Leaders love to talk about corporate culture and values, yet many companies have a disconnect between what leaders preach and what is practiced throughout the organization. Improving corporate culture requires a sustained effort over time. A first step: Look at how well those values are being communicated to the workforce.

Research shows that most organizations fall far short when it comes to strategic alignment. The authors'analysis of 124 organizations revealed that only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company's strategic priorities. How do leaders close this dangerous strategic-alignment gap?

It's common practice to develop a handful of strategic priorities to focus strategy -but formulated correctly, they're also useful communication tools for both internal and external stakeholders. Clear, credible priorities linked to explicit metrics offer a framework for assessing progress toward the company's goals, in a way that abstractions like vision or mission cannot.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Organizations often struggle with corporate strategy because executives lack clarity on how parts of the business fit together to create and capture economic value. A simple framework can help leaders understand the relationship between corporate and business unit strategies.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. When developing strategy for execution, managers often want to start by setting their strategic priorities, but that's a mistake. Management teams should start by identifying the corporate vision and critical vulnerabilities -both of which help clarify and shape priorities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Businesses develop strategies to address complex, multi-layered business environments and challenges -but to execute a strategy in a meaningful way, it must produce a set of specific priorities focused on achieving clear goals. Rather than trying to boil the strategy down to a pithy statement, executives will get better results if they develop a small set of actions that everyone gets behind.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many markets are affected by the complex interactions of multiple variables: geopolitics, technical innovation, capital market swings, competitive dynamics, shifting consumer preferences, and so on. These volatile markets throw out a steady stream of opportunities and threats, and managers can neither predict nor control the form, magnitude, or timing of future events with accuracy. In such environments, the traditional linear view of strategy--plan then execute--is woefully inadequate because it hinders people from incorporating new information into action. But instead of thinking of strategy as a linear process, why not consider it as inherently iterative--a loop instead of a line? According to this view, every strategy is a work in progress that is subject to revision in light of ongoing interactions between the organization and its shifting environment. To accommodate those interactions, the strategy loop consists of four major steps: making sense of a situation, making choices on what to do (and what not to do), making those things happen, and making revisions based on new information. Reconceptualizing strategy as an iterative loop is simple enough, but putting that new mindset into practice is not. Here, the crucial thing to remember is that discussions--formal and informal, short and long, one-on-one and in groups--are the key mechanism for coordinating activity inside a company. Thus, to put the strategy loop into practice, managers at every level in the organization must be proficient at leading discussions that reflect the four major steps (making sense, making choices, making things happen, and making revisions). Companies such as Diageo Ireland, All America Latina Logistica, and Onset Venture Services demonstrate that each of the four types of discussions has a different objective that requires a specific tone, supporting information, leadership traits, and accompanying tactics.

Critical initiatives stall for a variety of reasons--employee disengagement, a lack of coordination between functions, complex organizational structures that obscure accountability, and so on. To overcome such obstacles, managers must fundamentally rethink how work gets done. Most of the challenges stem from broken or poorly crafted commitments. That's because every company is, at its heart, a dynamic network of promises made between employees and colleagues, customers, outsourcing partners, or other stakeholders. Executives can overcome many problems in the short term and foster productive, reliable workforces for the long term by practicing what the authors call "promise-based management," which involves cultivating and coordinating commitments in a systematic way. Good promises share five qualities: They are public, active, voluntary, explicit, and mission based. To develop and execute an effective promise, the "provider" and the "customer" in the deal should go through three phases of conversation. The first, achieving a meeting of minds, entails exploring the fundamental questions of coordinated effort: What do you mean? Do you understand what I mean? What should I do? What will you do? Who else should we talk to? In the next phase, making it happen, the provider executes on the promise. In the final phase, closing the loop, the customer publicly declares that the provider has either delivered the goods or failed to do so. Leaders must weave and manage their webs of promises with great care--encouraging iterative conversation and making sure commitments are fulfilled reliably. If they do, they can enhance coordination and cooperation among colleagues, build the organizational agility required to seize new business opportunities, and tap employees' entrepreneurial energies.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. According to conventional wisdom, companies resemble organisms destined to pass through the stages of start-up, scaling, maturity, and decline. In reality, business opportunities--and not firms--pass through these stages, and most organizations consist of multiple opportunities arrayed across the different stages of the life cycle. Executives who understand this crucial distinction can view their organization as a portfolio of opportunities that requires constant re-jiggering to balance the demands of the present with the promise of the future. The authors suggest that, when assessing any opportunity portfolio, executives should remain on the lookout for the following common pathologies: waiting too long to exit a declining business, failing to salvage usable pieces of a business that is shut down, shunning promising new markets because of an overly conservative fiscal approach, trying to scale too many business opportunities so that none of them receives the necessary resources, applying the same management style to business opportunities at different life cycle stages, and erring on the side of loss aversion.

Successful executives who cut their teeth in stable industries or in developed countries often stumble when they face more volatile markets. They falter, in part, because they assume they can gaze deep into the future and develop a long-term strategy that will confer a sustainable competitive advantage. But visibility into the future of volatile markets is sharply limited because of the many different variables at play. Factors such as technological innovation, customers' evolving needs, government policy, and changes in the capital markets interact with one another to create unexpected outcomes. Over the past six years, Donald Sull, an associate professor at London Business School, has led a research project examining some of the world's most volatile markets, from national markets like China and Brazil to industries like enterprise software, telecommunications, and airlines. One of the most striking findings from this research is the importance of taking action during comparative lulls in the storm. Huge business opportunities are relatively rare; they come along only once or twice in a decade. And, for the most part, companies can't manufacture those opportunities; changes in the external environment converge to make them happen. What managers can do is prepare for these golden opportunities by managing smart during the comparative calm of business as usual. During these periods of active waiting, leaders must probe the future and remain alert to anomalies that signal potential threats or opportunities; exercise restraint to preserve their war chests; and maintain discipline to keep the troops battle ready. When a golden opportunity or "sudden death" threat emerges, managers must have the courage to declare the main effort and concentrate resources to seize the moment.

How many of us keep pace day to day, upholding our obligations to our bosses, families, and the community, even as our overall satisfaction with work and quality of life decline? And, yet, our common response to the situation is: "I'm too busy to do anything about it now." Unfortunately, unless a personal or professional crisis strikes, very few of us step back, take stock of our day-to-day actions, and make a change. In this article, London Business School strategy professors Donald Sull and Dominic Houlder examine the reasons why a gap often exists between the things we value most and the ways we actually spend our time, money, and attention. They also suggest a practical approach to managing the gap. The framework they propose is based on their study of organizational commitments--the investments, promises, and contracts made today that bind companies to a future course of action. Such commitments can prevent organizations from responding effectively to change. A similar logic applies to personal commitments--the day-to-day decisions we make about how we allocate our precious resources. These decisions are individually small and, therefore, easy to lose sight of. When we do, a gap can develop between our commitments and our convictions. Sull and Houlder make no value judgments about the content of personal commitments; they've devised a somewhat dispassionate tool to help you take a thorough inventory of what matters to you most. It involves listing your most important values and assigning to each a percentage of your annual salary, the hours out of your week, and the amount of energy you devote. Using this exercise, you should be able to identify big gaps--stated values that receive little or none of your scarce resources or a single value that sucks a disproportionate share of resources--and change your allocations accordingly.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Although the pursuit of opportunity promises outsized rewards to entrepreneurs and established enterprises, it also entails great uncertainty. The critical task of entrepreneurship lies in effectively managing the uncertainty inherent in trying something new. Some entrepreneurs foolishly try to ignore uncertainty; others go to the opposite extreme of attempting to avoid it altogether by believing naively that every contingency can be anticipated. Instead, entrepreneurs should manage uncertainty by taking a disciplined approach. Over the past five years, the author conducted systematic research into how entrepreneurs manage the inevitable risks while pursuing opportunities. A synthesis of the research revealed that discipline--and its byproduct, the successful management of uncertainty--comes through the adoption of an iterative experimentation model. In this three-step process, an entrepreneur formulates a working hypothesis about an opportunity, assembles the resources to test the hypothesis, and finally designs and runs real-world experiments. Depending on the results of a round of experimentation, the entrepreneur may revise the hypothesis and run another experiment, harvest the value created through a sale, or abandon the hypothesis and pull the plug. The model provides insights into some of the most daunting questions entrepreneurs face--including how to screen an opportunity, how much money to raise, when to make key hires, and how to use limited resources most efficiently.

The cofounder and CEO of AsiaInfo, a Chinese system integrator that built 70% of China's Internet backbone, must decide whether to list equity in the United States to fund future growth. Describes the company and the decision. A rewritten version of a previous case.

Conor Medsystems had developed a drug-eluting stent that could capture significant share of the $5 billion global market. Chief executive officer, Frank Litvack, is considering alternative sources of financing to test the device.

Describes the turnaround of America Latina Logistica, a $200 million revenue, formerly state-owned, railway in Brazil that has been restored to profitability by its CEO, a recent MBA graduate. After successfully transforming the company's operations, finances, and organization, the CEO must decide whether to acquire a trucking company and offer integrated logistics solutions to customers or stay focused on its core business of rail transportation. Provides rich data describing the details of the company's turnaround and also provides sufficient industry and financial data to analyze the strategic and financial implications of the proposed merger.

By fiscal year 2000, Samsung had pulled far ahead of other "chaebols," Korean conglomerates. For example, the market value of Samsung affiliates listed on the Korea Stock Exchange exceeded the sum of the market value of listed affiliates of second, third, and fourth largest groups: Hyundai, LG, and SK. Samsung's accomplishments during the late 1990s were particularly noteworthy when compared to its long-time rival Daewoo, whose businesses were forced into financial workout disposition of assets overseen by creditors in 1999. Discusses what made the destinies of the two groups totally different.

What makes a great manager great? Despite differences in their personal attributes, successful managers all excel in the making, honoring, and remaking of commitments. Managerial commitments take many forms, from capital investments to personnel decisions to public statements, but each exerts both immediate and enduring influence on a company. A leader's commitments shape a business's identity, define its strengths and weaknesses, establish its opportunities and limitations, and set its direction. Executives can all too easily forget that commitments are extraordinarily powerful. Caught up in the present, managers often take actions that, while beneficial in the near term, impose lasting constraints on their operations and organizations. Managers who understand the nature and power of their commitments can wield them more effectively throughout a company's life cycle. It doesn't mean you should try to anticipate all the long-run consequences of every commitment. But it does mean that before making important decisions about, say, operating processes or partnerships, you should always ask yourself: Is this a process or relationship that we can live with in the future? Am I locking us into a course that we'll come to regret?

This case describes issues facing the founder-CEO of a high-tech start-up in Boston, as he negotiates with multiple large potential partners and investors. The negotiations include a potential business partnership with FleetCenter and Madison Square Garden, and a potential investment from two large venture capital firms. The case focuses on the sequencing among the parties, how to resolve conflicting interests among the parties, and the issues facing small entrepreneurial firms trying to negotiate with very large and powerful investors and business partners.

Describes the founding and rapid growth of Siebel Systems. Focuses on how Siebel's alliance program enabled rapid growth. Explores the challenges CEO Tom Siebel faces in serving smaller customers.

The success of Yahoo!, eBay, Enron, and other companies that have become adept at morphing to meet the demands of changing markets can't be explained using traditional thinking about competitive strategy. These companies have succeeded by pursuing constantly evolving strategies in market spaces that were considered unattractive according to traditional measures. In this article--the third in an HBR series by Kathleen Eisenhardt and Donald Sull on strategy in the new economy--the authors ask, what are the sources of competitive advantage in high-velocity markets? The secret, they say, is strategy as simple rules. The companies know that the greatest opportunities for competitive advantage lie in market confusion, but they recognize the need for a few crucial strategic processes and a few simple rules. In traditional strategy, advantage comes from exploiting resources or stable market positions. In strategy as simple rules, advantage comes from successfully seizing fleeting opportunities. Key strategic processes, such as product innovation, partnering, or spinout creation, place the company where the flow of opportunities is greatest. Simple rules then provide the guidelines within which managers can pursue such opportunities. Simple rules, which grow out of experience, fall into five broad categories: how-to rules, boundary conditions, priority rules, timing rules, and exit rules. Companies with simple-rules strategies must follow the rules religiously and avoid the temptation to change them too frequently. A consistent strategy helps managers sort through opportunities and gain short-term advantage by exploiting the attractive ones.