Harvard Business Review or HBR has always been one of the mainstays of my reading list. I love how its editors seive out business and leadership articles which are meaty enough to provide a good intellectual workout without unnecessary academese.
Its latest compilation “HBR’s 10 Must Reads” is a selection of carefully selected journal articles centred on the most pressing issues of management.
Written by Ken Blanchard of “The One Minute Manager” fame, together with his co-authors John Britt, Pat Zigarmi and Judd Hoekstra, “Who Killed Change?” is a whodunnit with a business twist. The slim volume is easily read in one sitting and imbues one with useful pointers when implementing change management.
The plot goes like this. Somebody in the ACME organisation has killed Change. In this case, Change of course represents Change Management – a very necessary ingredient for enduring organisational effectiveness when things no longer become business as usual.
In the world of business, we’re often focused on our customer value proposition. What makes our products or services stand out in the marketplace? How do we draw the right customers at the right price?
The unfortunate thing, however, is that we often neglect to pay attention to the most important stakeholders in our organisation.
Namely, our employees.
Courtesy of Blaze Institute
Why do some teams produce outstanding results while others lag behind given similar resources?
The secret, according to “The New Science of Building Great Teams” in Harvard Business Review, is that successful teams have higher energy, are more engaged, and spend more time exploring outside the group. These patterns of communication and interaction are strongly correlated with performance metrics such as the average handling time in a bank’s call centre.
Courtesy of Technotraps
Beleaguered employees can now leverage on a “cheat code” to streamline work and increase their productivity – without getting into trouble.
With the subtitle “Breaking Stupid Rules For Smart Results”, Hacking Work by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein encourages workers of all stripes to utilise “benevolent” hacking to get their jobs done more effectively and efficiently.
Participants and facilitators of the inaugural YLT in Singapore
As Facebook’s IPO continue to garner interest (both good and bad), the question on many people’s lips is this: Can Singapore produce business leaders who started young such as Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?
Well, perhaps the Young Leaders of Tomorrow (YLT) programme can help to usher the way.
You can still buy Kodak Film these days! Source of image
Do you know that Kodak went through bankruptcy proceedings and have re-emerged?
Repositioned as a technology company focused on imaging for business, Kodak is a far cry from its halcyon years. Today, its main business segments are Digital Printing & Enterprise and Graphics, Entertainment & Commercial Films.
Crystal Jade Golden Palace in The Paragon (courtesy of Crystal Jade)
In the restaurant-eat-restaurant world of F&B, few local brands have stood up as clearly as Crystal Jade, one of the market leaders in Singapore.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary last year with a refreshing of its identity that involved extensive refurbishments at its restaurants, Crystal Jade enjoyed a turnover of S$240 million in 2010.
As the head honcho leading an organisation, being a good CEO isn’t an easy job. Sure, they’ll probably pay you more (or much much more) than the average salary man down the food chain, but the expectations are often sky high.
For a start, a good CEO has to have vision, ambition and the ability to inspire and motivate the troops. She needs to be great with forging relationships with customers, employees, partners, board members, investors, suppliers, government regulators and other stakeholders. Functioning as a mentor, coach, drill sergeant, and referee, she wears multiple hats depending on whom she speaks to.
Michael Beer (courtesy of Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute)
To rise above the vagaries of the uncertain economy, what should companies do? How can they manage the wrath of Wall Street and the severe backlash of a liquidity crunch?
Well according to Michael Beer from Harvard Business School, the answer is that companies should embrace a higher purpose. In an excellent podcast from HBR Ideacast, Beer shares some of the characteristics of these firms and the leadership styles that they embody.
