Favorite Articles for Week Ending April 29
Management Innovation
novel principles, processes, and practices that alter both the system and the way that organizations perform work
Interesting article that starts by highlighting how the NBA champion Toronto Raptors used bench players to rest and preserve Kawhi Leonard throughout the 2020-2021 season. The authors use this analogy to talk about how corporations should leverage variable talent to preserve their best people. They suggest building a “virtual talent bench” of strong utility players/partners that can relieve the pressure at any given moment.
Strategic Clarity
articulates long term priorities as well as current strategies throughout the company
Cultural Cohesion
creates a foundation of values, norms, and behaviors that bind together your team and your decision-making
Love the simplicity of this short post. Employees do not come to a job unmotivated. They become disenfranchised when the culture of the organization inhibits their performance, their participation, etc. After the author shares a sampling of these core attributes, he then suggests that we consider this challenge to be an organizational issue and not simply a management issue. We can all initiate the needed change, but the organization needs to be crafted in such a way to allow people to leverage their motivation when they come to work each day
Prepared Minds
ensures that information and context are provided to employees, so they are equipped to take initiative in their roles
This article suggests that disruption stems from 11 sources of macro change. To stay agile, organizations should pay attention to the early signals of change in these areas. The author advises that a cross-functional team be assigned individually to each source and meet periodically (online or offline) to share what they are finding. In this way, the team can identifying trends as well as consider what decisions might be impacted in the organization.
Resource Fluidity
mobilizes people and dollars across a portfolio of ongoing and emergent initiatives
Enabling Technology
leverages the latest software and devices to support the themes of management innovation
Here is an article that upholds the beneficial side of digital personas. The authors lay out guidelines for how to productively leverage the same technologies that create “deepfakes”. It remains to be seen how society will adopt these business “doubles”.
Curated News on Strategy Execution
Masters of Scale - May 4, 2021
The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday’s Aneel Bhusri
Your first hires are your cultural cofounders. And it’s worth your time to get every one right. That’s why Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri personally interviewed his first 500 employees. Today, with 12,500 employees and over $4b in annual revenue, Workday is consistently rated one of the best places to work.
Harvard Business Review ($) - May 1, 2021
Getting AI to Scale
Don’t try to change everything at once, but do begin with something important.
Deloitte Insights - Apr 27, 2021
Leading through the fog of disruption
The strength of purpose, values, and mission
Bain & Company - May 4, 2021
Growth Strategy: Identifying Your Parenting Advantages
The traits that nurtured your main growth engine can bring new success beyond the core.
HBR.org ($) - Apr 30, 2021
How Leaders Get in the Way of Organizational Change
Despite the vast body of knowledge available to leaders on how to effect lasting, positive organizational change, too many executives continue reaching for the same comfortable levers that consistently miss the mark. Thus, the oft-cited failure rate of organization transformations continues hovering around 70%. If you’ve got a major change on the horizon, here’s how to avoid three of the most common saboteurs of company transformation.
HBR.org ($) - May 3, 2021
Break Down Change Management into Small Steps
New research from leaders at Infosys indicates that across a variety of industries, lasting, long-term change is most effective when it occurs over a series of smaller microchanges. The authors identify three strategies for successful microchange management: Deconstruct big change into small steps, change behavior through small modifications to habits and routines, and continuously measure, learn, and evolve.
adaptable - Apr 30, 2021
Top Articles on Strategy Execution – April 2021
This is adaptable’s Top Ten list on Strategy Execution for April 2021. Enjoy!
adaptable - Apr 30, 2021
“Weekly Picks” (April 29th)
These are adaptable’s favorite couple of articles on Strategy Execution for the week ending April 29th. Enjoy!
MIT Sloan Management Review ($) - Apr 27, 2021
Creating Valuable (and Trusted) Experiences With Digital Personas
Deepfakes have received much (well-deserved) bad press — but the underlying technology holds plenty of potential for companies to build positive customer experiences.
Wired ($) - Apr 28, 2021
Ford’s Ever-Smarter Robots Are Speeding Up the Assembly Line
A transmission factory shows how artificial intelligence may creep into industrial processes in gradual and often imperceptible ways.
Medium ($) - Apr 23, 2021
Pretotyping vs. Prototyping — What’s the difference?
One of the most common mistakes made by founders and product developers is building something that they thought people would want, only to find out that their assumptions were wrong.
Fast Company ($) - Apr 26, 2021
4 emotionally intelligent ways to accept people who don’t share your values
It’s easy to spend your life with people who think like you. Yet hanging out with like-minded people is the opposite of open-mindedness.
HBR.org ($) - Apr 26, 2021
6 Strategies for Leading Through Uncertainty
It seems that any given week provides ample reminders that leaders cannot control the degree of change, uncertainty, and complexity we face. The authors offer six strategies to improve a leader’s ability to learn, grow, and more effectively navigate the increasing complexity of our world.
George Veth
Love the simplicity of this short post. Employees do not come to a job unmotivated. They become disenfranchised when the culture of the organization inhibits their performance, their participation, etc. After the author shares a sampling of these core attributes, he then suggests that we consider this challenge to be an organizational issue and not simply a management issue. We can all initiate the needed change, but the organization needs to be crafted in such a way to allow people to leverage their motivation when they come to work each day
Medium ($) - Apr 28, 2021
It’s Not a Leader’s Job to Motivate
The truth is that employees start out motivated but the work environments they find themselves in suck that motivation out of them. In other words, they come to the job with their “motivation buckets” filled (or mostly so), then the organization (and its managers) poke holes in those buckets.
George Veth
This article suggests that disruption stems from 11 sources of macro change. To stay agile, organizations should pay attention to the early signals of change in these areas. The author advises that a cross-functional team be assigned individually to each source and meet periodically (online or offline) to share what they are finding. In this way, the team can identifying trends as well as consider what decisions might be impacted in the organization.
Rotman -
11 Sources of Disruption
A quantitative futurist advises leaders to pay attention to 11 sources of disruption.
McKinsey & Company - Apr 26, 2021
The strategy-analytics revolution
It’s time to bring advanced analytics into the strategy room—here’s why.
Wired ($) - Apr 26, 2021
This Researcher Says AI Is Neither Artificial nor Intelligent
Kate Crawford, who holds positions at USC and Microsoft, says in a new book that even experts working on the technology misunderstand AI.
McKinsey & Company - Apr 23, 2021
A smarter way to digitize maintenance and reliability
In heavy-equipment maintenance, digital and analytics tools are struggling to live up to their promise. Here’s how to help them pull their weight.
Wired ($) - Apr 23, 2021
Now for AI’s Latest Trick: Writing Computer Code
Programs such as GPT-3 can compose convincing text. Some people are using the tool to automate software development and hunt for bugs.
Medium ($) - Apr 22, 2021
Why We are Building an Information Company Powered by Editorial Algorithms
Applied XL raises $1.5M to develop high precision AI systems that distill insights from big data, giving professionals and investors access to reliable life sciences information.
George Veth
Here is an article that upholds the beneficial side of digital personas. The authors lay out guidelines for how to productively leverage the same technologies that create “deepfakes”. It remains to be seen how society will adopt these business “doubles”.