Tomorrow I will see a close friend and former boss who taught me a lot about business. One of the things he taught me was that actions speak louder that words. Rule #1: Do something. People like to use the phrases ‘walk the walk’ and ‘leading by the example‘ but don’t provide any details on what it…
This is my 100th post! I realize that it may seem a bit hypocritical for me to be celebrating a milestone based on an activity metric, rather than an outcome one. As I pointed out in a post trying to define the mission and objectives for this blog, the quality of the posts is much…
Even though I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year talking to clients about risk management, I haven’t covered the topic in this blog other than my post on Risk Friends and Key Risk Indicators. This is especially odd as I’ve come to believe strategy management and risk management are inextricably linked. I’ll expound…
On Friday, a colleague in another division asked me “How do you measure the effectiveness of analysts relations?” It’s an unanswerable question we’ve all been asked 1000 times about a wide variety of topics (even a marine terminal gate). As I said then, every time someone asks you to show them the measures, be sure to…
For many years, I’ve argued that performance management is not just limited to finance but instead has many flavors, including workforce, operational, and IT performance management. Most people now seem to agree and there’s even talk of pervasive performance management. However, a critical analysis of the current situation suggests that marketing organizations are still early on…
Last month Ingrid Koehler (re)started an interesting discussion on whether citizens should be considered customers. While the debate isn’t necessarily new, it might be back in vogue with a majority of U.S. voters clamoring for change but the nation in a difficult financial situation. In a comment, Kari Manovitch suggests one size doesn’t fit all and that community, customer or…
An article in Industrial Market Trends alerted me to the Goldense Group 2008 Product Development Metrics Survey of the top 10 R&D metrics used by industry: R&D spending as a percentage of sales (77 percent); Total patents filed/pending/awarded/rejected (61 percent); Total R&D headcount (59 percent) Current-year percentage sales due to new products released in the past six…
Financial Week must be a little bit schizophrenic. A Sept 1, 2008 article titled “CFO turnover hits a record high” stated that, according to Crist Kolder Associates: CFO volatility—a measure of how often an executive leaves his or her finance post—reached its highest level in 13 years in 2007, with 128 CFOs departing their jobs,…
Financial Week reports that “according to a study to be released [in October] by executive recruiter Crist Kolder Associates, roughly half of the CFOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies stay in their posts for less than three years.” This equates to the average tenure of an NFL running back. Before you get too impressed,…
As a strategy management aficionado, I fell out of my chair laughing when I saw this Dilbert. After a few minutes, I realized I should have objected to Dogbert using PowerPoint to capture the goals. He should have used strategy management software instead. At least Dogbert is following the maxim that personal incentives should be…