Numerous studies show that people will rise, or fall, to the level where their superiors believe them capable. As a manager, it is up to you to have high expectations for your employees, and to communicate those expectations to them. In Pygmalion in Management , J. Sterling Livingston urges you to understand the power you have over your subordinates' success, and use it to benefit everyone involved. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
In <i>Control in an Age of Empowerment</i>, Robert Simons explains how to give employees the freedom to innovate while protecting your firm from loose cannons. Using powerful examples, Simons shows how to apply four powerful management «levers» to balance autonomy with control: Traditional diagnostic control systems, Belief systems, Boundary systems, and Interactive control systems. Used in concert, these four levers give you the control you need–without sacrificing the creative thinking your company can't do without. Since 1922, <i>Harvard Business Review</i> has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
While there is a widespread belief that some people are born to lead, the existence of an 'ideal manager' is almost entirely a myth. Basic skills – the ones that most employees can learn – are often more important than personality traits. In Skills of an Effective Administrator , Robert L. Katz identifies the three fundamental abilities companies should seek to develop in their managers. Find out for yourself how these vital skills can be put to work today. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
Corporate values and corporate operations have always been dynamically intertwined, but today more than ever the trend toward focusing on the social impact of the corporation is an inescapable reality that must be factored into managerial decision making. Instead of the utopian and sometimes anticapitalistic bias that marks much of applied business philosophy, this article presents a process of ethical inquiry that is immediately accessible to managers and executives. The process begins with 12 basic questions What is needed is a process of ethical inquiry that is immediately comprehensible to a group of executives and not predisposed to the utopian, and sometimes anticapitalistic, bias marking much of the work in applied business philosophy. First step is a set of 12 questions that draw on traditional philosophical frameworks but that avoid the level of abstraction normally associated with formal moral reasoning. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
What makes for a great meeting? As a leader, how can you keep discussions on point and productive? In <i>How to Run a Meeting</i>, Antony Jay argues that too many leaders fail to plan adequately for meetings. In this bestselling article, he defines the characteristics that contribute to success, from keeping formal minutes to acknowledging junior staff first. These guidelines will help you get demonstrably better results from every meeting you run. Since 1922, <i>Harvard Business Review</i> has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
In this seminal article, innovation experts Clayton Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman, and Willy C. Shih explore the key reasons why companies struggle to innovate. The authors uncover common mistakes companies make—from focusing on the wrong customers to choosing the wrong products to develop—that can derail innovation efforts, and offer a better way forward for management teams who want to avoid these obstacles and get innovation right. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
Business is like war: The best combatant wins while the worst loses, right? Not necessarily. Companies can succeed spectacularly without destroying others. And they can lose miserably after competing well. Exceptional businesses win by actively shaping the game they're playing, not playing the game they find. The Right Game shows you how to do this—by altering who's competing, what value each player brings to the table, and which rules and tactics players use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
In recent years a new—disquieting—form of disruptive innovation has emerged, one that beats incumbents on both price and quality right from the start and quickly sweeps through every customer segment. This kind of “big bang” disruption can devastate entire product lines virtually overnight. Look at the effect that free navigation apps, preloaded on smartphones, had on the market for devices made by TomTom, Garmin, and Magellan.Big-bang disruptions often come out of the blue from people who aren’t your traditional competitors. Frequently, they’re developed by inventors who are just doing low-cost experiments with existing technologies to see what new products they can dream up. Once launched, these innovations don’t adhere to conventional strategic paths or normal patterns of market adoption. That makes them incredibly hard to combat.Though technology- and information-intensive firms are most vulnerable to big bangs, mature industries face this threat, too. Credit cards, automobiles, and education, for instance, are all experiencing early warning signs. But in every industry, big-bang disruption will be keeping executives in a cold sweat for a long time to come.This article, which originally appeared in Harvard Business Review, offers some strategic principles to help businesses survive big bangs.
For most companies, cost cutting in a down economy means across-the-board slashing that «spreads the pain» of budget reductions across many departments. While that may sound like the best approach for getting critical results fast and for limiting political infighting, it is a mistake-one that will leave your company weaker, not just smaller. Instead, companies that need to reduce costs should treat the challenge as an opportunity to identify and reinforce their key capabilities, while divesting from those activities that do not truly reflect the business's strengths or long-term goals. This more strategic approach will make your company more resilient as tough times continue and more robust as recovery begins.In Cut Costs, Grow Stronger, an e-book published as part of the Harvard Business Press Memo to the CEO series, Booz & Company's Shumeet Banerji, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi provide executives with the tools they need to rapidly implement capabilities-driven cost reduction. First they demonstrate how to identify and clearly articulate your company's key capabilities-not just core competencies or skill sets, but those very few strengths that, in combination, define how your organization competes. You can then use this information to create your company's unique blueprint for effective and efficient cost reduction. The authors' detailed, step-by-step framework walks you through the process, which can be completed in as little as two or three months-it's something that you can do now. This practical guide to capabilities-driven cost-cutting is the tool executives need to confront the challenge of today's economy while strengthening the foundation for what will set their company apart in the future.