In his review of Phillip L. Zweig's Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy, James Grant puts the career of Citibank's longtime CEO into historical perspective. At the end of the last century, credit was a virtue to be cultivated. But by the time Walter Wriston became Citibank's president in 1967, banking had changed. The Federal Reserve Act had given the United States a central bank, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. protected depositors' savings. In Wriston's time, credit, far from being delicate, often appeared to be indestructible. Grant, who edits the respected Grant's Interest Rate Observer, argues that credit is no longer an absolute virtue, like honesty, but an economic asset, like property, plant, or equipment.
In many companies, strategy making is an elitist procedure and "strategy" consists of nothing more than following the industry's rules. But more and more companies, intent on overturning the industrial order, are reviewing those rules. What can industry incumbents do? Either surrender the future to revolutionary challengers or revolutionize the way their companies create strategy. What is needed is not a tweak to the traditional strategic-planning process, but a new philosophical foundation: strategy is revolution. The author offers ten principles to help a company think about the challenge of creating truly revolutionary strategies.
"In my role, I'm the guy who catches it all. I can't seem to get people to stand still and listen, and I can't continue to take all the hostility. I don't know how much longer I can last in this job." The executive who speaks these words is one of several who describe their feelings of burnout in this article, first published in May/June 1981. Anyone can feel overwhelmed by the challenges posed by complex organizations and the need to deal with conflicting personalities, says psychologist Harry Levinson. In this article, he suggests ways in which top management can help prevent burnout. In his retrospective commentary, Levinson notes that although burnout is as prevalent today as it was 15 years ago, the assumption underlying his article--that top management can play a role in preventing burnout--now feels outdated. Why? Because we are living in an age of self-reliance.
Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University in Canada and at INSEAD in France, takes aim at the hype surrounding management fads and gurus and dares to suggest that the emperor has no clothes. In order to rile all who care about management and get them thinking creatively, he presents ten contrarian observations on such topics as the meanness of leanness, the folly of CEOs who fancy themselves strategists, the disempowering that so-called empowerment creates, the myopia of purely financial measures, and the inadequacy of M.B.A. programs.
Cyrus Maher, CEO of Waterway Industries, thinks he may be facing a human resources problem. Lee Carter is a relatively new employee whose high-powered sales ability has rocketed Maher's sleepy canoe company into unprecedented growth. But Maher has overheard Carter discussing a new job that would offer equity, and he fears her defection is imminent. Maher has begun to reconsider his employees' compensation arrangements, particularly Carter's. As he consults with his banker and with advisers in the industry, he begins to realize that the easygoing culture he created at Waterway may have changed for good. In 96408 and 96408Z, James McCann, Kay Henry, Myra Hart, Ronald Rudolph, Bruce Schlegel, and Alan Johnson offer advice on this fictional case study.
Cyrus Maher, CEO of Waterway Industries, thinks he may be facing a human resources problem. Lee Carter is a relatively new employee whose high-powered sales ability has rocketed Maher's sleepy canoe company into unprecedented growth. But Maher has overheard Carter discussing a new job that would offer equity, and he fears her defection is imminent. Maher has begun to reconsider his employees' compensation arrangements, particularly Carter's. As he consults with his banker and with advisers in the industry, he begins to realize that the easygoing culture he created at Waterway may have changed for good. In 96408 and 96408Z, James McCann, Kay Henry, Myra Hart, Ronald Rudolph, Bruce Schlegel, and Alan Johnson offer advice on this fictional case study.
Cyrus Maher, CEO of Waterway Industries, thinks he may be facing a human resources problem. Lee Carter is a relatively new employee whose high-powered sales ability has rocketed Maher's sleepy canoe company into unprecedented growth. But Maher has overheard Carter discussing a new job that would offer equity, and he fears her defection is imminent. Maher has begun to reconsider his employees' compensation arrangements, particularly Carter's. As he consults with his banker and with advisers in the industry, he begins to realize that the easygoing culture he created at Waterway may have changed for good. In 96408 and 96408Z, James McCann, Kay Henry, Myra Hart, Ronald Rudolph, Bruce Schlegel, and Alan Johnson offer advice on this fictional case study.
No matter how much inventory a wholesaler carries, when a customer places a rush order, the essential item is often out of stock. No matter how many services a dealer provides, what a customer needs is often one that the dealer has never supplied. And no matter how hard a distributor tries to beef up its capabilities, when a customer has an emergency, the distributor often lacks the skills to respond. A number of companies are experimenting with ways to make their distribution channels more flexible and responsive. They have realized that by sharing resources in novel ways, they can take advantage of opportunities that they could not exploit alone. Business dynamics and emerging technologies make this new approach both essential and feasible.
By now, the monolithic factory was supposed to have given way to the virtual factory: a community linked by an electronic network that would enable numerous partners to operate as one. But for most companies, that promise has been elusive. The traditional technologies--electronic data interchange, proprietary groupware, and wide-area networks--are proving inadequate. Traditional systems cannot meet the three basic requirements of a large-scale virtual factory. First, an internetwork must be able to accommodate members whose IT sophistication varies enormously. Second, it must, while maintaining tight security, cope with partners in both transient and long-term relationships. Finally, it must provide a high level of functionality, including letting partners operate programs on one another's computers.
Over the past decade, business units have increasingly taken the role of strategy formulation away from corporate headquarters. The change makes sense: business units are closer to customers, competitors, and costs. Nevertheless, business units can fail, just as headquarters once did, by losing their focus on the organization's priorities and capabilities. The author offers a method for refocusing companies that he calls the strategic-renewal process. The principles behind the process are straightforward, but its execution demands extensive data, rigorous analysis, and the judgment of key decision makers. However, when applied with diligence, it can produce a strategy that yields both growth and profit.
Organizations evolve through periods of incremental or evolutionary change punctuated by discontinuous or revolutionary change. The challenge for managers is to adapt the culture and strategy of their organizations to its current environment, but to do so in a way that does not undermine its ability to adjust to radical changes in that environment. They must, in other words, create an ambidextrous organization--one capable of simultaneously pursuing both incremental and discontinuous innovation.
Perhaps no other article published in the management literature has had the impact of Richard Pascale's piece on the "Honda Effect" that was published in the Spring 1984 issue of the California Management Review. This now classic article has stimulated considerable debate over the role and value of corporate strategy in business decision making--which is the subject of this forum. This special collection of essays includes an abridged version of Pascale's original article ("Perspectives on Strategy: The Real Story Behind Honda's Success"), an exchange of correspondence between Henry Mintzberg and Michael Goold, and new essays by Richard Rumlet, Michael Goold, and Richard Pascale, who revisits his own original article as well as this whole debate.
Describes the development of McKinsey & Co. as a worldwide management consulting firm from 1926 to 1996. In particular, it focuses on the way in which McKinsey has developed structures, systems, processes, and practices to help it develop, transfer, and disseminate knowledge among its 3,800 consultants in 69 offices worldwide. Concludes by focusing on three young consultants operating in each dimension of the firm's organization--the local office, the industry practice, and the firm's competence center. Managing director, Rajat Gupta, wonders if the changes he has made are sufficient to maintain the firm's vital knowledge development process.
Discusses the resolution of the canceled power project in Maharashtra. The contract between the American gas giant and Indian state government is renegotiated.
XcelleNet, a $35 million system software company based in Atlanta, was founded in 1986 to address the computing needs of a class of remote and mobile users and data that were rarely connected to a network. Though the clear first mover and leader in the remote enterprise computing segment in 1996, XcelleNet and its market had been stalled by successive waves of networking technology--remote LAN Access, Groupware, and the Internet/Intranet. The company's founder and CEO, Dennis Crumpler, must formulate a strategy for capitalizing on XcelleNet's first-mover advantage and responding to the opportunities created by these emerging technologies.
Describes the television advertising and presents examples of the comparable print ads, then documents new measurement tools and presents the results of key surveys that address audience awareness. Also includes other relevant activities to support Siemens USA's corporate identity. These include umbrella activities, such as a presence in Atlanta for the Summer Olympics, joint trade activities, work with colleagues in Munich to support major projects in China, and the introduction of a Web page.
AeroTech Service Group uses Internet protocols and other advanced computing technologies to interconnect the IS networks of McDonnell-Douglas Aerospace with many of its customers, suppliers, and other partners. The case discusses AeroTech's product and explores options for growing the firm.
After taking office, South Africa's new president, Nelson Mandela, must decide whether to dismantle or support Armscor, South Africa's state-owned arms company, which has been a pillar of the apartheid regime. Complicating matters is the fact that the arms industry was South Africa's leading manufacturing exporter and a major employer. If Mandela chooses to support Armscor, the company must develop a strategy to obtain a much larger share of a rapidly declining world market.
Two former consultants have raised a search fund and are looking for a company to buy and run. After eight months of looking at deals, they have just signed a letter of intent to buy the second largest book retail chain in Canada in a turnaround situation. They must now decide whether to go through with the deal and, if so, how to raise the necessary financing.