Over the last decade, the number of women-owned businesses grew at nearly twice the rate of all U.S. firms. Despite this good news, the statistics about women as business leaders are disheartening. Only 2.6% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. Only 16% of the House and Senate members are women. (Even worse, seven of…
Archive | strategy
Strategy shouldn’t be static
My previous company used the slogan ‘aligning execution with strategy’ to emphasize that often what companies do (their execution) often doesn’t match what they say they want to do (their strategy). The phrase became so common among employees, partners, and customers that we would sometimes slip up and say ‘aligning strategy with execution.’ When that happened, I would often…
Survival of the loudest
On the heels of writing about prioritizing by what’s urgent rather than important, an article in Management-Issues reminds me we also have to worry about prioritization based on who yells the loudest. The article quotes a U.C. Berkeley study which showed outspoken people were judged as possessing higher levels of general intelligence, regardless of their…
Prioritizing What’s Important
Long-time readers know I recommend creating an alignment-focused organization as the fundamental way to improve performance. As I’ve said in many publications (BPM Magazine, Information Management, CxO magazine), To do so, organizations must motivate their employees with integrated and cascaded objectives, manage priorities based on impacts rather than perceived urgency, monitor progress towards outcomes, and…
Speedlinking, May 2009
One part writer’s block and two parts schedule overload means I don’t have time to write an original post. Speedlinking to the rescue: Over at ‘I Help You Blog’, Philip suggests 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle. My personal favorite is #101: Create a post with a 101 ideas. In a relatively…
Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?
In the Harvard Business Review article Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?, David Collis and Michael Rukstad claim most executives cannot summarize their company’s strategy. Of course, if executives can’t, no one else in the organization will be able to. And those organizations that don’t understand their strategy are unlikely to execute them successfully. In their words:…
My Management Guidelines
Since the title of this blog is “manage by walking around,” I thought I’d share a few examples of how I use that philosophy myself. While there is plenty of debate as to whether there is a difference between managing and leading, I describe myself as a leader rather than a manager. By that, I…
Dilbert on Goals
One last parting shot on MBOs and the proliferation of goals: Note to all vendors of software packages that support goal tracking (including my employer): It’s only a joke. I do know that there’s value in using technology to solve these problems.
Performance Management Quotes
A few of my favorite quotes about performance management: Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Tzŭ c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter F. Drucker, American Management Guru The essence of competitiveness…
Predictions for 2009
As I have in previous years, I had planned to catalog 2009 predictions for the BI and performance management markets to get a sense of how the general consensus might be changing. The new year is nearly a month old and, since I’ve made almost no progress, I was pleased to discover that Timo Elliott beat me to…