Have you noticed that the two most successful teams in New York City both engender passionately mixed emotions of admiration and contempt? One team is the New York Yankees, the storied baseball franchise that just won its 27th World Series title — when no other team has won more than 10 times. The Yankees have the largest revenue stream thanks to their own cable television network, a new billion-dollar ballpark, and owners who can afford the highest-paid players in baseball. (These players, in turn, generate yet more revenue.) The other team is Goldman Sachs, the legendary investment…
Harvard Business
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HarvardBusiness.org
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Of Goldman Sachs, the Yankees, and Level Playing Fields
20 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pm -
Stop Wasting Time on Voicemail
20 Nov 2009 | 10:43 amEvery time you make or receive a phone call that involves leaving or listening to a message, you're wasting time. You can't write as fast as people speak, so transcribing phone numbers, addresses, and other information from a voicemail message is tedious. When you have to leave a voicemail for someone, you're forced to listen to Robotic Voice-Mail Woman trod through the instructions on how to wait for the tone before you can start. There are two ways to cut this unnecessary voicemail overhead out of your day: 1. Get your voicemail messages transcribed automatically and emailed to you. Instead… -
What Innovators Can Learn from Bill Belichick
20 Nov 2009 | 10:09 amEven non-football fans probably heard about Bill Belichick's "blunder" of a call on Sunday night. Believe it or not, the call — and the firestorm that followed — has important lessons for innovation managers. A quick recap. The New England Patriots led the Indianapolis Colts by six points with two minutes to go. It was fourth down, the ball was on the New England 28 yard line, and the Patriots needed just two yards for a first down that would almost certainly have sealed a victory. Conventional wisdom called for a punt, but Coach Belichick decided to go for it. After the Patriots… -
Summoning the Courage to Tear Down Walls
20 Nov 2009 | 8:31 amOn November 9th, the world rejoiced in recognition of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. The anniversary was occasion for me to reflect on walls that have fallen for me in my career but also about the kind of conviction that's needed to break down walls — be they miles of concrete in a former Communist area or invisible but no-less-apparent in an office setting. One thing I wondered is whether the Berlin Wall would have fallen without President Reagan's speech? Possibly. Probably. But not as quickly. And yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, the State Department,… -
Can Good Journalism Also Be Profitable?
20 Nov 2009 | 7:54 amFeatured Guest: Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab and author of the Edge Economy blog on HarvardBusiness.org.
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Harvard Business IdeaCast
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Can Good Journalism Also Be Profitable?
20 Nov 2009 | 7:54 amFeatured Guest: Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab and author of the Edge Economy blog on HarvardBusiness.org. -
Applying Design Thinking to Your Business
13 Nov 2009 | 7:47 amFeatured Guest: Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management and author of The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage. -
Is Your Business Ready for H1N1?
6 Nov 2009 | 8:26 amFeatured Guest: Dr. Robert Blendon, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government. RELATED:Business Preparedness for Pandemic: Executive Briefing for Corporate and Governmental Decision Makers More than 200 corporate and government leaders came together at Harvard Medical School in Boston to learn about the most effective practices in preparing for a pandemic. This report captures the key takeaways from this leadership summit. -
Getting Big Things Done in Government
30 Oct 2009 | 8:28 amFeatured Guest: William Eggers, global research director at Deloitte and coauthor of If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government. -
How GE Does Reverse Innovation
23 Oct 2009 | 6:50 amFeatured Guest: Vijay Govindarajan, director of the Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business and coauthor of the Harvard Business Review article How GE Is Disrupting Itself.
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HBR Editors' Blog
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Maclaren's Stroller Recall: What Would You Do?
10 Nov 2009 | 8:52 amSafe to say the management team at Maclaren is having a terrible week. On Monday its US subsidiary issued a press release announcing a recall of every baby stroller it has sold in the United States in the past decade — which means about one million units. The purpose is to install a cover for the stroller's hinge mechanism, which is sharp enough to cut through a baby's fingers should they happen to be in the wrong spot as the stroller is opened.* In fact, this has happened on at least twelve occasions. If you didn't get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach as you read that… -
Is Listening an Endangered Skill?
5 Nov 2009 | 5:30 amIs listening important? "Yes, of course," you say. But then why would anyone pay thousands of dollars to hear someone speak, and then not listen? I recently attended the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine, a mind-bending affair attended by several hundred idea junkies, each of whom paid several thousand dollars to (ostensibly) hear what really smart people like Daniel Goleman, Dan Ariely, and Michael Pollan had to say. Yet as I stood up to stretch in the back aisle of the dark auditorium, I noticed dozens of lit-up BlackBerries throughout the audience, as people rapidly clicked away. The… -
Coping with "Career Menopause"
28 Oct 2009 | 9:04 amNight sweats. Heart palpitations. Crying jags. Mood swings. I'm a 55-year old woman, well and gratefully past that hormonal "change of life." So what the heck was this thing? My brilliant (and younger) colleague Julia Kirby took me out for a glass of wine and patted my arm. "Don't worry," she told me sympathetically. "It's career menopause." Count on Julia to consistently deliver le mot juste. I've always loved my job, but for ages I've been feeling something else — call it a longing for greater self-fulfillment — tugging at me. Relatives and friends have had brushes with death,… -
Throwing Money at the Energy Problem Isn't Enough
26 Oct 2009 | 9:18 amToday the U.S. Energy Department announced major funding for 37 cutting-edge energy research projects, from biofuel-producing bacteria to CO2-eating enzymes. The goal, as department secretary Steven Chu put it, is to "spur the next industrial revolution in clean energy technologies." That's an inspiring notion — but throwing money at clean-tech is a partial solution at best, no matter how revolutionary the research. America has always had a love affair with technology, and president Obama is as smitten as Secretary Chu. Obama was in Boston on Friday just a few miles from our offices,… -
HBR Issue Highlights | November 2009
22 Oct 2009 | 8:53 amWelcome to HBR's Issue Highlights. Each month, this interactive table of contents will highlight some of the magazine's best features, tell you who should read them, why they're relevant, and what you'll take away from them, all in under five minutes. Share this with others by clicking on the "Share" button in the bottom right hand corner. Let us know what you think by commenting below, or by emailing us at issuehighlights@harvardbusiness.org.
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HBR Now
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From the Field: Wisdom on Improving Sales and Marketing
19 Nov 2009 | 7:45 amGiven my intense focus on sales and marketing in recent blog posts, I thought it was time to hear directly from the field. I interviewed Adam Honig, CEO of Innoveer Solutions, a marketing consulting and CRM implementation company. My intent was to get insight on what companies are doing to optimize sales and marketing. Some excerpts: Raffoni: What types of sales and marketing optimization projects are companies pursuing now? Honig: We have seen that sales and marketing optimization projects swing between a growth focus and an efficiency focus. Right now the vast majority of companies are… -
Engage Employee Heart-Power — Not Just Brain-Power
11 Nov 2009 | 5:09 amOn any given Sunday in the NFL, the heart power of the players is at least as important as the brain power of the game plan. On any given workday, the same can be said for businesses. But companies lack confidence when it comes to creating heart power in employees. They're not sure how to do it well. So they concentrate brain power on the game plan of translating top-line dollars into bottom-line profit. Creating heart power starts with management's style of running the company — how much of the time executives spend leading and how much time managing. Managing has to do with matters of… -
Paths to Revenue: Mid-Market CEOs Share Best Practices
4 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amIn my last blog I mentioned that a recent survey of approximately 50 mid-market CEOs revealed that what was keeping them up at night was figuring out how to optimize the sales channel. Basically, "Is there a better path to revenue and profit?" As a follow up, I brought most of these CEOs together in a room and asked them to share their best practices with respect to the topic. I'm hoping this list triggers some ideas and results for those companies bold and nimble enough to test something new! Below are a few of the ideas that emerged from that session. Yes, try team-based comp strategies. -
Is Reverse Innovation Like Disruptive Innovation?
30 Sep 2009 | 6:49 amWe published an article, "How GE is Disrupting Itself," in the October 2009 Harvard Business Review, co-authored with Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric. The article introduces the phenomenon of reverse innovation. Several people have asked us about the relationship between reverse innovation and disruptive innovation, as defined by Clay Christensen. There is an overlap between reverse innovation and disruptive innovation but not a one-to-one relationship. In other words: Some, but not all, illustrations of reverse innovation are also illustrations of disruptive innovation. A… -
A Budapest B-School Teaches Leadership at the Crossroads
29 Sep 2009 | 5:26 amThe dramatic failings of business leadership, which contributed significantly to the worst recession in 60 years, have led (as has been widely reported) to much soul-searching at business schools around the world. Should the basic MBA mission be recast with the aim of, among other things: reconfiguring risk management; creating new compensation regimes; improving internal governance; dealing with regulation; addressing other pressing business and society issues such as health care and climate change; resolving tensions between rational choice and behavioral schools of economics; right-sizing…
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Tom Davenport
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Why Health Care Reform Is Vulnerable to Smart Analytics
19 Nov 2009 | 8:13 amInsurance — and health insurance in particular — has long been about the pooling of risk. It may be impossible to know what diseases and accidents will befall a particular individual, but if the risk is spread over a large pool, the cost of insuring the entire group is close to average. Therefore, when a company or organization seeks health insurance for a large group of employees, the particular attributes of those employees aren't usually assessed in detail. Increasingly, however, life and property & casualty insurers have attempted to increase their profits by predicting just… -
The US Is GM
2 Nov 2009 | 1:02 pmThe United States, my beloved home country, has become the General Motors of nations in its lethargy and complacency. This is ironic, because the US (and Canada) own a majority share of GM, but I am focused more on economic similarity rather than ownership. The height of complacency for GM was probably about 2004. In that year the automaker still had the title as the world's largest maker of cars, a title it relinquished in 2007. GM was still profitable in 2004 — but not very much so — and it was losing market share in many of its major markets. That was the year that GM abandoned… -
Forwarding Is the New Networking
30 Sep 2009 | 7:57 amMichael Schrage recently wrote a post on this site about the importance of forwarding information as a way to enhance network relationships. He's right about this, although the title — "The Disadvantage of Twitter and Facebook" — is misleading (and inaccurate, since people retweet things all the time — but sadly, editors know that anything with Facebook and Twitter in the title gets a lot of page views and retweets). Forwarding is the new networking. The fact that you can't do it easily on Facebook is about as relevant as the inability to do it over the telephone or the… -
Are Social Media Contributing to the Decline of Civilization?
10 Sep 2009 | 11:40 amI was recently sent a PR message encouraging me to blog about a new "social media for celebrity sightings" website called "OMGICU." (Get it?) Given the sad state of our society, the site will probably be successful. How could it not be, having combined the two greatest time-wasters of the current era: social technologies and celebrity worship! To save you from visiting the site and increasing its page view count, here's a typical sighting: Jill Zarin seen in Upper East Side nnekaj10 says: "And now Jill Zarin and husband have joined their daughter at California Pizza Kitchen... Jill looks… -
How to Make the Classroom as Exciting as a Video Game
1 Sep 2009 | 11:50 amChildren in the Northern Hemisphere are headed back to school this time of year. The great majority of them will go back to the traditional classroom, in which every student studies the same subjects in the same way at the same time. The fact that this approach doesn't work very well doesn't seem to hinder its popularity. We know that students are interested in different things, learn in different ways, and proceed at different paces. So why the "forced march" approach to education? This time-honored but silly approach to education, however, is beginning to crack. This summer, for example, 80…
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Conversation Starter
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Of Goldman Sachs, the Yankees, and Level Playing Fields
20 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pmHave you noticed that the two most successful teams in New York City both engender passionately mixed emotions of admiration and contempt? One team is the New York Yankees, the storied baseball franchise that just won its 27th World Series title — when no other team has won more than 10 times. The Yankees have the largest revenue stream thanks to their own cable television network, a new billion-dollar ballpark, and owners who can afford the highest-paid players in baseball. (These players, in turn, generate yet more revenue.) The other team is Goldman Sachs, the legendary investment… -
Summoning the Courage to Tear Down Walls
20 Nov 2009 | 8:31 amOn November 9th, the world rejoiced in recognition of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. The anniversary was occasion for me to reflect on walls that have fallen for me in my career but also about the kind of conviction that's needed to break down walls — be they miles of concrete in a former Communist area or invisible but no-less-apparent in an office setting. One thing I wondered is whether the Berlin Wall would have fallen without President Reagan's speech? Possibly. Probably. But not as quickly. And yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, the State Department,… -
The FDA, Big Pharma, and Social Media: What's the Right Rx?
20 Nov 2009 | 7:02 amLast week the FDA held a hearing to begin a dialogue with the American public on the question of what level of online engagement is acceptable for healthcare companies to have with their customers. In other words, should the FDA make sure Merck's tweets are accurate? I view this as a simple issue made difficult by a regulated marketplace. The healthcare industry has conducted the clinical trials and knows each drug or device inside and out. They are the world's experts on how their products work. The FDA, in turn, is responsible for protecting the public health and is for "helping the public… -
Is Your Boss a Bully? Stop Being the Target.
19 Nov 2009 | 12:07 pmThe total jobless rate in the US is 10.2%, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As the number of employees dwindles, companies are requiring fewer people to do more work, burdening an already stressed workforce. Bullies, especially bullying bosses, are unaffordable. According to Robert Sutton's The No Asshole Rule, the TCA (total cost of assholes), while difficult to calculate, is very expensive — in time, money, and workplace wellness. Although bullying is legal in every U.S. state, the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) is currently working to introduce… -
On Black Friday, Welcome Back Customers With Steep Discounts
19 Nov 2009 | 10:50 amWhile retailers gird their loins for the day-after-Thanksgiving rush, they're facing a rare make-or-break marketplace. The economy is starting a slow recovery, and consumers are finally emerging from their cash-conservation bunkers. In normal times, the right strategy would be to hold steady on margins and bank profits. Why start a margin-eroding price war? But this season is different; the head-turning discount you offer shoppers today will pay off handsomely over the long run. Consumers have had it with scrutinizing purchases and shopping at lower-end stores. They're eager to return to…
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Stew Friedman
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Three Reasons Why Bruce is the Best Boss
2 Nov 2009 | 7:48 amBruce Springsteen — great leader? You might be skeptical, but bear with me as I describe a few practical ideas we can pull from Springsteen's repertoire of the critical "soft skills" that set the memorably high-impact leaders apart from the rest of the pack. Bruce's epic music is a source of inspiration for millions around the world. Like many others, his impact on me has been deeply personal. On a recent night in Philadelphia, listening to Bruce and his E Street Band, I was reminded once again of why the Boss (big B) is not only New Jersey's greatest export and America's rock poet… -
Why The Hurt Locker Hurts
8 Sep 2009 | 1:45 pmThe Hurt Locker is a gripping movie — enthusiastically and universally acclaimed — about an elite team of American soldiers in Iraq "who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat." Time after time we watch the team's new leader, Staff Sergeant William James, arrive at a bomb site and, with gut-wrenching intensity and focus, attempt to untangle and defuse an I.E.D. (improvised explosive device). Totally consumed by his mission, he exposes his two subordinates, Sanborn and Eldridge, to unnecessary dangers and risks, "as if he's… -
How a 2-Minute Story Helps You Lead
4 Aug 2009 | 12:53 pmLeaders gain trust and teach people what's important to them by telling stories. But these days there's so much to attend to — now! — coming at us so fast. You might be tempted to let slide your soft skills, like how to tell a useful story. Just get to the point and move on to the next thing on the list. No time for fluff. Even President Obama, who masterfully demonstrated his storytelling skills in the campaign, was recently described as shuffling from one crucial issue to the next, like an iPod listener flits from song to song. No time for albums. Trying to do too much, too… -
Become a More Creative Leader — Think Small
15 Jun 2009 | 7:20 amWhat kind of leadership do we need now? This was the question I asked last week at the beginning of a day-long workshop attended by a group of senior-level women at a major technology firm headquartered on the west coast of the US. And I've been asking this question of thousands of other business professionals over the last year or so in similar settings around the country. Just a few days ago, in Puerto Rico, I asked it again at a gathering of business executives and, again I heard pretty much the same thing. By far, the most common responses? Adaptive, flexible, and innovative. Because of… -
The Power of Preventive Assessment
20 May 2009 | 11:42 amI just returned from Toronto where I spent some time in the hands of an amazing corps of health care professionals at Medcan, North America's biggest preventive health clinic. I heard more than one story of how Medcan's preventive assessments saved lives — and enormous medical cost. Medcan's CEO, Shaun Francis, is an alumnus of my Total Leadership course at the Wharton School, which he took in 2003, and he kindly invited me to try the service his firm provides. I was blown away. In less than a day, I underwent a comprehensive set of health assessments — all done with great care,…
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Tammy Erickson
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Newsweek's Sarah Palin Cover is Good Journalism
18 Nov 2009 | 12:21 pmMany years ago, when the idea of women in professional roles in business was much more novel that it is today, magazines were eager to profile female pioneers. As a very young managing director in one of the then-prominent management consulting companies, I received lots of requests for interviews. One of the first was from a major, serious business magazine. The writer conducted a lengthy interview on topics ranging from the nature of the work I was doing with my clients, my observations on key trends and evolving issues, the challenges of diversity in the workforce, and yes... a then-hot… -
Customer Experience Is Not About Coffee
4 Aug 2009 | 5:04 amI have been trying to send a wire transfer for over a week now. In the process, I've been asked dozens of times how my day is going, offered multiple cups of coffee, and declined repeated suggestions that perhaps I'd like to run a few errands while I wait. I've been smiled at, welcomed, and offered comfortable chairs. My responses have gone from the standard and polite, "fine, thank you," to the near-hysterical "not well" as tensions mounted. Still, no money arrived in the other person's account. As I had to explain to my friend in the United Kingdom who had not heard of the process, in the… -
Obama, Gates, Crowley, and the Baggage We Each Carry
27 Jul 2009 | 9:27 amMuch of my work over the past several years has wrestled with issues of diversity, specifically among the generations. My research has shown me time and again how powerfully and unconsciously our past experiences color the way we perceive events today — and how easily we form the wrong conclusion by judging another person through our lens. I've come across dozens of examples of mistaken impressions among the generations. For example, Boomers and X'ers are likely to react very differently if the corporation they're working for asks them to relocate. Boomers tend to be generally pleased,… -
Why Generation X Has the Leaders We Need Now
19 Jul 2009 | 7:58 amWilliam Strauss and Neil Howe, coauthors of Generations, posit that each generation makes a unique bequest to those that follow and generally seeks to correct the excesses of the previous generation. They argue that the Boomer excess is ideology and that the Generation X reaction to that excess involves an emphasis on pragmatism and effectiveness. As many of you know, I've spent much of the last year talking with members of Generation X — those of you born roughly in the 1960s and '70s. The book I've written based on those conversations (What's Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and… -
Reconciling Short- and Long-Term Workforce Trends
27 Jun 2009 | 10:31 amMy last post prompted a question that I thought might be worth discussing broadly. JoAnn Becker asked what the major marketplace forces are today and the implications of those forces for the company and the worker — how the recession and shifting talent practices mesh with the trends outlined in the books Workforce Crisis (written for organizations seeking talent), Retire Retirement (written to Boomers), and Plugged In (written to Gen Y's). (My final book in the series, written to Gen X'ers, will be published January 2010.) First, the numbers. My books all describe a world in which the…
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Umair Haque
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What's Your Strategy for the Next Decade?
17 Nov 2009 | 1:43 pmMirror, mirror, on the wall — who's the fairest of them all? That's the question most economists are asking. Many answer China, a few holdouts contend: America. I'd like to tell you a very different story, that clashes with both orthodoxies. Economic might isn't shifting. It's evaporating. Welcome to the Age of Decline. A new decade's breaking, and in it, people, companies, and countries will have to strategize differently. The story the macroeconomic tea leaves foretell isn't one of power shifting from America to China or anywhere else. It is a story of global economic might everywhere… -
The Digital Economy's Coming Subprime Crisis (And What You Can Learn From It)
11 Nov 2009 | 12:52 pmAre crises predictable? That's what most economists are thinking about these days. The great Hyman Minsky spent a lifetime building a model of macroeconomic crisis, striving to do exactly that. I spent an afternoon building, presented for you here, a tiny model of microeconomic crises: how industries crash and collapse. Our subject? Why media just might be the new Wall Street. Today's media players aren't investing in better ads. They're investing in more — and more toxic — ads. Uh oh: it's the economic equivalent of the subprime crisis. The parallels, to me, are too striking to… -
Can Google Take on Wall St — and Win?
29 Oct 2009 | 10:46 amDear Google, Eric Schmidt recently said, "CIOs are trapped in a 1980's architecture." Actually, the world is trapped in a 1970's architecture: a financial architecture that was designed for a bygone era, without the prosperity of future generations and the natural world in mind. So here's my challenge to you. The global IT market is worth a few hundred billion bucks. But you're (still) the most innovative company in the world — and there are bigger fisheries to rescue. A better global financial architecture is worth 10x more: at least $12 trillion, if the amount spent on the bailout is… -
Is Your Business Useless?
27 Oct 2009 | 11:45 amThese days, lots of people ask me: "Phew! So, the crisis is over, right?" Wrong. The real crisis is in the DNA of the industrial economy — and it's just as lethal as ever. Most businesses are socially useless. They're about as useful to society (to paraphrase Gloria Steinem) as bicycles are to fish. Sound controversial? If it does, it only underscores just how out totally of touch with real value we've gotten. (Here, for example, are Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, and Lord Turner all discussing social uselessness.) What has socially useless business cost just over the last five years? $12… -
Why Freakonomics Can't Beat Geekonomics
19 Oct 2009 | 1:12 pmWeekend drama: Formula 1, NFL, Sunday talk shows? Forget it: this weekend, the drama was in the econoblogsphere — where the new book SuperFreakonomics inspired a mass freak-out. Freakonomists Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's chapter on climate change met furious charges of irresponsible journalism and deliberate contrarianism from economists, climate scientists, and journalists alike. I think there's a deeper one. The real problem with the Freakonomics school of thought is this: it's economics 1.0 applied to the entire natural, social, and political world. But what today's world…
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David Silverman
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The Moment I Finally Felt Like an Executive
16 Nov 2009 | 8:55 amWhen I was little, I heard about "executives." "Executives at Mega Corp have denied rumors of misdeeds." "Executives at Giganta Corp could not be reached for comment." "Executives at Humongo Corp have promised double digit growth despite concerns about recent developments." The mystery around exactly what an executive did intrigued me, and I wondered if someday I could achieve my way to being one. In 1974, my father gave me a tour of the IBM plant where he worked as an engineer. We passed smoky grey glass panels, guarded by assistants at three-sided desks. They concealed, in his words, "the… -
When Sensitive Messages Go Astray
2 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pmThere are two of me. There's the me who gets up, changes my son's diaper and puts on my 17-year-old shoes that I know need to be replaced at some point but can't seem to get around to replacing. And then there's the me who lives in Los Angeles and gets my email. And I get his. We're both named David Silverman and we both work for the same company. Despite attempts to dispel confusion on the internal email system — I am David S. Silverman and he is David R. Silverman — things still go wrong because people type "David Silverman" into Outlook and press send, blithely relying on… -
How Successful CEOs Respond to Failure
21 Oct 2009 | 11:29 amFailure. We don't like to talk about it. But we all worry about it. We worry about it in the present: Why am I not doing better in my career? Do my coworkers think I'm messing up? Is my boss unhappy with me? We worry about it in the past: Why didn't I speak up at that meeting? Is it my fault I got laid off last year? What if I hadn't left that job ten years ago? And we worry about it in the future: What if I don't get the project done on time? Will I end up without a bonus? Am I going to get fired? I've recently been talking to CEOs as part of a project I'm working on documenting how people… -
When Clarity is Not the Same as Brevity
6 Oct 2009 | 12:55 pmOften my suggested revision to an email or document makes it longer than the original. Invariably, I am leapt upon by the brevity police. I imagine them at their keyboards, hunched liked winged monkeys, ready to pounce on any sign of verbosity. "It's too long!" they immediately screech. While it's true that shorter is often better, the soul of good communication is clarity. Cutting content may toss out the bathwater of wordiness, but it may also eject useful information into the electronic abyss. There's an example of this on my (and probably your) desk. The telephone. I am completely… -
What Your Suit Says About You
24 Sep 2009 | 6:52 amThere is no surer sign that I've crossed the invisible line into curmudgeon than this: I wear a suit to work every day and want everyone else to also. It's the second half of that statement that's clearly crotchety, but I ask you to hear me out. Twenty years ago I started my first job at IBM. I wore grey slacks with plenty of pleats (it was the late 80s), a button down shirt, and a tie — my favorite was a red woven "sock" tie, may it rest in peace. On occasion, I would add to the mix either my father's 1940s three-piece grey suit or paisley suspenders causing me to appear to be a very…
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John Baldoni
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New Study: How Communication Drives Performance
19 Nov 2009 | 11:54 am"Courage, innovation and discipline help drive company performance especially in tough economic times. Effective internal communications can keep employees engaged in the business and help companies retain key talent, provide consistent value to customers, and deliver superior financial performance to shareholders." Watson Wyatt 2009 According to Watson Wyatt's newest communication survey for 2009/2010, companies that are effective communicators "have the courage to talk about what employees want to hear," "redefine the employment deal based on changing business conditions," and have "the… -
What It Takes to Lead Now
13 Nov 2009 | 12:17 pmA majority of managers just don't understand what it means to be a leader. That's a conclusion that I draw from a recent global survey by McKinsey and Company about what it takes to manage corporate performance. Only 48% of managers surveyed believed that they need to inspire and only 46% believed it was their responsibility to provide direction during this crisis. The numbers for inspiration and direction actually drop to 45% and 39% respectively when considered as behaviors for how to manage post-crisis. More troubling, only 30% of managers felt that they needed to motivate their employees… -
Use Humility to Improve Performance
5 Nov 2009 | 6:43 amI've written before about the importance of humility as a leadership trait. But, as was recently pointed out to me, humility is an important trait in employees, too. When people act humbly, they are acknowledging their limitations and accepting that they cannot go it alone. This mindset is valuable to a team because it serves as an invitation for others to help. Humility, however, is not an excuse for slacking. It also means having the willingness to help others do their jobs when the need arises. It is a means for allowing different personalities to coordinate with each other. Rick Hensley,… -
How to Create Clarity Amidst Uncertainty
29 Oct 2009 | 12:15 pmCompanies have the right to demand that employees pay attention to their jobs — it is a base requirement for performance. However, as the recent incident involving two Northwest Airlines pilots illustrates, when other issues are pressing, employees lose focus. As the story goes, the pilots were trying to figure out the new Delta scheduling system that now governs what flights they're assigned. (Delta acquired Northwest last fall.) In doing so, they overshot their destination by 150 miles and did not respond to repeated queries from flight controllers. As reported in the New York Times,… -
Developing Your Leadership Presence
21 Oct 2009 | 2:30 pmWhat about when you are pushed in front of the microphone or given very little prep time for something like an introduction of a guest speaker? This question came from Tonya in response to my previous post on developing your leadership pitch. Here's the quick answer, you walk to the microphone and you smile. You take a moment to size up the audience and then you say what you have to say briefly and to the point. Most importantly, as they advise running backs who score touchdowns, act like you have been there before. The great ones hand the ball back the referee; the wannabes whoop and holler.
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John Sviokla
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Getting Buy-In For Abstract Ideas
13 Nov 2009 | 6:18 amShortly after the Americans and Brits landed in Normandy in World War II, they found themselves caught up in a region known as the Bocage. In the Bocage, there are many hedgerows set close together — stone and dirt ramparts topped with trees and hedges. Going over the hedgerows made the Allied tanks vulnerable, as their lightly protected underbellies were laid bare. Yet if they dynamited the hedgerows, the Germans, who were well dug-in, would know through which part of the wall the allies were about to enter, and concentrate their fire accordingly. And to go just one mile, the Allies… -
How Will "Augmented Reality" Affect Your Business?
30 Oct 2009 | 12:45 pmThis post was co-authored with Anand Rao. My colleague Anand and I think that augmented reality is going to be a big deal for businesses. What is it? It is the idea that locations, devices, even the human body will be "augmented" by linking and overlaying additional information on top of "regular" reality. For example, this month's Esquire will have visual codes embedded in the text — even on the cover — which you can hold up to your computer's camera. The computer will read the codes, and take you to a video or other information linked to that magazine "location." Is this just a… -
Getting Started with Disruptive Business Design
19 Oct 2009 | 7:20 amOliver Yeh, a first-year Mechanical Engineering student at MIT, just successfully designed, launched and retrieved a camera 17.5 miles into the atmosphere and took 4,000 photos — at a cost of just $150.00! That's probably less money than he will spend on his celebratory dinner. Not only is this story inspirational to someone like me, who after millions and millions of miles in the air (no exaggeration) still sits glued to the window when I fly over Manhattan or the Grand Canyon, but it points out how the minimum efficient scale of doing fantastic things is getting orders of magnitude… -
Why the CIO Needs to Be a Duck-Billed Platypus
29 Sep 2009 | 2:43 pmThis post was co-authored by John Sviokla and Chris Curran Information technology is the only part of the business which is both a line and a staff function. IT not only supports the entire business, but also helps to "make the donuts." This makes IT different from other functions — and something of a hybrid creature. Line management executes the primary activity of the organization, and has the authority to make decisions in that realm. Staff management supports line managers in the execution of their work. For example, the Vice President of Claims is a line executive at an insurance… -
Can You Design an Internal Netflix Prize?
23 Sep 2009 | 6:41 amThe recently awarded Netflix Prize reminds us that if you have a data-driven problem, it's possible to tap into a vast market of talent to deliver improved results. The internet makes it very easy for groups from around the world to self-organize, and then to self-sychronize to solve your problem. But as Greg McAlpin — the leader of the group that lost the prize by just twenty minutes — notes, most crowd sourcing efforts fail. In the case of the Netflix Prize, there were over 51,000 contestants organized into over 41,00 teams in 186 countries. The brilliance of Netflix management…
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Steve Demaio
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An Untapped Talent Pool in Your Midst
19 Nov 2009 | 7:59 amI spend part of my Thursdays teaching math to a class of 14 prospective nursing assistants at the American Red Cross in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My course is one of several in an intensive four-month program, run jointly by the ARC and the Community Learning Center in Cambridge. The students are a highly motivated group of legal immigrants from Brazil, Ethiopia, Haiti, Morocco, Nepal, and Somalia who are keen to join the health care labor force after they've completed the curriculum, which also includes instruction in English, basic clinical biology, patient care, and job-readiness skills. -
The Art of Learning from a Colleague
11 Nov 2009 | 6:09 amI have a colleague in publishing who works many miles from me and has a different but overlapping area of editorial expertise. Recently, instead of doing a bit of freelance work for her independently and having her interpret it later, I suggested that, as an experiment, I do it live with her on the phone without either of us spending time in advance. Curious what the trial would yield, she agreed to it. On the call, with the faint sound of her breathing as backdrop, I started to ask myself the same questions aloud that I would have asked alone in silence, commenting explicitly on each choice… -
Ten Things I Liked (and Hated) About Your Presentation
4 Nov 2009 | 5:02 amYou just gave an important talk about a new initiative. Maybe 40 employees were there, all "key players," you called us. I was the guy in the back of the room with the curly hair. You've seen me a bunch of times, mostly in the stairwell and the cafeteria. Bob is what you call me. (Name's actually Rob, but I'll try not to hold that against you.) If my opinion really mattered, I'd tell you what I liked about your presentation to your face. I probably wouldn't mention what I didn't like. But here, why not lay it all out for you? You can take it or leave it. 1. I arrived early, and I appreciated… -
Going Solo: One Year Later
28 Oct 2009 | 3:19 pmA year after I resigned from my full-time job, I still get questions about how I'm "filling my time." The assumption is that without another full-time job in hand, I have lots of room for leisure. But although I quit to pursue some long-neglected passions, I wasn't indulging a fantasy fit for the stage, in which I don the garish costume of "the quitter" and belt out catchy tunes about the virtues of change. That kind of performance bores me, and in my daily life now, the year-old act of quitting seems like yesterday's story. The reality is that, for nearly 10 months, I've been teaching… -
In a Classroom, a Teacher's Plea for the Metric System
21 Oct 2009 | 8:06 pmIn one of the math classes I teach, there are adults from China, Haiti, Ethiopia, Brazil, Colombia, and an array of other countries. The group is about as diverse as you can imagine, but the one thing everyone has in common is familiarity with the metric system. That should make my job easier, right? Problem is, I teach in the U.S., where the old imperial English system of measurement still reigns supreme. So, in our little classroom in Massachusetts, immigrant students have to learn clunky units like ounces, gallons, inches, and feet so they can navigate daily life in America. I try to make…
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Scott Anthony
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What Innovators Can Learn from Bill Belichick
20 Nov 2009 | 10:09 amEven non-football fans probably heard about Bill Belichick's "blunder" of a call on Sunday night. Believe it or not, the call — and the firestorm that followed — has important lessons for innovation managers. A quick recap. The New England Patriots led the Indianapolis Colts by six points with two minutes to go. It was fourth down, the ball was on the New England 28 yard line, and the Patriots needed just two yards for a first down that would almost certainly have sealed a victory. Conventional wisdom called for a punt, but Coach Belichick decided to go for it. After the Patriots… -
Is the Tata Nano Really "The People's Car"?
13 Nov 2009 | 12:14 pmLast week I was riding through the bustling streets of Bangalore when my colleague made a provocative statement: "I think the Tata Nano is going to be a flop." It was a strong statement coming from an Innosighter. After all, we have been talking about the disruptive potential of the "people's car" — priced as low as $2,000 — for years. "But look around," I said. "That family will surely flock to an affordable car that projects social status and provides a safe, comfortable ride." I pointed to the husband, wife, and two children who were precariously perched on a scooter zooming in… -
Why Great Innovators Spend Less Than Good Ones
3 Nov 2009 | 9:25 amA story last week about the Obama administration committing more than $3 billion to smart grid initiatives caught my eye. It wasn't really an unusual story. It seems like every day features a slew of stories where leaders commit billions to new geographies, technologies, or acquisitions to demonstrate how serious they are about innovation and growth. Here's the thing — these kinds of commitments paradoxically can make it harder for organizations to achieve their aim. In other words, the very act of making a serious financial commitment to solve a problem can make it harder to solve the… -
Constant Transformation Is the New Normal
27 Oct 2009 | 9:13 amI picked up an interesting vibe at the Magazine Publishers Association Innovation Conference the other week. For the most part, the industry has had a tough year as it grapples with recession, changing consumer behavior, and a range of disruptive technologies. Yet signs of economic recovery and a sense that the magazine industry could learn from missteps from cousins in the music and newspaper business produced an unexpected sense of optimism. One point I made in my remarks is that the forces at work in the magazine business — increased competition, rapidly shifting technologies, and… -
Nook: Too Soon To Call It a Kindle-Killer
21 Oct 2009 | 9:01 amIf nothing else, developments in the e-reader market provide substantial fodder for online commentary. It seems that every week features a story in a mainstream publication about the latest "Kindle killer" followed by endless chatter and eager speculation in blogs and on Twitter. This week's discussion centered on Barnes & Noble's "Nook" device. It's not hard to see why this particular device sparked such discussion. The slick-looking device has unique features, such as the ability to "lend" books that friends can view on multiple platforms for 14 days, use of Google's Android operating…
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Karen Berman & Joe Knight
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How EBITDA Can Mislead
19 Nov 2009 | 8:34 amDuring the dot-com boom, EBITDA became a popular way to measure how healthy a business was. EBITDA scores became the talk of Silicon Valley cocktail parties, where party goers would ask each other, "How soon will you be EBITDA positive?" Today EBITDA remains a valuable, if controversial, number for evaluating a company's earnings. After all, the WorldCom meltdown was facilitated by financial fraud related to EBITDA. Before we examine why EBITDA is favored by some and scorned by others, we need to consider EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes). As you might know, EBIT is synonymous with… -
Why is Public Financial Information Kept Private from Employees?
4 Nov 2009 | 1:55 pmEveryone in business should understand how financial success is measured and how they, individually, make an impact. A Fortune 100 company we work with held a two-day class recently to teach various mid-level managers the foundational elements of finance. The class focused on how to read financial statements and then, using their own public GAAP 10K statements, how to read, analyze and understand the story that their numbers are telling. Because the participants all came from one division of the company (and because the company is so big), we wanted to include data that has a "line of sight"… -
Do HR Managers Have the Skills They Need?
19 Oct 2009 | 1:26 pmFor years HR executives have implored their colleagues to become more business savvy. The mantra has been, "if you want a seat at the strategic table, you have to speak the language of business." Some HR departments have embraced that call to action. One large company we know identified business acumen as the second of four critical traits for its HR professionals. Other HR teams, however, have been less attuned to the problem — like our Fortune 500 client whose HR managers didn't know what the company's financial goals were and didn't even know who to ask to find out. Where does the… -
The Dismal Financial IQ of US Managers
7 Oct 2009 | 12:42 pmOur experience over the years has shown us that the vast majority of managers and leaders in Fortune 1000 companies have deficiencies in their basic financial knowledge. We spend most of our time teaching managers and leaders in corporate America how to read their own financial statements, understand key financial measures, and use financial tools to understand the data. Last year we developed a simple financial literacy test, in part because executives almost always assume their managers and leaders know more about finance than they really do, and in part because it's a great tool to assess… -
Lehman's Three Big Mistakes
16 Sep 2009 | 2:29 pmThe collapse of Lehman Brothers one year ago this week has us asking ourselves what principles of financial intelligence we can learn from Lehman's failure. The financial crisis that engulfed Wall Street and the economy in general, after all, provides a good backdrop for some important lessons. 1. Too much leverage The basic concept of financial leverage is taking the proceeds of a loan and investing that money to receive a higher rate of return. The difference in the rates (the interest rate of the loan and interest rate earned on the investment) is called the spread. Businesses, such as…
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Vineet Nayar
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When Was the Last Time You De-learned?
19 Nov 2009 | 9:44 amStudents all over the world are hard at work in school at this time of year. There's a buzz on every campus as young women and men learn the rules of life, challenge them, and try to develop their own ideas, values, and principles. For people in business, especially those who graduated a long time ago, it's time they went back to school in order to, for want of a better phrase, de-learn and un-graduate. That's the only way we will learn to challenge all that we have so far accepted as time-tested truths. Although it isn't easy, executives should shed their fear of the unknown and display… -
The Collaboration Imperative
24 Sep 2009 | 8:37 amThis is the Version 2.0 era. We have seen the rise of Web 2.0 technologies; companies are using Enterprise 2.0 tools; and in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the world's leaders are trying to create Capitalism 2.0. As companies wade through these challenging times, I see a distinct shift towards another new paradigm: Collaboration 2.0. There's growing recognition everywhere of the need for corporations to collaborate with government, with customers, with NGOs, with stakeholders--and even with competition. In order to survive, business requires the cover of a collaborative… -
The Employability Crisis is a Global Crisis
24 Jun 2009 | 10:05 amHigh quality talent needs to be available across the globe. Unfortunately, this is not currently the case. While there are good examples of some countries putting emphasis on changing their education systems to be more business-ready (or what I call "increasing employability") in most parts of the world, education and employability are not in step with each other, resulting in individual companies having to pick up the slack with significant investments in training. From my point of view as a CEO in the IT industry, there are three trends that will drive talent demand in the future —… -
The Long View Versus the Short View
1 Jun 2009 | 1:04 pmIt has been in the air for some time now, this all talk around the fast food generation — or the Facebook Generation as Gary Hamel prefers to term the Generation Y — and its so-called incessant need to live in the moment. The importance of savouring the moment is not new to us. It has been taught to us for ages in scriptures, fables, poems...and new-age self help books. And yet, this speed-addicted "now" generation has glimpsed what corporate leaders around the world seem to be missing in the fog of this downturn. Despite all the uncertainty surrounding layoffs and pay cuts, a… -
Emerging Patterns in the Crisis Economy
14 May 2009 | 7:30 amAs we watch Capitalism version 2.0 pan out, we are acutely aware of the changing role of government, financial institutions, equity markets in the new landscape. However, look below the surface. The new dynamics are also resulting in a fast-changing kaleidoscope within, with new patterns beginning to emerge. There is new life kicking in amidst all this talk of gloom and doom. We are witnessing a burst of fresh entrepreneurial energy as the changing environment encourages people to step out of their comfort zones. The need to think afresh about what works and does not work in the new world is…
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Peter Bregman
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How Not Achieving Something Is the Key to Achieving It
17 Nov 2009 | 12:24 pmMany years ago, when I first started my consulting firm, a friend of mine, Jane*, who worked for a large company, suggested I speak with her colleague, a man named Fred, who might be in a position to hire Bregman Partners. So I called Fred, mentioned Jane and asked to meet with him. I'm very busy, Fred told me, let's just talk on the phone. But I knew the phone wouldn't cut it. How about lunch?, I suggested. Or a drink after work? Or maybe just fifteen minutes in person somewhere? Fred finally agreed to a short lunch. Then he canceled. We rescheduled. He canceled again. We rescheduled again. -
Why Parents Make Great Managers
10 Nov 2009 | 12:27 pmA few days ago I was running in Central Park as fast as I could, pushing myself hard, trying to beat my previous best time. About halfway around the park I passed a mother walking with her two-year-old daughter. They were holding hands and she was moving at the pace of her child, about one step every five seconds. We were both enjoying ourselves, both in the moment, both focused on our task. But the contrast between us struck me. I was the equivalent of an individual contributor in an organization. A specialist, striving to maximize my personal productivity and achievement. Specialist jobs… -
When Should You Let an Employee Make a Mistake?
5 Nov 2009 | 3:43 pm"Put my training wheels back on," Sophia said in a stern tone, "Or I'm not going to ride my bike!" She had just turned four that day and wanted to learn to ride a bike like her older sister. Now she wasn't so sure. After a lot of encouraging and a little stubbornness of my own, she was willing to try. We agreed to practice 15 minutes a day until she got it. A couple of days later we weren't getting anywhere. It's not that she wasn't trying, it's just that she didn't seem to be able to get her balance on her own. Then it dawned on me: I was getting in the way. I didn't want my baby girl to get… -
The Martial Art of Difficult Conversations
27 Oct 2009 | 2:40 pmMy wife Eleanor and I used to live in a small house in Princeton, New Jersey. One night we returned home to find a car parked in our single space driveway with no owner in sight. We were tired and had nowhere nearby to legally park our car. So we had the car towed, parked our car in its place, and went to sleep. The next morning there was a loud knock on the door. Eleanor was the first to answer. She immediately regretted it. It was our next-door neighbor, we'll call her Leslie, and she was mad. As soon as she saw Eleanor she burst forth with a barrage of angry words and accusations. I was in… -
Diversify Your Self
21 Oct 2009 | 5:01 amRecently, a woman working for France Telecom sent an email to her father. Then she walked over to the window on the fourth floor of her office building, opened it, stepped through, and jumped to her death. The email read: "I have decided to kill myself tonight...I can't take the new reorganization." If this were an aberration, one depressed woman's inability to handle change, we could dismiss it. But, so far, 24 France Telecom employees have killed themselves since last year. And more than that have tried. One man stabbed himself in the middle of a meeting. When confronted with this high rate…
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Dan Pallotta
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Social Innovation: What Only the White House Can Do
13 Nov 2009 | 5:27 amLast I heard, the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation is focused on granting some $50 million to organizations that have proven to be successful and innovative. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't giving money to innovative organizations what hundreds of foundations try to do every year? Using the power of the White House for this purpose is like using Steve Jobs to write code. Rather than focus so narrowly on funding innovation in nonprofits, the White House office needs a different litmus test for how best to use its limited resources, one that asks: Will this… -
A Change-the-World Conference, And You're Invited
28 Oct 2009 | 11:57 amThe more conferences I speak at, the more I realize how profoundly segregated the people trying to change the world are from one another. In no particular order, we've got the academics, the medical researchers, the professional fundraisers, the family foundation community, the institutional investors, the social investors, the nonprofit executives, the celebrity do-gooders, and the government — to name just a few. At the annual conference for the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, you will find hundreds of academicians participating in colloquia… -
The "Psychic Benefits" of Nonprofit Work Are Overrated
13 Oct 2009 | 11:49 amPeople often tell me that those who work for nonprofits should work for less because of the psychic benefits of being able to make a difference, work with the poor, and so on. The notion is a red herring. And that's putting it kindly. Do these people really believe that no one makes a difference in the for-profit sector, and that there is no psychic benefit associated with careers there? What about the people at drug companies working on cures for disease or the people who build the Toyota Prius and the Smart Car? What about the people who publish The Grapes of Wrath, distribute the cell… -
What Nonprofits Can Learn from the Apollo Program
1 Oct 2009 | 11:43 am"Scale" is the new buzzword on the frontier of social sector thinking. Everyone wants to "take organizations to scale." What does this mean? Getting an organization to the point where it can sustain itself? This isn't what scale means to me. Something like 400,000 Americans are chronically homeless. Some 800 million people are malnourished in the world. More than 2 million adults and children die of AIDS each year. Until we've created responses as large as that need, we haven't reached scale. What good is it to have a bunch of nonprofits that are able to sustain themselves, if they are only… -
Letting Non-Profits Act Like Businesses: One Foundation's Brave Act of Leadership
18 Sep 2009 | 12:10 pmYesterday the Boston Foundation unveiled major changes in its grantmaking strategy and announced that "the most dramatic change is a shift of emphasis to unrestricted operating support." You're not hallucinating, and it's not a typo. As if the emphasis on operating support were not jaw-dropping enough, it's going to be unrestricted. This is not a narrow experiment. It involves the "majority of the Boston Foundation's competitive grants." And this is not a bunch of well-intentioned, innovative MBAs starting a little experimental social venture fund. It's a major institutional funder with a…
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John Quelch
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How to Price US Citizenship
5 Nov 2009 | 12:51 pmIn the for-profit sector, there are three basic ways to price a product: The cost plus profit margin method; benchmarking versus competition; and pricing based on customer value. But how should we think about pricing in the public sector? Let's take an unusual example: the price of US citizenship. Legal immigrants to the US who are resident for five years (or three years for those who marry a US citizen) can apply for US citizenship. Currently, citizenship application and processing fees in the US are $675 per person, up from $60 two decades ago. These fees, which exclude the costs of… -
How GM's Chairman Aims to Please
15 Oct 2009 | 10:56 amLee Iacocca did it. Dieter Zetsche of Daimler Chrysler tried it. Now Ed Whitacre, General Motors' new chairman, has become his company's television advertising spokesperson. There are five reasons why this campaign makes sense (and three big reasons why it doesn't!). First the positives. By being the frontman, Whitacre is: Taking charge. GM is now largely owned by taxpayers. GM advertising is being paid for by you and me. Whitacre was appointed by the government. The ad shows he's not in hiding. He's stepping up to take responsibility. Boosting internal morale. The boss is on the front line,… -
How Corporate Responsibility Can Survive the Recession
22 Sep 2009 | 5:31 amCorporations engaged in recession-driven cost-cutting are trimming or eliminating corporate responsibility initiatives. Though corporate survival is key and consumer skepticism of business CR initiatives at an all-time high, such actions are short-sighted. Now more than ever, businesses need to be saying "yes" rather than "no" to their social responsibilities.There are five key reasons: 1. Critical cross-border global issues require multinational corporations and their CEOs to lead in the search for solutions, recession or not. 2. Recession results in more poverty and exacerbates problems… -
How (Not) to Complain
17 Sep 2009 | 6:37 amSerena Williams berates a line judge for a questionable call; Kanye West hijacks Taylor Swift's acceptance speech; Joe Wilson accuses President Obama of lying to a joint session of Congress. The worlds of sports, entertainment, and politics seem to be long on self-promotion and especially short on trust and respect. In contrast, the commercial marketplace runs on trust. Billions of transactions occur daily in which both parties in the exchange end up satisfied. Almost all sellers - from multinational companies to individuals selling on eBay - are concerned about their reputations and realize… -
How Harvard Licensed its Brand
9 Sep 2009 | 9:00 amIn a recession, marketers and institutions with strong brands may be tempted to license their names and trademarks. But while licensing can generate easy revenues, those royalties come with a potential risk to the brand. Consider Harvard University's recent ten year licensing arrangement with Wearwolf Group Ltd. of New York to develop and sell a line of preppy apparel bearing the "Harvard Yard" brand and crimson trim. The University, presumably mindful of possible negative reputation effects, carefully avoided licensing the Harvard University logo or name. However, no matter how carefully…
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Susan Cramm
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Can You Get the Business and IT to Agree?
3 Nov 2009 | 2:09 pmMy last post asked you to help resolve the business-IT standoff concerning the approach for a large transformation project. To recap, the business leader wants to use a three-year "big bang" consultant-driven approach while the VP of IT wants to use an iterative, fast-cycle approach. The standoff has become apparent to the powers-that-be and the two leaders have been tasked with developing a joint recommendation. With some additional education, the business leader is ready to adopt the iterative approach but is uncertain how to do so. Based on the quality of the advice you shared in the last… -
The Business and IT Must Work Together. Can You Help?
15 Oct 2009 | 1:17 pmMy last post asked you to be the judge of whether a business sponsor of a major initiative should take the advice of their consultants to "go big" or the advice of their IT counterparts to "go small." Your advice was virtually unanimous: Break large projects into a series of small projects ("Remember: the larger the project, the larger the risk of failure. I would much rather see a dozen small successes than one huge failure"). Place your faith in your internal IT group — provided they have earned your trust ("IT are stakeholders too and they are raising valid concerns"). Select… -
IT Versus the Consultants. And You're the Judge.
7 Oct 2009 | 10:18 amThis is not what you need. Yet again, the IT folks and consultants are at odds and you are stuck in the middle. You are the business leader in charge of redefining the way your company performs its back office functions. You have been with the company for many years and worked in a number of roles — both field and corporate — with some level of acclaim, you might add. You have always worked hard, but are finding that working in field operations is a breeze compared to getting this transformation project launched. The last 365 days have been spent in a series of non-stop meetings,… -
How Are You Defying "Best Practice"?
11 Sep 2009 | 12:45 pmMy last post raised the question, "Why does management behavior often diverge from "broadly accepted" theory or best practice?" In response, you shared insights as to why best practices aren't always practical or desirable and, instead, what should be done to (in your words) avoid "giving up on differentiation" and use best practices as "the basis for innovative practices." Here's what I heard you say on the difficult realities you've experienced and how you've overcome them: In reality, "best practice"... 1 ...isn't always the "best." Best practices work for a particular company in a… -
Why Do We Ignore "Best Practices"?
31 Aug 2009 | 7:11 amWhy does management behavior often diverge from "broadly accepted" theory or best practice? This question hit me over the head (once again) during a conversation with a talented, young CIO about a big project that was significantly late and over budget. Ask anyone experienced in the world of IT or change management, and they will tell you that the best way to pull off a big project is to break it up in to a series of small ones. Yet, this CIO decided to push forward with an approach that he knew was risky and likely to stumble and possibly fail. When I asked him why he pursued this course, he…
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Sylvia Ann Hewlett
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Women of the Workplace, Uniting
5 Nov 2009 | 1:03 pmBetween waves of layoffs and evaporating job opportunities, we're in a climate that naturally breeds an every-woman-for-herself mentality. A recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that female bullies were alive — and, more than 70 percent of the time, kicking other women. But I've also seen companies encouraging their smart women to help their women colleagues in ways that are more than just heartening. In fact, I'm convinced they're part of a new way of networking. According to research for my new book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down,… -
Go Pro Bono to Rescue Morale
30 Oct 2009 | 1:18 pmI recently ran into a friend who had joined AIG just before the economy imploded. While he's grateful to have kept his job, working for a firm regarded as one of the four horsemen of the financial apocalypse has its downside. "When I say I work at AIG," he says, "people react as though I'm in the porn industry." It's hard to get excited about work when your company is reviled. And it's hard for companies to attract and retain top talent when their reputations are under siege. A new study from the Center for Work-Life Policy, discussed in the book Top Talent and the special report "Sustaining… -
How Cisco Created Their Own Talent Incubator
20 Oct 2009 | 1:50 pmWhile there's been a lot of discussion about how the recession may be over, to many organizations and their employees, the view ahead is still one tough slog. The zeitgeist says it's far too early to dream about constructing your ideal job; survival trumps career development. Yet that's precisely the kind of thinking that will cause talented workers to tune out, turn off and, as soon as the economy picks up, take a hike. In researching my upcoming book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, we found that the number one reason that talented people love their jobs —… -
In Hard Times, Re-Commit to Flex Time
12 Oct 2009 | 8:55 amA major milestone is within reach: By October or November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women will outnumber men in the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. While I'm naturally delighted to see something approaching employment parity, I'm much more concerned about the reason for this historic reversal — and its ramifications. Women are gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing. That's the good news. Although 80 percent of the 5.1 million people who have lost their jobs in this recession are men, women have not been… -
Are Your Best Female Employees a Flight Risk?
5 Oct 2009 | 12:01 pmOne of your company's most powerful competitive weapons may at this very moment be cleaning out her desk — or contemplating doing so. Can you afford to let her go? In researching my forthcoming book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, we found that in the wake of last year's financial crash, high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men — 84 percent compared with 40 percent — to be seriously thinking jumping ship. And when the head and heart are out the door, the rest of the body is sure to follow. Women are falling victim to two types of…
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Navi Radjou
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How Can India Unleash Its Entrepreneurs?
11 Nov 2009 | 6:46 amIn the course of the last three days I have spent at the 2009 India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF), I have heard speeches from many politicians and policy-makers — from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma to Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. They all invariably identified many socio-economic problems that could cripple India's growth in the medium to long term. These include a dysfunctional education and healthcare system, deficient energy supply, restrictive labor laws, labyrinthine… -
Can India Reap Its Demographic Dividend?
10 Nov 2009 | 7:43 amI am currently in New Delhi attending the India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF). This Summit, which marks the 25th year of WEF's engagement in India, is themed "India's Next Generation of Growth." Last Saturday, I participated in a brainstorming session on how India can increase its workforce quality and employability given the fact that 100 million people from India — the combined labor forces of Britain, France, Italy, and Spain — are projected to join the global workforce by 2020. With half the population under 25 and a national workforce that is… -
Polycentric Innovation: The New Global Innovation Agenda for MNCs
5 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pmRecently I delivered a talk a the Council on Foreign Relations titled "Managing the New Trajectory of Global Innovation" explaining why and how multinationals must revamp their Western-centric innovation strategy in order to effectively leverage global ideas, talent, and markets. In our increasingly multi-polar world characterized by the inexorable rise of emerging markets like Brazil, China, and India, I believe multinationals (MNCs) must abandon their ethnocentric innovation model — which concentrated all their R&D resources in the West. Instead, MNCs must embrace a "polycentric"… -
Mobile Banking's Next Big Market: The United States?
28 Oct 2009 | 8:25 amIn my recent trip to Silicon Valley, I had the privilege to meet with Carol Realini, CEO of Obopay, a mobile payment startup that is fueling a social revolution worldwide by enabling scores of unbanked people to avail of financial services for the first time in their life. Obopay's technology allows consumers and small businesses to buy, pay, and transfer money through any mobile phone via a simple text message (or by using the Mobile web browser or Obopay's downloadable mobile app). People who send money via Obopay can fund their account either with cash or by linking it to their credit card… -
Is Bollywood Plus Hollywood Really A Win-Win Deal?
12 Oct 2009 | 11:38 amThe Western film industry, which has traditionally viewed India merely as a market for its movies, is suddenly keen to tap into Indian capital and talent. In early summer, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks closed a whopping $825 million co-production deal with Indian industrialist Anil Ambani's Reliance Big Entertainment. And Charles Darby, the legendary British special effects artist who worked on epic movies like Titanic and Matrix, is building a special effects studio in Mumbai that he hopes will match rivals in London and Hollywood. Darby's new Indian venture is financially backed by Eros…
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Rosabeth Moss Kanter
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On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors
16 Nov 2009 | 10:00 amIn the World According to Twitter, giving away access to information rewards the giver by building followers. The more followers, the more information comes to the giver to distribute, which in turn builds more followers. The process cannot be commanded or controlled; followers opt in and out as they choose. The results are transparent and purely quantitative; network size is all that matters. Networks of this sort are self-organizing and democratic but without any collective interaction. The significance of Twitter is yet to be determined; it is a simple, impersonal, and transient… -
Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage
9 Nov 2009 | 6:26 amJust because this is a time of transformation doesn't mean that it's easy to sell transformational ideas. Economic uncertainty has reduced the audience for bold, grand rhetoric. Besides, even in boom times innovation is risky. Innovators often have to ease anxieties by sounding conservative while doing something radical. We all want breakthroughs; it's just that we can't know exactly which of the bold new ideas will break through. For every Mustang, there's an Edsel. For every flip phone, there's a flop. (Apple's track record — iPod, iTunes, iPhone — is extraordinary but… -
Promises You Should Never Believe (or Make)
2 Nov 2009 | 7:58 amPromises, promises. Are you still waiting for flu shots after making an appointment, then learning that the vaccine is not available? The Obama administration announced that more vaccine was coming when it wasn't. US HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained why to an Associated Press reporter, "We were relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers and as soon as we got numbers we put them out to the public. It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy." Where have we heard that before? Overly rosy promises are regularly offered by politicians, manufacturers, car… -
How to Go from Small to Super
27 Oct 2009 | 8:01 amSmall business is by far the leading job creator, and entrepreneurship the leading engine of American economic renewal. As unemployment swells, small business prowess is needed more than ever. But can a small company be a SuperCorp, like progressive larger companies such as IBM and Procter & Gamble? Undoubtedly some smaller companies can leap tall hurdles in a single bound -- or, in Google's case, leap from zero dollars to billions in less than ten years. Although flying that high is rare, small companies can gain power through strategic social responsibility, whether their products are… -
Top Ten Ways to Find Joy at Work
19 Oct 2009 | 6:12 amI set out to write a David Letterman-style Top Ten list about finding joy in the workplace in tough times. But recent revelations about how Letterman found joy at work is not what I'm advocating. His extramarital affairs with subordinates were perverse, dishonest, conspiratorial, and exploitative power-mongering -- harmful and possibly illegal. No joke. Jobs are not saved nor enhanced by turning workplaces into sleaze factories. Exploiting others is definitely not on my list for getting more joy out of work. But enlisting others in a great cause tops it. In researching my SuperCorp book, I…
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Bill Taylor
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The Rise of the Teaching Organization
17 Nov 2009 | 6:34 amEver since the publication, nearly two decades ago, of Peter Senge's monumental bestseller The Fifth Discipline, we've been in the age of the "learning organization." Executives have come to understand that for their companies to stay ahead of the competition, their people, at every level, have to learn more (and more quickly) than the competition: new skills, new takes on emerging technologies, new ways to do old things, from manufacturing to marketing to R&D. Gary Hamel, the influential business strategist, likes to say that one of the most urgent questions facing leaders (and thus their… -
Sizing Up Jack Welch: Is "Too Big to Fail" Really Too Big to Succeed?
9 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amLast week, I got to spend nearly an hour interviewing Jack Welch, the legendary former chairman and CEO of General Electric, in front of an audience of several thousand bankers from around the world. It was a fun and stimulating conversation that ranged from the toughest leadership challenge facing financial institutions (his answer: energizing rank-and-file employees, who used to be the "friendly neighborhood banker" and are now seen as responsible for the country's economic mess) to the launch, in January 2010, of the Jack Welch Management Institute — basically, his version of the… -
The New Logic of R&D: Rip Off and Duplicate
4 Nov 2009 | 11:40 amThere's not a lot of good news coming from the business side of newspapers these days, and nowhere is the situation more grim than at the Tribune Company, which just sold the beloved Chicago Cubs, still owns the struggling Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, and has been operating under bankruptcy protection since December 2008, with little hope of emerging any time soon. But as Plato, that noted corporate strategist, famously said, necessity is the mother of invention — and the troubles at the Tribune Company have inspired at least one intriguing approach to unleashing some… -
Amazon and Zappos: A Savvy Deal
23 Jul 2009 | 1:40 pmIt's been one heck of a July for Tony Hsieh, CEO of Internet superstar Zappos.com. A week or so ago, Hsieh passed the one-million-follower mark on Twitter — putting him in the company of Martha Stewart, Miley Cyrus, and 50 Cent. And just yesterday, Amazon.com accounted it would spend more than $800 million worth of its stock to buy Zappos — even as it promised to keep its hands off the company, so Hsieh and his colleagues could keep doing things their own way. So good for Tony! Congratulations. Good for Jeff Bezos, too. Not only is he adding a huge new category of products —… -
Decoding Steve Jobs: Trust the Art, Not the Artist
23 Jun 2009 | 12:47 pmSteve Jobs is back in the headlines, which got me thinking about this unique leader's legacy — and what, if anything, the rest of us can learn from how Jobs does his job. Whoever uttered the words, "trust the art, not the artist" must have had Steve Jobs in mind. There's no doubt that the Apple CEO will go down as one of the most creative, visionary, and high-impact leaders of his generation — or any generation. How many corporate executives can make a legitimate claim to have reshaped not just one industry but four: computing (the Mac), music (the iPod), mobile communications…
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Anthony Tjan
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A Script for Entrepreneurial Success
18 Nov 2009 | 7:44 amOn a recent trip to New York, I visited David Liu, the co-founder and CEO of The Knot, Inc. He's one of the few entrepreneurs to have not just ridden the boom of the late 90s but also to have survived the bust of the early 2000s, and he's still going strong today. Almost from the get go, the Knot has been a category favorite and market leader in the bridal content and community space, with a foot in both the digital world (TheKnot.com) and the print one (bridal magazines). David shared some reflections on what film school taught him about running a business, why entrepreneurs are the best… -
Every CEO Should Write an Annual Memo to the Board
12 Nov 2009 | 8:02 amIt is hard to believe but yes, 2009 is winding down. Thanksgiving is around the corner, the holiday rush is almost palpable, and before you know it we'll be watching our TV screens for the ball to drop in Times Square. It is about this time of year that many businesses begin to feel the pressure of making Q4 work, budget planning for 2010 gets underway, and if there is any time left, to reflect on what this past year has meant. Each November or December, we sit down with each of our portfolio company CEOs and ask that they put down their top priorities for the upcoming year and lessons… -
Flexibility and Persistence: Getting the Balance Right
5 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amThe latest in a series of interviews with entrepreneurs about what pursuing opportunity really requires. Bill Trenchard is former CEO and Chairman of LiveOps (where he remains a board member) and is a highly successful venture investor and advisor. He focuses on hard results and the practical issues of rolling out a product and making money with a venture. Bill's sophistication lies in his lack of complication and the humility with which he approaches his role as founder, investor, or advisor. He has the ability to bring really cool technology to staid industries and gets excited about the… -
Five Mind-Blowing Web Stats You Should Know
28 Oct 2009 | 8:32 amFifteen years have passed since I was first introduced to the web by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark's launch of Netscape in 1994. The following year I started a company, ZEFER, while at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. ZEFER was one of the earliest Internet services and development firms and we were both thrilled and lucky to be participants in the first days of Internet commercialization. In 1994, we estimated that there were probably 5000 websites; the Internet research organization Netcraft, based in England, started tracking the number of websites in 1995, then pegging it… -
The Art of the Exit
21 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amIf you think of the venture investment cycle as finding a deal, managing a deal, and then finally "monetizing" or exiting from a deal, then an interesting question is what is the most difficult part of this investment cycle? While critical to success, the first part of the cycle — "deal flow" and the decision to invest in a company — is the easiest part. Even if you miss a good deal opportunity, another one will emerge — they tend to be like trains in that you just need to be patient as another one will come by. The middle bucket of the investment cycle — managing the…
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Gina Trapani
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Stop Wasting Time on Voicemail
20 Nov 2009 | 10:43 amEvery time you make or receive a phone call that involves leaving or listening to a message, you're wasting time. You can't write as fast as people speak, so transcribing phone numbers, addresses, and other information from a voicemail message is tedious. When you have to leave a voicemail for someone, you're forced to listen to Robotic Voice-Mail Woman trod through the instructions on how to wait for the tone before you can start. There are two ways to cut this unnecessary voicemail overhead out of your day: 1. Get your voicemail messages transcribed automatically and emailed to you. Instead… -
How to Benefit From a Freelancer's Mind-Set
11 Nov 2009 | 1:08 pmAfter watching longtime colleagues get laid off during a painful downsizing, a friend of mine is putting together her résumé. She realized she could be next, and she wanted to be ready. "It's scary," she confided in me. "It's been a long time since I've been on the hunt, interviewing, marketing my skills. Even though I'm still employed, I've got to stop being a company woman and think more like a freelancer." Layoffs or not, any career-minded employee can benefit from having a freelancer's mind-set. I'm biased, of course: I've been a self-employed freelancer for almost seven years now. The… -
A More Practical Creative Sabbatical
5 Nov 2009 | 5:15 amA couple weeks ago I wrote a post on creative sabbaticals. It featured Stefan Sagmeister, a design studio owner who takes a year off from client work every seven years to boost his creativity. Readers reacted strongly, polarized into two camps: The "I wish!" folks, for whom a sabbatical seems like a distant dream, and the "Yes! This works!" people, who have found ways to work "micro-sabbaticals" into their everyday lives. This week we're going to try to convert the first group into the second. Let's face it: unless you're a CEO, an academic, or your organization offers sabbaticals (yes, some… -
Don't Forget To Use the Phone
29 Oct 2009 | 12:56 pmThe first dot-com I worked at back in 2000 didn't survive, but one bit of office culture from that experience has stuck with me. In meetings, if a discussion veered too far from the agenda, someone would say, "Let's take this offline." Today I work at home, managing projects and communicating with co-workers and editors primarily via email. Many of those exchanges could seriously benefit from literally "taking it offline" — by picking up the phone. Still, my tendency is to quickly type up a response and hit send. Email's benefits are hard to resist. It's asynchronous, so you're not… -
Burned Out? Take a Creative Sabbatical
20 Oct 2009 | 1:34 pmIn an early episode of the excellent TV series Mad Men, agency partner Roger Sterling walks into creative director Don Draper's office to find Don gazing off into space. "I'll never get used to the fact that most of the time it looks like you're doing nothing," Sterling quips. Sterling should take comfort in the fact that our best creative work is done in times of reflection and idleness. Studies have shown that the wandering mind is more likely to have a "Eureka!" moment of clarity and creativity. Taking breaks and zoning out from everyday tasks gives our brains time to do a kind of…
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Marshall Goldsmith
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Leadership Isn't About You
17 Nov 2009 | 12:30 pmThis week's question for Ask the Coach: I am having a difficult time leading my team. The team members will not follow my instructions, which I am sure would make our project much more successful. What am I doing wrong? What you're doing wrong is very simple: you have simply forgotten that your team is more critical to the success of your project than you are. Over the years, I have worked with many great leaders as an executive educator and coach. One client, Charlie (not his real name), in particular is still one of my favorites. He is the one who showed the most improvement — and he… -
Build Your Self Confidence Like a Leader
30 Oct 2009 | 11:38 amThis week's question for Ask the Coach: What can I do to build my confidence in my capabilities as a leader? You won't get to the top without self-confidence; to build it, you have to believe in yourself. Don't worry about being perfect — put up a brave front and do the best you can. That's it in a nutshell. Here's a little more background for you. Last year, as I often do, I taught a seminar for MBA students at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. A second-year student approached me and told me he'd read my book What Got You Here Won't Get You There. "In… -
How Entrepreneurs Should Handle Succession
15 Oct 2009 | 7:42 amThis is second of two columns in which I address, in collaboration with my good friend and colleague, Dr. Steven Berglas, the unique challenges that entrepreneurial family businesses builders face in leadership succession. The first post describes how entrepreneurial founders can unwittingly sabotage the succession process. Entrepreneurs who create and build businesses from scratch are nothing if not street smart. They know business, as well as the trends that impact businesses. I am not certain that all successful family business founders know this statistic: most (60-70%) of all family… -
Why Entrepreneurs Sabotage the Succession Process
8 Oct 2009 | 12:50 pmThis week's question for Ask the Coach: In your book, Succession: Are You Ready? you describe the challenge of succession for the CEOs of major corporations. What unique challenges do you see for succession in entrepreneurial family businesses? My good friend and colleague, Dr. Steven Berglas, and I are currently writing a book that addresses this specific question. Given major demographic trends in the United States, this topic has become more critical today than at any time in our country's history. Millions of aging Baby Boomers who have founded businesses are now past or approaching the… -
Why You Should Choose an Internal Successor
17 Sep 2009 | 11:11 amThis week's question for Ask the Coach: I'm getting ready to move on. Should I look for my successor inside the organization or find a candidate on the outside? Developing a great successor is one of the most important accomplishments that a CEO — or any senior-level executive — can achieve. But, what's best for your organization, and for you? Should you develop an internal or an external successor? There are many reasons, both personal and professional, to invest in development for an internal candidate. To start, if a new CEO comes from outside the company, the board will expect…
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Rita McGrath
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Kraft, Cadbury, and Hershey: A Not-So-Sweet Deal?
19 Nov 2009 | 7:51 amLarge-scale mergers often plague the "winning" bidder with what academics call the "Winner's Curse." The winner's curse takes place when a bidder does indeed win the object for which he or she was bidding, but the value of that object turns out to be less than what was bid for it. What's a recipe for a winner's curse in an M&A situation? Take one part highly visible transaction for a highly motivated, deep-pocketed acquirer. Add a bit of reluctant bride (or outright naysaying bride) on the part of the target firm. Add a potential white knight, preferably one that is despised by the original… -
Remembering Russ Ackoff
17 Nov 2009 | 8:57 amLast Wednesday's Wall Street Journal brought the news that Russell Ackoff had passed away at the age of 90, after a long life of influencing management thinking and practice. At the time he was having the most profound impact on my life — when I entered The Wharton School's PhD. program, and the Center named for him — Russ didn't even know me. When we met years later, I think he appreciated that he had left a legacy of many students, myself included. I was the last Ph.D. student ever to graduate from Ackoff's Social Systems Sciences program (founded in 1980) at The Wharton School. -
Create a Special Unit to Drive Growth
15 Oct 2009 | 11:08 amAs the economy shows some signs of shrugging off its doldrums, growth is back on the agenda. After cutting costs for a year or more while repeating the mantra "do more with less," should companies be looking to special groups to jump-start growth? Corporate venture groups, incubator "greenhouses," and other units dedicated to identifying and incubating growth opportunities have a checkered corporate history. Often begun with flashes of significant enthusiasm, they are often first on the chopping block when executive sponsors change, costs need to be cut, or the fashion of the day swings away… -
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Battle for E-Books
5 Aug 2009 | 11:01 amThere's a battle emerging over the industry structure of e-books: Amazon has one approach, Barnes & Noble another. Will the clash play out like the computer wars of the late 80s, or the music wars of the late 90s? Let's take a look. Years of declining music sales reflect a grim story for the music business — the amount of music people are willing to pay for has dropped dramatically, the unit of business has shifted fundamentally to music by the song, and the preferred medium for acquiring music is now downloading individual songs, rather than purchasing a complete CD. Who is winning in… -
Hiring the Already-Employed: Savvy or Sad?
2 Jul 2009 | 7:06 amA fascinating article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal caught my eye. It suggests that even with so many great people out there looking for work, employers would still rather hire someone who is already working, thank you very much. Apparently, many believe that those that are unemployed were their former employers' lower-priorities, poor performers or otherwise non-superstars. By hiring someone who already has a job, they reason, they are reducing their risk of picking up someone who is a second-class performer. I guess this is the modern-day version of Groucho Marx's old line that he…
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Andrew Winston
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Five Ways to Use (Green) Data to Make Money
19 Nov 2009 | 9:31 amIf you put an energy meter inside a home and show people total usage in real time, a miraculous thing happens: they use about 10 percent less energy. The simple act of placing data in front of people changes their behavior. Data makes people smarter and inspires them to make small changes to save money and energy. You can use this powerful tool in business not only to cut costs, but to drive innovation and revenues. Some are calling this phenomenon the "Prius effect," referring to how people respond when they see real-time fuel-efficiency data while driving the popular Toyota hybrid. As the -
Finding the Money to Green Your Business
12 Nov 2009 | 5:15 amContrary to the popular misconception that going green is expensive, in a very large range of cases, environmental initiatives don't raise costs, they lower them — and fast. In operational areas such as facilities (heating, cooling, lighting), fleet, IT, and waste, leading companies continue to find large savings in shockingly simple actions, such as changing lighting or using outside air to cool a data center. But even for the most head-slappingly obvious changes with super-fast paybacks, companies still need to find the capital to buy the new bulbs, optimize the HVAC system, or add… -
SuperFreakonomics Ignores the Business Case for Sustainability
26 Oct 2009 | 12:39 pmStephen Dubner and Steven Levitt's SuperFreakonomics has certainly gotten a lot of people worked up. The point of contention is a chapter about global warming which makes the case that Al Gore and others are getting us way too worked up about the climate problem because the only way to solve it is to convince people to "put aside their self interest and do the right thing even if it's personally costly." The authors go on to explain their solution — geoengineering — which purportedly isn't going to require us to cut back on our energy use or rethink the way we do business. But… -
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Is Hurting U.S. Competitiveness
5 Oct 2009 | 7:30 amWhat do Exelon, Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources, and Nike all have in common? In the last week they all dropped out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the group's stance on climate-change legislation. Sadly, the Chamber's COO told the Wall Street Journal that these defections will not change the Chamber's misguided positions, including constant carping about the potential costs (almost always overstated) of climate change and calling for a mock "trial" on the science of climate change. Here's why the Chamber is out to lunch. First, tackling climate change is good for business and… -
Get Lean on Energy Costs, Not People
18 Sep 2009 | 10:24 amThis may be hard for anyone below 40 to fathom, but companies didn't always fire people to save money. IBM was famous for "full-time employment," but then its first layoffs in the early 90s changed the game forever. Over the last 20 years it has become (supposedly) good management practice to slash people costs — remember the famous cutters like "Chainsaw" Al Dunlop? A company's stock price rose whenever it announced cuts. But as we face a carbon-constrained future with volatile, rising energy and commodity prices, companies will soon realize that they're often "fatter" in energy and…
