Optimize Your Business

Collaborative strategies: The "costs of collaboration are here and now; the benefits represent potential. This gap is accentuated by the desire of top managers to institute accountability for performance at business-unit levels by relating pay to unit performance. As a result, companies often don't reap the biggest benefits of collaboration. ... Collaboration isn't constrained by lack of knowledge about strategic benefits, then, but by internal IT limitations, managerial culture, and the nature of managerial performance-measurement systems within the company. All is not lost, however." --"The Collaboration Continuum," by C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy

ROI valuation: "These customized systems are intended to accentuate capabilities that differentiate a company from the competition along the lines of the strategy the executive team has laid out. Building core systems is a great challenge, but it's one that IT people live for. ... By contrast, systems for context are ... not that engaging. Competitive differentiation on context is actually a liability." --"Mind Your Core Business," by Geoffrey Moore Optimal marketing: "A deep understanding of trust reveals that it applies only to personal relationships between human beings, not among companies. As companies cut back on direct relationships with customers to save money, they may well be rolling back the possibility of trust, and with it, the management of loyalty. The important point here is that companies need to employ 'E' technologies to increase customer-touch efficiency and, at the same time, increase personal touch points with their most loyal customers." --"The Ascent Of Loyalty: Why Trust Really Matters," by Jim Taylor and Scott Dinsdale Corporate culture: "Most CXOs, when asked to define their company's culture, answer in terms of open offices or casual dress codes. They haven't really thought about their culture at all. Edgar Schein, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. But even leaders aware of the power of culture to affect the bottom line often can't define it with any confidence." --"Better Living Through Culture," by Lou Musante Financial management: "Savvy companies invest ahead of the turn. Only journeymen wait for their daily newspaper to tell them that it's OK to invest again. ... If you could buy a portfolio of stocks of companies with the vision and confidence to let IT spending grow faster than revenue during a downturn, history suggests you'd do extremely well." --"Investing For The Long Haul," by Charles Phillips Business leadership: "The answer to the question, 'Why don't we execute on strategy?' is found in the organization itself--in the structures, systems, frameworks, incentives, and operating principles that collectively constitute the organizational model. This model is the context in which thousands of decisions are made every day at every level of a business." --"Transformation Agents," by James O'Toole, Andrew Tipping, and Carl Hurst Interested? Apply for a subscription at go.optimizemag.com. BOB EVANS
Editor-in-Chief
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