Harvard business review最新文献

We'd like to think that no smart, upstanding manager would ever overlook or turn a blind eye to threats or wrongdoing that ultimately imperil his or her business. Yet it happens all the time. We fall prey to obstacles that obscure or drown out important signals that things are amiss. Becoming a "first-class noticer," says Max H. Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School, requires conscious effort to fight ambiguity, motivated blindness, conflicts of interest, the slippery slope, and efforts of others to mislead us. As a manager, you can develop your noticing skills by acknowledging responsibility when things go wrong rather than blaming external forces beyond your control. Bazerman also advises taking an outsider's view to challenge the status quo. Given the string of ethical failures of corporations around the world in recent years--from BP to GM to JP Morgan Chase--it's clear that leaders not only need to act more responsibly themselves but also must develop keen noticing skills in their employees and across their organizations.

Managers and academics often lament that Wall Street's shortterm focus makes it impossible for corporations to plan for the long run. Palmisano disagrees. Yes, there are some on Wall Street, such as the sell-side analysts who dominate quarterly earnings conference calls, who can't see more than a few months out. But CEOs shouldn't participate in those calls anyway, he believes. They should instead focus their energies on the institutional investors who will embrace the long view if they are given ways to judge a company's progress. In this edited interview with one of HBR's executive editors, Palmisano describes how IBM's top management made significant changes to how the firm set goals and communicated them to investors. "The model," a rolling multi-year road map for earnings growth and cash generation, included an emphasis on R&D investment even during downturns, a plan for execution that involved every unit in the organization, and a shift toward long-term compensation. Transparency and open dialogues with large shareholders were also key. The CEO is a steward, Palmisano argues, charged with protecting a company and its returns for decades to come. But that vision need not clash with success on the visible horizon; during Palmisano's tenure, IBM's stock price soared.

How can a person who seems so qualified for a position fail miserably in it? How can someone who clearly lacks relevant skills and experience succeed? The answer is potential, the ability to adapt and grow into increasingly complex roles and environments. For the past several decades, organizations have based their hiring decisions on competencies. But we have entered a new era of talent spotting. Geopolitics, business, industries, and jobs are changing so rapidly that it's impossible to predict the capabilities employees and leaders will need even a few years out. The question now is not whether people have the right skills; it's whether they have the potential to learn new ones. Research points to five markers of potential: a strong motivation to excel in the pursuit of challenging goals combined with the humility to put the group ahead of individual needs; an insatiable curiosity to explore new ideas and avenues; keen insight into connections that others don't see; a strong engagement with work and people; and the determination to overcome obstacles. Once organizations have hired true high potentials--a challenge, given the increasing scarcity of senior talent-and identified the ones they already have, it's crucial to focus on retaining them and on helping them live up to their potential by offering development opportunities that push them out of their comfort zones.

Almost every retailer looks to Google to refer customers, and it's rare to find a manufacturer whose products aren't sold on Amazon. But these and other big platforms can capture a disproportionate share of the value a company creates: Buy an app on iTunes, and Apple takes 30%. The author presents four strategies to help businesses reduce their dependence on powerful platforms. Exploit the platform's need to be comprehensive. American Airlines' strong coverage of key routes made its presence on the travel website Kayak indispensable to Kayak's value proposition. As a result, AA negotiated a better deal. Identify and discredit discrimination. Public complaints that eBay was giving search prominence to suppliers who advertised on the site forced a reversal of the policy. Create an alternative platform. When MovieTickets was on the verge of dominating phone and online ticketing, Regal Entertainment and two other large theater chains formed Fandango. Deal more directly. People ordering takeout through online platforms like Foodler and GrubHub have often already chosen their restaurant. Restaurants that deal directly can exit the platform.

How can leaders build an organization that is capable of innovating continually over time? By creating a community that is both willing and able to innovate. To be willing, the community must share a sense of purpose, values, and rules of engagement. When Luca de Meo was Volkswagen's head of marketing communication, he fostered a sense of purpose in his team by asking its members to reflect on what being part of VW meant to them; strengthened their shared values by encouraging them to use the brand's three components-innovation, responsibility, and value-to guide their work; and built significant responsibility and autonomy into their rules of engagement. To be able, companies must generate ideas through discourse and debate; experiment quickly, reflect, and adjust; and make decisions that combine disparate and even opposing ideas. Bill Coughran, an SVP of engineering at Google, employed these capabilities both to solve the company's near-term data storage needs and to make progress toward a next-generation solution.

A health care revolution is under way, and doctors must be part of it. But many are deeply anxious and angry about the transformation, fearing loss of autonomy, respect, and income. Given their resistance, how can health system Leaders engage them in redesigning care? In this article, Dr. Thomas H. Lee, Press Ganey's chief medical officer, and Dr. Toby Cosgrove, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, describe a framework they've developed for encouraging buy-in. Adapting Max Weber's "typology of motives," and applying behavioral economics and other motivational principles, they describe four tactics leadership must apply in concert: engaging doctors in a noble shared purpose; addressing their economic self-interest; leveraging their desire for respect; and appealing to their sense of tradition. Drawing from experiences at the Mayo Clinic, Geisinger Health System, Partners HealthCare, the Cleveland Clinic, Ascension Health, and others, the authors show how the four motivational levers work together to bring this critical group of stakeholders on board.

It's one thing to set goals-and entirely another to get the people in your organization to actually accomplish them. To make the leap from vision to execution, you can't just define what needs doing; you also need to spell out the details of getting it done. One motivational tool that enables this is "if-then planning," which helps people express and carry out their intentions. If-then plans work because contingencies are built into our neurological wiring, says social psychologist Halvorson. Humans are very good at encoding information in "If x, then y" terms and using such connections to guide their behavior, often unconsciously. When people decide exactly when, where, and how they'll fulfill a goal, they create a link in their brains between the situation or cue (If or when x happens) and the behavior that should follow (then I will do y). This creates powerful triggers for action. To date, most of the research on if-then plans has focused on individuals, but new studies show that they're very effective with groups, improving performance by sharpening focus and prompting members to execute key activities in a timely manner. If-then planning helps organizations avoid poorly expressed goals, groupthink, the tendency to cling to lost causes, and other problems. It pinpoints conditions for success, increases everyone's sense of responsibility, and helps close the troublesome gap between knowing and doing.

Innovative management ideas that bubble up in other companies pose a perennial quandary for leaders: Should you attempt to borrow new ideas, and if so, which ones and how? Even the most promising practices can be disastrous if they're transplanted into the wrong company, writes Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School. Broadly speaking, there are two ways to borrow from innovative companies, he argues. The first, observe and apply, is the most commonly used approach for adopting new management ideas. It can and does work well, but only under Limited sets of circumstances: when the observed practice easily stands alone or involves just a small constellation of supporting behaviors (think of GE's well-regarded succession-planning process) and when a company's management model or way of thinking is very similar to the originator's (think of two software firms that both use the Agile development approach). The second method is to extract a management practice's essential principle-its underlying logic-and ask a series of questions to determine if it is right for your firm, including: How is your company different from the originating firm? Are the goals of the practice important to your organization? Many management innovations are launched with great fanfare, only to fade in popularity. With careful analysis, you can avoid falling prey to this hype cycle. And even if it turns out that a borrowed idea isn't right for you, the analysis will help you better understand your own management models and sharpen your practices.