Curated News on Strategy Execution
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Public Spaces
As the pandemic continues to hamper movement, local public spaces have become important points of congregation (physically distanced, as appropriate). As a matter of fact, many of us may have taken the pandemic as an opportunity to visit nearby spaces for the very first time! Have you begun to see these spaces in a new…
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Listening to Community Voices
Shareholder value is being supplanted by a plethora of stakeholder values, and leaders must understand these diverse needs.
HBR.org ($) - Aug 30, 2021
You’ve Built a Racially Diverse Team. But Have You Built an Inclusive Culture?
It’s one thing to have a racially diverse team. It’s another to unleash that team’s potential to do great things in your organization. And yet there is very little guidance on how, exactly, to do the latter.
MIT Sloan Management Review ($) - Aug 24, 2021
How smaller firms can harness the potential of collaborative robots
Integrating robots into a manufacturing system is often prohibitively expensive. A new approach could change that.
McKinsey & Company - Aug 27, 2021
An ecosystem of partners: The foundation of capital project excellence
To deliver large capital projects in heavy industry more efficiently, project owners can consider forming an ecosystem of partners and fundamentally rethinking ways of working together.
adaptable - Aug 31, 2021
Top Articles on Strategy Execution – August 2021
This is adaptable’s Top Ten list on Strategy Execution for August 2021. Enjoy!
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Let the Workshops Commence!
Workshops are an invaluable way for teams to surface great ideas and to forge new paths forward, acting as crucibles for iterative design work.
adaptable - Aug 26, 2021
“Weekly Picks” (August 26th)
These are adaptable’s favorite few articles on Strategy Execution for the week ending August 26th. Enjoy!
Wired ($) - Aug 24, 2021
Can Robots Evolve Into Machines of Loving Grace?
Perhaps, if we put bots together the right way, consciousness will simply emerge.
Forbes ($) - Aug 20, 2021
Annual Budgeting Is For The Birds
It is finally time to retire annual budgeting and make way for dynamic rolling forecasts.
MIT Sloan Management Review ($) - Aug 26, 2021
What You’re Getting Wrong About Burnout
The burnout crisis is here, but many managers are failing to address the root causes of stress for employees.
MIT Sloan Management Review ($) - Aug 23, 2021
How to find and fix hidden factories
An ever-growing list of workarounds is weighing on your productivity and profits. Finding these hidden factories can get your systems running again.
Harvard Business Review ($) - Sep 1, 2021
What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation
Many people believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovations is chaotic, random, and unmanageable. But that view is flawed, the authors argue.
George Veth
I couldn’t agree more with the actual empirical evidence of this article – that online shoppers don’t always care about faster delivery times, especially if the exact delivery time window could be pegged. However, to get up on the balcony, I really appreciated the elements of the case study – the use of data to understand customer preferences and, then, the move to organize employees to think through how to meet the newly understood preference. This article highlights the benefits of working to create prepared minds in our organizations. A virtuous cycle of continuous improvement follows!
MIT Sloan Management Review ($) - Aug 23, 2021
Online Shoppers Don’t Always Care About Faster Delivery
Analyzing online customer data may reveal that other delivery attributes matter more than how quickly an order is received.
HBR.org ($) - Aug 25, 2021
The Sales Playbook of Successful B2B Teams
High-performing B2B companies are increasingly using sales plays–a coordinated set of actions to create and win an opportunity at a specific customer or prospect, driven by data.
Fast Company ($) - Aug 20, 2021
How to spot tomorrow’s macrotrends before they change everything
It’s easy to tell when a trend is in the process of transforming an industry. What’s trickier—and more powerful—is identifying them before their impact is unmistakable.
George Veth
This article restates (without being prophetic) the basic reality that all of work is being transformed by technology, so let’s keep pushing forward with digital transformation efforts! The authors suggest that these efforts are “future-proofing” our organizations. Based on a Bain study, the authors provide six practices, and lots of pioneering case examples, for “assembling and managing teams” leveraging data and technology.
Harvard Business Review ($) - Sep 1, 2021
Future-Proofing Your Organization
Drawing on research by Bain & Company involving more than 300 large firms worldwide in every facet of the global economy, the authors identify six practices for companies to follow as they regroup and reorganize for the inevitable recovery.
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All hands on deck!
When a crisis occurs, or when you are simply facing a persistent challenge, it can be hard to reach a consensus on the best path forward.
George Veth
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about problem definiton, problem framing, and problem reframing. This article pushes us to recast our thinking from being binary – Yes or No, This or That, etc… Instead, can we reframe our thinking to consider Both And or a Win-Win situation? I think that reframing is one of the most important skills of leaders. It shows empathy (to understand the other), curiosity, and flexibility. But, for some reason, it’s not easy!
strategy+business ($) - Aug 23, 2021
Five ways to avoid the pitfalls of binary decisions
Before you decide, check how the question is framed to ensure you have all the information you need and have considered all your options.
George Veth
Great case study of UPS from the eyes of their new CEO, Carol Tomé. I really enjoyed her vivid description of the process she took the company through after inheriting the top role amidst the pandemic. The article outlines a very thoughtful approach to reorienting around purpose and values, integrating the voice of employees, and devolving some decision-making. This may seem basic, but, at the same time, it is so healthy. Love it.
Harvard Business Review ($) - Sep 1, 2021
The CEO of UPS on Taking the Reins Amid Surging Pandemic Demand
When the author agreed to accept the top job at UPS, the global shipping service, in late winter of 2019, she expected to steer the company toward a brighter future. She had no idea that she would have to do it during a global pandemic that made her organization an essential service but kept most people at home and pushed demand for shipped goods to holiday levels year-round.
George Veth
Appreciated this article on how Flagship Pioneering (venture firm behind Moderna) leverages “emergent discovery” to create variants of an idea and then seeks to evolve each idea by always trying to learn more and to ask what’s possible. As they say, the theme behind the firm’s innovation process is not a “shots-on-goal” approach where 1 in 10 ideas are expected to be succcessful, but, rather, a desire for every exploration to be a learning experience. This article reminded me of one of my all-time favorite books, Erik Beinhocker’s “The Origin of Wealth” which was my first introduction to evolutionary economics. Both the article and Beinhocker’s book are worth reading to gain a real understanding of emergent discovery.