HOW TO THINK STRATEGICALLY

by Michael Watkins

Are great strategic thinkers born or made? The answer turns out to be “yes.” Yes, individuals sit somewhere on a spectrum of innate talent and yes, you can develop that talent.

The implication for organizations is that they must find ways to identify and cultivate future leaders with the capacity to think strategically. The implication for the individual leader is that it is pointless to worry about nature versus nurture. Both matter, but there isn’t much you can do at this point on the nature side. You should focus on nurturing the talent you have.

Approaches to develop your strategic thinking ability include:

Immersion. Total immersion is the best way to learn a new language. It’s the best way to figure out complex business environments, too. Immersion is important because people need significant “soak time” in a milieu in order to build powerful mental models. Note to talent development professionals: This insight also highlights the dangers of moving people too rapidly from business to business or job to job, because there isn’t time to master the core dynamics of each new situation.

Apprenticeships. As with most arts, one of the best ways to learn to think strategically is to work closely with masters in apprenticeship-like relationships. These provide low-risk environments in which novices can observe and learn from the work of masters and so absorb their ways of thinking.

Simulations. Business simulations are a great tool for developing intuition about interactions among the variables that drive organizational performance. They provide a “manageably complex” environment within which managers can safely experiment and gain insight into cause-effect relationships. Unlike the real world, you also can “wind things back” and try again if they don’t work the first time. My favorite example is the Executive Challenge simulation developed by Enspire Learning.

Game-theory training. Game theory is the study of “games” involving intelligent actors with conflicting interests who can make moves and countermoves that yield specific potential payoffs. It’s easy to be put off by game theory because the detail involves lots of mathematics which can’t be applied in many real-world situations. But they’re great ways to imagine situations and how you might behave in them. One good reference for this is Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff.

Case-based education. You can accelerate the development of your strategic thinking by exposing yourself to a diverse range of realistic “cases” and letting yourself reflect on the experiences so you can absorb the lessons. Research suggests that this sort of exposure to distillations of reality is particularly powerful when it involves comparisons of cases that are similar but involve a few key distinctions that drive significant differences in outcomes.

Cognitive reshaping. This literally means doing mental exercises that create new habits of mind. One example is the “go to the balcony” exercise proposed by William Ury in his negotiation book Getting Past No. Ury advises negotiators to discipline themselves, regardless of how tense and difficult the proceedings, to periodically take a step back and “go to the balcony” in order to get perspective on what is happening and why, and adjust strategies accordingly. It’s a great way to develop your ability to move across levels of abstraction. Another example is the architect’s exercise, in which any time you enter a new home or office space, you take the time to think about how you would change the space to make it a more attractive place in which to live or work. This exercise is particularly helpful in developing visioning ability.

What suggestions do you have for developing the ability to think strategically?

Fuente: Harvard Business Review

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

BUSINESS PLAN - PLAN DE NEGOCIOS

BUSINESS PLAN - PLAN DE NEGOCIOS

 (by Dilbert)

Created by Scott Adams, Dilbert is about the world's most famous -- and funny -- dysfunctional office

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

STRENGTHEN YOUR STRATEGIC THINKING MUSCLES

by Liane Davey

Have you been told that you need to be more strategic? Whether through 360 feedback or after a failed promotion attempt, being told that you aren’t strategic enough really stings. Worse is when you try to clarify what “more strategic” would look like and get few tangible suggestions. 

Being more strategic doesn’t mean making decisions that affect the whole organization or allocating scarce budget dollars. It requires only that you put the smallest decision in the context of the organization’s broader goals. Nurturing a relationship, such as one that could provide unique insight into a supplier, a customer, or a competitor is highly strategic. Everyone has an opportunity to think more strategically.

If you’re not being seen as enough of a strategic thinker, my guess is that it’s because you’re so busy. What percentage of your workweek is spent in meetings? How much of the time left over is a mad dash to respond to emails, make phone calls, and do some actual work? Is there anything left? Under the guise of productivity, you have probably squeezed out thinking time. The result is decisions that are based more on reflex than on reflection.  The risk of reflexive, knee-jerk decisions is that they tend to be based on what has worked before. That would be fine if our world was static, but it is not.  Your industry, your competitors, your customers are changing at an unprecedented rate. Doing what you’ve always done can be as risky (or more risky) as trying a new and unproven approach.

In this context, it’s critically important to make time to reflect before making decisions. What is involved? Who is involved? What is at stake? What is the opportunity and what are the risks?  What at first seems like an opportunity might reveal significant risk and what seemed risky at first might reveal a significant opportunity.

Your other response to your harried life might be to make a list of things to accomplish, put your head down and get things done. But focusing too narrowly restricts your chance to be strategic. Strategic people create connections between ideas, plans, and people that others fail to see.

A senior banking executive was looking for a new IT vendor for operations in the Caribbean when he learned that another department was working on new customer service standards. His default reaction was to just carry on.  But that would have been a lost opportunity to marry the system requirements with the new service standards, which allowed the marriage of better protocols for customer interactions with more efficient and effective data available in real time.

And remember, relationships are strategic too. The executive asked the new IT vendor to introduce him to other clients who had already implemented their new systems. He had the chance to ask questions about the vendor and how to optimize the contract and the relationship.

Strategic people see the world as a web of interconnected ideas and people and they find opportunities to advance their interests at those connection points.

But a person who reflects on situations and connects ideas and people still has one problem: it isn’t possible to do everything! Possibilities are unlimited; time, money, and resources are not. That necessitates the ability and willingness to make choices. In famous Renaissance group research, failure to focus on a few key strategies contributed to the failure to execute strategy.

Making choices, both about what you will do and what you won’t, it is a critical part of being strategic.  Closing one door in favor of another requires the courage to take action (for which you could later be blamed) and confidence to abandon an alternative (which could be a missed opportunity). It is at the point of choice that your ability to be strategic is finally tested.  It isn’t without risks, but the risk of not choosing, of spreading limited resources over too many options is greater.

You will be seen as more strategic if you take action and course-correct than if you choose to stagnate and doing nothing or stall from trying to do everything.

You don’t need a new title, more control, or bigger budgets to be more strategic; you just need to be more deliberate in your thoughts and actions.  By investing time and energy to reflect on the situations and decisions that face you; by finding ways to connect ideas and people that you had never linked before; and by having the courage to make choices about what you will do and what you won’t, you will greatly increase your strategic contribution.  Soon people will be looking at you differently, calling on you more often, and maybe even giving you that promotion you’ve been hoping for.

Fuente: Harvard Business Review

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

CORPORATE CHARITY - CARIDAD CORPORATIVA

CORPORATE CHARITY - CARIDAD CORPORATIVA

 (by Dilbert)

Created by Scott Adams, Dilbert is about the world's most famous -- and funny -- dysfunctional office

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

WHAT ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE REALLY IS

by Jamie Notter

This post is an excerpt from the Snippet e-book “Culture that Works: How Getting Serious About Culture Unlocks New Performance” (November 2013) by Jamie Notter

One reason organizational culture does not make the priority list of leaders is that it is hard to define. It’s squishy. It’s complex. Sometimes it’s even contradictory. Employees will experience your culture in different ways and even describe it differently. With all the other challenges your business faces, I can see why culture takes a back seat. It turns out, however, that the complex nature of culture actually drives its power.

Having the best product or making the perfect strategic move doesn’t buy you much time at the top. The competition moves faster than it used to. As Rita Gunther McGrath wrote in Harvard Business Review, the landscape has shifted from looking for that long-term, sustainable competitive advantage to managing more of a portfolio of “transient advantages,” moving from one short-lived advantage to the next.

Sounds hard, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. But this is where culture comes in. Like most organizations, your competitors have typically ignored culture. They’ve been focusing on strategy and operations (understandably), and culture simply became a luxury that they would get to once they achieved some success. But remember, the whole point of culture is to drive the success of the enterprise. Waiting to work on your culture until after you become successful actually condemns you to a perpetually mediocre culture. This, in turn, weakens your ability to succeed. It’s a negative flywheel effect.

Focusing on culture not only removes this negative flywheel, it can replace it with a positive one if you do it right. And, unlike products and strategies, which can be quickly copied, the culture advantage has more power. The fact that it is complex and challenging only means that any advantage you gain over your competitors will be tough to match. So, how do you secure this kind of advantage? It starts with understanding what culture really is.

A definition

I have boiled down my definition of culture to make it as clear and actionable as possible:

"Organizational culture is the collection of words, actions, thoughts, and “stuff” that clarifies and reinforces what a company truly values".

To explain, I’ll start with the last word: values. Culture is ultimately about what is valued. That can include flowery “values statements” if you like, but to be honest, those statements aren’t where the power lies. Enron had nice statements in their lobby about things like integrity and honesty, but that wasn’t really valued at the end of the day, was it? It turns out making your numbers look good at all costs was valued, so that’s what people did. Your culture is the collection of things that clarifies and reinforces what is really valued by the system.

And that means it’s complex. I listed four things in the definition that create your culture: words, actions, thoughts, and stuff. The first three are brought to life by you and your people. Culture is a complex combination of what we say it is, our behaviors, and the underlying assumptions and thinking behind it. As you might expect, those three areas are often inconsistent, which is one reason why culture can be so messy. It becomes something that you have to piece together, recognizing you’ll find some contradictions along the way.

For example, we’ll say we value customer service, but we’ll also say we value being strategic and focused on the long term. Those values are nice, but at times are quite opposed to each other. One is proactive and one is reactive, and to figure out where the culture really stands on that contradiction, you’ll have to assess several things at once. It’s the combination of what people say and what they do that will ultimately determine how those two values are balanced.

Additionally, you have to factor in the “stuff.” Forgive the technical jargon here, but “stuff” just means the non-human parts of culture. Tangible things like office layout, office location, office decor, dress code, what types of computers you use, etc. These also reflect what is valued, so they have to be included in your analysis of what your culture really is.

There are more eloquent definitions out there, and there are definitions that either go deeper or broader, but I use this one because it facilitates action. Words, actions, thoughts, and stuff give you things you can work with. They give you areas where you can experiment and change and learn. And they keep the conversation about values moving, rather than stuck down a path that leads toward a boring new set of inspirational posters—but no improvement in performance.​

A time for action

So, now I’ll ask you to think about your culture. Think about the words, actions, thoughts, and stuff that clarify and reinforce what your organization truly values. And don’t limit yourself to a culture that sounds cool or represents only your ideals. Get real about “what is.” What is valued? What is rewarded? What is discouraged? Not so clear? Well, now is the time for you to figure this out.

Fuente: SmartBlog on Leadership

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

MEETING WITH INVESTORS - REUNIÓN CON INVERSORES

MEETING WITH INVESTORS - REUNIÓN CON INVERSORES

 (by Dilbert)

Created by Scott Adams, Dilbert is about the world's most famous -- and funny -- dysfunctional office

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

BUSINESS "IS" BEHAVIOR 

(PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT)

by Aubrey Daniels

 

The following is an excerpt from “Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness,” Fifth Edition, revised, by Aubrey C. Daniels, PhD., and Jon S. Bailey, Ph.D., for Performance Management Publications

Success in business is defined by an organization’s ability to produce results. If you don’t make a profit, you will go out of business. The same is true for each managerial position within your organization. If a manager does not produce results, he/she will not be judged as successful.

All organizational results are the products of human behavior. Every result is produced by someone doing something. If you want to improve results, you must first get employees to change what they are doing. You want people to do some things either more or less often, or in some cases, to do something entirely different.

To change results, you must change behavior. Managing by results is a reactive approach and is very inefficient and in the long run, ineffective. Because results are always the end product of behavior, by the time you get the result, the behavior that created it is long gone.

To be a proactive manager, you must define the results that you need and then determine the behaviors that will produce those results. You then manage those behaviors as they occur. If you do so consistently and systematically, you will know the result before you see the report at the end of the day, week, month, or quarter. When you manage behavior daily, you are creating the future results that your organization values.

Build behavior and results will come

Business is behavior. Without behavior no organizational accomplishments are achieved. Before businesses discovered behavior, they tried to improve results by eliminating people through downsizing, moving them around through re-engineering or by changing the types of people hired. These approaches had only limited success. It is safe to say that billions of dollars have been wasted because the designers and initiators of these activities didn’t understand some of the basic laws that govern human behavior (See “OOPS: 13 Management Practices that Waste Time and Money and What to Do Instead”.) Within the last few years, business has become acutely aware of the need to change behavior, not people. This is an important distinction because the distinction between changing behavior and changing people is still often confused.

Some employees are turned off by the term behavior because it indicates that employees are at fault. But actually, this approach relieves the individual of fault and places fault, or the causes of behavior, on the environment in general, comprised of the dynamic relations between the organization/infrastructure, managers, and employees. Company owners, managers, and supervisors can design environments where employees are effective and efficient, and enjoy their work.

International competition has accelerated the need for dramatic change in virtually all aspects of business. Executives realize they must change the way they are doing business and they’d better do it in a hurry! It’s difficult to find a current business publication that does not contain quotes from some executive about the necessity of changing the behavior of employees. However, if you read carefully, you will see that they are not talking about behaviors at all, but are still talking about results, only using another name.

This confusion extends to the word results as well. For many people the word results means the bottom line. In the context of organizational performance, results and bottom line are entirely different. The bottom line refers to the accounting for, and valuing of, mission critical behaviors and results. It is, if you will, the overall scorecard for the organization. A result, as we use the word, refers to the outcome of the process you design to convert inputs into outputs. These results, along with certain economically valuable behaviors, are then converted into some accounting format that assigns them an economic value. This simplifies analysis at an organizational level and allows for an easy prioritization process for the allocation of resources. While the bottom line may be the place to start your analysis when defining the potential for improvement, you must trace any result to its behavioral components to actually realize that potential. You do not manage the bottom line; you manage the processes that create it, most especially the conditions that support organizationally valuable behaviors!

Traditionally, managers have been held accountable for attaining results, so management’s focus on results is understandable. As a group, managers have had little formal training in behavioral methods but have nevertheless been successful by identifying the measurable, bottom-line results to be accomplished and by holding others accountable for producing them. The problem with this approach is that it is often a costly and unpredictable way to get results, in both financial and human terms. By the time a result is produced (profitability, for example), many behaviors have occurred. If those behaviors have not been deliberately managed, in almost all instances, results could have been more efficiently and effectively produced, thus saving time, energy, and cost. By more carefully managing performance, even in very successful companies, such gains in effectiveness and cost reduction can add up to many millions of profitable dollars.

A quote attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt is, “The best executive is the one who has enough sense to pick good men [sic] to do what he wants done and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” This kind of managing by results was exemplified decades later with the Watergate escapade. One can imagine that the official who instructed the would-be burglars must have said something like, “I don’t care how you get it; just get it!” Of course, the way they got it is now well known around the world. This infamous event at least started a concern in business and government that values should be placed high on any boardroom or political agenda. Unfortunately, many companies thought they could manage values without understanding behavior and, in our opinion, this has resulted in the scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and, of course, the now-infamous Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, to name just a few.

Of course the opposite extreme exists as well. Many managers involve themselves too deeply in their subordinates’ behavior. Although the term micromanagement is often misused, it describes the activity of many managers who attempt to control every single behavior of others. This is a self-limiting approach since the manager feels that, to be successful, he or she must know everything that each employee knows and does. Very few managers ever succeed with this process and even more rarely do their employees succeed. Whether intentional or not, micromanaging is a punitive approach that inhibits or prohibits employees’ professional growth.

Unbreakable behavior laws

Laws govern our behavior. Knowledge of those laws allows you to more effectively accomplish the things that are important. While a common sense approach to behavior tells us that you never know what people will do, behavior analysis shows you that is not so.

Behavior is more predictable than you might realize. Some habits you acquired as children stay with you all of your life. Although many people don’t like to be thought of as predictable, they don’t mind when others say they are dependable. Dependable by another name is predictable. Those who are dependable do what they say they will do and that allows one to predict the future to some extent. The best predictor of what people will do today is what they did yesterday. This includes what we call habits or patterns of behavior and reflects such things as observed thinking styles (the logical assembly of words in patterns) and observed problem-solving approaches that are highly consistent over time and situations.

People often react negatively to the idea that there are laws that govern behavior. These same people do not object to the fact that the law of gravity also governs our behavior. We make choices based on the law of gravity, whether we have been schooled in physics or not. A scientific understanding of gravity allows us to invent things that make work easier, allows people to travel faster and farther, and in other ways increases the enjoyment of life. In the same way, our knowledge of the laws of behavior does not change how they affect our behavior but guides us in developing effective, efficient, and satisfactory interactions with others at work and at home. If you do not have this knowledge, the behavior of others will continuously frustrate and baffle you.

The key to producing consistent results in business and industry is the effective management of behavior; it is behavior change that produces measurable results. Businesses run on human behavior, and anything else — downsizing, re-engineering, or changing selection profiles — will be less successful. Managing by results can lead to a Watergate-scale disaster; micromanaging, a punitive approach, clearly reduces employee growth and creativity. The laws of behavior as we understand them allow managers and supervisors to arrange conditions that produce predictable patterns of behavior that are consistently productive over time. This goal is easily within reach of behaviorally trained business owners, managers, and supervisors.

Fuente: SmartBlog on Leadership

Haciendo click en los links siguientes, accederán a los Contenidos de algunos de nuestros CURSOS DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

IN COMPANY - Programa Ejecutivo en GESTIÓN DEL CAMBIO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

IN COMPANY - Taller de ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS 

para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510