Leadership

Tips on being a better leader and creating great leaders within the organization.

Call for Papers: Creating High Performing Teams — the role of leadership, coaching, mentoring, and team building

Christine Generali | Feb 25, 2013 1 Response

Feb 252013

The expanding investments in people and the retracting investments in people precede the economic business cycle of boom or bust. In other words, when companies begin to re-invest in people, productivity increases, creativity soars, new products appear and new customers are engaged. When companies pull back on people investments, sales start to sag, productivity declines, product introductions slow to a trickle and soon the business falters. The faltering of business is usually obfuscated initially by the drive for efficiency and financial engineering of the books but the employees reflect the dropping corporate barometric pressure. Rumors fly, people begin to hang out at the water cooler to commiserate and speculate about what is going on. High …

2013: Lean Concepts Such as Strategic Value, Operational Kanban Will Begin to Transform Enterprises

James Sutton | Dec 5, 2012 No Responses

Dec 052012

2013: Lean Concepts Such as Strategic Value, Operational Kanban Will Begin to Transform Enterprises

Last year I predicted that enterprises would take an increasingly holistic systems view. I said “they will take an increasingly strategic view of improvement, coordinating change across divisions and functions to achieve a higher overall level of performance. This trend is reversing [of] short-term, every-division-for-itself fractionalization…[so that] the Enterprise, at the end of 2012, will look more like an effective, coordinated whole and less like a collection of disparate…parts.” This happened as predicted. One of the best indicators of it is the rapid acceleration since that time of “reverse offshoring” or “inshoring.” Reverse offshoring is the return of business from lower labor-cost nations where it had been transferred in previous years. Offshoring is a useful …

New Ways of Management

Jens Coldewey | Nov 28, 2012 2 Responses

Nov 282012

For nearly 20 years now, management theory has been changing. It started with single books, such as Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline. By the end of the 90s it had developed into several independent movements/management models. One of them was the Agile Software Development movement; others included the Beyond Budgeting movement and the Human Systems Dynamics movement. Though each of these movements was launched from a completely different perspective (e.g., organizational development, software development) each came to a very similar conclusion: The traditional way to organize companies is well suited for industry and mass production but hinders knowledge work and is unable to adapt to the ever-growing pace of the market. Traditional companies are based on a deterministic …

Emerging Technologies to Enable Business Models & Processes at Unprecedented Pace

Stephen Andriole | Nov 27, 2012 No Responses

Nov 272012

Emerging Technologies to Enable Business Models & Processes at Unprecedented Pace

2013 is the year when a major re-thinking of business technology strategy — organized around the power of emerging technology — will begin. The re-thinking will be driven by the rapid deployability of emerging technologies like cloud computing, social business intelligence, mobility, location-enabled services and big data analytics. The time-to-technology-deployment is shrinking — fast: companies will dramatically accelerate their adoption of emerging technologies — especially due to cloud delivery — and redefine their business models and processes around the capabilities of the new technologies. Examples include location-enabled services for cross-selling and up-selling, social business intelligence for corporate crisis warning and management, big data analytics for slicing customer profiling and performance — in real time — …

Commander’s Intent and Corporate Guidance

Carl Pritchard | Jan 31, 2012 5 Responses

Jan 312012

A financial services client last month asked me if I had read anything about management and the relationship to “commander’s intent.” While I had to confess that I had not, I did some quick searching to find out what the concept was about and how it might relate to effective management practice. What I found was a compelling object lesson on how we should be drawing on the lessons learned from other practices. The concept of “commander’s intent” has been around for almost 200 years. It’s a compelling military concept, originated by the Germans. The idea is that rather than apply tight command and control, leaders provide a clear sense of the outcomes they seek …

Update on Leadership Exec Ed

Anne Mullaney | Jan 18, 2012 No Responses

Jan 182012

Wow, I can’t believe that our Summit 2012: Executive Education+ is less than 3 months away! A while ago, I blogged a little about Prof. Amy Edmondson’s keynote on Teaming, which will be preceded by two teaming exercises run by Prof. Alan MacCormack. At the time, we hadn’t yet firmed up the case study portion of our program. But we have since then. We’ve chosen a case that bridges the topic of leadership (which is the focus of Prof. Richard Nolan’s keynote on Monday morning and the debate that follows it) and teaming. As with Alan’s exercises, we’re keeping the title of the case under wraps so there are no preconceived notions of the outcomes! …

Systems Improvements for Government

Mark Peterson | Dec 22, 2011 No Responses

Dec 222011

Numerous State, County and Municipal entities are facing difficult times managing finances and workforce cost. With the continued economic slump, government and its departments/business units are experiencing tighter budgets and are insisting upon greater value from investments. At the same time, financial and budgeting systems have aged to the point where it’s time to look at replacing them. While still useful, many existing business systems are lacking integration capabilities, hindering much-needed increases in workforce efficiency and effectiveness. New systems come with high expectations for improvement. Financial ERP systems for State, County and Municipalities will be a major focus area for replacement and upgrades. While IT organizations have been prominent in developing project management offices (PMOs) …

The Enterprise Begins to Dance

James Sutton | Dec 16, 2011 No Responses

Dec 162011

In 2011, and with increasing speed in 2012, Enterprises are embracing the whole-system view of themselves. This means they will take an increasingly strategic view of improvement, coordinating change across divisions and functions to achieve a higher overall level of performance. This trend is reversing the short-term, every-division-for-itself fractionalization that many organizations adopted during the financial pressure years 2008 – 2010. In the coming year we will see more of the team mindset (with some “taking one for the team” while others seemingly gain) than the “spread the pain” approach. The most successful organizations will compensate those groups which bear the greater pain so the whole can prosper. The systems-wholistic trend will continue even if …

Is Leadership a Science?

Christine Generali | Dec 15, 2011 No Responses

Dec 152011

CIOs and their management teams are facing a leadership crises – with the emphasis on MORE – be more productive, more efficient, more creative, more collaborative, more customer focused and more business savvy. How can leaders inspire their teams to produce technical innovation in a timely, efficient manner? What approaches – or maybe even a science – can help leaders meet these increasing demands? The March 2012 Cutter IT Journal, with Guest Editor Lynne Ellyn, will address these questions. Please send us your ideas – proposals of interest are due 28 December 2011. To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers02.html

Go Team(ing)!

Anne Mullaney | Dec 12, 2011 No Responses

Dec 122011

We’re really exciting about “teaming day” at Summit 2012: Executive Education+ (April 2-4). The line-up is amazing. It starts with Alan MacCormack, of Harvard Business School, conducting two exercises (experiments?) on teaming to demonstrate how to make teams more effective and innovative. Yes, he’ll be breaking the group up into teams. But we’re not revealing any more — you’ll have to come and experience it yourself! Afterwards, Alan’s colleague at HBS, Amy Edmondson will keynote on teaming. Amy was recently named to the 2011 Thinkers50 list. Her presentation will divulge what prevents organizations from learning. Her case study research shows barrier that include interpersonal fear, irrational beliefs about failure, groupthink, problematic power dynamics and information hoarding. …

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Leadership

Call for Papers: Creating High Performing Teams — the role of leadership, coaching, mentoring, and team building

2013: Lean Concepts Such as Strategic Value, Operational Kanban Will Begin to Transform Enterprises

New Ways of Management

Emerging Technologies to Enable Business Models & Processes at Unprecedented Pace

Commander’s Intent and Corporate Guidance

Update on Leadership Exec Ed

Systems Improvements for Government

The Enterprise Begins to Dance

Is Leadership a Science?

Go Team(ing)!

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