Strategic thinking is most important for leaders in 2010 say the top 20 Companies

from mick's leadership blog

Strategic thinking is most important for leaders in 2010 say the top 20 Companies

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Mission Statements

From Fast Company, by Nancy Lublin

Here are four mission statements. Two are from real organizations. Two were created by Dilbert's Automatic Mission Statement Generator. Can you guess which ones are genuine?

1. It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructures as well as to quickly create principle-centered sources to meet our customer's needs.

2. Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance-based infrastructures.

3. To improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities.

4. Respect, integrity, communication, and excellence.

Mission statements are like corporate Hallmark cards. Often written in a bland cursive font and plastered conspicuously at headquarters, these aspiring epigrams are pretty words in Air Supply -- like rhythm. Sometimes they're created at a retreat in the woods, between the trust fall and the passing of the speaking stick. Vigorous fights over semantics last for hours, even months. Then you end up with some variation of the jargony quasi-poetry above.

For three years, I sat on an advisory board at my alma mater that helped shape the university's entrepreneurship program. At every board meeting, someone would say, "So why are we here?" Then someone would read the mission statement (it was packed with words like "commitment" and "empowerment"), and even the most dramatic James Earl Jones -- like vocal effect couldn't help motivate us to think more clearly. Because it was neither clear nor useful -- and if it wasn't useful, why the heck were we arguing about it?

Mission statements don't have to be dumb. In fact, they can be very valuable, if they articulate real targets. The first thing I'd do is forget the exact words and remember the reason for a statement in the first place. In 2006, Wilson Learning surveyed 25,000 employees from the finance and tech industries. Respondents said they wanted a leader who could "convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do." The same applies to mission statements, which set the tone. Employees, vendors, and clients don't get stoked by fuzzy mission statements. They will line up behind concrete goals.

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Strategy and Operations in the Enterprise: Closing the Alignment Gap

A Forbes Insights Report has just been published, in association with SAP. Well worth checking out.

Here's the summary ...

Enterprise executives clearly agree that aligning strategy and operations is essential to their companies’ success, but many organizations still face significant barriers that may prevent them from achieving this. Executives on both sides of the strategy/operations aisle are concerned that strategic priorities may be out of sync with operational realities, in particular in critical areas such as risk management and talent allocation and retention.

Intensifying this split are the sudden shifts companies have had to make to deal with the impact of the global recession and resulting economic volatility. But it is clear that many executives believe the time to more closely align strategy and operations is now, to protect the company in the short term and to help it map out the long-term growth initiatives for the eventual economic recovery.

This study, conducted in association with SAP, is based on a survey of more than 200 C-level and senior executives at global enterprises with annual revenues exceeding $500 million. Additional interviews with senior executives provide first-hand insights into how companies are managing alignment issues.

Here's the full report.

Sun Tzu's art of War

From Jason Seiden's blog ...

"Over the next two weeks, I will be posting a series of blog entries on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Today, I start at the beginning: chapter one. (Makes sense.)

If you are not familiar with the book, I highly recommend it. It’s a fast read, and most versions have commentary at the beginning that provide a fascinating historical context for the work. There is also a terrific website, sonshi.com, that has a copy of the book, interviews (including one with me), and a forum dedicated to The Art of War. I highly recommend perusing that site.

So here are the key questions that jump out at me from chapter one: first, why study war? And second, what’s the framework for understanding how to win?

The first question is easy: because if you ever find yourself in a war, you had better know how to win. Not engage, not skirmish, but win. Only by being able to win a war can you hope to avoid one.

The second question is deceptively complex. Sun Tzu lays out a five point model for thinking about the elements of warfare. Master these five elements, and you’ve got it made in the shade. They are: the “way”, heaven, ground, command, and law/doctrine that sounds simple only until you start to apply it.

Way is culture or influence. It is the ability of leaders to unite subordinates under a common theme and create a heightened level of commitment to the common cause. Sun Tzu puts this as the first amongst equals."

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Building a platform (and thinking about Google's Knol)

From Seth Godin's blog ...

At the end of November, I flew out to give a speech to 350 Google folks. They had invited me to join a panel on the best way to for Google to work with partners.

My riff (I only had about 8 minutes... gotta hate panels) was to point out that AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and others before them had had the same challenges in building an environment that attracted partners and media companies. (I had run companies that worked with each of them). The question it turns out, is always the same: do you have a platform that I can build a business on?

Obviously, a lot goes into that calculation. It’s not just tools and technology. It’s attitude and predictability. It also involves a threshold, an attainable goal that separates insiders from outsiders.

Take Hollywood, for example. There are literally tens of thousands of people and organizations that have built a business around the movie-making platform. The major studios provide a predictable, profitable place to make a living. Screenwriters, technology companies, advertising agencies--they know that they can depend on the system, and even better, they realize that once they’ve paid some dues, they can profit over time by getting better gigs, more reliable income streams, etc.

Wal-Mart has done the same thing with the businesses and vendors that count on them. They have created a series of rules and procedures and over time, it gets easier and easier to make a living working with them.

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How to Fill the Talent Gap

From the Wall Street Journal Online, by Douglas A. Ready and Jay A. Conger

"Global companies face a perfect storm when it comes to finding the employees they need.

It's no secret that global companies are finding it harder to fill critical jobs these days. They're struggling to land top recruits in emerging markets, for instance, and haven't prepared people in their own ranks to step seamlessly into management slots.

Companies are racing to find solutions, but most of them are making a crucial error: They're treating these problems as separate issues. At most multinationals, a host of problems in recruiting and developing talent are converging to create a perfect storm -- a crisis that could derail the company's growth strategies.

To meet the challenge, companies must rethink how they hire, train and reward their employees, placing those tasks at the heart of their business plans. In doing so, they have an opportunity to address all these separate problems with a unified plan, rather than waste time and resources attacking each of the issues individually.

We arrived at this conclusion after researching more than 40 companies to gain a better understanding of their concerns in recruiting and developing. We wanted to identify what steps companies were taking to excel in these areas -- to see what it would take for a company to become a world-class talent factory.

As a part of our research, we identified five common problems in recruiting and development".

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Apples are Square

I don't often recommend books, but there is a new one out which you might find interesting - "Apples are Square", by Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas Kuczmarski.

From their website:

"For centuries, leaders have been operating within a “control and compete” mindset. But the times are changing. More and more, at the helm of successful companies, you’ll find a different sort of leader. Collaborators, not controllers, they are “square apples,” bold men and women who dare to create success by reshaping the workplace in unexpected ways. In Apples Are Square, innovation consultants and celebrated authors Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas Kuczmarski share with you the secrets of how to become a square apple in your organization.

To develop their groundbreaking strategy for success, the authors interviewed 25 leadership pioneers from many different work settings - media, the arts, government, sports, education, and business, including Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist; Mary Ellen Weber, former NASA astronaut; and NFL star Chris Zorich, whose personal story inspired the title of this book. With the tools in Apples Are Square, you’ll be able to take any bruised environment and reshape it into a positive force."

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