Showing posts with label decision making. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decision making. Show all posts

Leadership A to Z: A Guide for the Appropriately Ambitious (Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series) Review

Leadership A to Z: A Guide for the Appropriately Ambitious (Jossey-Bass Business and Management Series)
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Leadership A to Z: A Guide for the Appropriately Ambitious (Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series) ReviewHow to describe a book with this title? It is not a dictionary. It is not a sequential narrative. It is not an anthology of aphorisms or portions of previous publications. It is not a manual. (However, its title does make much more sense than would those of other books such as Chicken Soup for Dummies or Stan Laurel on Management.) What Leadership A to Z provides is "a guide for the appropriately ambitious." O'Toole believes that more can be learned from what effective leaders do (and how they do it) than from their personality and character. What do all effective leaders seem to have in common? What O'Toole characterizes as "appropriate ambition." Note the modifier. All of us have ambitions. (The most effective leaders assuredly do.) Within effective organizations, most of those involved seem to have both personal and organizational ambitions which nourish and sustain each other. At least these ambitions are not mutually-exclusive or even incompatible. Within the most effective organizations, these ambitions are almost (not quite) identical. Moreover, most of the time -- day to day -- most of those involved are leaders of leaders. That is, sharing ambitions which are appropriate to them as well as to their organization, together functioning as what Noel Tichy has described as a well-designed, carefully-maintained "leadership engine."
How should this book be read? One option is to read it sequentially from A to Z. That will work. However, my personal preference (and suggestion) is to re-visit the Contents (pages ix-xi) whenever there is a question to be answered, a problem to be solved, or a new perspective needed. You may find that the answer will reveal itself after you read (let's say) some/all of B, H, J, and T; perhaps reading some/all of A, M, R, and W will suggest a solution; as for gaining a new perspective, I often hop around, in and out, back and forth. Sometimes I locate or formulate one...sometimes I don't.
The book's content is rock-solid. The writing style (vintage O'Toole) has snap, crackle, and pop. The selection of individual items was, of course, arbitrary but the material seems cohesive...perhaps because, directly or indirectly, all of the items help to demonstrate "appropriate ambition" in action. Another way to approach the book is to pretend that you have just entered O'Toole's General Store. Perhaps you have a specific item in mind. Or perhaps you are just "looking around." Fine. Take your time. Check out the merchandise. No obligation to buy anything today. Come back again another time. You are always welcome. Next visit, perhaps, you'll need what you saw last time in Aisle 5. It's nice to know it's there. It's nice to know that some much else is also there, waiting to be of help to you.Leadership A to Z: A Guide for the Appropriately Ambitious (Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series) Overview

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The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies: ...And How to Break Them Review

The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies: ...And How to Break Them
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The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies: ...And How to Break Them ReviewMaintaining the success of a corporation over the long term has a lot to do with the fortunes afforded by healthy market forces, but there can be debilitating factors afoot that do not allow companies to take advantage nor insulate themselves during inevitable downturns. These factors may be obvious from a conceptual standpoint, but as Steven Covey has proven with his bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, sometimes the most obvious things have to be laid out in an easy-to-absorb manner that resonates with people who are most prone to such behavior. Whereas Covey identifies positive habits on an individual level, Emory University's Jagdish N. Sheth takes the more daunting task of identifying the self-destructive habits of corporate leaders as proven by renowned companies experiencing very public failures. Not coincidentally, Sheth limits himself to seven to make the comparison with Covey all the more clear. Like Covey, the author trumpets them like the Seven Deadly Sins, and four of the seven especially take on that aura.
The most obvious is hubris. Unexpected success, especially at the magnitude that brings widespread media attention, can inflate the egos of an unprepared leadership exponentially. Key examples we have seen recently have been Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling at Enron; Bernard Ebbers at WorldCom; and in the related political arena, the Republican Party circa November 2006 when the leadership forced their own value system upon constituents unwilling to accept such rhetoric and legislation unconditionally. On the other end of the outward behavioral model is complacency where success is taken for granted, so much so that monopolists lose their grip on the market forces far earlier than potential competitors think about entering it with their own niche strategy. Especially guilty are monopolies of distribution and regulation, the latter in cases where the government owns the business as in the case of Air India. The territorial impulse is the third factor, the tendency to develop functional silos around a company's perceived value, which ultimately comes down to a level of unnecessary in-fighting that results in suboptimal performance. What happens here is that insulation from an uncontrollable market becomes a greater priority than looking at encouraging new avenues for value.
This last fact is critical in understanding how the fourth self-destructive habit, volume obsession, festers. Volume is seen as an overriding factor for success, even though the profit margins are eroding with the increasing desire to commoditize. Little if any attention is paid to whether one's output is becoming obsolete in an ever-changing market. According to Sheth, the less obvious factors could be the most damaging because they are insinuative by their very nature. Denial is one such habit where current realities are not even confronted, and he points to the aversion to the Green Movement as a key example of an inevitable need being ignored since short-term benefits cannot be clearly ascertained. Even more common among companies depending on specialty technologies for their profits is an inability to face any advances that would cause disruption to their business models, and this could run the gamut from online social networking to outsourcing.
The remaining two bad habits are competency dependency and competitive myopia, which really strike me as outgrowths of the other five. Sheth defines competency dependence as the inability to re-invent oneself, whereas competitive myopia is when a company starts to align the competition with its perception of their limitations and thus underestimate what they can do. The author's perspective is hardly dire as he concisely outlines what strategies corporate leadership needs to enact to break the cycle of perpetual destruction. As he showed with his recent co-authorship of Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, Sheth is an engaging writer who easily brings a real-world context to his theories. Although not really groundbreaking, the book is a fast read and an insightful one for those executives and managers looking for guidelines around their company's growth.The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies: ...And How to Break Them Overview

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Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Making in a Changing World Review

Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Making in a Changing World
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Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Making in a Changing World ReviewBlythe J. McGarvie is a global citizen, who just happens to call the U.S. home. She inspires us to change our point of view in "Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Making in a Changing World." Inspired by Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat," she moves beyond his insights to share her experiences in diverse businesses all over the world. It's new. It's different. Give up your old world views and be part of it. What a way to lead change!Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Making in a Changing World Overview

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First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently Review

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
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First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently ReviewI found this book valuable as it was based on research with over 80,000 managers, not just one person's personal experience. As a manager, the 12 questions that define a great place to work helped me step back and identify what type of environment I am creating for my employees --- or failing to create. Reading the book has led to some very open discussions with my direct reports on those issues. I especially liked the six questions for a review that turn a brief look at past performance into a discussion about what the person needs to do to move forward. I included those questions in my reviews this year.
In our department's people development, we often focused primarily on where people need to improve. The authors gave a different perspective on leveraging strengths and managing around weaker areas.
I also liked the definition of "manager" vs. "leader". Too often management skills are seen as inferior to leadership, yet this book showed that they are separate skill sets. I've got a ways to go with both skill sets, but now have somewhat of a blueprint for how to move forward. This book has helped me look at what I am doing to impact the quality of our work environment.First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently Overview

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Business Decisions How to Be More Decisive While Reducing Risk in Today's Economy Review

Business Decisions How to Be More Decisive While Reducing Risk in Today's Economy
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Business Decisions How to Be More Decisive While Reducing Risk in Today's Economy ReviewAfter reading Michael McGrath's previous decision-making books, I anticipated his new book about business decisions to be helpful as well. I was pleased to read even more historical examples than I expected, and I learned hands-on techniques I could apply in all types of situations. Michael's style of writing makes it easy and enjoyable to read while providing many great perspectives for how we approach our decisions, and better yet... how to make the best decisions possible. A must-read!Business Decisions How to Be More Decisive While Reducing Risk in Today's Economy Overview

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Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) Review

Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series)
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Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) ReviewThis is the third book I've read by Mr. Hugos and he never disappoints! Writing in an entertaining style that is easy to understand, informative without being pedantic Mr. Hugos skillfully delivers on making business perform and more profitable in the information economy. I have run a business for a quarter century in an industry where the operative buzz word has always been urgency but after reading Business Agility Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive world my philosophy of conducting business and my understanding of how businesses should operate have been fundamentally changed.
By introducing and /or elaborating on three concepts OODA, Six Sigma, and Mr. Hugos' own DDB Define Design Build, and melding them all together in a cohesive plan to attain business agility he has delivered a powerful new book to the bible on how to properly conduct business, and how to stretch the almighty profit margin!
The concepts of business agility are cleverly conveyed by his use of drawing analogies from how a sun flower functions to the military tactics of great military minds of the past. While this book was probably written with the idea of making a large enterprise more nimble (it takes a while to turn an ocean liner) I see where the ideas and concepts presented will be useful in my small business (canoes have to be navigated too!)
In this book Mr. Hugos has shown how the old hierarchical controlling ways of doing business should be, must be replaced with a coordinated network approach. An approach that enables innovation, and promotes visibility, training and creates motivation. In this book Mr. Hugos has created a blue print to transform any organization from a staid assembly line, monolithic dinosaur to a dynamic, responsive and adaptive modern firm capable of growing the bottom line.
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Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct, and Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent Review

Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct, and Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent
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Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct, and Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent ReviewA Search Consultant myself, the book put forward some good idea's which it completely fails to work out. It is a book written for PR purposes rather than an attempt to give a genuine informed in-depth look of how, quoting the back-flap "the profession is charting the course of global business". Therefore it resembles nothing more than an parade of truisms.
An example is how McCool calculates the cost of a bad hire; I know the cost is high but the costs as claimed by the author are not substantiated, either backed up by any research or by detailed argumentation as why they are so high: the cost of a bad executive hire ranges from 10 to 15 times the annual salary of the executive (20% direct costs - 80% indirect costs). Why? How? McCool never explains or argues how he gets to such figures - his assertion this represents the cost is enough.
The "because I say so" argumentation underlies all claims made in the book. All follow the path where idea's which do make sense are brought forward, but are not worked out nor illustrated in a manner that goes beyond the writing of what looks like a quickie performed by a PR ghost writer. Still, the majority of the chapters are not as meek as the one where he tells a story of how a headhunter can be a "hearthunter".
Sigh.Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct, and Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent Overview

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Win/Loss Reviews: A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) Review

Win/Loss Reviews: A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series)
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Win/Loss Reviews: A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) ReviewThis unique and authorative text from the Microsoft Executive Leadership Series focuses on gaining actionable competitive insights through the scalable process of quickly and effectively capturing win and loss information from those directly on the front lines who have the clearest view of the action - the sales force. To that end Win/Loss Reviews - A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence turns a classic competitive intelligence approach on its head on so many levels for many a practitioner or sales professional to implement for the first time or fine tune. Firstly it has been written by a practitioner that has been there and done that for his employer, Microsoft. Secondly, Rick Marcet's background is sales and the approach in the book is to build the process around the seller for the primary benefit of the seller, understanding the psyche of sales and leveraging the phenomenon of crowd wisdom, where everyone in sales can benefit from peer insights. Thirdly the text provides an adaptable blueprint for B2B businesses to implement a programme for themselves as an adjunct to best in class sales or as a rasion d'etre for CI programmes. Rick manages to integrate sales and CI practitioner perspectives in such a complimentary, win-win manner that this easy to follow text expertly combines theory and practical execution for a step change in both sales and competitive performance.
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Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) Review

Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series)
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Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) Review"Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution" by Bruno Aziza and Joey Fitts represents much more than a demystification of performance management terminology. The book is neither a re-telling of the benefits of performance management, nor a veiled attempt to shape a business case for PerformancePoint. Instead, the authors introduce novel ideas backed by case study research, culminating in a pervasive and flexible model for business transformation within the scope of performance improvement.
The Culture of Performance (CoP) Model presented by the authors bridges a gap between the establishment of a performance measurement framework (e.g., Balanced Scorecard, TQM, Lean, etc.), and the tools and methods brought to bear in executing performance measurement (read: Business Intelligence). CoP is a comprehensive model for evolving organisations into the strategy-focused enterprises that Drs. Kaplan and Norton envisioned years earlier. To be certain, we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
That the authors chose to include "culture" in the name of their model cannot be understated: it directly addresses organisation-wide cultural transformation as it relates to the adoption of performance management (through the model's six phases). The authors demonstrate, with compelling evidence, that a company is more likely to achieve its desired outcomes when all its members adopt a performance-oriented mindset. Here, case studies on Expedia, Energizer and The Veterans' Health Administration (U.S.) each strike a chord on the sometimes painful transformation to a culture of performance. Aziza and Fitts make these findings practical, encouraging incubation through scored questionnaires, supporting capability models (MAP) and guiding principles. The final chapter of the book provides an excellent summary that aligns said scores to an entry point into the CoP model; this provides a reasonable indication of where an organisation may begin to improve business performance.
This excellent book warrants careful review and consideration-- it represents fresh and illuminating thinking from two of the most prominent figures in the field of performance management. For executives, directors and managers looking to improve business performance (as well as consultants specialising in performance management) consider this book essential reading.
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