|
|
30 July 2009 • 7:00 am  Newborn gazelle hunkering down for safety, Serengeti, Tanzania (© Erika Bloom) Reading blogs, scanning headlines, and staying in touch with old friends, it seems to me that right now there is a lot of hunkering down going on. Hunkering down, like dodging bullets and any port in the storm are vivid metaphors for the actions of people when there is danger about. During a global recession, individuals naturally think about protecting themselves and their families from the risk of unemployment, investment failure, and other threatening stuff.
Organizational behavior is a ‘soft’ science that begins with the premise that organizations exhibit collective behaviors. This too is natural. Fish and birds move in unison. Bees, ants, and other insects live in highly-ordered societies that act in concert. Wolves hunt in packs. Evolutionary biologists explain these behaviors as adaptations not just for the survival of the group, but the survival of the species.
more
28 July 2009 • 7:00 am Everyone makes mistakes – we often say that ‘to err is human, to forgive divine.’ And despite occasional assertions to the contrary, our leaders are in fact human. So our leaders have made mistakes, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The consequences of our leaders’ mistakes are usually greater than the mistakes of those led; through their decisions and actions, leaders cause many others to do things. This is the definition of leadership. In meritocracies, individuals rise to leadership roles because they are viewed as capable and skillful, and are therefore expected to make good decisions for the organizations they lead. But we also say that ‘mistakes will happen.’
more
20 July 2009 • 7:00 am Of course, today marks the 40th anniversary of the landing of the first manned spacecraft on the moon. Newspapers are filled with retrospectives, and commentators bemoan the subsequent loss of momentum for continued manned exploration of space. In the clutter of hyperbolic coverage of the accomplishment and my own recollections of the era, I’ve been struggling to find some deeper meaning to share here.
more
18 July 2009 • 8:27 am  Reading the obituaries and fond remembrances of Walter Cronkite, who died yesterday at the age of 92, I am struck by the simplicity and power of the label “the most trusted man in America” that was his – exclusively. Cronkite was, of course, the anchor of the CBS Evening News on American television from 1962 until 1981, an era when there was no internet, no cable TV, and far fewer sources of news. In contrast to the newspapers that delivered yesterday’s news in depth, television journalism was about immediacy – it was today’s news – and about brevity. Cronkite’s 30 minute newscast format (which had been expanded from 15 minutes shortly after Cronkite became anchor) required less detail and more thoughtful editing than any newspaper story.
Cronkite’s passing gives us pause for reflection; on his remarkable career, on the evolution of news and information sharing during our lifetimes, and the increasing irrelevance of network television news. Like many of my generation, I especially remember Cronkite for his role in two of the moments that defined 1960s America – his genuine emotion in November 1963 when he told us that President Kennedy was dead, and his boyish excitement at the triumph of the success of the Apollo moon landing, exactly 40 years ago this week.
more
8 June 2009 • 11:36 am Practitioners and fans of the balanced scorecard concept understand that measurement has the power to motivate behavior. The great challenge in driving change in any organization isn’t just to change the culture, but to change the behavior of individuals and groups inside the organization. Performance measurement doesn’t just tell us how well we’re doing at achieving a desired outcome, the very process of measurement and communication of measure results actually changes behavior.
more
5 June 2009 • 8:03 pm I want to share with you the opening lines of the lead story in tomorrow’s Economist. With no punches pulled, the issue’s cover story disects the decline and bankruptcy of GM, once the most powerful corporation in the world. The tale of GM is a sad but effective illustration of the deadly combination of long-term avoidance of change and institutionalized support of the status quo, in this case by the U.S. goverment. The article is a very worthwhile read for those engaged in strategic planning. Your comments are welcome below.
The decline and fall of General Motors
Detroitosaurus wrecks
The lessons for America and the car industry from the biggest industrial collapse ever
The demise of GM had been expected for so long that when it finally died there was barely a whimper. Wall Street was unmoved. Congress did not draw breath. America shrugged. Yet the indifference with which the news was received should not obscure its importance. A company which once sold half the cars in America, employed in its various guises as many people as the combined populations of Nevada and Delaware and was regarded as a model for managers all over the world has just gone under; and its collapse holds important lessons about management, about government and about the future of the car industry.
GM’s architect, Alfred Sloan, never had Henry Ford’s entrepreneurial or technical genius, but he had organisation. He designed his company around the needs of his customers (“a car for every purse and purpose”). The divisional structure he created in the 1920s, with professional managers reporting to a head office through strict financial monitoring, was adopted by other titans of American business, such as GE, Dupont and IBM before the model spread across the rich world.
Although this model was brilliantly designed for domination, when the environment changed it proved disastrously inflexible…
29 May 2009 • 11:35 am Today’s offering is a departure from the sometimes dry prose of change and strategy offered here. A story that began over sixty years ago culminated on Wednesday in the very wet Atlantic Ocean about six miles off of Key West, Florida. A story of remarkable tenacity.
more
25 May 2009 • 11:19 am Much of my work with organizations has been influenced by two classic theories of human behavior and motivation. Many of my clients have been familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in which human needs are arranged like rungs on a ladder. According to Maslow, the most basic needs at the bottom of the ladder are physical, such as air, water, food, and sleep. Next are safety needs, followed by psychological, or social needs; for belonging, love, acceptance. Next are esteem needs; to feel achievement, status, responsibility, and reputation. At the top of it all are the self-actualizing needs; the need to fulfill oneself, to become all that one is capable of becoming. Maslow felt that unfulfilled needs lower on the ladder would inhibit the person from climbing to the next step. Published in 1943, Maslow’s Theory of Human Motivation has been a remarkably durable set of ideas, given the advances in behavioral science in the decades since.
more
21 May 2009 • 1:32 pm For a few years now, I’ve been doing a riff on Blockbuster and Netflix in some of my speaking engagements. It’s been a useful case for sharing many of my insights about strategic management and the role of technology in strategy (disclaimer: neither of these firms has been a client of mine, and my impressions have been formed only from publicly-available information).
The essence of the riff is this: Blockbuster built a very successful business model and then had its lunch eaten by Netflix. The key lessons we can learn from this case are:
- Don’t underestimate the power of technology to change your competitive environment.
- Constantly be looking for ways to challenge and reinvent your value proposition, or your competitors will do it for you.
- Recognize and overcome the forces that will resist change in your own organization.
more
|
