Showing papers in "Harvard Business Review in 2011"

Nuevos modelos de negocios en los mercados emergentes

Abstract: Muchas multinacionales occidentales esperan encontrar la mayor parte de su crecimiento futuro en las economias emergentes Pero lo habitual es que traten de aprovechar la oportunidad reduciendo implacablemente los costos y aceptando margenes cercanos a cero El problema, plantean los autores �todos de la consultora en innovacion Innosight� no es que esas empresas no puedan crear ofertas viables, sino que el hecho de limitarse a transplantar sus modelos de negocio domesticos en los mercados nuevos no funcionara Deben idear modelos radicalmente nuevos identificando un importante que los consumidores necesitan realizar y para los que la oferta existente no da alternativas satisfactorias; desempenar ese trabajo en forma rentable a un precio que el cliente pagara e implementar y desarrollar cuidadosamente el modelo al probar constantemente los supuestos y hacer ajustes Recurriendo a su experiencia en investigacion, incubacion y consultoria para empresas que han creado 20 modelos de negocios nuevos en mercados en desarrollo, los autores describen la amplia demanda potencial que representa el �mercado del medio� en las economias emergentes; esas millones de personas que tienen el deseo y los medios para pagar por bienes y servicios, desde un refrigerador, pasando por el lavado de la ropa, hasta las transferencias de dinero, que les ayudaran a hacer mejor sus trabajos en comparacion con cualquier otra oferta actual

Ways Women Lead

Abstract: While Mary Hartman helped us see the importance of continually rethinking our response to the issues that women face, Judy Rosener frames the problems and opportunities that women encounter in organizations in a very specific way. Her response is one that emphasizes the unique contributions that women leaders make within organizations. In her now classic article on women leaders we find a demonstration that a transformative collaborative model of leading is both more typical of women leaders and actually very effective, particularly in large organizations. As the book progresses, we shall see that the strategy of emphasizing women leaders’ “unique” leadership style also has its dangers, as it tends to strengthen gender stereotypes. We however include this perspective here because we want to trace the various possible responses to the changing situation of women within organizations, and consider its costs and benefits before offering new perspectives. Rosener’s article does offer us some crucial insights into alternative leadership models that may be more appropriate responses to contemporary organizational dynamics. Although Rosener barely touches on it, a transformational leader is more comfortable in a complex environment of a large multinational corporation, and that style of leadership, in turn, is more conducive to leadership success in global companies.

How to solve the cost crisis in health care.

Abstract: U.S. health care costs currently exceed 17% of GDP and continue to rise. One fundamental reason that providers are unable to reverse the trend is that they don't understand what it costs to deliver patient care or how those costs compare with outcomes. To put it bluntly, few health care providers measure the actual costs for treating a given patient with a given medical condition over a full cycle of care, or compare the costs they incur with the outcomes they achieve. What isn't measured cannot be managed or improved, and this is all too true in health care, where poor costing systems mean that effective and efficient providers go unrewarded, and inefficient ones have little incentive to improve. But all this can be remedied by exploring the concept of value in health care and carefully measuring costs. This article describes a new way to analyze costs that uses patients and their conditions--not organizational units or narrow diagnostic treatment groups--as the fundamental unit of analysis for measuring costs and outcomes. The new approach, called time-driven activity-cased costing, is currently being implemented in pilots at the Head and Neck Center at MD Anderson, the Cleft Lip and Palate Program at Children's Hospital in Boston, and units performing knee replacements at Schon Klinik in Germany and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. As providers and payors better understand costs, they will be positioned to achieve a true "bending of the cost curve" from within the system, not in response to top-down mandates. Accurate costing also unlocks a whole cascade of opportunities, such as process improvement, better organization of care, and new reimbursement approaches that will accelerate the pace of innovation and value creation.

Before you make that big decision...

Abstract: When an executive makes a big bet, he or she typically relies on the judgment of a team that has put together a proposal for a strategic course of action. After all, the team will have delved into the pros and cons much more deeply than the executive has time to do. The problem is, biases invariably creep into any team's reasoning-and often dangerously distort its thinking. A team that has fallen in love with its recommendation, for instance, may subconsciously dismiss evidence that contradicts its theories, give far too much weight to one piece of data, or make faulty comparisons to another business case. That's why, with important decisions, executives need to conduct a careful review not only of the content of recommendations but of the recommendation process. To that end, the authors-Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on cognitive biases; Lovallo of the University of Sydney; and Sibony of McKinsey-have put together a 12-question checklist intended to unearth and neutralize defects in teams' thinking. These questions help leaders examine whether a team has explored alternatives appropriately, gathered all the right information, and used well-grounded numbers to support its case. They also highlight considerations such as whether the team might be unduly influenced by self-interest, overconfidence, or attachment to past decisions. By using this practical tool, executives will build decision processes over time that reduce the effects of biases and upgrade the quality of decisions their organizations make. The payoffs can be significant: A recent McKinsey study of more than 1,000 business investments, for instance, showed that when companies worked to reduce the effects of bias, they raised their returns on investment by seven percentage points. Executives need to realize that the judgment of even highly experienced, superbly competent managers can be fallible. A disciplined decision-making process, not individual genius, is the key to good strategy.

Strategies of learning from failure.

Abstract: Many executives believe that all failure is bad (although it usually provides Lessons) and that Learning from it is pretty straightforward. The author, a professor at Harvard Business School, thinks both beliefs are misguided. In organizational life, she says, some failures are inevitable and some are even good. And successful learning from failure is not simple: It requires context-specific strategies. But first leaders must understand how the blame game gets in the way and work to create an organizational culture in which employees feel safe admitting or reporting on failure. Failures fall into three categories: preventable ones in predictable operations, which usually involve deviations from spec; unavoidable ones in complex systems, which may arise from unique combinations of needs, people, and problems; and intelligent ones at the frontier, where "good" failures occur quickly and on a small scale, providing the most valuable information. Strong leadership can build a learning culture-one in which failures large and small are consistently reported and deeply analyzed, and opportunities to experiment are proactively sought. Executives commonly and understandably worry that taking a sympathetic stance toward failure will create an "anything goes" work environment. They should instead recognize that failure is inevitable in today's complex work organizations.

The wise leader.

Abstract: In an era of increasing discontinuity, wise leadership has nearly vanished. Many leaders find it difficult to reinvent their corporations rapidly enough to cope with new technologies, demographic shifts, and consumption trends. They can't develop truly global organizations that operate effortlessly across borders. And they find it tough to ensure that their people adhere to values and ethics. The authors assert that leaders must acquire practical wisdom, or what Aristotle called phronesis: experiential knowledge that enables people to make ethically sound judgments. Wise leaders demonstrate six abilities: (i) They make decisions on the basis of what is good for the organization and for society. (2) They quickly grasp the essence of a situation and fathom the nature and meaning of people, things, and events. (3) They provide contexts in which executives and employees can interact to create new meaning. (4) They employ metaphors and stories to convert their experience into tacit knowledge that others can use. (5) They exert political power to bring people together and spur them to act. (6) They use apprenticeship and mentoring to cultivate practical wisdom in orders.

Learning to live with complexity.

Abstract: Business life has always featured the unpredictable, the surprising, and the unexpected. But in today's hyperconnected world, complexity is the norm. Systems that used to be separate are now intertwined and interdependent, and knowing the starting conditions is no guide to predicting outcomes; too many continuously changing interactive elements are in play. Managers looking to navigate these difficulties need to adopt new approaches. They should drop outmoded forecasting tools-for example, ones that rely on averages, which are often less important than outliers. Instead, they should use models that simulate the behavior of the system. They should also make sure that their data include a good amount of future-oriented information. Risk mitigation is crucial as well. Managers should minimize the need to rely on predictions-for instance, they can give users a say in product design. They can decouple elements in a system and build in redundancy to minimize the consequences of a partial system failure, and turn to outside partners to extend their own company's capabilities. They can complement hard analysis with "soft" methods such as storytelling to make potentially important future possibilities more real. And they can make trade-offs that keep early failures small and provide the diversity of thought needed in a nimble organization faced with complexity on virtually every front.

Social strategies that work.

Abstract: Although most companies have collected lots of friends and followers on social platforms such as Facebook, few have succeeded in generating profits there. That's because they merely port their digital strategies into social environments by broadcasting their commercial messages or seeking customer feedback. To succeed on social platforms, says Harvard Business School's Piskorski, businesses need to devise social strategies that are consistent with users' expectations and behavior in these venues--namely, people want to connect with other people, not with companies. The author defines successful social strategies as those that reduce costs or increase customers' willingness to pay by helping people establish or strengthen relationships through doing free work on a company's behalf. Citing successes at Zynga, eBay, American Express, and Yelp, Piskorski shows that social strategies can generate profits by helping people connect in exchange for tasks that benefit the company such as customer acquisition, marketing, and content creation. He lays out a systematic way to build a social strategy and shows how a major credit card company he advised used the method to roll out its own strategy.

The ambidextrous CEO.

Abstract: Although most managers publicly acknowledge the need to explore new businesses and markets, the claims of established businesses on company resources almost always come first, especially when times are hard. When top teams allow the tension between core and speculative units to play out at lower levels of management, innovation loses out. At best, leaders of core business units dismiss innovation initiatives as irrelevancies. At worst, they see the new businesses as threats to the firm's core identity and values. Many CEOs take a backseat in debates over resources, ceding much of their power to middle managers, and the company ends up as a collection of feudal baronies. This is a recipe for long-term failure, say the authors. Their research of 12 top management teams at major companies suggests that firms thrive only when senior teams lead ambidextrously--when they foster a state of constant creative conflict between the old and the new. Successful CEOs first develop a broad, forward-looking strategic aspiration that sets ambitious targets both for innovation and core business growth. They then hold the tension between innovation unit demands and core business demands at the very top of the organization. And finally they embrace inconsistency, allowing themselves the latitude to pursue multiple and often conflicting agendas.

Building collaborative enterprise.

Abstract: Can large companies be both innovative and efficient? Yes, argue Adler, of the University of Southern California; Heckscher, of Rutgers; and Prusak, an independent consultant. But they must develop new organizational capabilities that will create the atmosphere of trust that knowledge work requires--and the coordinating mechanisms to make it scalable. Specifically, such organizations must learn to: Define a shared purpose that guides what people at all levels of the organization are trying to achieve together; Cultivate an ethic of contribution in which the highest value is accorded to people who look beyond their specific roles and advance the common purpose; Develop scalable procedures for coordinating people's efforts so that process-management activities become truly interdependent; and Create an infrastructure in which individuals' spheres of influence overlap and collaboration is both valued and rewarded. These four goals may sound idealized, but the imperative to achieve them is practical, say the authors. Only the truly collaborative enterprises that can tap into everyone's ideas---in an organized way--will compete imaginatively, quickly, and cost-effectively enough to become the household names of this century.

Why leaders don't learn from success.

Abstract: What causes so many companies that once dominated their industries to slide into decline? In this article, two Harvard Business School professors argue that such firms lose their touch because success breeds failure by impeding learning at both the individual and organizational levels. When we succeed, we assume that we know what we are doing, but it could be that we just got lucky. We make what psychologists call fundamental attribution errors, giving too much credit to our talents and strategy and too tittle to environmental factors and random events. We develop an overconfidence bias, becoming so self-assured that we think we don't need to change anything. We also experience the failure-to-ask-why syndrome and neglect to investigate the causes of good performance. To overcome these three learning impediments, executives should examine successes with the same scrutiny they apply to failures. Companies should implement systematic after-action reviews to understand all the factors that led to a win, and test their theories by conducting experiments even if "it ain't broke."

The unselfish gene.

Abstract: For generations, we have operated on the assumption that human beings are fundamentally selfish, and so we have built systems and organizations around monetary incentives, rewards, and punishments That hasn't always worked very well Now the tide is starting to turn In fields such as evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, political science, and experimental economics, researchers are seeing evidence that human beings are more cooperative and behave far less selfishly than we have long assumed The success achieved by such collaborative offerings as Wikipedia, Craigslist, Facebook, and open source software has, in fact, a scientific basis Dozens of field studies have identified highly successful cooperative systems, which are often more stable than those based on incentives Moreover, researchers have found neural and possibly genetic evidence of a human predisposition to cooperate Evolution may actually favor people who collaborate and societies that include such individuals Organizations would be better off helping us to engage and embrace our generous sentiments rather than assuming that we are driven purely by self-interest We can build collaborative systems by encouraging communication, ensuring that claims about community are authentic, fostering a feeling of solidarity, being fair, and appealing to people's intrinsic motivations

The CEO's role in business model reinvention.

Abstract: Fending off new competitors is a perennial struggle for established companies. Govindarajan and Trimble, of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, explain why: Many corporations become too comfortable with their existing business models and neglect the necessary work of radically reinventing them. The authors map out an alternative in their "three boxes" framework. They argue that while a CEO manages the present (box 1), he or she must also selectively forget the past (box 2) in order to create the future (box 3). Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy mastered the three boxes to reinvigorate his company and greatly increased its changes of enduring for generations.

The innovation catalysts

Abstract: A few years ago the software development company Intuit realized that it needed a new approach to galvanizing customers The company's Net Promoter Score was faltering, and customer recommendations of new products were especially disappointing Intuit decided to hold a two-day, off-site meeting for the company's top 300 managers with a focus on the role of design in innovation One of the days was dedicated to a program called Design for Delight The centerpiece of the day was a PowerPoint presentation by Intuit founder Scott Cook, who realized midway through that he was no Steve Jobs: The managers listened dutifully, but there was little energy in the room By contrast, a subsequent exercise in which the participants worked through a design challenge by creating prototypes, getting feedback, iterating, and refining, had them mesmerized The eventual result was the creation of a team of nine design-thinking coaches--"innovation catalysts"--from across Intuit who were made available to help any work group create prototypes, run experiments, and learn from customers The process includes a "painstorm" (to determine the customer's greatest pain point), a "soljam" (to generate and then winnow possible solutions), and a "code-jam" (to write code "good enough" to take to customers within two weeks) Design for Delight has enabled employees throughout Intuit to move from satisfying customers to delighting them

Failing by design.

Abstract: It's hardly news that business leaders work in increasingly uncertain environments, where failures are bound to be more common than successes. Yet if you ask executives how well, on a scale of one to 10, their organizations learn from failure, you'll often get a sheepish "Two-or maybe three" in response. Such organizations are missing a big opportunity: Failure may be inevitable but, if managed well, can be very useful. A certain amount of failure can help you keep your options open, find out what doesn't work, create the conditions to attract resources and attention, make room for new leaders, and develop intuition and skill. The key to reaping these benefits is to foster "intelligent failure" throughout your organization. McGrath describes several principles that can help you put intelligent failure to work. You should decide what success and failure would look like before you start a project. Document your initial assumptions, test and revise them as you go, and convert them into knowledge. Fail fast-the longer something takes, the less you'll learn-and fail cheaply, to contain your downside risk. Limit the number of uncertainties in new projects, and build a culture that tolerates, and sometimes even celebrates, failure. Finally, codify and share what you learn. These principles won't give you a means of avoiding all failures down the road-that's simply not realistic. They will help you use small losses to attain bigger wins over time.

Are you a good boss--or a great one?

Abstract: Private moments of doubt and fear come even to managers who have spent years on the job. Any number of events can trigger them: an initiative going poorly, a lukewarm performance review, a daunting new assignment. HBS professor Hill and executive Lineback have long studied the question of how manager grow and advance. Their experience brings them to a simple but troubling observation: Most bosses reach a certain level of proficiency and stay there--short of what they could and should be. Why? Because they stop working on themselves. The authors offer what they call the three imperatives for managers who seek to avoid this stagnation. First, manage yourself--who you are as a person, the beliefs and values that drive your actions, and especially how you connect with others all matter to the people you must influence. Second, manage your network. Effective managers know that they cannot avoid conflict and competition among organizational groups; they build and nurture ongoing relationships. Third, manage your team. Team members need to know what's required of them collectively and individually and what the team's values, norms, and standards are. The authors include a useful assessment tool to help readers get started.

Zoom in, zoom out.

Abstract: Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives have virtues. But they should not be fixed positions, says Harvard Business School's Kanter. To get a complete picture, leaders need to zoom in and zoom out. A close-in perspective is often found in relationship-intensive settings. It brings details into sharp focus and makes opportunities look large and compelling. But it can have significant downsides. Leaders who prefer to zoom in tend to create policies and systems that depend too much on politics and favors. They can focus too closely on personal status and on turf protection. And they often miss the big picture. When leaders zoom out, they can see events in context and as examples of general trends. They are able to make decisions based on principles. Yet a far-out perspective also has traps. Leaders can be so high above the fray that they don't recognize emerging threats. Having zoomed out to examine all possible routes, they may fail to notice when the moment is right for action on one path. They may also seem too remote and aloof to their staffs. The best leaders can zoom in to examine problems and then zoom out to look for patterns and causes. They don't divide the world into extremes-idiosyncratic or structural, situational or strategic, emotional or contextual. The point is not to choose one over the other but to learn to move across a continuum of perspectives.

El coaching ejecutivo en América Latina

Abstract: Mientras que el coaching ejecutivo se ha ganado un lugar en la agenda de muchos ejecutivos de linea y profesionales de RRHH, poco se sabe en cuanto a su difusion, uso y resultados Con el estudio por los autores, se busca dar un primer paso para llenar este vacio, con la esperanza de contribuir a la mejora de su practica en las empresas de la region Hallaron que en poco tiempo, el coaching ejecutivo llego a una difusion de 84,6% en las empresas de su muestra El uso del coaching ejecutivo se concentra principalmente en la alta direccion y los empleados de alto potencial, y tiene por objetivo contribuir a la mejora de la performance del coacheado o al desarrollo de capacidades especificas A partir de la diferenciacion entre empresas que obtienen buenos resultados de las intervenciones de coaching que organizan y las que no, los autores llegan a dos importantes conclusiones Primero, no existen diferencias significativas en la organizacion y la estructura de los procesos de coaching Desde los criterios usados para seleccionar el coach, pasando por la duracion de sesiones y procesos, hasta las redes de soporte al coacheado, en ninguna dimension hay diferencias que expliquen variaciones importantes en el desempeno Segundo, las variables del contexto organizacional tienen un fuerte impacto Por lo tanto, es necesario preparar la organizacion antes de iniciar intervenciones de coaching mediante tres pasos: aclarar su proposito a partir de argumentos de negocio, desarrollar habilidades de coaching y difundirlo desde la alta direccion hacia el resto de la organizacion

Making yourself indispensable.

Abstract: Peter Drucker and other leadership thinkers have long argued that leaders should focus on strengthening their strengths. How should they do that? Improving on a weakness is pretty easy and straight forward: You can make measurable progress by honing and practicing basic techniques. But developing a strength is a different matter, because simply doing more of what you're good at will yield only incremental improvements. If you are strong technically, becoming even more of a technical expert won't make you a dramatically better leader. If, however, you use what the authors call "nonlinear development"--similar to an athlete's cross-training--you can achieve exponential results. Your technical expertise will become more powerful if, for instance, you build on your communication skills, enabling you to explain technical problems both more broadly and more effectively. The authors, all from the leadership development consultancy Zenger Folkman, present a step-by-step process by which developing leaders can identify their strengths (through either a formal or an informal 360-degree evaluation), select appropriate complementary skills (the article identifies up to a dozen for each core strength), and develop those skills to dramatically improve their strengths--making themselves uniquely valuable to their companies.

El GEO de Genpact cuenta cómo creó en India un sector completo desde cero

Abstract: Bhasin era la cabeza de GE Capital en India cuando, a fines de los 90, tuvo una vision de futuro para una pequena division que estaba brindando servicios de back-office como procesamiento de creditos para vehiculos y transacciones de tarjetas de credito para el mercado local. GE Capital era la primera empresa extranjera de servicios financieros con permiso para operar en India. Considerado un experimento por el gobierno, era excesivamente vulnerable a los cambios en las politicas y filosofias gubernamentales. Bhasin queria encontrar una forma segura y sustentable de crecimiento. La reserva de talento entusiasta y ambiciosa que veia a su alrededor, tanto dentro de la empresa como en el pais entero, le dio una idea: ?por que no sacar ventaja a partir de ese recurso y ofrecer servicios de apoyo a GE Capital en todo el mundo? Las personas a quienes pidio consejo no aprobaron su idea. ?Como, se preguntaban, podria el construir una instalacion a la escala que necesitaria, contratar enormes cantidades de personas y capacitarlas segun los estandares Seis Sigma para productos que desconocian por completo y obtener acceso a las telecomunicaciones y a la infraestructura a un nivel hasta ese entonces nunca visto en India? Sin dejarse intimidar, Bhasin presiono y hoy, Genpact, que fue escindida de GE Capital en 2005, emplea directamente a 43.000 personas y atiende a 400 empresas en 13 paises.