One thing common about the top performing companies, is the alignment across functions. The corporate strategy of such firms is streamlined to match the capabilities and their purpose. However, closer scrutiny suggests that in a lot of organizations, there is no individual in charge of this portfolio. It is often a mis-mash of random capabilities mixed with their departmental work which all collaborates together. Strategic alignment is not necessarily a function for the senior-most leadership. Instead a particular enterprise leadership is needed. Unlike traditional leadership that primarily focuses on talent management and how to utilize the limited resources in the right manner. In enterprise leadership, the person needs to possess multiple capabilities to navigate across disciplines, levels, nationalities, stakeholders and various phases of projects. Enterprise leaders are in charge of the overall vision of the firm and designing each intricate component of the same to ensure consistent execution of strategy defined. Japanese multinational Ricoh is one such company that has got this strategic alignment and enterprise leadership spot-on.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/01/is-anyone-in-your-company-paying-attention-to-strategic-alignment?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=strategy&referral=00210&spMailingID=18884501&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1181579965&spReportId=MTE4MTU3OTk2NQS2

Uploaded Date:08 February 2018

The failure of Nokia is often attributed to the disruption cased to its feature phone industry by the likes of Apple, Samsung and Google. Yet that is too simplistic an explanation, as signs of Nokia’s decline were evident in the company’s working structure much before the launch of the first iPhone. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nokia was definitely the market leader, growing exponentially each year. However, this led to a highly fractured corporate strategy with emphasis placed on immediate gains. So, in the early 2000s, buoyed by its recent success, Nokia set up the NVO (Nokia Ventures Organisation) to explore business innovations. Ironically, it was Nokia which first developed a smartphone called Communicator back in 1996 and even a camera phone in 2001. Yet, these technologies were rejected by the top hierarchy as these innovations identified by the NVO were far too ahead of their time. They even came across something resembling the modern Internet-of-Things. Its Symbian Operating System (OS) was initially like the maker itself, a market leader but was soon found out to be unwieldy when compared to Apple’s IOS or Android. Nokia failed to seize the app market as perfected by Apple. They couldn’t shift gears towards a market where software was more the game-breaker than hardware. All this led to the sale of Nokia’s phone business to Microsoft in 2013.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/the-strategic-decisions-that-caused-nokias-failure-7766

Uploaded Date:06 February 2018

A lot of companies these days talk about enabling failure as a part of initiating business innovations. Unfortunately, mostly all this is just lip service. Mots companies are still in practice, too cautious, and this reflects in the makeup of the top leadership which is mostly comprised of those with generally unblemished successful results. One tends to have more failures with increase in position as stakes then grow. A lot of young achievers both in their professions and in academics, tend to suffer more psychologically when faced with real failure as they’ve never had that experience in the past. While social media can be a great pull for digital marketing, it can also be a massive leveler with failure stories constantly posted across the various platforms. A safe environment where innovations are nurtured usually see the best spurt of creativity. The best way to imbibe failure as a learning tool is to immediately apply the skills grasped as ninety percent of senior executives do according to a study by Columbia Business School. One can also take solace from the stories of failure by Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz among others to help cope up.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Reframing-Failure?gko=89782

Uploaded Date:06 February 2018

Business leaders such as Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson are pioneering ones who could spot trends and proactively make changes to suit the market requirements. Some strategies have been identified which are needed to establish disruptive innovations. First of all, a leadership design needs to be established involving honesty, trust and teamwork. After this, an inquiry needs to be made to come up with authentic business intelligence on the work concerned. The solutions can wait bit longer. Further inputs need to be extracted from within the organization. A vision now needs to be forged to be worked towards. New risks will now start appearing, so these must be faced head-on. Collaboration will now be required to forge connections and innovate along the way. All ideas explored so far need to be combined with existing abilities to create the final model. A prototype needs to be constructed so that pilot testing can be done. Anything non-actionable will never take off the ground. The said business innovation must bear the creator’s hallmark in the way it is executed. Finally, the project needs to be linked to the ultimate purpose of the organization.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/12/14/10-strategies-for-leaders-to-drive-disruptive-change/

Uploaded Date:06 February 2018

Disruption is one of the most revered yet feared terms in the business world today. Several businesses are in the throes of getting disrupted, while several others are fearful of being so. The photography industry faced such onslaught due to smartphones while music recording giants suffered due to platforms such as Apple’s iTunes and Spotify. However, on closer scrutiny it emerges that disruption is to an extent an exaggerated term. A lot of companies who got disrupted, faced so due to fundamental deficiencies. Some others got so due to retrenchment policies, which focussed only on short-term. A study was conducted by the strategy research wing of management consulting giant PwC to gauge the impact on several industries. The study found out that as expected some industries such as IT, software and related services have been affected, several have barely been scathed. Others affected include biotechnology, textiles, construction, healthcare equipment, hotels, restaurants and pharmaceuticals. At the bottom of the table are industries such as gas utilities, aerospace, machinery, oil, gas, media, food products, auto components and energy equipment. Proactive strategies need to be developed to combat these disruptors while building on latent strengths.

Source:https://w/ww.strategy-business.com/article/The-Fear-of-Disruption-Can-Be-More-Damaging-than-Actual-Disruption?gko=b4a17

Uploaded Date:19 January 2018

Different companies across industries are at different phases of growth or even transformation. This is also true on the success of the corporate strategy. While some companies have executed its agile transformation perfectly, others are still grappling with envisaged effects. This is due to changes in their operational model. Simply possessing a top-notch strategy document is not enough, as it needs to be matched by equally effective implementation. This transformation is particularly tricky for banks where as per an estimate by research firm Gartner, two-thirds of their budget gets spent on legacy maintaining systems alone. A mistake companies commit is diving headlong into redesign of the operating model. Effective transformation requires a fact-based assessment on addressing the changes needed. The metrics defined must be specific enough so that strategic trade-offs may be made. The principles intended must be compressed in brief, ideally one-page documents. After the blueprint gets implemented, talent recruitment and further management becomes crucial, as the right personnel need to be fitted in the proper position. Companies in the midst of such transformation, would be well-advised to encourage constructive conflict as that will be essential to a practical design of the operating models.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/11/is-your-company-actually-set-up-to-support-your-strategy

Uploaded Date:18 January 2018

Sceptics often point out digital age terms such as holocracy and agile management as fads which do not seem to solve any organizational issues or enhance productivity. Yet on further introspection, it appears that ultimately all organizational people based innovations revolve around two broad maxims- clarity and collaboration. Holocracy for instance was first used by Zappos before they themselves replicated five-hundred such concentric circles of six to eight members. This substantially improves the company’s talent management and retention standards to eventually improve productivity. Spotify has implemented a unique model of management training where they have “player-coaches” in each squad who is in charge of the team’s training and coaching. Spotify has also started “fail walls” which are walls on which the teams’ failures and success stories will all be set out for all to see. This increases collaboration and transparency. Agile management has taken off from centres of excellence and business process reengineering as was used earlier. There is already talk of futuristic people management techniques such as use of blockchain and flash organizations. All these terminologies have their uses if applied in the right spirit.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Strategy-Talk-Can-the-Latest-Organizational-Innovations-Really-Help-Us?gko=e0f96

Uploaded Date:09 January 2018

Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE was considered one of the giants of management thinking in the 20^th century. Yet as the new century has worn on, his ideas have seemed ill-suited to sustainable transformations. The Boston based conglomerate’s transformation took place over eight long years and a lot of those have not carried out during the leadership of Jeffrey Immelt. Broadly four kinds of interventions exist. The first is the Commanding intervention from Welch’s school of thought. It is authoritarian, with the top management expecting compliance rather than consensus from those reporting to them. The pace is quick which works best with downsizing or divestment. The next type is Engineering, where the pace is slower and evokes a complete redesign of the work processes. Like commanding, here too quantitative measures are held at a premium, but trust needs to be built in among the subordinates. The third variety is the Teaching intervention. Here, a transformation is effected on the beliefs held in the organization. The timeline here is longer. Corporate training sessions are needed where external consultants, psychoanalysts and coaches gradually wean away the traits held unnecessary. The last one is the Socializing intervention. This is a continuous ongoing transformation, done bottom-up typically by influential employees. Stability is sought rather than an instant change. “Neutron Jack” as Welch was popularly known as definitely used the first approach. While flaws were later detected, they were extremely successful in the short to medium term.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/strategic-change-is-all-in-the-timing-6566

Uploaded Date:14 December 2017

Most companies fall for the urge of setting extremely lofty a corporate strategy for themselves. While, aggressive goal-setting may improve the performances, setting unrealistic ones may instead hurt the same. There is a thin line between realistic and unhealthy stretch targets. One such unhealth stretch target is the strategy being formulaic. It could also be excessive. It could be too broad-based and thus neglect the fine details. Being opaque could be another issue as that would lack clarity. There are related behaviour symptoms too associated such as manipulation, hedging, too many surprises and having misplaced priorities. To rectify this, cross-functional trade-offs need be calibrated between targets. A level of trust needs to be forged with the employees. One needs to be careful that this does not instead backfire. Employees must also feel confident in sharing bad news in case there is any. This will encourage risk-taking, which will ultimately be beneficial for curating business innovations.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/in-search-of-a-better-stretch-target?cid=other-soc-twi-mip-mck-oth-1711&kui=jogbwsjVnJKcIIei7k-QHw

Uploaded Date:13 December 2017

Numerous studies have been conducted to understand the reasons for the disparity between the corporate strategy drafted and its actual execution. Deviations are considered to be detrimental to the corporate performance. However, even complete adherence to strategic plans does not always amount to success. This gap is known as the strategic dissonance or Strategic Stress. The “Yerkes-Dodson Law” which is used for talent management purposes, shows how stress and individual performance are intertwined together. This strategic stress meanwhile may be divided into three zones within a bell-curve. The first such is Strategic Burnout where the stress levels are immense. Here, autonomy may be too much leading to anarchy, the strategic plans may be infeasible or the external forces have pushed the market elements against the company as happened with Lego in 2004. The other extreme end is the Strategic Boredom where stress levels are at all-time lows. When everything goes according to plan, complacency creeps in and innovations suffer. The most desirable position to be in is the Strategic Sweet Spot. For this, balance needs to be found between the different types of managers. While alignment takes place, excessive conformity is avoided. To hit this sweet spot, companies must adopt a mindset that is conducive for stress. It must be set up accordingly by curating innovative events such as hackathons. A diverse mix of people will help to no end in achieving this.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/11/great-corporate-strategies-thrive-on-the-right-amount-of-tension?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Uploaded Date:13 December 2017

A lot of companies are struggling to bridge the gap between the corporate strategy and its execution. A problem with most such companies is that they aren’t asking themselves these crucial questions or answering them holistically. The first such question is whether the company is clear in which way it wants to add value to the marketplace. The next is the unique capabilities in which they are better than the rest. Defining how these myriad capabilities work together is the next. Then there is the matter of those capabilities reflecting in the strategy documents. The company should also understand the “sweet” spot behind its product or service. A crucial point often missed at this stage is the ability to leverage such abilities. Another question is on whether employees concerned can collaborate on disparate capabilities. Finally, one needs to realize whether the leadership is truly good at reinforcing those capabilities. In order to forge together a culture of accountability, companies must actually curate together an executive team to look into such questions, instead of the usual incremental, financial approach towards strategic planning. Similar to annual employee surveys, pulse interviews must be conducted to involve more people into discussion on such matters. Lastly, the board must get involved as they would have the longitudinal sustenance to think through long-term ideals.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/11/8-tough-questions-to-ask-about-your-companys-strategy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr

Uploaded Date:13 December 2017