Harvard Business Review

MARCH 21, 2017

Walmart has held a low-price leadership position from its start. Now, in some cases, it can often lower prices than Amazon because Jet.com’s operating model doesn’t rely on holding inventory. In its announcements and ads about the new free shipping service, product prices have not been mentioned.

IT Strategy 15

IT Strategy Strategy Core Competence Price 15

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 18, 2012

Recognizing that the company's command-and-control culture wouldn't work in the 21st century, he defined leadership as leading by values and created a unique collaborative organizational structure. Executing this strategy required seamless integration of IBM's product capabilities with its geographic reach. When the U.S.

Globalization 18

Globalization Golden Parachute Short-term Long-term 18

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2012

Through the first half of the last decade, a foundation of Nokia's competitive advantage was its unmatched ability to customize a wide variety of phones for operators. A crucial element of its strategy to win over consumers to its advanced smartphones was to persuade third-party developers to create a vast array of apps for its phones.

Innovation 16

Innovation Supply Chain Telecommunications Core Competence 16

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 29, 2011

Today, operating under the TD Bank umbrella, the outfit has more than 1,000 branches up and down the East Coast, from Maine to Florida, and a well-earned reputation as "America's most convenient bank.". Ferrari pit crews operate largely in silence, despite (or because of) the roar of engines around them.

Banking 22

Banking Retail Open-book Creativity 22

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 13, 2017

Companies wind up in trouble and squander the time, talent, and energy of their workforce when they lose focus, spend money on things that don’t make a difference to employees or the future of the business, and use operating models that are out of whack. redesign the operating model. Redesign the Operating Model.

Organization 16

Organization Zero Based Budgeting Budgeting How To 16

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

The current mantra is “Move fast with stable infrastructure”, which speaks to the organizational design challenge of operating at scale in a fickle and volatile world. There is a simple test you can perform to start an honest conversation about strategy and organizational effectiveness where you work.

Banking 15

Banking Strategy Film IPO 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 17, 2017

For decades, we’ve often thought of leadership profiles in unique buckets—two popular varieties were the “visionaries”, who embrace strategy and think about amazing things to do, and the “operators”, who get stuff done. Adam Pretty/Getty Images.

Execution 16

Execution Strategy How To Budgeting 16

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2017

Tactical performance is how effectively your organization sticks to its strategy. In Precision’s case, good tactical performance required developing rules, checklists, and standard operating procedures and then following them closely. We made a number of operational changes to the call center.

Organization 15

Organization Tactics Call Center Metrics 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 29, 2012

At a Global 50 consumer products company, management has developed a governance structure that allows it think about risk proactively, and has aligned its risk profile and exposures more closely with its strategy. Managers could keep the organization within acceptable tolerance ranges, driving performance to plan.

Risk Management 15

Risk Management Maturity EBITDA Management 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 21, 2013

In order to see the future more clearly, it''s almost always helpful to look back — and this certainly goes for IT and its ever-increasing impact on operations, and ultimately on competitive advantage. Yet with each wave, the criticality of IT to basic operations and delivery of service to customers continues to escalate.

Competitive Advantage 10

Competitive Advantage Management Information Technology Airlines 10

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

For every company wrestling with evolutions in its strategy, success depends as much on matching the operating model to those evolutions as it does on the soundness of the strategy itself. But exactly how do today’s companies create or update an operating model to match adaptations or wholesale changes in strategy?

Strategy 8

Strategy Company Banking Apparel 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 17, 2013

The CIO paradox is a set of contradictions that lies at the heart of IT leadership. Be strategic and operational. IT is highly strategic, intensely operational, hard to staff and extremely expensive. CIOs who want to be effective in the future will extend their leadership and expertise beyond the IT function.

CIO 10

CIO Technology Storytelling Short-term 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 18, 2011

It can be easy to dramatically expand revenue and profits when you are the upstart in an emerging sector — but once you're on top, sustaining this leadership position isn't easy. It could also include sophisticated software based on the WebOS (the operating system HP leveraged from the Palm acquisition).

Software 15

Software Technology Intellectual Capital Marketing 15

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 7, 2014

He talked with HBR about why a company’s culture is more important than its strategy — and some of the innovative tactics that CEOs have used to help create a high-performing culture. As human beings, we like to operate in small tribes. Leadership' Excerpts: Why did you focus on culture? It’s the creation of silos.

CEO 15

CEO FAQ Restructuring Performance Review 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Nokia was so immersed in executing its strategy that it lost sight of its purpose. Personal leadership is indispensable to operationalizing your purpose. Few imagined that this juggernaut, brandishing vast resources with such steely determination, could be quickly brought down. In retrospect, it seems inevitable.

Strategy 15

Strategy Company How To Supply Chain 15

Lead Change Blog

JUNE 25, 2020

He opened the dialogue, saying he and his leadership team had put a lot of thought into where they want to take their bank, and the vision they committed to was to deliver top decile ROE, ROA and topline revenue growth: a quintessential example of focusing on effect, not cause.

P&L 220

P&L ROE Metrics CFO 220

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 12, 2014

The company’s twenty years of entrepreneurial success had positioned the company to reap greater financial rewards using a more disciplined operational focus. However, by the middle of the decade, Google was growing, YouTube was forming, and “operational excellence” wasn’t a differentiating strategy in technology.

Strategic Fit 9

Strategic Fit Rogers CEO Strategy 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 27, 2014

Or does it focus on customer service and helping the business achieve its strategy? If procurement is operating effectively, suppliers should be beating down the door to get their goods and services sold into to the organization. Cutting costs Global business Leadership Organizational culture'

Budgeting 10

Budgeting Objective Cost Globalization 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 6, 2013

Define Your Strategy. CIOs need to develop an affirmative IT strategy that begins by identifying old behaviors to give up, new behaviors to adopt, and remaining behaviors to do differently. It has to come before technology innovation, product innovation, operational innovation, and all the other areas where we eventually must innovate.

CIO 9

CIO Hamel Technology Tactics 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 8, 2015

In my research on how experienced managers and professionals step up to bigger leadership roles, I have observed both the value and the difficulty of returning to our youthful, fake-it-till-you-learn-it strategies. “I went home exhausted each day from playing the role of ‘Director of Operations,’” she said.

Learning-by-Doing 8

Learning-by-Doing Finance Definition Politics 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 11, 2018

a cataract operation can cost $200 or less, compared with $3,500 in the U.S. Under the leadership of Anthony Tersigni, Ascension’s president and CEO, the organization has sought to become much more efficient at delivering health care. Ascension has another solid reason for pursuing its strategy.

Health Care 8

Health Care Insurance Cost Price 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 23, 2016

This leaves operating managers, the ultimate “consumers” of talent, to choose between two talent acquisitions methods (or “sourcing channels”): Either engage HR to acquire employees or engage Procurement to acquire contingent workers. Create one integrated workforce strategy.

Strategy 8

Strategy Span of Control Finance How To 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 17, 2015

With a strong, competent, and independent chair able to step in and assume responsibility (and possibly act as interim CEO), a company in a crisis that destroys its leadership is better placed to navigate the storm. Hayward’s leadership had contributed to BP underplaying safety its U.S. Take the case of BP.

CFO 8

CFO Crisis Mass Marketing IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 22, 2015

In an ongoing global survey of senior executives , more than half of the respondents said they didn’t think their company had a winning strategy, and two-thirds said they didn’t think their organization had the right capabilities to execute its strategy. Operating as these companies do takes a lot of confidence.

Execution 8

Execution Strategy Fashion Apparel 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 27, 2017

Our research shows that the same inclusive leadership behaviors that leverage diversity to drive innovation and market growth can enable managers to support individuals with disabilities. But teaching managers to display inclusive leadership behaviors is just the first step. And they are more likely to have their ideas endorsed.

Compliance 8

Compliance Chief Operating Officer Innovation Survey 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 27, 2015

For each city or region the right mix of programs depends on what outcomes the leadership of that area is trying to achieve. The type of capital required and its source depends on the type of business, its stage of life, and its strategy for the future. This research shows that the market for middle skills operates very poorly.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Policies Banking Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 7, 2013

Instead of buying batteries, consumers would buy subscriptions for miles (just as mobile-phone operators sell subscriptions to minutes). When Better Place was founded, its strategy called for initial rollouts in Israel and Denmark. Since resale value ranks high for mass market buyers, this has all the makings of a deal breaker.

Mass Marketing 10

Mass Marketing Transportation Depreciation Short-term 10

Sales Wolf Blog

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

Scaling Up by Verne Harnish is your "go-to-" business operating system. Properly scaling a business is an exercise in mastering four critical decisions: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. Strategy Is your companys strategy clear, differentiated, and capable of driving sustainable revenue growth?

Benchmarking 151

Benchmarking Core Competence Objective Strategy 151

In the CEO Afterlife

JUNE 8, 2016

The change in management, which included Bell and Powell, meant a big change in how the company would operate in the following decades. Its strategy to get out ahead of the competition rested on the innovative, hard, vacuum-sealed packaging its then-parent company, Jacob Suchard, was using in Europe at the time.

Brand 100

Brand Brand Management Advertising Management 100