Thinking Ahead Insights: Managing the present from the future

Managing the present from the future Assemble a critical mass of key stakeholders. Many more than just the top 8 to 10 leaders. Should include key technologists and leading process engineers. Group should be sufficiently diverse to ensure conflict, which will get issues on the table so they can be resolved. Have to decide how it's going to happen. Do an organizational audit to generate a complete picture of how the organization really works. Understand the competitive situation. Reveal barriers to moving from "as is" to the future. Core values. Key systems. Strategic assumptions. Core competencies, etc. Create urgency. A threat that everyone perceives, but no one is willing to talk about, is most debilitating to an organization Book of Five Rings � Japanese guide for samurai warriors. Written four centuries ago, directs the samurai to visualize his own death in the most graphic detail before going into battle. Idea being, once you have experienced death, there is not a lot left to fear: one can then fight with abandon. This helps explain the value of discussion about not changing and the dire consequences to a company in a difficult business situation. Harnessing contention. Conflict jump-starts the creative process. Most companies suppress contention. Control kills invention, learning and commitment. Emotions often accompany creative tension, and they are often unpleasant. Intel plays rugby; your ability at Intel to take direct, hard-hitting disagreement is a sign of fitness. Many excellent companies build conflict into their designs. Induce organizational breakdowns that foster out-of-the-box thinking and solutions. Breakdowns should happen by design, not accident. In trying to manage back from the future, concrete tasks will have to be undertaken; continuing on the current path will not get you there. Often you don't know how to make these tasks occur. This will generate breakdowns, which can generate out-of-the-box thinking and solutions, if the situation is managed/lead correctly. Continuous open dialogue is key to working through breakdowns. Setting impossible deadlines is another way to encourage breakdowns and out-of-the-box thinking   Insights from: "The Reinvention Roller Coaster: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future." By Tracy Goss, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos.

8 Steps to summon the Leadership power to make the impossible happen

The power to make the impossible happen. As a leader your source of success in the past is probably preventing you from making the impossible happen now. You must re-invent yourself, put past success at risk to make the impossible happen. "I define this advanced level of power as the ability to take something that you believe could never come to pass, declare it possible, and then move that possibility into a tangible reality." She claims there is a set of theories and methods for learning to make the impossible happen, and that these can be taught. Reinventing yourself does not imply that something is wrong with you; it's a process that takes you to a new place, to unfamiliar and unknown territory. Executive re-invention is primarily an ontological journey. Ontology is a branch of philosophy concerning the nature of reality and different ways of being. If you are going to re-invent your organization, then in order to succeed, you must first re-invent yourself. (Note: This is an alternate strategy to Kotter, where re-invention occurs when a different type leader takes over. None of Kotter's success stories seems to have re-invented themselves.) Goss uses the analogy of a Navy SEAL and corporate leaders. The green recruit, despite being among the top 1% of officers in Navy, needs considerable training to take on the impossible missions assigned the SEALs. Similarly, the top 1% of leaders in organizations when they get to the top, are not prepared to take on the impossible; they need training. Transformational change is an oxymoron. "Transformation" is a function of altering the way your being, to create something that is currently not possible in your reality. "Change" is a function of altering what you are doing, to improve something that is already possible in your reality. To transform yourself, you must transform your context, that is, the way you think, talk and act. "Language is the only leverage for changing the context of the world around you. This is because people apprehend and construct reality through the way they speak and listen." "By learning to uncover the concealed aspects of your current conversations and learning to engage in different types of conversations, you can alter the way you are being, which, in turn, alters what's possible."  Insights from The Last Word on Power: Executive Re-invention for Leaders Who Must Make the Impossible Happen. By Tracy Goss.   O2ibm Visit this Open Forum

The 7 stages of leadership re-invention

The seven stages of leadership re-invention. Uncovering your winning strategy: learning to understand what has really created your current level of success. Experiencing the limits of the universal human paradigm at work in your actions. The universal human paradigm colors all choices, decisions and actions. Simply stated, it says: "There is a way that things should be, and when they are that way, things are right. When they're not that way, there is something wrong with me, with them, or with it." This paradigm is inherited simply by being brought into a group or culture. Learning to put everything at risk: becoming willing to operate with no guarantee you will succeed, with your eyes wide open to the high odds of failure and the accompanying consequences. Inventing a new master paradigm that provides you with a new source of power: making a series of declarations that constitute a new master paradigm (Similar to personal vision). Inventing an impossible game to play: making bold promises in a game you have chosen to play Breaking the addiction to interpretation: every problem and dilemma is seen through the way it contributes to your invented future, rather than through filters from the past. Operating beyond the limits of your winning strategy: building the capacity to bring about your "impossible future." Insights from The Last Word on Power: Executive Re-invention for Leaders Who Must Make the Impossible Happen. By Tracy Goss.   O2ibm Visit this Open Forum

Re-invention is not changing what is, but creating what isn't

"The Reinvention Roller Coaster: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future."  By Tracy Goss, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos. The authors contest: Re-invention is not changing what is, but creating what isn't.  A butterfly is not more or a better caterpillar, it is a completely different animal. Incremental change is not enough for many companies today. These companies need to re-invent themselves. "When a company reinvents itself, it must alter the underlying assumptions and invisible premises on which its decisions and actions are based." In other words, it must change its context along the following lines of reasoning: The first step is for a company to uncover its hidden context. A company is only going to do this when it is threatened, losing momentum or eager to break new ground. "The journey to reinvent yourself and your company is not as scary as they say it is; it's worse," says Mort Meyerson, chairman of Perot Systems. You do it only out of the conviction that the only way to compete in the future is to be a totally different company. Shifts in context can only occur when there is a shift in being. Nordstrom's is used as an example. Their way of being is summarized as "Respond to Unreasonable Customer Requests." Those that have tried to copy Nordstrom's have not understood their fundamental way of being and have failed. A declaration from a leader, like Sir Colin Marshall's pronouncement that British Airways would be "the world's favorite airline" (when, at the time, it was one of the worst), does a couple of things: Creates possibility Stimulates interest and commitment A declaration is different from a vision statement, which provides a more elaborate description of the desired state and the criteria against which success will be measured. Key to re-invention is the re-invention of the leader   O2ibm Visit this Open Forum

How pervasive is the issue of culture and change?

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."  Niccolo Machiavelli  In the book "Corporate Culture: Removing the Hidden Barriers to Team Success"  the authos Jacalyn Sherriton and James Stern, contest that corporate culture change is needed for successful implementation of formal teams. Corporate culture is defined by four elements. Ritualized patterns of beliefs, values and behaviors. Management environment created by management styles, philosophies, what is said, done and rewarded. Management environment created by systems and procedures. Written and unwritten norms and procedures. The authors believe that you can make a direct assault on culture change differing with Kotter, Heskett and Schein. The book describes successful change in subcultures when top-level support was either absent or sporadic. They feel that each major functional organization such as marketing or R&D has its own subculture, as do divisions and other large units of the organization. Subcultures are influenced by the overall corporate culture, but subcultures are never the same as the overall culture. There is much more freedom to change a subculture than is commonly realized or acted upon So how perasive is the issue of culture and change?   The authors carried out a survey of 100 companies and found that: 15% had been involved with a merger. 22% had been acquired. 41% had formed alliances. 78% were increasing the utilization of teams. 95% were involved in at least one of these initiatives that culture impacts significantly. Only 51% of respondents felt that their organization understood the need to address culture issues in making these changes. Only 31% of respondents felt their organization had the skills and knowledge to address organizational culture issues. Only 36% had assessed the culture and identified changes needed. But 56% (highest) had plans for training to address culture change. However regarding the pervasiveness of culture and change we ought to bear in mind the following:   Senior managers trying to implement teams continue to act individually: they are concerned about control over the teams and concerned that consensus decision making is too time consuming. They often set a very bad example, for example, by protecting their turf. Team members are typically not used to working in teams. They often are uncomfortable and lack the communication skills to make the teams work effectively. Introduction of teams while downsizing or facing threats of downsizing creates forces that are antithetical to teams.   O2ibm Visit this Open Forum >>

How to Add your Twitter account to LinkedIn

LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman and Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone conclude that their sites go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Join LinkedIn and Twitter Accounts Join your accounts and all sorts of wonderful things happen. Paint a broader picture of your professional ideas by making your Twitter ID appear right on your LinkedIn profile. To add your Twitter account, visit “Edit My Profile” and click “Add Twitter account” next to the Twitter field. Twitter will ask you to verify your account name and password. Once the account is verified, you’ll be asked how you’d like to share your tweets on LinkedIn (see below). Note that once your accounts are joined, you can change this setting at any time by clicking “Edit” next to your Twitter account name. Note that in order to send tweets from Twitter to LinkedIn, your Twitter account must be set as public. P.S. Make sure the “Protect my tweets” box is not checked in your Twitter Settings. Add your Twitter account to LinkedIn O2ibm Visit this Open Forum

How blue are the oceans? The Starwood experience

Robyn Pratt, Starwood An INSEAD article In search of blue oceans: The Starwood experience asks: Are companies using Blue Ocean Strategy to search for ‘uncontested market space’ and, if so, how? One group which has been exploring blue ocean thinking for the past three years is Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Jens Meyer In conjunction with Meyer, the company has developed a process through which employees are trained in Blue Ocean Strategy, effectively focusing on non-customers, before being given three to four months to apply the methodology. Projects are then proposed to the senior operating team at a so-called ‘Visual Strategy Fair’; black belts or master black belts then put together a business case to present those projects to the senior leadership team for a decision on whether to implement these.

How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

The book ‘Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant’ has had a huge impact worldwide. Written by two INSEAD professors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, it sold more than a million copies within its first year of publication and has been translated into 39 languages, breaking Harvard Publishing records as the fastest selling book in print. In the lead up to writing the award-winning book, Kim and Mauborgne spent 15 years studying strategic moves by companies in more than 30 industries over a period spanning from 1880 to 2000. Traditionally competition has been at the heart of corporate strategy – country versus country, company versus company, and even business school versus business school.  The key question is usually how can a company outdo its rivals?

Thinking Ahead Visions: The Leadership Circle

“Leaders get the best out of followers and followers get the best out of leaders,” says Manfred Kets De Vries, Clinical Professor of Leadership Development at INSEAD. The connection between leaders and their staff is only one of many circular connections he sees. The challenge for leaders multiplies as organisations get bigger and as globalisation makes companies more diverse and more virtual.  “It’s very hard to manage large organisations, things become so enormous,” he said in an interview with INSEAD Knowledge. Another circular challenge for leaders is to keep an organisation growing over generations. “To me, the real test of a leader is how well his or her successor does, and very few leaders pass that test,” he says. Leaders have to help people re-invent their organisations. Kets De Vries imagines this as an ancient mythical serpent that swallows its tail but is constantly reborn in a circular connection. To complete that circle, leaders are required to leverage their vision and their skills to create sustainable, results-oriented organisations. He believes group or team coaching is one of the most effective ways of achieving that long-term success.

Actionable Insight: How To Stay Creative Under Pressure

How To Stay Creative Under Pressure John Baldoni  a leadership consultant,and author of eight books, including Lead Your Boss, The Subtle Art of Managing Up, contests that creating urgency to save a sinking ship is imperative. Working long hours to do so is also critical, but working day after day for months on end without a break is a bad idea. When a team is crashing on a deadline, pulling together can be energizing. But when there is no deadline in sight, the long hours exact vengeance in the form of loss of energy as well as diminished commitment. Managers do not become more creative by working harder; they burnout more quickly. You need give people a break from the day to day flow of work. Here are some suggestions for sustaining performance under pressure...

Thinking Ahead Visions: Overhauling the Global Financial System

Rethinking global financial systems A radical rethink of the structure of the global financial markets and greater cooperation of the major regulatory bodies are paramount, said the heads of major financial institutions at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul. Speaking at the World Knowledge Forum, Douglas Feagin, head of Goldman Sachs’ financial institutions group for Asia, believes that reforms of the financial services sector are crucial in restarting economic growth in the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Douglas Feagin Pointing to the bubbles in key asset classes, “unclearly unsustainable” leveraging in the financial systems, and poorly understood and managed derivative securities, Feagin says: “We are going to have to have a change across all these areas – the asset price bubbles, deleveraging and reform of the fundamental securities markets – in order to have a basis to restart economic growth.” Meanwhile, fears of a global recession continue to weigh heavily on financial markets around the world, even as many individual countries – such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – have announced new financial and regulatory measures to shore up their financial systems and currencies, and boost confidence...

What the Experts Say: Four Things Leaders Can't Give

Four Things Groups Want that Leaders Can't Give — and One They Can Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Confidence and SuperCorp in this excellent article contests that emerging group experiences have predictable dynamics, whether they are new project teams, training and development programs, wilderness experiences, or just people learning new jobs. People form relationships based on first impressions and sometimes-false hopes, find that things haven't gone as imagined, and then struggle through confusion and misunderstanding to create their own positive norms that help them work effectively. The best leaders help people through these stages only to find some common issues popping up — things people seem to want that even the best leaders can't provide. Anticipating these dilemmas makes it easier to resolve them. Here are four desires that are almost impossible to satisfy:

Can China do the magic and help power the global economy out of a crisis?

Can China help power the global economy out of a crisis? After five years of double-digit expansion, the world’s fastest-growing economy has succumbed to the economic chill wind sweeping across the globe. China’s economy slowed to an annual growth clip of 9 per cent in the third quarter from 10.1 per cent in the previous quarter ­– well below the consensus forecast of 9.7 per cent. With the credit crisis buffeting global economic growth, China’s industrial production and construction declined due to weaker export orders, factory closures for the Beijing Olympics and the sagging property market. However, retail sales growth remained strong, while inflation eased amid falling commodity prices. Nevertheless, Dominic Barton, Asia Pacific chairman of consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, is “very bullish about where China is going to be over the next two to three years.” Speaking at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, Barton says that while consensus economic forecasts point to a likely two-percentage point drop in China’s economic growth in 2009, its underlying growth drivers remain formidable ­­– due to its large consumer base, significant infrastructure expenditure and the Chinese government’s strong fiscal position.

Live on Wall Street: Living with uncertainty

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Visit this group Living with uncertainty The authorities in the US and Europe have the right policies in place to tackle the financial crisis, but it will take time to restore confidence in the markets, according to speakers at the World Knowledge Forum. James Wolfensohn, who had led the World Bank during the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s, told the forum’s ‘Live on Wall Street’ session that the markets have ‘yet to be convinced of the utility of these interventions.’ James Wolfensohn The US government, along with governments in Europe, will be pumping billions of dollars and euros into the financial system to bail out banks. Echoing Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, Wolfensohn said by satellite link from New York: “What we need, of course, is to restore confidence,” especially as the upcoming US presidential elections were helping to create a “sense of uncertainty in our country.” “Of course, we are all hoping things will modulate and we’ll get used to it and it will turn around but as chairman Bernanke says, it probably will not happen right away.”

Actionable Insight: Engaging Consumers and Suppliers

Sustainable practices: engaging consumers and suppliers -- by Grace Segran, London -- Coca-Cola is one firm that knows very well that its environmental and economic impact extends well beyond its factory gates. This starts with the ingredients it needs for its products to the natural resources required to make the packaging, "extending all the way to the people who buy and consume our drinks and handle the packaging," says CCE Europe's Communications Director, Shanna Wendt who spoke to INSEAD Knowledge on the sidelines of a supply chain conference here recently. Shanna Wend With companies increasingly being held accountable for the environmental and social practices of their supply chain, how then do they go about engaging consumers and suppliers in their supply chain?

What the Experts Say: Skills for Tomorrow's Leaders

Skills for Tomorrow's Leaders In this symposium at the Harvard Business School, expert thinkers gathered to investigate what is necessary today to develop the leaders we need for tomorrow. Featuring: Angel Cabrera, President, Thunderbird School of Management Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic Daisy Wademan Dowling, Executive Director, Leadership Development at Morgan Stanley Andy Zelleke, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School Batia Mishan Wiesenfeld, Professor, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, NYU Evan Wittenberg, Head of Global Leadership Development, Google, Inc. Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor, Harvard University Scott Snook, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School and retired Colonel, US Army Corps of Engineers

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Actionable Insight: Find out How LG Electronics reinvented itself in the US

How LG Electronics reinvented itself in the States Since 2002, Korean electronics giant LG Electronics struggled to launch its brand in the US market. Five years later, it became the top seller of refrigerators and washing machines, and has since been successfully maintaining its lead in the two home appliance categories with current respective market shares of about 24 per cent. LG achieved annual revenue growth of 20 per cent in the Americas, rising to more than $13 billion from $5.6 billion under the leadership of Michael Ahn, a former president and CEO of LGE Americas. Ahn, who’s currently a senior adviser to the company, tells INSEAD Knowledge in an interview that it took a long time for LGE to gain public acceptance of its products as premium products. Even securing national distributors was fraught with difficulties...

What the Experts Say: New Hires Welcome Onboard

Get Immediate Value from Your New Hire There are many theories on how to correctly "onboard" someone to an organization or a team. Most focus on how to provide the new hire with the information and skills she needs to succeed. But that can only take her so far. She will need connections and an understanding of the inner workings and culture of your company to be truly successful. Whether she is transitioning from another part of the organization or is brand new, you can get her up to speed more quickly by going beyond the basics and explaining how things actually get done. What the Experts Say...

Is there hope for a comeback of the newspaper industry?

Is there hope for the newspaper industry? ---- by Kevin Tan ----    The future may be looking decidedly bleak for the newspaper industry in the US, but for Joshua Benton, Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, there is still cause for optimism. “I’m a pessimist for existing newspaper companies. I’m a total optimist that there’s going to be more information available to consumers and to readers than there has ever been the case before,” says Benton, speaking to INSEAD Knowledge on the sidelines of the Reporting New Realities media conference held recently in Hong Kong. “This is already true and I don’t think that’s going to change. We are seeing a remarkable eco-system of new online start-ups arrive both at the local and the national levels in the United States and elsewhere.” Read full article and view Video from Hong Kong media conference: newspaper industry session “And they are innovating, they are coming up with new models, and while I may not be optimistic for the old players and their sustainability and their willingness to change and to innovate in this new world, I think that as consumers and as citizens of democracies, we’re going to be ok.” Even so, that is of little comfort to print journalists, as the industry continues to be buffeted by falling advertising revenues, declining circulation, and mounting editorial job losses. Indeed, Benton notes that about a third of all newspaper journalists in the US have lost their jobs since 2006. According to a recent survey of 353 newspaper and broadcast executives by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, 70 per cent of respondents reported staff cutbacks in the past three years. In addition, 70 per cent of newspaper executives say their newsrooms are leaner than ideal but can still do the job well, although 15 per cent of newspaper executives think that their newsrooms are too small to do more than the bare minimum. Only 15 per cent of respondents believe that paid online content will be a significant source of revenue in three years.