Readers will know I’m no fan of the obsession with ‘transformation’ in strategy, but it’s sometimes essential or advanageous. In Corporate Transformation under Pressure, McKinsey report a less than 40% overall success rate, especially when used in an effort to get out of trouble - as they say, “this finding seems to contradict the common wisdom that it is hardest to transform a company when it lacks an acute and apparent need for change“. As I’ve said in previous posts, when you are in trouble is a bad time to reinvent yourself - most often better to focus on getting back to the basic, core business model that works.

Helpfully, the article goes on to offer tactics that, when used together, seem to make transformations more successful, depending on the purpose of the effort.

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Michael Olson of Pleiades Technology Futures just pointed me to what looks some solid materials on how to make the business case for investing in sustainability from Bob Willard at Sustainability Advantage. This contrasts strongly with much of the well-meaning but mostly futile aspirations of many sustainability advocates.

Bob’s approach is extremely clear and expressed in terms that would likely grab exec attention - pointing out in particular that many substantial investments in sustainability offer a perfectly good financial return in conventional terms, even before adding the intangible value of external benefits. Continue reading ‘Business case for sustainability’

Useful reminder to avoid flaws in strategic planning in HBP’s Management Essentials. Especially good to see the first item:

1. Don’t skip rigorous analysis.
2. Don’t think strategy can be built in a day.
3. Take care to link strategic planning to strategy execution.
4. Make sure to hold robust strategy review meetings.

This may all seem verypedestrian in these exciting times of strategic innovation and reinventing your business model - but no less critical than it always was.

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Just been made aware of CPM – may be useful to strategic management. It seems to have come from the challenge of deciding and managing multiple, large-scale projects in sectors such as defence, IT and construction. Continue reading ‘Corporate Portolio Management’

I have been tough on the poor strategy seen over both of the last two boom-bust cycles, so good to see in Sensible Giants from the Economist that the largest listed firms have disproportionately little debt compared with both smaller listed peers and private firms. Continue reading ‘Good strategy from big listed firms’

Amongst the continuing stream of articles on this, some good ones [I've left out some bad or downright dangerous ones] include: Continue reading ‘More items on strategy in the crisis’

In MBA Students Aren’t Learning to Avoid Future Crises from Net Impact, 90% surveyed blame short-term business focus for the crisis … and fewer than a quarter think their courses help them avoid future crises. Still not seen any sign of strategy approaches to help with this, as featured in my recent presentation, which offers some suggestions.

It seems today’s MBA students, if not all those they follow, are pretty smart.

A large Management Development community I track has been discussing how we could have prepared people better for the current troubles, and some have advocated the Balanced Scorecard [BSC]. I have used BSC in strategy teaching for some years, and come across BSCs in many companies. My impression is that, whilst it is a valuable extension to standard financial reporting systems, it has some limitations as a tool for managing strategy – limitations that the down-turn has exposed quite sharply.

Continue reading ‘The balanced scorecard’

Digital Darwinism by Christopher Vollmer in strategy+business plays to my view of strategy as making order-of-magnitude impact, not the percentage incrementalism that constrains much management thinking. Continue reading ‘Online environment changing competition’

It’s hard enough dealing with current difficulties in a strategically sound way, but it’s not helped by actions that are pointless or counter-productive - examples below.

Some of these actions just might be unavoidable if the business is in real danger of collapse, but very few are in such a bad state. It seems most are doing these things for purely symbolic reasons - ‘We must be seen to be taking the problem seriously’ - or else to hold up short-term profitability because of perceived pressure from investors or analysts. Continue reading ‘‘Gestures’, not strategy’