The pioneers of the United States' first credit agencies, in the mid-nineteenth century, understood that modern commerce required a new kind of foundation.
Nigeria's oil industry was in decline. Nigerian crude was having trouble finding customers, fuel shortages plagued the domestic economy, and power plant outages were rising. NNPC had failed to develop one of the world's largest reserves of natural gas, Nigeria's four refineries were operating at a fraction of capacity, and the company was considered inefficient and corrupt. Many voices were now calling on President Muhammadu Buhari, newly elected in May 2015, to reform Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or sell off the national treasure for an estimated $75 billion.
This case comprises four scenarios that exemplify some of the benefits of a very brief, very inexpensive educational program, El Gran Proyecto Salta (The Big Leap Project). Salta was designed to assist female micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries by teaching them basic business knowledge so that they might make the leap to the next level of success. Salta instruction was provided free of cost to more than 100,000 Peruvian women in very brief stand-alone sessions (three hours per session) at exceptionally low cost to sponsors ($38 per participant). Four women who participated in Salta are featured in this case. Each of these micro-entrepreneurs' stories includes their personal backgrounds, their adaptations of Salta lessons and experiences, and the benefits derived for their businesses, families, communities, and for themselves.
In 2005, Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) invested in oil exploration leases in the Beaufort Sea in the Alaska Arctic. A few years later, additional leases were acquired in the nearby Chukchi Sea. After years of delays, Shell began drilling in the summer of 2012 with two drillships. More delays and the short drilling season resulted in only two partially drilled wells. On the journey south after drilling was completed, one of the ships had an engine fire and the other one ran aground. The Kulluk, the drillship that ran aground, was eventually scrapped. After spending more than $5 billion on its Arctic exploration program between 2005 and 2015, the company had very few results for its efforts, raising questions about Shell's and the industry's ability to manage large complex oil and gas projects in the Arctic.
The complex problems of our time increasingly demand creative, adaptive and flexible governance structures. The author shows that a new breed of 'temporary' organization is emerging to tackle some of the world's most wicked problems, achieve targeted results, then shut down. She provides examples, including an initiative to combat AIDS that involves The Gates Foundation, Merck Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline and UNITAID. She then describes five key characteristics of the new mindset required to build short-term organizations with long-term impact.
As Asia's population and per capita incomes rise, four key components of its natural resource base are set to decline substantially. The authors group the environmental problems that confront Asia into four categories-water management, deforestation and land degradation, air pollution, and climate change. They then provide seven policy objectives that can serve as a platform from which to address these problems, at both regional and local levels. Embracing these objectives, they believe, will facilitate the management of Asia's environmental problems to 2030 and beyond.
Solving wicked problems involves mobilizing different actors, ways of thinking, forms of knowledge and practices. In short, it requires messy solutions. The authors argue that Mary Douglas's Cultural Theory can guide the selection of problem-solving approaches for wicked problems. Having analyzed 20 problem-solving approaches from Organizational Studies, they present six that-based on Cultural Theory's focus on combining Individualistic, Egalitarian, Hierarchichal and Fatalistic elements-are best suited to tackling wicked problems, including Design Thinking, Future Searches and 21st Century Town Meetings.
In today's global marketplace, companies are being asked to create innovative products and services for increasingly diverse users, cultures and environments. These 'design challenges' can be so wickedly complex that the task of aligning all of a project's stakeholders sometimes seems impossible. But it's not. The authors show that design empathy is an approach that can be embraced to draw upon people's real-world experiences and address modern challenges. They provide four strategies for scaling and sustaining design empathy within your organization, including 'telling stories, documentary-style' and 'taking clients on visceral journeys'.
Senior executives from Novo Nordisk, Virgin Group, Johnson & Johnson and Tim Hortons provide dispatches from the front lines of the corporate sustainability challenge, describing their companies' varied approaches to tackling sustainability in arenas including aviation, investing, consumer products and health care.
The traditional linear and analytic problem-solving processes to which business leaders have become accustomed-from quality management to Six Sigma-rarely open up the variety of different 'frames' that the more exploratory approaches from the realm of Design Thinking can. The authors show that sometimes-and more frequently than ever these days-we need many different frames around a problem in order to see the many different possible solutions. They describe four elements of the skill of framing and 're-framing' a problem, and show how together, they enable you to 'create a new story' on behalf of your customer.
If we want to create a future in which humanity thrives, we must re-frame our approach to life and the way in which we see the world. The author, an innovation strategist, describes seven cultural and economic shifts that are taking place within what he calls 'The Age of Opportunity'. These include a shift 'from mechanical to organic' and 'from data to patterns'. The social and business landscapes are ripe for opportunities to re-frame our world, he says, and embracing these shifts is the first step on the road to innovation.
In the past, society has counted on government bodies and institutions like the World Bank to address global issues like climate change, youth unemployment and income inequality. But in recent years, the author argues, another kind of institution has become uniquely placed to address these challenges: global corporations. The catch, she explains, is that before a corporation can take a wider world view, it first has to reach inside of itself to build inner resilience. She describes three spheres of corporate influence and how to build resilience within each in order to proceed to the third and final sphere: contributing to global resilience.
The author of the popular 2008 HBR article, 'Strategy as a Wicked Problem', argues that disruptive business models and wicked problems have de-linked the future from the past, making traditional strategic planning systems inadequate. He presents a tool that organizational strategists can use to face 'multiple possible futures' and 'chaotic ambiguity': feed-forward systems. By embracing this approach, he says, leaders can fashion a future that is unrelated to the past, driven by 'robust actions' and 'enablers' that can transform an organization and its context.
In this wide-ranging interview, Unilever CEO Paul Polman describes how his company is putting the world's biggest problems-from sanitation issues to poverty to youth self esteem-at the very core of its business model. He describes the company's Sustainable Living Plan, which aims to reduce environmental impact, improve health and well-being and enhance livelihoods around the world. He shows that this approach not only makes enormous sense for shareholders and brings costs down, it drives up employee engagement levels and enables a company to embrace new business opportunities.
Although 46 similar products were on the market when Intuit launched Quicken, in 1983, it immediately became the market leader in personal finance software and has held that position for three decades. That's because Quicken was so well designed that using it is intuitive. But by the time Smith became CEO, in 2008, the company had become overly focused on adding incremental features that delivered ease of use but not delight. What was missing was an emotional connection with customers. He and his team set out to integrate design thinking into every part of Intuit. They changed the layout of the office, reduced the number of cubes, and added more collaboration spaces and places for impromptu work. They increased the number of designers by nearly 600% and now hold quarterly design conferences. They bring in people who have created exceptionally designed products, such as the Nest thermostat and the Kayak travel website, to share insights with Intuit employees. The company acquired one start-up, called Mint, and collaborates with another, called ZenPayroll, to improve customer experience. Although most people don't think of financial software as a category driven by emotion or design, Smith writes, Intuit's D4D ("design for delight") program has paid off. For example, its SnapTax app, inspired by consumers' migration to smartphones, led one user to write, "I want this app to have my babies."
Despite the widely accepted ideal of "shared value," research led by Harvard Business School's Kasturi Rangan suggests that this is not the norm-and that's OK. Most companies practice a multifaceted version of CSR that spans theaters ranging from pure philanthropy to environmental sustainability to the explicitly strategic. To maximize their impact, companies must ensure that initiatives in the various theaters form a unified platform. Four steps can help them do so: Pruning and aligning programs within theaters. Companies must examine their existing programs in each theater, reducing or eliminating those that do not address an important social or environmental problem in keeping with the firm's business purpose and values. Developing metrics to gauge performance. Just as the goals of programs vary from theater to theater, so do the definitions of success. Coordinating programs across theaters. This does not mean that all initiatives necessarily address the same problem; it means that they are mutually reinforcing and form a cogent whole. Developing an interdisciplinary CSR strategy. The range of purposes underlying initiatives in different theaters and the variation in how those initiatives are managed pose major barriers for many firms. Strategy development can be top-down or bottom-up, but ongoing communication is key. These practices have helped companies including PNC Bank, IKEA, and Ambuja Cements bring discipline and coherence to their CSR portfolios.
Authenticity has become the gold standard for leadership. But as INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra argues, a simplistic understanding of what authenticity means can limit leaders' growth and impact. All too often, we tend to latch on to authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what's comfortable. But few jobs allow us to do that for long. In this article, Ibarra explains how leaders can develop an "adaptively authentic" style by experimenting with many different leadership approaches. It's OK to change tactics from one day to the next, she says. That's not being fake; it's how we figure out what's right for the challenges and circumstances we face. Three strategies can help you break free from a self-concept that's too rigid: Learn from diverse role models. Growth necessarily involves some form of imitation, but don't copy just one person's leadership style. Borrow selectively from various people to create your own collage. Work on getting better. Set learning goals-not just performance targets-to focus on the value of experimentation. Stretch the limits of who you are by doing new things that make you uncomfortable but help you discover by direct experience whom you want to become. Don't stick to "your story." Jettison outdated self-concepts and draw on personal narratives that fit your circumstances as you're taking on new challenges.
Seeking and giving advice are central to effective leadership and decision making, and they require emotional intelligence, self-awareness, restraint, diplomacy, and patience on both sides. But managers tend to view these competencies as "gifts" that one either has or lacks. The authors argue instead that they're practical skills you can learn and apply to great effect. They draw on a large body of research to identify the most common obstacles to effectively seeking and giving advice--such as thinking one already has the answers, defining the problem poorly, and overstepping boundaries--and offer practical guidelines for getting past them. The authors define the five stages of advising: (1) finding the right fit; (2) developing a shared understanding; (3) crafting alternatives; (4) converging on a decision; and (5) putting advice into action. Each stage includes suggestions for seekers and for advisers. Example: At stage 4, when it's time to narrow down the options, a seeker might review discarded or briefly considered ideas, and his adviser might play devil's advocate--to check for confirmation bias. Overall, the authors' guidelines amount to a fundamental shift in approach: a creative, collaborative way of understanding problems and crafting promising paths forward--which often requires an ongoing conversation.
For organizations to prosper, managers in the middle ranks must feel empowered to identify and promote the need for change. People at this level gather valuable intelligence from direct contact with customers, suppliers, and colleagues; they can often see when the market is ripe for a certain offering, for instance, or spot signs that a partnership won't work. But for many reasons, ranging from a fear of negative consequences to compliance with a top-down culture, they may not voice their ideas and concerns--and even when they do, they often struggle to persuade the people at the top. The authors studied "issue selling" in a range of organizations, roles, and industries, identifying seven tactics associated with success. Managers should (1) tailor their pitch to the goals, values, and knowledge of decision makers; (2) frame the issue to show how it supports a strategic goal; (3) manage emotions (their own and their audience's); (4) get the timing right by, say, attending to a boss's preoccupations or watching larger trends; (5) involve others, both in and out of their networks; (6) adhere to organizational norms, such as how leaders prefer to receive information; and (7) suggest solutions, or at least propose ways to find one. Issue selling is an ongoing process that requires groundwork and patience. Midlevel managers who do it effectively get decision makers' attention and make a real difference in their organizations.