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When you just don’t get along with a colleague, reset the relationship by focusing on trust.

Analyzing factors behind generative AI’s value can help leaders determine who will benefit most from its growth.

Externally focused x-teams can drive innovation, performance, and distributed leadership but require a shift in mindset.

Four key steps can help a new initiative create value for both the company and the public.

Several organizing principles can help companies sustain both profitability and a sense of purpose.

New research finds that investments companies make in information technology increase profitability and sales more than investments in advertising or R&;D do.

Jonathan Byrnes offers techniques to improve your organization's profitability.

All companies would like to offer custom products that delight their customers. For many, the challenges seem overwhelming, and they settle for manufacturing standard products in bulk, guided by long-term forecasts. Because demand is rarely forecast correctly, companies miss potential sales and must pay to store and manage excess product. In an effort to purge inventory, they offer discounts and other incentives. Profits erode, and the companies lose sight of what customers really want. Some companies attempt to offset those effects by optimizing pieces of the value chain. They create island solutions, such as lean factories, believing that such initiatives will make them more responsive. The authors argue that those efforts ultimately fail because they are not customer- centered. Citing results from their research, sponsored by the 3DayCar Programme at Cardiff Business School in Wales and the International Motor Vehicle Program at MIT, they show that island solutions sometimes backfire because they degrade other parts of the value chain. Instead, they urge companies to aim for a true build-to-order strategy, in which managers systematically improve the value chain’s flexibility in three areas: process, product and volume. Because the emphasis at each stage is on how to meet customer demands efficiently, optimization becomes more holistic and ultimately more profitable. To improve process flexibility, companies can link customer requirements directly to production, synchronizing customer-oriented production schedules in real time with suppliers. To improve product flexibility, they can push customization closer to the customer and can use common support structures to reduce the impact of product variety. To improve volume flexibility, the authors suggest ways companies can reduce reliance on full capacity or use differentiated pricing to reward customers for ordering products well in advance. The authors urge managers not to settle for halfhearted transitions to build to order. They recommend two critical first steps: First, understand key aspects of customer demand; second, adjust all processes accordingly. Only then can companies truly implement responsiveness across the value chain.

Composing valuable strategies requires seeing the world in new and unique ways. It requires asking novel questions that prompt fresh insight. Even the most sophisticated, deep learning-enhanced computers or algorithms simply cannot generate such an outlook. Innovative strategies depend more on novel, well-reasoned theories than on well-crunched numbers.

A down economy is not the time to “slash-and-burn,” but rather to ensure growth potential during the ensuing rebound. This requires a focus on strengthening key relationships, capitalizing on underutilized staff, clarifying strategic roles and forging stronger links between compensation and results.” More than 20,000 times last year, midsize and large U.S. companies responded to adversity by slashing on average 100 staffers at a time. It’s a safe assumption, says compensation consultant Jeffrey Oxman, that many of those organizations destroyed value by cutting capacity they soon had to replace, by making poor choices as to who should go and who should stay, by failing to communicate the rationale for change so as to keep surviving employees motivated, and by missing the opportunity to rethink their business model to optimize their positioning for the recovery ahead. Such issues, says Oxman, go beyond the question of layoffs; they go to the heart of how companies can avoid lasting damage and build long-term value. The conventional wisdom is suspect. Recessionary economies may not require re-engineering or moving noncore competencies outside the organization for greater efficiency. Oxman suggests four critical ways to prepare for economic recovery: strengthening key relationships across customers, employees and shareholders; leveraging downtime by capitalizing on underutilized staff for innovation initiatives; refocusing staff on what’s important by prioritizing strategic roles and clarifying individual goals; and building return on compensation by forging stronger links between pay and results.