Claire de Weerdt shares an article designed to help your company prepare for an economic recession.  How can you prepare for a possible recession? One method is to conservatively shore up reserves to mitigate risk for a worst case scenario, however, this may come at a high opportunity cost in the event of a soft landing, as resources may have been more productive elsewhere. On the other hand, if you take a bullish perspective, you may not be prepared for…

Want to adopt a little more agility in your practice? Patrice Gorin shares a beginner’s guide to agile consulting. In my experience, both as a consultant and a client, I’ve seen teams and organizations waste huge amounts of energy and resources pursuing inefficient approaches to solving problems. As a result, I’ve often felt as if there was no time left to do agile the right way. As a consultant or a client, do you experience … A lack of clarity…

Jason Schenker shares an article and resource links that all business leaders may find informative and useful. This Weekly LinkedIn newsletter from Jason Schenker includes original research from The Futurist Institute and Prestige Economics to help prepare leaders for the future — this week and beyond! 1. The Future of Manufacturing, the Economy, and Commodity Prices Manufacturing data are important for the economy and commodity prices. Data from May 2021 showed global manufacturing was exceptionally strong and can be seen…

In this article, Larry Gorkin shares a few ideas on how to win in fast-changing markets. IBM’s recent third-quarter earnings announcement was full of bad news. Profits were far below expectations, revenues continued an ongoing decline, and the company said it would not meet its widely promoted profit target for 2015. Wall Street sent IBM shares down -10%. These results reflect IBM’s below par response to major shifts impacting the overall IT market. The story highlights the challenges of sustaining…

In this article, Alex Miller identifies how CEOs can take a step back to the early days of starting a business to remember how to build agility and improve innovation. Four out of 10 CEOS surveyed in our 2016 CEO Outlook report anticipate that their companies will undergo significant transformation over the next three years. To support their approach to transformation, the CEOs indicated that they are building their strategic priorities around a focus on their customers, as well as…

Nils Boeffel shares an article that explains why it’s important to recognize where, why, when and how the agile method chosen makes sense.  Agile methods are not simply a project management that work differently from the classic waterfall method, but they are something more. Agile looks to establish a culture of continuous change, of questioning the status quo, of adapting the organization to ever faster changing needs. It will force management to manage more by goals and objectives, and steer…

In this article, Alex Sharpe uses the Coronavirus as an example to explain why a period of disruption offers a great opportunity to pivot. The CORONA Virus is rocking our worlds – no doubt. It is a scary time with lots of uncertainty. Fortunately, times like this cause a disruption which also means opportunity. For many of us that is not easy to hear as we watch businesses struggle and industries change. It is even harder as we hear about…

Patrice Gorin shares a beginners guide to agile consulting. In my experience, both as a consultant and a client, I’ve seen teams and organizations waste huge amounts of energy and resources pursuing inefficient approaches to solving problems. As a result, I’ve often felt as if there was no time left to do agile the right way.   As a consultant or a client, do you experience … A lack of clarity or adaptability around the scope of work  Teams that are…

  To ensure companies have the talent that will grow the business, Stephen Redwood explains how a multi-track career model is the better choice for today’s agile and lean requirements. In a world where attracting top talent is increasingly competitive there is certainly a case for focusing attention on that special and small number of company roles that are deemed critical to success. Those roles may well shape the agenda, define points of focus, and be responsible for creating much…

  In this article, Emre Kara explains the benefits of going agile and how to do it without undergoing massive transformation.  This article is for those of you who have heard of agile but are not sure what to do with it and how to use it in your context. If you are one of them, then go ahead and enjoy reading! When you google agile as a keyword, you will see that in the majority of search results agile…

  Eric Hiller shares how his experience as a new father reminds him of how one has to adjust and adapt using knowledge learned from lean manufacturing and agile product development. Coronavirus has changed a lot of things in America—especially in urban areas, where there are heightened precautions. It is even more chaotic when you have your first newborn baby, like my wife and me. Babies are very different from manufacturing floors; however, there are certain processes that must be…

  Surbhee Grover provides insight and inspiration in this article on the fortitude of spirit and mental strength. The setting of the movie is the tiny town of Nome, Alaska, which is paralyzed by a deadly, fast-spreading disease. Despite a quarantine that was executed early on, the epidemic is expected to wipe out a majority of its inhabitants within days… unless they get speedy access to the appropriate medication (antitoxins) that needed to be transported more than 600 miles, amidst…

  Andrew Hone’s company provides a comprehensive report designed to position your business for success in the post Covid-19 environment. Achieving rapid and sustainable cost reduction is a critical business objective, especially in the current environment. The near-term economic outlook is bleak, with the IMF projecting the world’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. At a time when most businesses are likely to see deteriorating market conditions and declining revenue, rebalancing the cost base to reflect…

  Andrew Hone’s company blog explains why cost reduction programs often fail.  Although cost reduction programs can deliver a powerful mix of financial, strategic, and organisational benefits, the failure rates of these types of programs are very high. A recent survey of C-Suite executives, for example, found that while 90% of businesses had attempted to implement a cost reduction program, 75% failed to meet their targets, and 44% missed them by more than half. Drawing on some of the key…

  Amanda Setili shares a post that identifies a few ways we can take positive action during the current crisis. Billions of us worldwide are altering our behaviors during the covid 19 crisis, so that as many people as possible remain safe. When faced with a tough situation—even something big, like the coronavirus situation—I always ask: how can we mitigate the downside, and create some good? We are living in strange times, and things are changing every day. Schools are…

In this TEDX talk at Columbia University, Kaihan Krippendorff discusses employee innovation within the model of disruption, and how it helps activate lean, agile innovation and growth in your organization.    “Employees are the number one source of innovative growth options and the only remaining source of true competitive advantage. Arming them with the skills and tools necessary to innovate on a continual basis is of paramount importance to organizational survival.”   Points covered in the talk include: -The path…

Three key points in ninety seconds from Amanda Setili on how to avoid strategy execution melt down.Strategy execution is where everything goes haywire.   We can always come up with a good strategy, a good plan for what we want to do, but when the rubber meets the road and you’re actually implementing, that’s where you find out all the things that you maybe didn’t plan for. Frankly, it’s impossible to anticipate everything. One of the keys to effective strategy…

Kaihan Krippendorff provides three signposts that can direct your organization towards a successful pivot.   If people try to tell you that pivoting is the new thing, that it’s the fresh Silicon Valley approach to business designed for today’s fast-paced digital world, don’t believe them. Consider Fairfield University, a private school founded just outside of New York in Fairfield, Connecticut, by the Catholic Church – a 2,000-year-old organization. In 1941, the society that runs the Jesuit school system had acquired two…