure succession success.…
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2010: Structure As Strategy: Designing for Growth
Good organization design – aligned structure – is often viewed as an enabler of strategy. While this (and its converse: the wrong structure can disable strategy) may be true, we believe that structure can be seen as somewhat more powerful, as part of the strategy itself.…
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2010: Never Satisfied: Know and Grow Your Business, Your Team and Yourself
An organization that performs well in a crisis will not necessarily perform well in calmer times. Surviving the recent economic crisis doesn’t mean you will now prevail. But senior leaders can leverage their dissatisfaction with the status quo to grow their businesses, their teams and themselves.…
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2009: HR In Turbulent Time: The Call to Lead
Dramatic changes in business models are driving the need for commensurate levels of change in how human capital is deployed and managed. We offer some thoughts on the critical components of successful HR transformations, including ideas, tools and practices to provoke thinking and guide leaders.…
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2009: Emerging from Economic Contraction: Senior Leaders' Role
Senior leadership teams are responsible for both the short term and long term, however tempting it is to focus only on short term viability. We offer ideas on how to test and release old market assumptions, develop growth strategies, and align talent and organization structures to produce renewal.…
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2009: Do You Have the Right Talent and Capabilities to Grow?
New avenues of growth may need new business models, which may need new capabilities. Four talent management best practices can help leaders align talent with strategic goals: Strategic Organization Review, Capability Requirements Segmentation, Talent Risk Assessment and Capability Development.…
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2009: Avenues of Trust: How to Re-Route Your Business
Customer interaction with businesses has changed; there is erosion in established avenues of trust. We examine some causes of the erosion, offer what others have done to address that, and provide steps that any company can take to build new avenues of trust for their customers to travel.…
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2008: The Centers of Acceleration Boost
This paper refreshes our concept of Centers of Acceleration vs. Centers of Excellence. To provide high-level technical support and expert advice to business units, and truly accelerate the progress of the business units being supported, there are some steps that companies can take.…
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2008: Making Market Segmentation Work
Many companies (this article focuses on insurance companies) are migrating to market-segment focused strategies and structures. There are four inputs that are critical to your success: define the segment, design the customer experience, create a brand army and create the enabling structures.…
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2008: Exploring White Space
A business’s strategy, structure and behavior must align. Leaders must attend to all three parts. The parts must be right for each other. And leaders must think about the interactions in terms of motion, speed, innovation and the necessity of change. Alignment may be the biggest challenge of all.…
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2008: Down to Basics: The Fundamental Theory of the Business
The financial crisis has shaken belief in business leaders’ competence. This reminds us that it is easy to live with prevailing notions of the business. We offer both a view on why adjusting the Theory of the Business is such a challenge and approaches to solve for it at the root cause level.…
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2007: Successfully Handling the Transition to Private Equity Ownership
Leadership teams moving into private equity ownership face challenges: transition distraction, lack of clarity and communication, turnover, uncertainty, dissidence from stay-on incentives, and involvement of PE owners. Learn how to make these transitions faster, smoother and more efficient.…
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2007: Horizon 1-2-3: A More Complete View
Managing a growth portfolio is tricky. Having ideas at all three stages of development is necessary for long-term growth. It is easy to misstep in moving ideas from one stage to another. But missteps can be reduced if leaders know where to look in their pursuit of growth.…
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2007: Ensuring Transformation ROI
Many change efforts don’t meet expectations. A well-prepared transition team can make a difference. A small investment there can pay big dividends in the long run. This article outlines several approaches to help transform the team into successful transformers themselves.…
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2006: Mindset Shift: At the Heart of Moving Forward
Business is always changing; mindset must follow at an equivalent rate. But the familiar can be more comforting than unknown possibilities. Mindset change requires leadership. Several approaches that help top teams shift mindset and encourage buy-in for important transformation are outlined.…
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2006: Leadership Vision in a Kaleidoscopic World
Running businesses requires that C-Suites integrate complexity and simplify to the essence. If the C-suite is the brain, Finance is the Central Nervous System, flowing information to maintain vital signs. This piece examines the evolution of Finance and current trends in Best Practices firms.…
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2006: A Breach in the Levee: The Changing Role of Corporate Responsibility
The Katrina disaster response drove private corporations to step in to fill the holes left by government and public institutions. What level of corporate responsibility is right? What is the corporate role in disaster planning and prevention? Corporate responsibility may never be the same.…
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2005: Wearing SOX Inside Out: Creating a Culture of Transparency
Leaders can turn costly compliance issues (such as Sarbanes-Oxley) into pragmatic sources of discovery and transformation to strengthen the norms and behaviors that lead to financial success. Embracing transparency can lead to better thinking, development and innovation.…
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2005: Hull Design and Organization Structure
There are parallels between boat design – what makes boats fast and nimble or stable and slow – and organization design. Five key boat design criteria are examined: speed, agility, stability, slice and buoyancy. These can help organizations as they move to maturity.…
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2004: The War for Talent: Lessons from the Front
Playing exclusively to the needs of company stars may play havoc with the best interests of the company. It is a challenge to develop strong talent and reward actual performance AND to create a culture buttressed by systems and management that bring out the best in people.…
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2004: Centers of Acceleration vs. Centers of Excellence
To provide technical support and expert advice to business units, many companies establish Centers of Excellence. In order to reap the benefits, we outline some steps that help companies reconsider them as Centers of Acceleration, whose job it is to accelerate the progress of the business units.…
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2003: Integrity and the Client - Consultant Relationship
The potential conflict between serving client needs and meeting internal sales objectives can create an ethical dilemma for consultants. The point of view developed from years as both executives and advisors may be of interest to both consultants and those managers who hire and use consultants.…
