It was great spending time in Boston at the Harvard Business School thinking about the strategies around so many different businesses, and how agile to change these organizations are. The trick is to now come back to our “real world” lives and apply what we heard, read and talked about. The class and especially the classmates were great fun.
What I hope to achieve with this blog site is the ability for us to stay in touch, share, learn and continue to grow from our time together.
My key learning’s from last week:
Understand what business you are in and also what you are not.
- Leadership drives the ability of an organization to both have a strategic direction and also if that organization will have attributes that allow for agility and stretch.
- There is the seen and the unseen in networks and corporate structure/ organizations make sure you take both into account.
- What made you successful in the past will most likely not make you successful in the future.
- Never assume you have the whole picture - get others to help check in and give a reality check.
Best in Spirit! David Carrithers
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4 comments:
My major takeaway values (after a few days away from HBS)are:
1. the focus of a company's core operations has to be clear, challenged and continually on check. We have to frequently ask why we do this
2. The right metrics have to be put in place
3. The people with the right frame of mind will always make the difference
4.Not everyone is willing and able to write down a stategy...but fewer still have the fierce focus to implement the strategy
Thanks David for your initiative in setting this up!
My reflections on the main takeaways could be grouped into two categories. On one hand, regarding strategy;
1) the conventional wisdom on the importance of really and truly understanding what the customer values was reconfirmed - your customer has to feel that you offer value for them and you, as a supplier, must understand where the value is
2) build an operation to consistently deliver the value to your customer + ensure that your structure & set-up is efficient enough to allow you to capture part of the generated value for yourself
and on the other hand, regarding agility;
1) the importance for constantly observing the changes and evolution in boht operating/competitive environment and in customer behaviour/preferences
2) reflecting the impact of the above changes to the validity of your value proposition + make adjustments when the perceived value of your customers really change
3) probe with new offerings / value propositions constantly to verify your assumptions on how your customers perceive your offerings vs those of your competitors
4) recognize and enbrace the informal networks in your company as a source for innovation and competitive edge - ensure that the formal and informal networks are supporting one another
Have been on holiday, sorry for the late comment. Thank you David for initiating the blog. By the way I am going to buy a cool notebook this week to be online 24/7 to stay agile.
I really enjoyed the SA program.
It was really ming stretching for me to see business from another angle. Currently we undergo in Germany a major market/customer behavior shift in Germany in the energy sector. The content and the ideas from our course come in quite handy. Especially due to the latest oilprice issue people put energy even more into their focus. Electrical cars will come very soon...what does it mean for an energy company with power plants? New opportunities or threats? Decentralized energy.... Do we need big powerplants? Where will be the margin and the profits? At the production, transportation or at the end of the value chain. How can we add value for the customer? How can we differentiate? Is the smartmetering the ultimate future business modell? Does Web 2.0 play a future role in the energy business?
As you can imagine we face many challenges where we need to be agaile in all ways.
Hope to stay in touch with you and to exchange some intelligent thoughts.
Catch ya
Markus (Schröder)
hey how is everyone? Is everyone back from holidays?
I would like to have you opinion on the floowing scenario:
Way back in July when I was with you all at HBS, my organisation was in the middle of a reshuffle. To this very date it has not been completed with very few new positions yet confirmed and normal day-to-day is very close to a stand-still! Everyone is asking "Where do we stand?"
By now you must be asking "But why it is taking so long?" What can you do in these prevailing circumstances? What comes to my mind right now are the case studies we disussed when one day you one thing and the next you do the exact opposite!!
Does anyone have some similar experience to share?
Regards to everyone
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