Curated News on Strategy Execution (scroll down)

As the technology revolution accelerates, Ryan McManus considers the leaders organizations need to succeed.

Creating value is about exceeding expectations. For any business decision, we must understand the expectations of the decision-maker, and provide a path to exceed those expectations. For leaders and managers seeking approval from their colleagues in the finance function for new projects and initiatives, this is an increasingly urgent priority, because organizations are looking ever more closely at the ‘business impact’ of their resourcing decisions. Chief financial officers (CFOs) are increasingly following up on approved projects, examining whether the original promises that were made were achieved. The ‘fire-and-forget’ process for business cases, where approved cases are quickly forgotten as teams implement projects, is becoming rare. At the same time, many organizations are also increasing the amount of scrutiny before the business case is approved.

We live in an age of polarization. Many of us may be asking ourselves how, when people disagree with or discount us, we can persuade them to rethink their positions. The author, an organizational psychologist, has spent time with a number of people who succeeded in motivating the notoriously self-confident Steve Jobs to change his mind and has analyzed the science behind their techniques. Some leaders are so sure of themselves that they reject good opinions and ideas from others and refuse to abandon their own bad ones. But, he writes, “it is possible to get even the most overconfident, stubborn, narcissistic, and disagreeable people to open their minds.” He offers some approaches that can help you encourage a know-it-all to recognize when there’s something to be learned, a stubborn colleague to make a U-turn, a narcissist to show humility, and a disagreeable boss to agree with you.

Senior leaders can become insulated from early signs of danger and opportunity. Here’s how to overcome that.

Many companies rely too much on big data and analytics in their hunt for strategic insights.  They’d do better if they actually went out and talked to their customers instead, as Toyota and Adobe do, because data is too rooted in what managers already think their customers are interested in.

Over the past 12 months, the COVID-19 crisis has forced business leaders to double down on cost management, ensure liquidity, and scrutinize budgets. Apart from prompting short-term contingency measures—such as cutting back on marketing budgets or IT projects—the lockdowns have spurred cost reductions. Just consider the dramatically lower spending on travel that has accompanied the shift from physical meetings and events to virtual ones.

Conflicting demands and challenges must be managed. Here’s how.

Many organizations find themselves in a perpetual state of crisis and rely on company “heroes” to put out the fires. While many people love the feeling of saving the day, it shouldn’t be a way of life. If you’ve wondered why your organization performs well in a crisis but struggles otherwise, it may be time to pause and ask why. Your heroes may actually be revealing that you have a deeper problem. The author offers four ways to move away from a culture of perpetual crisis. First, understand that heroism is not a sign of commitment, but rather that it’s time to make changes in your organization. Second, make sure the way you’re allocating resources is realistic. Third, get better at cross-functional coordination. And finally, reward teams, not just individuals.

It’s natural for leaders to emphasize the importance of hitting financial targets, but making numbers the centerpiece of your leadership narrative is a costly mistake. Financial results are an outcome, they’re not a root driver for employee performance, and a growing body of evidence tells us that overemphasizing financial targets erodes morale and undermines long-term strategy. Leaders looking to motivate employees must instead use their time with their teams to build belief in the organizational purpose, the intrinsic value of the employees’ work, and the impact they have on customers, and each other. To do so, the authors recommend three tactics: 1) Reevaluate how you use your leadership airtime; 2) Discuss your customers with specificity and emotion; and 3) Resist the urge to widely share every measure of financial performance.

In the early days of developing a new idea, the metrics that may be most germane are things like number of prototypes created and tested; number of customers interviewed; repeat users of a new software platform; number of parties that have been persuaded to participate in a new business ecosystem; or how efficiently you are shelving low-potential ideas in favor of those that resonate with customers or are feasible for your company to pursue (sometimes called “concept kill rate”.) But to build a durable engine of innovation inside your organization, you need a way of making the transition from those early activity metrics to a more defensible set of metrics demonstrating the impact and value you’re creating. That transition is a mix of engineering and gut feel — not unlike building an on-ramp and then using it to merge into zippy traffic.

A well-designed program to promote productive behavior and skills can not only energize an organization’s workforce but also become an essential element of any successful transformation.

It’s no secret that first-party data—proprietary information that a company collects directly from the customer, with consent—is critical for improving relationships with customers and driving better business results. And such data will become even more essential for digital marketing success as increasing numbers of companies stop using third-party cookies to track website visitors. Moreover, BCG research has found that data-driven marketing can double revenue and increase cost savings by 1.6 times.

Chipotle just invested big in an autonomous delivery company. Their CTO explains why and what the process will look like.

Using AI and data-driven tools, companies can change the price of a good or service based on who is buying, when they’re shopping, and myriad other factors. This power raises a question: Should ethics and societal values factor into these prices — and how? Companies should consider what they’re selling, who they’re selling to, and how they’re selling their products, and consider the range of possible impacts. Then, they should 1) get creative about reducing negative externalities, 2) reach out to stakeholders, and 3) build proactive filters into their pricing deliberations.

The pandemic demands a new DNA for business success. By embracing three interconnected value drivers, CEOs can reorient for transformation.

The age of computational design has finally arrived. Incorporating data and artificial intelligence (AI) at every stage of a design process transforms our design tools, and perhaps the very definition of what it means to design and engineer. We have started to tap the enormous opportunity in the data flows and computational capabilities available to us. And as access to data — and our ability to extract knowledge from it — grows, we see opportunities for organizations to rethink design processes at a fundamental level.

Equipping employees with wearable or implantable AI devices may improve efficiency, but firms must weigh ethical concerns and prepare customers for the new experience.

What mobility ecosystems will help OEMs and other industry stakeholders in the next normal?

Will smart machines really replace human workers? Probably not. People and AI both bring different abilities and strengths to the table. The real question is: how can human intelligence work with artificial intelligence to produce augmented intelligence. Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov offers some unique insight here. After losing to IBM’s Deep Blue, he began to experiment how a computer helper changed players’ competitive advantage in high-level chess games. What he discovered was that having the best players and the best program was less a predictor of success than having a really good process. Put simply, “Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.” As leaders look at how to incorporate AI into their organizations, they’ll have to manage expectations as AI is introduced, invest in bringing teams together and perfecting processes, and refine their own leadership abilities.