Articles

Urban environments can substitute for internal resources in driving process innovation.

New technologies such as blogs, wikis, Second Life and Skype are popping up, sometimes unexpectedly, in many organizations. Assessing which technologies to implement is difficult enough. Figuring out how to assess a novel technology that is already being used by members of your organization is even more challenging. With so many new and different technologies emerging all the time, trying to choose the "right" one for every company and situation is the wrong approach. Managers instead need to evaluate how it will work in their specific organization. In that spirit, the authors introduce the six-dimensional Genre Model -- based on why, what, who, where, when and how -- for considering the central issues, risks and benefits of using a new medium in the context of existing technologies. The model helps assess how employees' use and adoption of the new technology will align with the organization's mission, culture and business practices and how it may change productivity and effectiveness. Several case studies are analyzed. Blog Central at IBM, introduced by management as a self-publishing platform for employees, soon became more social than informational as users applied blogging to extend their personal networks, "get the pulse" of their organization and establish a sense of community. After MNI Partners, a management consulting company, adopted the Skype system to cut costs on its weekly international conference calls, the nature of those meetings evolved as participants exploited the new medium's properties. And when managers from a large European petroleum company, which the authors call Epsilon, established an internal electronic bulletin board for the exchange of technical information, they learned that many longtime employees, aggrieved by recent corporate changes, had other uses in mind for that medium. The Genre Model is used to analyze these cases, as well as to help explain, retrospectively, why the business letter gave way to the memo, which then was largely subsumed by e-mail.

As the war for talent intensifies, there is growing evidence that a company’s corporate social responsibility activities comprise a legitimate and compelling way to attract and retain good employees. To burnish their social responsibility credentials and thereby attract and retain talent, CEOs of companies such as Home Depot, Delta Air Lines and SAP recently pledged to deploy millions of employee volunteers on various community projects. Indeed, many companies big and small, including Cisco Systems, General Electric and IBM, view employee engagement in CSR as a “strategic imperative.” But few organizations have figured out how to use CSR properly as part of their employee engagement efforts. They fall short of communicating their CSR intentions and initiatives to their employees and tend to keep CSR decisions in the hands of senior managers. At the same time, they fail to understand which CSR initiatives work best to excite which groups of employees. All in all, they fail to capture CSR’s considerable potential to help them fight the war for talent. When used properly, CSR can strengthen employees’ engagement by creating the feeling that they are part of a larger corporate mission and that the company shares their values, and by helping them enhance their own social connections. This article draws on recent studies to confirm that CSR can yield substantial returns for both employees and the company. The research demonstrates that CSR initiatives can fulfill employees’ needs and motivate them to identify strongly with their employers, as is very much the case at The Timberland Co. Using frequent verbatims from study participants, the article portrays the challenges that companies face in making the most of their CSR strategies internally. The authors then recommend five practical steps that can help business leaders increase CSR’s effectiveness as a lever for talent management, acquisition, and retention.

Technology use, diverse networks and access to new information all enhance productivity.

Technology- or platform-driven strategy is a fast track to commoditization.

Recent Supreme Court rulings have changed IP protections.

Observers are often amazed when executives with impressive track records are mysteriously transformed into corrupt and tyrannical monsters once they become chief executive officers. In truth, these executives often had serious character flaws that were either hidden or ignored for years. Corporate boards and search committees are not likely to detect personality problems of promising CEO candidates simply by examining their resumes or by conducting standard job interviews. This raises the question of how corporate boards or CEO search committees can penetrate the facade of an upwardly mobile executive who is, in reality, a wolf in sheep's clothing. What danger signals do these individuals exhibit and what measures can be taken to reduce the likelihood of hiring a dysfunctional CEO? The author identifies eight potential danger signals including: an obsession with acquiring prestige, power, and wealth; a proclivity for developing grandiose strategies with little thought toward their implementation; and a fondness for a data-driven management style that overshadows or ignores a broader vision. Even sterling CEOs occasionally exhibit one or more of the danger signals described here. Potentially bad CEOs, however, usually possess several of these characteristics, and they exhibit them repeatedly. There is no ideal method for selecting a CEO, and there may be no executive position that provides a true test of a person's fitness to assume the top job, but there are several ways that a company can limit its risks when deciding on a CEO. Boards are usually cautious when looking at CEO candidates from outside the organization. They are more likely to be lulled into a sense of complacency, however, when considering an internal candidate. Some suggestions for screening prospective CEOs include disregarding the time-tested rule that past success is a predictor of future success, performing a thorough background check that focuses on a candidate's integrity and interpersonal skills and using experience-based interviews to test CEO finalists

Ask any executive to describe how their company interacts with others in their supply chain, and it isn't long before words such as "marriage," "partnership" or "relationship" come up. However, if there is one truism at all about relationships today, it is that of constant communication. Yet in some of the most "strategic" supplier relationships, this simple concept is almost never deployed. The literature on supply chain management offers a range of metrics for suppliers, including "hard" metrics such as cost and quality and "soft" metrics such as service and innovation and the need for sophisticated models to evaluate supplier performance. But where is the discussion of holding the buyer company accountable for its end of the bargain? In very few cases do buyers adhere to supply chain metrics for themselves. Nonetheless, buyers have as much influence as suppliers on the success or failure of a supply chain relationship. Some companies are addressing this notion with mechanisms that emphasize dual accountability. Dual accountability requires a fundamental shift in the psychology of buyer-supplier relationships. Not only is tangible accountability demanded from both partners, but suppliers and buyers also must show greater communication, openness and trust. The article explores the genesis of the dual accountability concept, outlines the benefits -- which range from decreased risk to improved reputation to lower total cost -- and illustrates how dual accountability can be profitably applied by suppliers and buyers working together. One means of achieving dual accountability is the Two-Way Scorecard, a performance tool that measures supplier and buyer results across a balanced set of categories and, within those categories, tailors metrics for each party. As such, it is a concrete means of embedding cooperation in the supplier-buyer relationship. Experiences with implementation of the Two-Way Scorecard and other methods of dual accountability are discussed for Johnson & Johnson Group of Consumer Companies and other corporations. The article offers keys to implementation of dual accountability and discusses the crucial role of technology.

Two Unisys studies indicate there's a wiser use of your IT resources.

For many years now, companies seeking to deliver higher business performance by harnessing IT have focused on alignment -- the degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business and expends its resources, pursues projects and provides information consistent with them. In practical terms, that means there must be shared ownership and shared governance of IT projects. However, the authors contend that their research -- a survey of more than 500 senior business and technology executives worldwide, followed up with in-depth interviews of 30 CIOs -- reveals a troubling pattern: Even at companies that were focused on alignment, business performance dependent on IT sometimes went sideways, or even declined. That's because underperforming capabilities are often rooted not just in misalignment but in the complexity of systems, applications and other infrastructure. The complexity doesn't magically disappear just because an IT organization learns to focus on aligned projects rather than less aligned ones. On the contrary, the authors say, in some situations it can actually get worse. Costs rise, delays mount and the fragmentation makes it difficult for managers to coordinate across business units. The survey also showed that almost three-quarters of respondents are mired in the "maintenance zone." IT at these companies is generally underperforming, undervalued and kept largely separate from a company's core business functions. Corporate management budgets the amounts necessary to keep the systems running, but IT doesn't offer enough added value to the business and often isn't expected to. Drawing on the experiences of Charles Schwab & Co., Selective Insurance Group, De Beers, First Data Corp. and National City, among others, the authors identify a group of best practices that constitute "IT-enabled growth." The companies that achieve the highest growth at a low cost manage complexity down, source IT staffing and software wherever it makes the most sense and create start-to-finish accountability connected to business results. Then, and only then, the best performers tightly align their entire IT organization to the strategic objectives of the overall business, using governance principles that cross organizational lines and making business executives responsible for key IT initiatives.