When it comes to providing career development support for employees, most companies offer three key elements visibility into opportunities and paths, the means to learn and practice, and rich feedback and coaching only to high-potential performers. The authors explain how organizations can integrate those elements into a career development system that works across all levels of the workforce to boost retention and cultivate needed skills.
Today's challenges of digital transformation, coupled with the pandemic, call for a shift in leaders' mindsets so that they can revamp their businesses for the better. The author discusses four common assumptions about driving transformation and suggests ways leaders can rethink them to help their companies thrive when challenged with constant global change.
As leaders develop strategy for a future that has been reshaped by the pandemic, they need to rethink their fundamental assumptions about what customers want. The truth is, people still want personal service but it doesn't have to come from a person. The author identifies five assumptions companies often make about what their customers want and offers questions to consider to help prepare for the post-pandemic era.
The post-pandemic era requires a mindset change about jobs and managerial expectations. These considerations will influence decisions on whether and when to allow continued work-from-home arrangements; whether to customize rules for employees; where to locate the business; how to make work measurable and ensure employee focus; and how to position an organization to retain its best talent.
In today's fast-changing business environment, employees' continual development is essential. That's leading to a new and more powerful role for chief learning officers: They're not just trainers anymore; they're transformers who are reshaping organizational capabilities and culture. The authors interviewed CLOs at 19 large companies and found that transformers are revamping their organizations' learning goals, learning methods, and learning departments. Their efforts offer a road map for anyone wishing to build a stronger workforce. With respect to learning goals, the aim should be not just to teach employees specific skills but to cultivate broader capabilities, including strong leadership, digital literacy, and a growth mindset. With respect to learning methods, the trend is to move away from traditional classroom instruction and adopt approaches that can provide learning to more employees, in more-customized ways. (Think online and audio courses, videoconferencing, interactive simulations, and formal opportunities for employees to reflect on and apply what they've been taught.) Finally, with respect to transforming learning departments, the key is to make them leaner, more agile, and more strategic by curating useful external content, encouraging peer teaching, measuring the impact of training, and providing tools to tailor learning plans to individuals.
For legacy companies, culture change is often the biggest challenge of digital transformation. How can they become more agile and innovative without alienating their best employees or wrecking their best existing practices? This article provides a framework for leaders in any industry. The process begins with understanding four key values of digital culture: impact, speed, openness, and autonomy. It then involves adopting or refining a set of digital-ready practices, grounded in these values.
As sexy as it is to speculate about new technologies such as AI, robots, and the internet of things, the focus on technology can steer the conversation in a dangerous direction. Because when it comes to digital transformation, digital is not the answer. Transformation is. In various industries, including banking, paint, and shipbuilding, digital leaders are finding that technology's value comes from doing business differently because technology makes it possible.
This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. People often talk about business competition as if it's a short race: Get to market first and you are bound to win. Indeed, the importance of first-mover advantage has been drummed into the heads of many business executives, and some have almost been brainwashed to think that speed is everything. But when a new technology like the Internet threatens to transform an industry, the companies that are quickest to respond aren't necessarily the ones that reap the greatest benefits. In fact, choosing a fast strategy can lock them into a set of decisions that actually hurt them in the long run. Instead, organizations that choose the right strategy for the entire race--both for the early and late stages--will come out ahead. The authors have found that companies that respond quickly by launching a spin-off usually have difficulty achieving true staying power in the market. For enduring success, incumbent companies are better off creating a group that is--or will eventually be--integrated within their organizations. Only then will they be able to tap fully into their numerous strengths and assets, leveraging their incumbent's advantage.
Describes Destiny's use of "pattern language" concepts to structure its business activities. The innovative approach contrasts with a process approach and helps the company balance its needs for scalability with retained agility.
Reviews Tektronix's implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution in all three of its global business divisions. This case tells the story of three implementations, each with its own character and requirements. Tektronix managers needed to synchronize the requirements of each division with the company's overall need to standardize business practices and its desire to adhere to a common business model across the enterprise. Details the difficulty of major business change in a mature business and technical environment.