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One fundamental need of business executives: to obtain sufficiently reliable estimates of the likely revenues and profits from making a strategic move.

The article explains how to make more reliable estimates of the real targets for the company’s offering.

What often leads to revenue estimates that are way off is to attempt to identify some average willingness-to-pay.

“‘Competitors’ include those that may be unknown to the company and, in the case of a new-to-the-world offering, providers of substitute solutions.

As well-informed customers today have more choices than ever, careful customer analysis is of paramount importance to minimize the risks that can be managed and, as a result, maximize the chances of making successful strategic choices.

Managers have become wary of launching fighter brands. But they should not give up on a fighter brand strategy altogether: under certain conditions a fighter brand can be effective, if it is correctly positioned.

The authors’ decision-making framework to help managers think through the specific design of a fighter brand is supported by field experience in designing and successfully launching fighter brands. 10; The framework takes managers through four steps. 10;

A fighter brand can be designed to combat, and ideally eliminate, low-price competitors while protecting an organization’s premium-price offerings.

Identifying must-have features “must-haves” is at the core of the fighter brand framework.

If a company’s strategists can identify at least one unique must-have feature for the value segment with high certainty, and remove it from the fighter brand targeted at the price segment, the risk of cannibalization is minimal.

This article aims to present a novel, powerful and proven alternative for the flawed way in which firms traditionally state “company values”.

An analysis was made of the value statements of the 100 largest Fortune Global 500 firms. A literature search on company values was conducted. The authors’ field experience with the use of company values was applied.

A majority of large global companies have stated company values. There is abundant pundits’ advice on how to define, embed and live by company values. Nevertheless, stated company values generally have no impact on performance; worse, they may blow up in managers’ faces, with accusations of hypocrisy. The novel approach overcomes these shortcomings. First, it removes unnegotiable qualities, consigning these to the company’s code of conduct. Second, it no longer states a value as a singular point of perfection but as a position of a cursor on a scale.

This approach looks at a value as a capability, that is, a resource that requires investment and development, one that helps the company to be more effective than its competitors and that its competitors would find hard to imitate readily.

This approach looks at a value as a capability, that is, a resource that requires investment and development, one that helps the company to be more effective than its competitors and that its competitors would find hard to imitate readily.

The article is of value to practicing managers. The approach helps the firm to distinguish itself from competitors in a positive and hard-to-imitate way. It stimulates productive open conversations between the firm’s managers and employees. It leads to statements that both reveal and reinforce the firm’s desired culture.

The nitty-gritty of organizing for sustainability requires carefully defining and assigning the roles and responsibilities for carrying out the activities required to implement the company’s sustainability strategy.

The authors offer a framework to help managers make design choices for their company’s Sustainability organization.

The “sustainability focus” and “organizational philosophy” dimensions can be combined into a grid onto which a company?s position can be mapped.

Should Sustainability be a distinct and integrated function, or combined with another function, or split into subfunctions, or absorbed into the general management of the businesses?

Sustainability is a hot topic at the CEO level nowadays and the authors have worked out a practical guide for customizing a company’s implementation agenda and its organizational structure so its program will be effective.

Companies change their organizations continually. When such a change follows a change in company strategy, employees understand why it happens. However, organization changes occur much more frequently than strategy changes. Their seemingly haphazard nature breeds cynicism, while it shouldn’t: organization changes are perfectly normal, usually necessary and often for the better. The reason is that an organization design is never perfect. Designing an organization is a delicate exercise that considers diverging requirements, but at some point, you’ve got to decide, and go for the “least bad” design. The article lays out how to explain why such changes and cycles occur.

The authors draw on their long advisory experience to propose three premises about organization design. They then describe the implications of these premises for managers who need to make and explain organization design changes.

Premise 1: There is no one-size-fits-all organization. Implication: Beware of adopting organizational hypes thoughtlessly; tailor the design to the specific situation, possibly on the basis of an “organizational health-check”. 10;Premise 2: There are usually good reasons why an organization is as it is. Implication: Beware of following a slash-and-burn approach; consider a gradual approach as the default, possibly on the basis of causal loop diagrams. 10;Premise 3: Organization is more than “structure”. Implication: Beware of isolated, simple-minded changes; include “processes”, “people”, “technology” and “culture”, as explained by various frameworks.

Alfred Chandler famously wrote that “structure follows strategy”. This article demonstrates that “structure begets structure”. Hence it is important for managers not to bungle an organization design change. To that purpose, they should be clear about the desired time to see the impact of the change and about the risk of change-induced organizational chaos.

The article contributes to good management practice by enabling managers to explain well why an organization change, even in the absence of a strategy change, does make sense. Managers’ ability to explain the benefits of change, and employees’ acceptance thereof, is a mark of organizational maturity.