Join In The Race Or Be Left Behind: How ‘Change’ Is Changing The Competitive ...Accenture Insurance
While financial services firms have proven themselves capable of making small changes that increase effectiveness and better manage risk, in today’s competitive environment success hinges on a broader, multi-disciplinary transformation that affects the entire fabric of the industry. “Change fitness”—an organization’s ability to quickly and effectively drive all sorts of change—has become a core competency.
“Join In The Race Or Be Left Behind: How ‘Change’ Is Changing The Competitive Landscape In Financial Services” explains how data analytics can reveal strengths and weaknesses within a financial services firm that, when addressed effectively, can improve change fitness and help drive the kind of large scale change that will sustain competitiveness for the long term.
1) The document discusses planning, executing, and measuring successful business transformations. It provides best practices from various companies that have successfully transformed their businesses.
2) Common challenges to successful transformation include failure to anticipate changes, misjudging risks, and lack of change management skills. Successful transformations had support from leadership, strong execution, and clear metrics to measure progress.
3) Implementing enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) solutions can help companies overcome challenges and drive transformation by providing visibility, standardized processes, and metrics to track progress and costs. EPPM supports the innovation, efficiencies, and risk management that companies need to transform.
We’ve worked with Executives and IT leaders for over 30 years, and the single most common complaint we hear from them is their profound frustration with the lack of results and transparency from their never-ending IT investments.
To add further complexity, the demand for digital products and services has made it increasingly difficult for organizations to make ongoing investments and balance the need for innovation with optimization.
The latest data, combined from global enterprises, big consulting and research firms, makes the case that companies need to urgently act to address the digital disruption of their business and their related skills gaps. The data shows that 70% of digital business initiatives are likely to fail to deliver business growth, due to lack of business process and product innovation, as well as poor organizational adaptability.
Poor governance and legacy product management processes to align business and IT initiatives, coupled with insufficient leadership engagement across the organization, are the main reason most companies are wasting money on IT.
This thought paper speaks to these challenges and how optimizing both technology innovation and cross-organizational engagement will accelerate the positive business outcomes that organizations are looking to achieve especially in lieu of increasing digital disruption.
Authors - Alex Adamopoulos and Bob Kantor
The document discusses how established companies can become more data-driven through a strategic transformation. It provides examples of how the Spanish hotel chain Ilunion and Transport for London used data analytics to improve decision making. The key steps for companies include linking data initiatives to business goals, creating a data-driven culture where all employees use data in their work, and implementing technology infrastructure to make relevant data and insights accessible. Becoming truly data-driven requires addressing cultural and technical barriers and viewing data as a strategic asset.
The document discusses how agile practices are becoming essential for organizations to operate successfully in today's rapidly changing business environment. It defines what it means to be agile, focusing on flexibility, autonomous work cells, transparency of investments and accountability of execution. The trends driving agility include globalization, cloud services, mobility, social media and the need for faster decision making. Building an agile organization requires competencies like collaboration, transparency of investments and accountability. It also discusses the social business practices involved in planning for business through identifying opportunities and targeting investments, and monitoring operations through agreements and benefits realization.
The document summarizes key points from a business analytics conference. It discusses how analytics has become more important and useful due to increased data and new tools. While analytics is helping organizations, clear business needs and leadership support are still needed to ensure insights are properly used. There is a shortage of analytics talent, and on-the-job training is critical for developing skills. India has a large share of the analytics outsourcing market but can move further up the value chain through faster delivery and challenging itself.
Join In The Race Or Be Left Behind: How ‘Change’ Is Changing The Competitive ...Accenture Insurance
While financial services firms have proven themselves capable of making small changes that increase effectiveness and better manage risk, in today’s competitive environment success hinges on a broader, multi-disciplinary transformation that affects the entire fabric of the industry. “Change fitness”—an organization’s ability to quickly and effectively drive all sorts of change—has become a core competency.
“Join In The Race Or Be Left Behind: How ‘Change’ Is Changing The Competitive Landscape In Financial Services” explains how data analytics can reveal strengths and weaknesses within a financial services firm that, when addressed effectively, can improve change fitness and help drive the kind of large scale change that will sustain competitiveness for the long term.
1) The document discusses planning, executing, and measuring successful business transformations. It provides best practices from various companies that have successfully transformed their businesses.
2) Common challenges to successful transformation include failure to anticipate changes, misjudging risks, and lack of change management skills. Successful transformations had support from leadership, strong execution, and clear metrics to measure progress.
3) Implementing enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) solutions can help companies overcome challenges and drive transformation by providing visibility, standardized processes, and metrics to track progress and costs. EPPM supports the innovation, efficiencies, and risk management that companies need to transform.
We’ve worked with Executives and IT leaders for over 30 years, and the single most common complaint we hear from them is their profound frustration with the lack of results and transparency from their never-ending IT investments.
To add further complexity, the demand for digital products and services has made it increasingly difficult for organizations to make ongoing investments and balance the need for innovation with optimization.
The latest data, combined from global enterprises, big consulting and research firms, makes the case that companies need to urgently act to address the digital disruption of their business and their related skills gaps. The data shows that 70% of digital business initiatives are likely to fail to deliver business growth, due to lack of business process and product innovation, as well as poor organizational adaptability.
Poor governance and legacy product management processes to align business and IT initiatives, coupled with insufficient leadership engagement across the organization, are the main reason most companies are wasting money on IT.
This thought paper speaks to these challenges and how optimizing both technology innovation and cross-organizational engagement will accelerate the positive business outcomes that organizations are looking to achieve especially in lieu of increasing digital disruption.
Authors - Alex Adamopoulos and Bob Kantor
The document discusses how established companies can become more data-driven through a strategic transformation. It provides examples of how the Spanish hotel chain Ilunion and Transport for London used data analytics to improve decision making. The key steps for companies include linking data initiatives to business goals, creating a data-driven culture where all employees use data in their work, and implementing technology infrastructure to make relevant data and insights accessible. Becoming truly data-driven requires addressing cultural and technical barriers and viewing data as a strategic asset.
The document discusses how agile practices are becoming essential for organizations to operate successfully in today's rapidly changing business environment. It defines what it means to be agile, focusing on flexibility, autonomous work cells, transparency of investments and accountability of execution. The trends driving agility include globalization, cloud services, mobility, social media and the need for faster decision making. Building an agile organization requires competencies like collaboration, transparency of investments and accountability. It also discusses the social business practices involved in planning for business through identifying opportunities and targeting investments, and monitoring operations through agreements and benefits realization.
The document summarizes key points from a business analytics conference. It discusses how analytics has become more important and useful due to increased data and new tools. While analytics is helping organizations, clear business needs and leadership support are still needed to ensure insights are properly used. There is a shortage of analytics talent, and on-the-job training is critical for developing skills. India has a large share of the analytics outsourcing market but can move further up the value chain through faster delivery and challenging itself.
This white paper discusses how human capital (i.e. a company's employees) can serve as a "force multiplier" for other elements of an organization like processes and technology. It argues that people should be considered the most important element of the "people, process, technology" framework that is commonly used. When employees are properly recruited, trained, engaged and supported by sound processes and enabling technology, they can amplify returns on investments in those other areas. The paper provides various examples and research findings that show the financial and performance benefits that companies gain when they make human capital development a top priority.
AGILITIVE is a professional brand that combines business modeling, customer development, service design, data analytics, and innovation frameworks to help organizations transform to become more agile. It encompasses using tools like business model canvases, customer journey mapping, and developing and analyzing taxonomies using systems thinking. AGILITIVE is applicable to help both for-profit and non-profit organizations transform. The methodology aims to implement practices like having an outside-in management mindset, enabling managers, coordinating work dynamically, focusing on values over just economic value, and using conversation over commands. Organizations need transformations that can meet challenges through practices aligned to create an agile organism, rather than treating the organization as a machine.
Executive Summary-Complex Development Approachh12robba
- The document discusses a "Complex Development Approach" for software-as-a-service startups to improve their chances of survival and growth.
- It argues that aiming solely for "product/market fit" is flawed and vague, and that vendors should instead focus on achieving scalability through iterative phases that partially satisfy larger market shares.
- The approach involves allocating resources between "development activities" to improve the product and "sales activities" to generate capital, and finding the proper balance between these allocations is key to sustaining growth.
This document discusses ideas for improving corporate reporting to better meet stakeholder needs. It proposes:
1) Less frequent but more comprehensive reporting (annual/biannual instead of quarterly), focused on long-term value creation metrics in addition to past financial performance.
2) Releasing key performance indicators monthly through social media to provide timely updates between comprehensive reports.
3) A modern disclosure schedule including monthly indicators, biannual reports, annual comprehensive reports, and five-year perspectives on vision and strategy.
4) Integrated reporting comes closest to existing frameworks in emphasizing long-term value creation, but does not fully address issues like standardization and technology that could further modernize reporting.
A white paper produced by Kenya Markets Trust (KMT) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to promote the application of lean management principles to the field of inclusive market development
Why outsource at all, why Scrum and how to find a perfect candidate to do the job?
What are the advantages of reading the e-book?
#Better understanding of basic Scrum, Agile and outsourcing method,
#Understanding of the importance of group work and consequences of that approach,
#Understanding of business value that comes with getting project done in Scrum,
#Better understanding and need of preparedness for making a project in Scrum.
A view on a pace driven IT structure, enabling the integration of innovation and new business requirements through
efficient use of personnel work attitudes and strengths.
The document discusses the challenges of being a transformational leader today. It notes that while business transformations are critical for survival, most fail due to a lack of leaders with the right skills. These leaders, called "Strategists", have skills in visioning, execution, and adapting to complex challenges. However, Strategists make up only 8% of leaders. The document outlines 10 ways for organizations to identify and retain their own Strategists to lead transformations from within.
Transformational deals have become desirable, but business leaders agree that they are the most difficult transactions in M&A today. This article lists seven fundamental tenets of M&A integration that can help your company shift its business model and maybe reshape its industry.
This document introduces a hackathon organized by CIPD and MIX to address the challenge of making organizations more adaptable to change. It notes that while the world is changing exponentially, most organizations struggle with change and lack the incentives and capabilities to change proactively. The hackathon aims to distill the characteristics of adaptable organizations, diagnose barriers to adaptability, and jointly invent practical management "hacks" that can spur organizations to become more adaptable. It provides an overview of the timeline and goals of the hackathon and encourages participation.
The Last Word: The 50-Year Journey to Digital BusinessCognizant
To make good on the promise of the digital age, established companies must master a veritable Rubik's Cube of thorny challenges. The solution lies in understanding three key historical precedents and four perennial seasons of change.
The document discusses how ego and popular trends often drive people's behavior more than logic and consciousness, contributing to the creation of systems and organizations with insufficient long-term strength. It also examines how understanding psychological forces, ethics, technical issues, policies, procedures, and change management is important for effectively managing complex industries and organizations. Leaders must ensure technical capabilities align with products, processes, marketing, and customer satisfaction to support the company vision.
IBM Retail | The new role of the Chief Information Officer: A studyIBM Retail
The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is being refined in today's organization. IBM initiated a study of over 2,500 CIOs worldwide to understand the differences between responses from organizations with high and low PBT growth. Learn how today's CIO can make the biggest impact in your organization.
This document discusses aligning IT strategy with business goals. It emphasizes reviewing strategic plans to identify how technology can help achieve goals like becoming a leading home health provider. IT and business strategies should complement each other through collaborative development. Data is collected from staff through surveys and interviews to identify themes like competitiveness. Linking IT performance to business metrics allows evaluating each unit's contributions to overall value. Value-based management and key performance indicators can help consider IT a vital business player.
Leveraging Design Thinking for Value Enhancement of Digital Transformation Innomantra
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Digital Transformation has been making waves and has found widespread recognition in most industries. What started as a driver of marginal efficiency is now rapidly shifting to become an enabler of fundamental innovation and disruption within an organization. The scope and scale of digital-driven change continue to grow immensely. However, organizations are still grappling with the nuances of the journey of digital transformation implementation, its implications or its impact. Digital transformation is not about adopting technologies but having an integrated approach involving people and leadership.
This white paper presents the context of digital transformation in manufacturing organizations. It redefines the process to incorporate important aspects such as breaking the silos, rescoping the challenge/ objectives, having an iterative approach and using design thinking to better understand the value implication of such an exercise. Case studies from clients have been used to illustrate the same.
Keywords: Design Thinking, Industry 4.0, Manufacturing industries, Smart factory, Value Assessment, Digital Transformation, Value Implementation
CEO Newsletter - Agile Performance ManagementDarryl Judd
The document discusses the need for organizations to move away from traditional annual performance review cycles towards a more agile and continuous performance management process. It outlines some of the key features of an agile performance management system, including regularly reviewing and updating individual goals in line with changing business needs, holding frequent check-ins between managers and employees to provide real-time feedback, and separating performance conversations from compensation decisions. The summary highlights that many large global companies are adopting this new agile approach to better support employee development, engagement, and high performance over time.
The accounting profession has felt the impact of change. Over the past several years, operational changes in workflow and process have dramatically altered the scope of the accountant’s role. The profession’s workforce is aging, underlining the importance of succession planning and talent management. Additionally, as the digital universe doubles in size every other year, many firms struggle to keep pace with the latest technology trends.
For today’s firm, change is constant. And across the entire tax, accounting and audit profession, the forecast calls for even greater shifts in people, processes and technology.
These ever-evolving realities inspired Wolters Kluwer, CCH, a strategic partner to accounting firms, to explore two major questions in the 2014 Wolters Kluwer, CCH — Accounting Firm Preparedness Survey.
В нашем исследовании "Раскрытие силы инноваций" мы предлагаем инновационным компаниям решение пяти ключевых вопросов, чтобы впоследствии вы могли максимально эффективно использовать полученные инвестиции.
Обсудить отчет можно на странице PwC Startup Cloud в Facebook http://on.fb.me/11ZZJvU.
Is peer pressure good for kids development?
Advantages:
1) Improvement in academic performance
2) Identity formation and individual socialization
3) A path to adulthood
What's parents' role?
- encourage reflective thinking
- encourage your teen's independence
- let your teen know of your concerns and feelings
- keep the lines of communication open
- get to know your kids friends
- develop back up plans to help kids get out of uncomfortable and dangerous situation
A Resourced Based View of EntreprenuershipFahim Akhtar
The document discusses the resource-based view of entrepreneurship. It states that a firm's competitive advantage lies in its unique bundle of valuable tangible and intangible resources. Resources provide an advantage when they are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and there are no substitutes. Financial, physical, human, organizational, technological, and reputational resources are discussed as types that can provide competitive advantages if they meet these criteria. The resource-based view focuses on how firms can obtain and deploy resources to implement strategies and sell outputs at a higher price than costs.
This white paper discusses how human capital (i.e. a company's employees) can serve as a "force multiplier" for other elements of an organization like processes and technology. It argues that people should be considered the most important element of the "people, process, technology" framework that is commonly used. When employees are properly recruited, trained, engaged and supported by sound processes and enabling technology, they can amplify returns on investments in those other areas. The paper provides various examples and research findings that show the financial and performance benefits that companies gain when they make human capital development a top priority.
AGILITIVE is a professional brand that combines business modeling, customer development, service design, data analytics, and innovation frameworks to help organizations transform to become more agile. It encompasses using tools like business model canvases, customer journey mapping, and developing and analyzing taxonomies using systems thinking. AGILITIVE is applicable to help both for-profit and non-profit organizations transform. The methodology aims to implement practices like having an outside-in management mindset, enabling managers, coordinating work dynamically, focusing on values over just economic value, and using conversation over commands. Organizations need transformations that can meet challenges through practices aligned to create an agile organism, rather than treating the organization as a machine.
Executive Summary-Complex Development Approachh12robba
- The document discusses a "Complex Development Approach" for software-as-a-service startups to improve their chances of survival and growth.
- It argues that aiming solely for "product/market fit" is flawed and vague, and that vendors should instead focus on achieving scalability through iterative phases that partially satisfy larger market shares.
- The approach involves allocating resources between "development activities" to improve the product and "sales activities" to generate capital, and finding the proper balance between these allocations is key to sustaining growth.
This document discusses ideas for improving corporate reporting to better meet stakeholder needs. It proposes:
1) Less frequent but more comprehensive reporting (annual/biannual instead of quarterly), focused on long-term value creation metrics in addition to past financial performance.
2) Releasing key performance indicators monthly through social media to provide timely updates between comprehensive reports.
3) A modern disclosure schedule including monthly indicators, biannual reports, annual comprehensive reports, and five-year perspectives on vision and strategy.
4) Integrated reporting comes closest to existing frameworks in emphasizing long-term value creation, but does not fully address issues like standardization and technology that could further modernize reporting.
A white paper produced by Kenya Markets Trust (KMT) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to promote the application of lean management principles to the field of inclusive market development
Why outsource at all, why Scrum and how to find a perfect candidate to do the job?
What are the advantages of reading the e-book?
#Better understanding of basic Scrum, Agile and outsourcing method,
#Understanding of the importance of group work and consequences of that approach,
#Understanding of business value that comes with getting project done in Scrum,
#Better understanding and need of preparedness for making a project in Scrum.
A view on a pace driven IT structure, enabling the integration of innovation and new business requirements through
efficient use of personnel work attitudes and strengths.
The document discusses the challenges of being a transformational leader today. It notes that while business transformations are critical for survival, most fail due to a lack of leaders with the right skills. These leaders, called "Strategists", have skills in visioning, execution, and adapting to complex challenges. However, Strategists make up only 8% of leaders. The document outlines 10 ways for organizations to identify and retain their own Strategists to lead transformations from within.
Transformational deals have become desirable, but business leaders agree that they are the most difficult transactions in M&A today. This article lists seven fundamental tenets of M&A integration that can help your company shift its business model and maybe reshape its industry.
This document introduces a hackathon organized by CIPD and MIX to address the challenge of making organizations more adaptable to change. It notes that while the world is changing exponentially, most organizations struggle with change and lack the incentives and capabilities to change proactively. The hackathon aims to distill the characteristics of adaptable organizations, diagnose barriers to adaptability, and jointly invent practical management "hacks" that can spur organizations to become more adaptable. It provides an overview of the timeline and goals of the hackathon and encourages participation.
The Last Word: The 50-Year Journey to Digital BusinessCognizant
To make good on the promise of the digital age, established companies must master a veritable Rubik's Cube of thorny challenges. The solution lies in understanding three key historical precedents and four perennial seasons of change.
The document discusses how ego and popular trends often drive people's behavior more than logic and consciousness, contributing to the creation of systems and organizations with insufficient long-term strength. It also examines how understanding psychological forces, ethics, technical issues, policies, procedures, and change management is important for effectively managing complex industries and organizations. Leaders must ensure technical capabilities align with products, processes, marketing, and customer satisfaction to support the company vision.
IBM Retail | The new role of the Chief Information Officer: A studyIBM Retail
The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is being refined in today's organization. IBM initiated a study of over 2,500 CIOs worldwide to understand the differences between responses from organizations with high and low PBT growth. Learn how today's CIO can make the biggest impact in your organization.
This document discusses aligning IT strategy with business goals. It emphasizes reviewing strategic plans to identify how technology can help achieve goals like becoming a leading home health provider. IT and business strategies should complement each other through collaborative development. Data is collected from staff through surveys and interviews to identify themes like competitiveness. Linking IT performance to business metrics allows evaluating each unit's contributions to overall value. Value-based management and key performance indicators can help consider IT a vital business player.
Leveraging Design Thinking for Value Enhancement of Digital Transformation Innomantra
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Digital Transformation has been making waves and has found widespread recognition in most industries. What started as a driver of marginal efficiency is now rapidly shifting to become an enabler of fundamental innovation and disruption within an organization. The scope and scale of digital-driven change continue to grow immensely. However, organizations are still grappling with the nuances of the journey of digital transformation implementation, its implications or its impact. Digital transformation is not about adopting technologies but having an integrated approach involving people and leadership.
This white paper presents the context of digital transformation in manufacturing organizations. It redefines the process to incorporate important aspects such as breaking the silos, rescoping the challenge/ objectives, having an iterative approach and using design thinking to better understand the value implication of such an exercise. Case studies from clients have been used to illustrate the same.
Keywords: Design Thinking, Industry 4.0, Manufacturing industries, Smart factory, Value Assessment, Digital Transformation, Value Implementation
CEO Newsletter - Agile Performance ManagementDarryl Judd
The document discusses the need for organizations to move away from traditional annual performance review cycles towards a more agile and continuous performance management process. It outlines some of the key features of an agile performance management system, including regularly reviewing and updating individual goals in line with changing business needs, holding frequent check-ins between managers and employees to provide real-time feedback, and separating performance conversations from compensation decisions. The summary highlights that many large global companies are adopting this new agile approach to better support employee development, engagement, and high performance over time.
The accounting profession has felt the impact of change. Over the past several years, operational changes in workflow and process have dramatically altered the scope of the accountant’s role. The profession’s workforce is aging, underlining the importance of succession planning and talent management. Additionally, as the digital universe doubles in size every other year, many firms struggle to keep pace with the latest technology trends.
For today’s firm, change is constant. And across the entire tax, accounting and audit profession, the forecast calls for even greater shifts in people, processes and technology.
These ever-evolving realities inspired Wolters Kluwer, CCH, a strategic partner to accounting firms, to explore two major questions in the 2014 Wolters Kluwer, CCH — Accounting Firm Preparedness Survey.
В нашем исследовании "Раскрытие силы инноваций" мы предлагаем инновационным компаниям решение пяти ключевых вопросов, чтобы впоследствии вы могли максимально эффективно использовать полученные инвестиции.
Обсудить отчет можно на странице PwC Startup Cloud в Facebook http://on.fb.me/11ZZJvU.
Is peer pressure good for kids development?
Advantages:
1) Improvement in academic performance
2) Identity formation and individual socialization
3) A path to adulthood
What's parents' role?
- encourage reflective thinking
- encourage your teen's independence
- let your teen know of your concerns and feelings
- keep the lines of communication open
- get to know your kids friends
- develop back up plans to help kids get out of uncomfortable and dangerous situation
A Resourced Based View of EntreprenuershipFahim Akhtar
The document discusses the resource-based view of entrepreneurship. It states that a firm's competitive advantage lies in its unique bundle of valuable tangible and intangible resources. Resources provide an advantage when they are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and there are no substitutes. Financial, physical, human, organizational, technological, and reputational resources are discussed as types that can provide competitive advantages if they meet these criteria. The resource-based view focuses on how firms can obtain and deploy resources to implement strategies and sell outputs at a higher price than costs.
Strategic Management - Module 3 – MG University - Manu Melwin Joymanumelwin
This document provides an overview of strategic management concepts including the McKinsey 7s model, leadership in strategic management, portfolio analysis tools like the BCG matrix and GEC model, strategic control processes, and strategy evaluation activities. It defines each concept, provides examples, and explains how managers can apply these strategic management tools.
Organization and Management Guide,Chapter 8 Strategic Management by Stephen Robbins and Mary Coulter Management Book 12th Edition, Pearson Publication.
The document discusses competitive advantage and business systems. It defines the key components of a business system as the resource base, activity system, and product/service offering. It then examines internal analysis using the resource-based view, which defines a firm according to its resources and capabilities. Resources support capabilities, and capabilities exploit resources. The document analyzes how resources, capabilities, and the value chain can provide competitive advantage, and stresses the importance of dynamic capabilities for managing knowledge, learning, innovation, and developing future resources and capabilities.
1) The document discusses the resource-based view of the firm, which argues that a firm's resources and capabilities are the source of its competitive advantage.
2) Core competencies are the activities a firm performs better than competitors and are difficult to imitate, allowing for sustained competitive advantage.
3) Resources can be tangible (physical/financial assets) or intangible (human capital, organizational processes, reputation). Capabilities are how the firm combines resources.
4) For resources/capabilities to provide sustained advantage, they must be valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and the firm must be organized to exploit them.
Complete Business Frameworks Toolkit - Strategy, Marketing, Operations, Consu...Flevy.com Best Practices
Download this primer now from slideshare.
Full version here:
https://flevy.com/browse/business-document/complete-consulting-frameworks-toolkit-644
This is a very comprehensive document with over 350+ slides--covering 51 common management consulting frameworks and methodologies (listed below in alphabetical order). A detailed summary is provided for each business framework. The frameworks in this deck span across Corporate Strategy, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Organization, Change Management, and Finance.
These frameworks and templates are the same used by top tier consulting firms. With this comprehensive document in your back pocket, you can find a way to address just about any problem that can arise in your organization.
The level of detail varies by framework, depending on the nature of the management model. Examples, templates, and case studies are provided.
FULL LIST OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTING FRAMEWORKS & METHODOLOGIES:
1. ABC Analysis
2. Adoption Cycle ( Consumer Adoption Curve)
3. Ansoff Market Strategies
4. Balanced Scorecard
5. BCG Growth-Share Matrix
6. Benchmarking
7. Blue Ocean Strategy
8. Break-even Analysis
9. Business Unit Profitability
10. Economics of Scale
11. Environmental Analysis
12. Experience Curve
13. Cluster Analysis
14. Company & Competitor Analysis
15. Consumer Decision Journey ( McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey)
16. Core Competence Analysis
17. Cost Structure Analysis
18. Customer Experience
19. Customer Satisfaction Analysis
20. Customer Value Proposition
21. Fiaccabrino Selection Process
22. Financial Ratios Analysis
23. Gap Analysis
24. Industry Attractiveness & Business Strength Assessment
25. Key Purchase Criteria
26. Key Success Factors (KSF)
27. Market Sizing & Share
28. McKinsey 7-S
29. Net Present Value
30. PEST Analysis
31. Porter Competition Strategies
32. Porter's Five Forces
33. Portfolio Strategies
34. Price Elasticity
35. Product Life Cycle
36. Product Substitution
37. Relative Cost Positioning
38. Rogers' Five Factors
39. Scenario Techniques
40. Scoring Models
41. Segment Attractiveness
42. Segmentation & Targeting
43. Six Thinking Hats
44. Stakeholder Analysis
45. Strengths & Weaknesses Analysis
46. Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP)
47. SWOT Analysis
48. SWOT Strategies
49. Treacy / Wiersema Market Positioning
50. Value Chain Analysis
51. Venkat Matrix
Implementation of strategic management tools and strategiesHebi Pathan
PepsiCo is considering strategic options for its Mountain Dew brand in Pakistan. A SWOT analysis identified strengths like brand awareness and taste, weaknesses like high investment needs, and opportunities like innovating new flavors. Strategies recommended based on SWOT, BCG matrix, GE model, and QSPM analysis include market development, product development, and horizontal diversification to launch new flavors internationally. Market penetration was also suggested to leverage the strong brand in Pakistan.
The document provides an overview of conducting an internal analysis for strategic management. It discusses analyzing an organization's resources and capabilities, including its resource-based view, business model, value chain, functional resources, and functional capabilities. Key aspects covered include identifying the organization's strengths and weaknesses, distinctive competencies, core competencies, management functions, strategic marketing issues like market position and segmentation, marketing mix, product life cycle, and brand reputation. The internal analysis is critical for understanding an organization's internal strategic factors to determine if it can take advantage of opportunities and avoid threats.
This document discusses the importance of organizational agility in today's changing business environment. It defines agility as the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions and disruptive competitors. The key aspects that enable agility are a supportive culture, strategic flexibility, collective leadership, capable people, and adaptive processes. Organizations with highly developed agility are better at responding to changes, implementing strategies, and achieving business results. While difficult, cultivating agility requires changes to policies, structures, and mindsets to empower teams and accept failures as learning opportunities. When successfully implemented, agility allows organizations to navigate disruption and thrive during uncertain times.
This document discusses the importance of organizational agility in today's changing business environment. It defines agility as the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions and disruptive competitors. The key aspects that enable agility are a supportive culture, strategic flexibility, collective leadership, capable people, and adaptive processes. Organizations with a highly developed culture of agility are better able to anticipate changes, implement responsive strategies, and quickly respond to market needs. Building agility requires organizations to develop capabilities in change management, risk management, and monitoring the external environment. It also involves establishing structures and policies that promote flexibility, empowerment, and an ethos of experimentation.
Agility boosts performance: Guide for your agile transformation journeySebastian Olbert
ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY AS A COMPETITIVE FACTOR
The Agile Performer Index
In the Agile Performer Index, goetzpartners and the NEOMA Business School clearly demonstrate the correlation between agility and entrepreneurial success. The more agile the company, the better it performs financially. The purpose of the study was to investigate what agility can really do for organizations. Is it just a temporary trend? With the right methodology, can agility deliver sustainable success?
Resulting from a broad survey among 285 leading European companies, the Agile Performer Index documents that agility programs are a suitable way for organizations to achieve lasting performance and competitive advantage.
Selected key findings:
Agile companies perform ~ 2.7 times better than non-agile companies
CxOs rate their company’s agility higher than do middle managers.
Sector check: Digital maturity doesn’t guarantee agility
The Importance of a Growth Mindset in a Digital WorldWill
This document discusses the importance of developing a growth mindset within organizations in order to take advantage of opportunities in the digital world. It argues that companies need agile cultures that embrace change and innovation. The document provides examples of companies like Netflix, Blockbuster, Starbucks and hospitals that cultivated growth mindsets and were able to adapt to digital transformations, compared to those like Blockbuster that did not and failed. It identifies characteristics of agile organizations like responsiveness, collaboration, and learning mindsets. Leaders must shape cultures, engage employees and align practices to develop these agile cultures.
This study surveyed 204 executives and employees from companies in German-speaking countries to assess organizational agility. The study examined what business environment factors drive the need for agility ("agility drivers") and how sensitive and responsive companies are to changes. It also evaluated what enables agility ("agility enablers") and compared more agile to less agile organizations. The study found most companies face agility drivers like intense competition but lack sufficient sensitivity and responsiveness. It also identified gaps between current and desired states of agility enablers. Comparing more and less agile firms provided insights into effective enablers of agility.
This document discusses how organizations must adapt to increasing uncertainty and complexity in the modern business environment. It argues that traditional management methods focused on efficiency and control are challenged by today's unpredictable conditions. To succeed, organizations need to embrace self-transformation, harness complexity, focus on the future through scenario planning, and develop the agility and responsiveness to change. Drawing parallels between living systems and businesses, it suggests organizations aim for the "edge of chaos" through disequilibrium, self-organization, and non-linear approaches rather than direct control.
This document discusses the need for large organizations to transform into "hyperagile" organizations in order to adapt quickly to changes in today's complex environment. It defines hyperagility as organizational agility, beyond just project agility, that is embedded in the organizational DNA. Key aspects of hyperagility include engaging and empowering employees through trust and accountability, being able to rapidly reallocate resources, and having strategic, portfolio, project, and operational agility. Large organizations must learn from small, born-agile "hidden giants" that can disrupt them if they do not also transform to a hyperagile model.
This is a discussion to guide new managers to navigate the complex and often confusing world of corporate maze. Of course anyone who has become a fledgling executive, does have enough relevant experience. However this can be used as a primer to guide the beginning of the journey.
Achieving business agility_by_restructuring_the_organizationChandan Patary
This document discusses strategies for transforming organizations to increase business agility through restructuring. It proposes a framework with four pillars: management vision, organizational structure, organizational culture, and process optimization. The framework is supported by four accelerators: portfolio management, defining new roles and operating models, assessing culture, and establishing a software factory. To implement the framework, the document recommends creating a transformation program, identifying business value, restructuring around business value using a Spotify model, developing a growth mindset, defining new roles, applying a cultural model, and enabling swarming behavior. The goal is to reinvent the organization to meet changing market needs and enhance customer value through an agile transformation.
Major organizations are increasingly adopting agile methodologies across entire segments and at large scales. While agile teams are effective for small, collocated groups, scaling agile presents new challenges like large, distributed teams that are difficult to coordinate. Successful large-scale agile implementation requires understanding these scaling issues and adapting agile strategies, practices and leadership approaches to diverse situations. Leaders must lead agile teams in an agile way by removing constraints and prioritizing client outcomes, while gradually expanding agile adoption based on evaluating costs and benefits.
The document discusses the importance of organizational agility for businesses to thrive in today's changing environment. It defines agility as the ability to quickly adapt to and take advantage of changes through flexible processes and structures, a strategically sensitive and adaptive workforce, and an ongoing ability to sense emerging opportunities. Key aspects that enable agility are constant environmental scanning, internal information sharing, innovative thinking, and rapid experimentation.
This document discusses the importance of strategic planning during tough economic times. It argues that while reactive actions like layoffs address short-term problems, strategic planning sets a company's direction and enables it to prepare for future growth. The document provides suggestions for effective strategic planning, including involving employees, organizing collected ideas, and inviting junior staff to planning sessions to develop future leaders.
This document discusses the importance of strategic planning during tough economic times. It argues that while reactive actions like layoffs address short-term problems, strategic planning sets a company's direction and enables it to prepare for future growth. The document provides suggestions for effective strategic planning, including involving employees, organizing collected ideas, and inviting junior staff to planning sessions to develop future leaders.
This document discusses how traditional tech giants face slowing growth rates and are looking to customer relationship intelligence to drive ongoing success and transformation. It notes that 80% of next year's revenue will come from existing customers, so these companies must understand their complex customer relationships to meet changing demands and capture opportunities. The document advocates that by using customer relationship intelligence to gain insights from customer contract data, companies can solve revenue leakage today and position themselves for future growth.
This document provides an overview of agile management principles and practices. It discusses how agile approaches aim to help organizations be more responsive to changes in their environment through principles like empowerment, measurement, collaboration and quick iteration. The document outlines three levels of uncertainty that organizations face and how their need for agility depends on factors like incomplete knowledge, variation in workflow, and the novelty of their work. It also discusses how agile approaches require both more control and empowerment compared to traditional management styles.
The document discusses key factors for organizations to become more nimble. It covers 5 themes: people, processes, technology, ecosystems, and strategy.
Under people, it discusses the importance of culture, roles & responsibilities, evaluating skills supply & demand, evaluating people, and growing existing/recruiting new people.
For processes, it covers agile development, product management, DevOps, change management, service desks, and knowledge management.
When discussing technology, it focuses on enterprise architecture, cloud computing, APIs & microservices, and security.
It also emphasizes the importance of ecosystems by networking with customers, peers, investors, recruiters, and partners.
The overall message is that organizations need
Success and failure in organization designRajamani5373
This document outlines keys to successful organizational design and reasons why redesigns fail. It identifies five keys to nimble design: build on strengths, go beyond structure, define roles, empower roles, and foster learning. Seven common failures are also outlined: lacking goals, structuring for people not business needs, causing disruption, private agreements, lacking assessment, breaking confidentiality, and poor communication. Overall it stresses the importance of clear goals, data-driven design, minimal disruption, transparency and change management.
Foundation of Organization Design (MGMT673)Reading Material Or.docxericbrooks84875
Foundation of Organization Design
(MGMT673)
Reading Material Organizational Structures
Types of Structures
There are many types of organizational structures. Each structure functions in different ways, demands different skills from employees, and is influenced by corporate size, strategy, culture, and the resources the organization has for managing the structure.
Organizations have been known to change their structure to meet market demands, only to discover that they overlooked something major, which is now derailing their work. For example, the computer system an organization had in place could not support the demands of the new structure, or other stakeholders (such as suppliers, government regulators, or employees) refused to work with the new structure. In many cases, an organization has been forced to return to its old structure at an enormous cost of both time and money. Though structural change should not be feared, all critical stakeholders must be in on the early stages of planning. This allows the consultants and management to understand both the intended, as well as the potential unintended, consequences of the new design.
The following are some basic organizational structures' strengths, weaknesses, and limitations.
Functional Organization
The functional organization is a widely used design and has existed since Roman times. Such an organization is generally broken into departments or divisions, such as manufacturing, sales, accounting, and human resources. The importance of the different structural units has emerged over time and can be determined by looking at the organization’s history. As functional organizations grew, they often added on new units or subunits. Like all organizational designs, the functional organization has strengths and weaknesses. The strength of the functional organization is that when the environments these organizations grow up in are stable, and the workforce is homogenous, these organizations work very well.
There is a challenge in functional organization design. Through the years, as organizational environments became more turbulent, as the work force became increasingly diversified, and as technology became more demanding and complicated, it also became more costly to keep the functional organizations performing well.
Divisional Organization
The divisional organization is built around products, services, geography, or customers, rather than functions. It came into being about the same time as the growth of the large American corporations and the early development of the mass markets.
Some of the strengths of divisional organizations are that they make accountability of managers easier, promote delegation, focus interest on the customer, and build departmental cohesion. Weaknesses of this structure are inefficiency and multiple demands on people, which increase stress and cause goal conflict. The latter is due to focusing on department objectives at the expense of the overall organization’s .
Strategy prototyping leap into the future look aroundmichaeldmaginn
The document describes a new approach to strategic planning called "prototyping alternative futures". It involves:
1) Gathering a small group of knowledgeable stakeholders to discuss potential futures for the organization through asking questions about new products, customers, or ways of delivering value.
2) Developing "prototypes" - tangible but incomplete representations of these potential futures through techniques like sketches, diagrams, or conceptual models.
3) Discussing each prototype to understand how it might operate and be funded in order to gain consensus more efficiently than traditional analytical strategic planning methods. The goal is to tap intuition and creativity to identify new strategic directions for the organization.
The document discusses the importance of an effective operating model for product organizations to successfully execute strategies. It identifies four key factors of an operating model: product mindset, organizational design, development model, and decision making structure. Product mindset focuses on understanding customer needs rather than requests. Organizational design calls for a product management team separate from engineering and sales. The development model addresses balancing in-house versus outsourced work. Decision making aims to minimize risk through lean methodology and experimentation.
The article discusses the seven stages of developing strategic leadership abilities over the course of a career. It argues that strategic leadership can be strengthened through self-directed neuroplasticity, where focusing attention on high-level thinking rewires the brain. The seven stages involve: 1) mastering impulses through executive function, 2) thinking about what others think through mentalizing, 3) becoming habitually self-aware through applied mindfulness, 4) balancing integrity and pragmatism, 5) managing success, 6) expanding aspirations, and 7) building a lasting legacy. Going through these stages shifts one's thinking to a "high ground" that favors long-term strategic decision-making over short-term problem solving and helps one
This document discusses how emerging technologies like blockchain, IoT, and AI can be used to automate trust and verification of assets and credentials. It provides examples of how supply chains, employee verification, and collaborative R&D projects could benefit from these technologies by creating secure and immutable records to track assets and credentials in real-time. This automated trust could reduce costs associated with counterfeiting and validation while also enabling new business models and revenue streams through secure data sharing and analytics.
An Conghui, president of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and CEO of Geely Auto Group, explains the future of flying cars and the value of an international brand.
Telecom companies are struggling to find a profitable identity in today's digital sphere. The article suggests they could help customers control their personal data by offering "personal data manager" services that give users control over what data is collected and how it is used. By 2025, such services could allow users to monetize their data and recapture up to a quarter of the $400 billion value of the data economy. Telecom companies are well positioned to offer these services due to their network infrastructure, customer relationships, and experience in data and government regulation.
Governments around the world are developing national AI strategies to encourage innovation, protect citizens, and compete globally in artificial intelligence. These strategies aim to boost economic growth while addressing concerns about privacy, bias, jobs, and other issues. The document urges businesses to engage with governments on developing policies to help manage various tradeoffs around AI, such as innovation vs regulation and transparency vs vulnerability. National strategies and international cooperation will be important to balance opportunities and risks as AI increasingly transforms society and business.
The document discusses challenges faced by Chief Strategy Officers (CSOs) in fulfilling their role. It finds that only 25% of CSOs feel very successful in creating value for their company. Common issues CSOs face include unclear priorities, spending too much time on tactical tasks instead of strategy, and not having a strong voice at the leadership table. It provides recommendations for companies to better utilize their CSO, such as making strategy a top executive priority, improving the strategic planning process, and clarifying the CSO's role and focus on strategic questions. When implemented, these recommendations can help CSOs unlock their full potential to drive company strategy and competitive advantage.
The corporate center of many major companies will undergo significant changes over the next 5 years. The size of headquarters will shrink as more transactional work is outsourced and automated, reducing costs by 25-40%. Headquarters staff will transition from administrators to specialized experts in areas like data analytics, digital technologies, and change management. Corporate functions will be restructured as flexible, cross-functional teams that form around priorities and dissolve when work is complete. This will require recruiting new types of digital talent and offering more flexible employment.
For Greg Lehmkuhl, president and CEO of Lineage Logistics, temperature-controlled supply chains for perishables are one of the world’s next great platforms.
Henry Schein has embraced a stakeholder value approach that focuses on long-term trust-based partnerships with key stakeholders like customers, employees, and suppliers. This approach seeks to harness the power of these stakeholder partnerships by designing a system like a flywheel that efficiently stores and releases the energy generated by stakeholders. Building this stakeholder flywheel requires aligning the company's purpose, strategy, culture, and execution around creating trust with stakeholders so they are willing to contribute their time, energy, and passion. Henry Schein's focus on performance, caring, and purpose has energized stakeholders and powered the flywheel effect, producing long-term value for all stakeholders including investors and society.
This document discusses how some companies have achieved unprecedented power and success by leveraging three new forms of capital: behavior capital, cognitive capital, and network capital. It provides examples of how companies like Amazon, Google, and healthcare consortia are using these new sources of capital to transform industries. The document argues that to thrive in this new "bionic" business environment, all companies will need to undergo a transformation and reinvent what they do and who they benefit by shifting from a supply-oriented to demand-oriented approach, treating knowledge as flows rather than stocks, and adopting a platform business model.
As more and more companies in a range of industries adopt machine learning and more advanced AI algorithms, the ability to provide understandable explanations for different stakeholders becomes critical. If people don’t know why an AI system made a decision, they may not trust the outcome.
Leaders may think that awareness programs are suitable for addressing unconscious bias, but they are just the start. Raising awareness of unconscious bias through presentations and tests does not actually change behaviors or outcomes. To effectively address unconscious bias, organizations need to focus on changing behaviors through shared knowledge, language to discuss biases, and structural approaches like requiring diversity in hiring panels. The most effective strategies are concrete rules and policies that change outcomes by increasing minority applicants and representation, rather than just focusing on awareness.
Findings from a recent PwC Consumer Intelligence Series (CIS) survey of 15,000 global consumers confirm that technology will remain central to retailers' ability to understand and predict customer behavior. But none of these high-tech capabilities would be possible without people.
More from Strategy&, a member of the PwC network (20)
Today's Retail Needs Both Tech and the Human Touch
Agility Is Within Reach
1. www.strategy-business.com
strategy+business
ONLINE MARCH 16, 2015
Agility Is Within Reach
With strategic responsiveness and organizational flexibility, you can
move quickly when your industry changes.
by Kayvan Shahabi, Antonia Cusumano, and Sid Sohonie
2. www.strategy-business.com
1
agility you need.
It’s an absence that will become all the more glar-
ing. In PwC’s latest CEO study, more than half of
CEOs surveyed said they believe they will be competing
in new sectors in the next three years, and 60 percent
said they see more business opportunities now than they
did three years ago. But almost three-quarters of re-
spondents expressed concern that their companies lack
the skills needed to meet future competitive threats. In
these conditions, agility is critical.
Strategic responsiveness is the ability to sense new
risks and new opportunities in the business environ-
ment and to craft a response to those pressures quickly.
Consider the disruptive effect of new technologies, such
as the Internet’s impact on prerecorded music and pub-
lishing or digital fabrication’s effect on conventional in-
ventory management. The challenge is not just to
change quickly, but to change profitably: to know which
products and services should be switched out and which
should remain intact. To exercise this judgment, your
top executives must have a thorough understanding of
your industry and markets, and there must be mecha-
nisms in place—not just traditional strategic planning
and market research, but social media and even custom-
er usage data collected through the Internet of Things—
to feed them information about trends. Their decisions
must be made quickly, and communicated rapidly to
M
any corporate leaders think their companies
are agile. Surely, they assume, we possess that
combination of speed, flexibility, nimbleness,
and responsiveness that will enable us to turn on a dime
as circumstances warrant. It often comes as a surprise,
then, when a significant opportunity or challenge arises
and the company can’t deliver.
What these leaders realize too late is that they are
thinking about agility in a counterproductive way. In
their view, agility is an end in itself, instead of a means
to a more important end—sustainable competitive ad-
vantage. At one extreme are startups and other high-
growth companies. They can, in effect, be too agile,
chasing every potential opportunity without clear stra-
tegic goals. At the other end of the spectrum are large,
incumbent companies, slowed by lethargic or timid cor-
porate cultures, combined with rigid business processes
and legacy information technology systems.
The sweet spot lies somewhere in between. The ap-
propriate level of agility won’t be the same for everyone,
but for all companies in all industries, we’ve found that
being agile depends on developing two key attributes:
strategic responsiveness and organizational flexibility.
These two qualities are mutually reinforcing but are de-
veloped in different ways, and it is easy for a company
to possess one without the other. But until you explic-
itly develop proficiency in both, you won’t have the
Agility Is Within Reach
With strategic responsiveness and organizational flexibility, you can move
quickly when your industry changes.
by Kayvan Shahabi, Antonia Cusumano, and Sid Sohonie
3. www.strategy-business.com
2
sources for parts when the product portfolio changes, or
to maintain the required flow of parts when natural di-
sasters or other external events lead to sudden break-
downs in logistics. Does human resources have the
means to find the right people when new talents and
expertise are needed? Are your various functions set up
to respond to one another’s changes and help one an-
other move forward?
Agile companies have both high strategic respon-
siveness and high organizational flexibility. Their lead-
ers accept the inevitability of change. They have mecha-
nisms in place for sensing potentially disruptive forces
and taking advantage of them before the competition.
The rest of the organization understands the value of
rapid action; people are practiced and confident, with
the skills and infrastructure support they need. Al-
though the company encourages experi-
mentation, it also resists unnecessary
complexity: At any time, there are just a
few new initiatives, backed by everyone
in the company. There is also a strong
network effect—people share the in-
sights from experiments and customer
engagement up and down the hierarchy.
Unfortunately, that combination is
rare. Most companies are strong in one
or the other attribute, but not both. In
what we call faux-agile companies, where
strategic responsiveness is high but orga-
nizational flexibility is low, leadership is
visibly committed to agility, and takes
on ambitious initiatives. But the compa-
ny does not have all the capabilities it
needs to deliver results, especially when
every function in the company.
Organizational flexibility is the facility to shift ex-
ecution rapidly. In many companies, such functional
skills as product development, manufacturing, market-
ing and sales, and customer intimacy are deeply en-
trenched, reinforced by IT systems and ingrained prac-
tice. But when there is a change in strategic direction,
the company needs to be able to retool and rework the
most necessary activities, often within a few weeks or
months. Doing so requires the capacity and the willing-
ness to innovate in every aspect of the enterprise—not
just developing new products in response to perceived
consumer needs and market trends, but putting in place
new organizational structures, business processes, and
technologies. Ask yourself, for example, whether your
supply chain is resilient enough to rapidly develop new
Kayvan Shahabi
kayvan.shahabi@us.pwc.com
is the U.S. technology industry
advisory leader at PwC, and is
based in San Jose, Calif.
Antonia Cusumano
antonia.m.cusumano
@us.pwc.com
is the U.S. technology industry
people and change leader at
PwC, and is based in San Jose,
Calif.
Sid Sohonie
sid.a.sohonie@us.pwc.com
is a director in PwC’s technol-
ogy industry advisory practice,
and is based in Seattle.
Also contributing to this
article was PwC director
James Saliba.
StrategicResponsiveness
Organizational flexibility
HIGH
HIGH
LOW
LOW
The Faux-Agile Enterprise
Focus on a few key strategic
imperatives, and develop the
cross-functional capabilities and
make the operational investments
needed to deliver on them.
The Fragile Enterprise
Start with your existing strengths.
What new value can you deliver by
making a few changes—for
example, implementing real-time
data analytics to improve
senior-level decision making?
The Agile Enterprise
Continue to move in the most
profitable and value-driven
directions, which means develop-
ing even more discipline to focus
on the areas that will produce the
best results.
The Almost-Agile Enterprise
Monitor the urgent issues and
disruptions facing your company
and its industry, and develop next
steps that represent clear
imperatives for change.
Source: PwC analysis
Exhibit: Agility Profiles and Prescriptions
4. www.strategy-business.com
3
its titles needed to leverage technology and processes
more efficiently, create new publications more quickly,
boost contact with readers through better use of social
media, and provide a single view for advertisers. But the
company also needed to support and encourage each
publication’s independent personality. To accomplish
these tasks, executives developed a single, flexible con-
tent management architecture for creating and editing
content. There was a standard digital system, enabling
publications to respond to opportunities—and advertis-
ers—more quickly and efficiently, but each publication
would maintain its unique identity. Once fully installed,
the system would have the added benefit of enabling
editors to see how other publications contributed to the
company’s overall performance, and to look for ways to
collaborate and share content.
Regardless of your industry, increasing both strate-
gic responsiveness and organizational flexibility can give
your company the agility it needs. Leaders must be able
to discuss the nature and extent of the disruptions they
see coming down the road, and to experiment with new
types of products and services and new organizational
structures in response. When a company learns to
change itself this way, the fundamental qualities that
made it great in the first place—its view of how value is
created for its customers, its capabilities in creating that
value, and its distinctive presence in the market—can
remain the same. Because becoming agile doesn’t mean
changing who you are. It means gaining the ability to
see both opportunities and threats and then executing
the strategies needed to address them. +
the strategy changes. It may be that leaders are detached
enough from day-to-day operations that they perceive
the company to be addressing customer needs more ef-
fectively than it actually does. Functions and business
units are siloed: They don’t communicate effectively,
and they resist working together. Processes and IT in-
frastructure are not aligned with strategy and may be
out of date.
Those firms we refer to as almost-agile companies,
in contrast, have low strategic responsiveness but high
organizational flexibility. These organizations are
known for operational competence and skill at continu-
ous improvement. They make and sell everything well,
but don’t always make and sell the right things. Strategy
is bound up with existing customers; however, company
leaders don’t easily recognize when their needs and ex-
pectations change. As a result, they don’t develop the
breakthrough products and services that their custom-
ers might respond to. Many projects are proposed at
relatively local levels, and may get implemented on an
ad hoc basis, but few receive company-wide support.
The worst-case scenario occurs when companies
are weak in both dimensions. These fragile enterprises
are typically characterized by rigid leadership, high cost
structures, and slow decision making, all of which have
often evolved over many years of growth. Top executives
divide the business among themselves, each chasing a
different group of opportunities or serving different sets
of customers, and often working at cross-purposes. Sev-
eral levels of approval are needed for any significant
change. The culture reinforces stasis, rather than re-
sponsiveness, in a way that encourages business as usual.
Once you know which type of company you are,
you can understand where you need to do the most
work (see Exhibit). Consider the story of one major mag-
azine publisher, with more than 25 distinct periodicals
in print and digital formats. Company executives real-
ized the organization would have to adapt in the face of
disruptive competition and rapidly changing circulation
prospects. They saw the writing on the wall—their stra-
tegic responsiveness was high. But they also knew that
their organizational flexibility was low, with a siloed
structure and highly entrenched editorial culture.
The company had to make some big changes: All of