Blog Posts

Enterprise Social Networking

By Saba on April 7, 2011

In an era of heightened competition and a changing workforce, new models of peer-to-peer interactions and networked, community based collaboration are creating exceptional business value. Learn how Enterprise social networking forms the core of a connected corporate community. View.

Moonshots for Managers

By Gary Hamel on April 6, 2011

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of three posts (previously published in The Wall Street Journal ) introducing the Moonshots for Management that now make up the framework for the MIX. We're republishing them here to give an introduction for those readers of the MIX who may not be familiar with them, as well as to provide some of the rationale behind the moonshots for those are already acquainted with them. The second post in the series can be read here .

If you’re a professional manager, here’s a question for you: What’s the obstinate, knotty management problem you’re working to solve—the one that bedevils your organization, that lies beyond the boundaries of best practice, and has no obvious solution? In other words, are you working on anything that might advance the state of the art in a fundamental way? Are you aiming to fundamentally improve the technology we use to mobilize human resources to productive ends—that is, the technology of management? If no, why not?

Geneticists hope to dramatically improve human health—by untangling the complexities of the genome. Computer scientists work to radically extend the limits of human capability—by...

Worth Preserving: What Business Leaders can learn from the Renaissance

By Christian Stadler on March 30, 2011

As the global economy slowly turns around, we have embarked on a new era of growth. While innovation and new business ideas gain central stage, we should remember that some old-fashioned management practices are worth preserving.

By “old-fashioned” I mean: Companies should build a solid capital and reserve base, only grow if they can do so profitably, and avoid overleveraging at all costs. In simple terms, corporations should have some spare cash at hand for unexpected threats and opportunities and never engage in activities which put their entire future at risk.

A trip back to the Renaissance illustrates the point.

Unless you’re a student of European history, you’ve probably never heard of the Fuggers, a German merchant and banking family. In the 16th century, though, they were the reigning masters of the universe. The Fuggers bankrolled Europe’s greatest empires; their political influence was comparable to the Medici in Italy, and their wealth was matched only by the Rothschild’s a century later. Originally merchants of fine clothing, they diversified into banking in the 15th century. Their closest dealings were with the Habsburg family, which provided mining rights as securities against loans from the merchants....

Reimagining the organization Wikipedia-style: How a Thousand Volunteers Built a Strategic Plan

By Chris Grams on March 21, 2011

The term “strategic planning” conjures up images of suits in conference rooms diagramming the path to world domination on whiteboards. All too often, strategic planning is an activity reserved for the organizational elite—executives aided by consultants. The top dogs think up all the big ideas—and the “troops” execute the plan.

Not so for one organization.

Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation, a 50-person non-profit supporting Wikipedia and related projects, turned the conventional approach to setting strategy on its head . Against a backdrop of slowing Wikipedia contributions and a declining number of active editors, the foundation turned where it has always turned for answers: to its worldwide community of volunteer “Wikimedians.”

A few weeks ago, the Wikimedia Foundation unveiled the final version of its new strategic plan (you can download it yourself here ). While the vision described within it is compelling, the unique process used to craft that vision contains powerful lessons for leaders and organizations of all types.

Summoning an army of volunteers

In total, more than 1,000 people contributed to the Wikimedia strategic planning project, writing nearly that many proposals to meet the...

A better grasp of how value is created will help executives resist short-term pressure

By McKinsey & Company on March 19, 2011

Editor’s note: Why are managers so often short sighted at the expense of the long-term health and value of their companies? One reason is that compensation and incentive systems are too often geared to the short term. These incentives can skew our perspective of the bigger picture. Indeed, research suggests that most executives wouldn’t fund a viable new initiative if doing so reduced current earnings. Changing this won’t be easy, but building new incentive systems that focus executive attention on creating long-term stakeholder value is a critical priority for management innovation. One of the MIX’s Moonshots for Management addresses this need: Stretch management timeframes and perspectives .

This adaptation from Value: The Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance , by McKinsey authors Richard Dobbs, Tim Koller, and Bill Huyett, argues that a better understanding of how shareholder value is created will help executives and their boards stay focused on longer-term goals .

It’s surprising how often senior executives and their boards make decisions that defy their own intuition about what creates lasting shareholder value. Perceived market pressure to deliver short-term profits, new financial engineering techniques, and misconceptions dressed as...

Want to be a part of the Hackathon Pilot? Well, come on then.

By Chris Grams on March 10, 2011

In her post earlier today, Polly LaBarre introduced my new role as the MIX Community Guide .

One of my first tasks? I’ll be leading the Hackathon Pilot, an experiment in open collaboration we hope will help shape the future of the MIX and lead to genuine progress when it comes to crafting the “source code” for Management 2.0.

Earlier this week, we announced the winners in another great M-Prize contest ( congratulations, Lisa, Joris, and Doug !), the HCI Human Capital M-Prize. The M-Prizes continue to be a compelling channel for contributing ideas and stories to the MIX (MIXers added almost 100 new hacks and stories as part of the Human Capital contest, and have added just as many for the ongoing MBA M-Prize ). The MIX will be announcing some new M-Prizes this spring, so keep your eyes out.

Meanwhile, with the Hackathon Pilot, we aim to prototype another approach to contributing to the future of management-- one that supports collective work over individual contribution. The MIX team is putting together all sorts of mechanisms for enabling this sort of work, in part inspired by feedback and...

Inventing the Future Together: Introducing the Hackathon Pilot

By Polly LaBarre on March 10, 2011

Why can't we build organizations that are as resilient, inventive, inspiring, and accountable--as human--as the people who work within them? That's the driving question behind and the dream fueling the MIX. Of course, it's not just our dream--it's the shared dream of countless workers and leaders in every kind of organization around the world. Hundreds of you have already stood up for that dream with your contributions--your inspiring stories, pioneering ideas, experimental designs, passion, energy and time--here on the MIX. We are so energized by and grateful for those contributions--and we need more! We also know--and you've told us--that this is not enough. If we want to create what amounts to the open source code for Management 2.0, we can't just rely on the individual contributions of management innovators everywhere--we need those energetic and inspired contributors to work together to make real progress on a set of make-or-break challenges . That's why we're rolling out a set of power tools and new platforms for collaboration among MIXers. I'm thrilled to announce the launch of the first of those: the Hackathon Pilot --an experiment designed to coordinate efforts around tackling the Communities of Passion moonshot...

Announcing the Winners of the HCI Human Capital M-Prize

By Polly LaBarre on March 9, 2011

Last night at the Human Capital Institute Summit in Atlanta, the MIX team announced the winners of the first Human Capital M-Prize.

We are delighted to share them with you:

Lisa Haneberg (Grand Prize) for her HACK
Start with a better question to create a better talent management system: the Talent Management Cloud

Joris Luijke for his STORY
Atlassian’s Big Experiment with Performance Reviews

Doug Solomon for his STORY
The Tube: IDEO Builds a Collaboration System that Inspires Through Passion

The judges ( Colin Price, Director of Global Organization Practice, McKinsey & Company, Marcus Buckingham, speaker and author of Now, Discover Your Strengths , John Boudreau, Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California, and Gary Hamel and the MIX team) were especially impressed by the intensive effort the ten semifinalists put into the final round—they gathered and incorporated feedback from peers, judges and the MIX team, polished their entries, and most importantly, connected with each other.

At last night's...

Paths to Innovative Leadership

By Rich Lyons on March 7, 2011

Twenty-first century companies are in great need of innovative leaders. They need men and women who know how to put new ideas to work effectively and responsibly in every corner of their organizations. They need people who will define what's next in our markets and societies.

But that doesn't mean that all business schools must develop the same types of leaders. Different businesses will need different kinds of talent. To develop a wide-ranging workforce, business schools must first understand how all aspects of their programs--their curricula, their faculty, their locational advantages, their cultures--work together. Only with that understanding can they forge fresh approaches to developing innovative leadership.

Unfortunately, while virtually every business school teaches leadership in one way or another, I believe that there isn't much differentiation among schools in the kinds of leaders they produce. At least, these differentiations are seldom explicitly stated. In fact, we have tended to blur these distinctions in our programs by failing to specify one set of leadership styles and capabilities over another.

I think that's a mistake. Business schools bring different strengths to the table and can foster business innovation in unique and interesting ways. At the Haas School of...

Enduring Success—What the History of Outstanding Corporations Has to Teach Us

By Christian Stadler on March 7, 2011

Some companies have the knack of turning in stellar performance decade after decade. To be sure, they may lose their way for a year or two, but somehow they overcome the setback and resume their relentless progress. General Electric is one such company. So is Shell. Understanding what sets these companies apart from their rivals is arguably the holy grail of managers and business scholars alike.

For the last six years, I have led a team of eight researchers in a study of some of Europe's oldest and best companies. We asked: What distinguishes companies that managed to perform at a very high level over very long periods from others that do not perform as well? To answer this question we selected a sample of companies that had turned in an extraordinarily high performance over the past 50 years (our gold medalists outperformed the stock exchange by at least the factor 15) and compared each with another old company, whose performance was still good but which was well behind the very high performer (we call them silver medalists). Fifteen years after Collins and Porras' Built to Last , our work incorporates fresh insights from management science and provides...

Why Business is Brain-Dead--and How to Wake Up

By Umair Haque on March 4, 2011

Often, when I'm invited to speak to boardrooms, I start by gently saying: "Listen up folks. Business is brain-dead. Right now, even as we speak, your business is probably undergoing a slow, barely perceptible, but wholly pernicious brain death." I might take a custom-made, baby-soft $2000 loafer to the head and get muscled out of the room, but as I'm ushered through the cubefarm hinterlands I try to explain: "No, really. I don't say this for effect, it is literally true: business has a serious cognitive malfunction--an inability to process reality".

Here's a question to test yourself: is your economic design based on real costs--or fake, inauthentic, perhaps entirely fictional ones? In my experience, the vast majority of organizations fall squarely in the latter camp.

Consider, for a moment, the "costs" that make up the bulk of "business models." The telco industry depends on "roaming costs." The banking industry depends on "overdraft charges" and credit card surcharges. The software industry, on "per-processor (or per-seat) licenses." The music and film industries, on dubious "expenses" of all kinds . The healthcare industry, on spiraling therapeutic costs--often unwanted, unnecessary, or downright ineffectual. The auto industry, more and more on "financing,"...

Why It's Logical to Go Radical

By Bill Taylor on February 27, 2011

Not long ago, I was in the audience at a symposium organized by the leaders of the Henry Ford Health System, a $4-billion-a-year health-and-hospital company based in Detroit. The organization's leaders had called the symposium to explain to local executives why they were making the biggest strategic bet in the system's history since its founding by Henry Ford himself back in 1915.

Many observers thought the hospital was taking too big a risk, that its strategy was too radical. But Robert Riney, COO of the organization, turned those worries on their head. "It's not radical to 'go radical,'" he told the wide-eyed group. "It's logical to go radical. How can you look at the situation in our industry and say the answer is to make incremental change?"

What was the bold move on people's minds? The organization's decision to build one of the most remarkable healthcare facilities that I (or anyone) has ever seen, the Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The $360-million facility, roughly 23 miles northwest of the original Henry Ford Hospital, is a one-of-a-kind innovation that reimagines the sense of what's possible in its field.

"This was the first hospital...

Nokia's Real Problem: The Commodity Trap

By Henry Chesbrough on February 22, 2011

Last week, Nokia's new CEO Steven Elop wrote a scathing memo to his team at Nokia, describing the company's declining market position in mobile phones as a "burning platform". Such direct and blunt language is unusual in most corporate settings, and shows how seriously Elop views Nokia's troubles.

But Nokia will not arrest its deterioration until it properly diagnoses the cause of its position in the market. I believe that Nokia has fallen into a "commodity trap" in mobile phones. In this trap, it is not enough to accelerate innovation or increase the number of new products one offers. Instead, Nokia needs to rethink the nature of its business. For Nokia is no longer in a product business, it is now in a service business. And it will need to innovate differently in order to get out of the commodity trap.

A commodity trap is a subtle trap. Companies that differentiate their products by building them to be smaller, faster, more powerful and cheaper begin to find that others quickly imitate every new feature that they introduce. The length of time that any given product is attractive in the market begins to decline, as even newer...

We Want Your Vote—And Your Ideas!

By Polly LaBarre on February 18, 2011

As we close out the semifinal round of the HCI Human Capital M-Prize , we wanted to offer up a quick take on each of the entries in the running—and encourage all of you to rate the entries, add your ideas and questions in the comments field.

These contributions are rich with ideas and insights around unleashing passion, inspiring extraordinary contribution, promoting freedom, inviting participation (even from the most unlikely sources), and subverting hierarchal power and control. Dig into these and offer up your own. This is just the beginning of our collective journey in creating organizations that are truly fit for human beings. We want to hear your voice!

The semifinal round ends on February 20th—winners will be announced at the HCI Human Capital Summit in Atlanta on March 8th and here on the MIX.

How to Start a Movement in Your Company
Story by David Choe
An inspiring 3-part narrative of real-world transformation led by an in-the-trenches innovator who unleashed a “swarm of initiative” around an urgent business challenge. Choe, a director of strategy at the $1 billion-firm Tyco Electronics, tells the story of taking...

The Dumb Growth Revolution

By Umair Haque on February 18, 2011

In light of recent events, here's a tiny hypothesis: In a hyper-connected world, revolutions spread. Tahrir Square, Trafalgar Square, and Times Square aren't miles apart--but inches.

Think the revolution in Egypt is yesterday's news? Think again. You know how the flu spreads--the first glimmering sign of a great global epidemic is a small eruption here and there. My hunch is that Egypt is just the tip of the iceberg, the spark signaling a larger conflagration--a viral epidemic of contagious, self-organizing revolutions, hell-bent on ousting the creaking, rusting powers that be.

I'd suggest we're witness to the first wave of a larger movement spearheaded by the world's young, fiercely devoted to toppling the tired, toxic status quo--whether they sit (and protest) in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen or Wisconsin and London.

What created an environment so conducive to the spread of this epidemic? I'd put it this way. Yesterday's institutions were built to narcotize us into sleep--and while we dozed, they purloined our future, looted our societies, trampled nature, eviscerated our communities, ransacked our values, and body-slammed our own sense of self-worth. If we ever needed a revolutionary imperative. . .

Sound harsh? Welcome to what Tyler Cowen...

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