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Dashboards and scorecards are widely‐deployed performance management tools, but are often ineffectively used. Properly designed, developed, and deployed strategic dashboards can cut through clutter, provide incisive strategic insight, improve decision‐making, and enhance both alignment and implementation performance. This article seeks to identify common pitfalls in strategic dashboard design and use, and then recommend guidelines for improving dashboard design, scope, use and impact.

The paper is based on hands‐on development of dashboards and strategy implementation programs for hundreds of clients across multiple sectors; complemented by operating experience managing strategic implementation and dashboard/measurement systems for high‐growth, complex organizations.

Key steps include developing a process that prioritizes indicators, includes key stakeholders, incorporates management analysis and judgment, favors rich data display using a common visual and quantitative language, and systematizes consistent dashboard use and dissemination.

Careful attention to dashboard content, form, process, and politics will help leaders strategically manage performance. Properly designed, dashboards can effectively focus senior teams on strategic issues, and catalyze strategic action.

This perspective from a practitioner identifies pitfalls and guidelines for maximizing the value and reach of dashboards, gleaned from experience across multiple industries and sectors.

Classifying and evaluating the central ideas of strategic management (the basic tools for managers) is an ambitious project. Judging them by their impact, utility, and longevity, this study selected ten big ideas.

The author, who has 40 years of experience with large US, Canadian and Puerto Rican firms, reviewed the literature and interviewed a number of senior practitioners to collect current opinions.

The article should spur discussions among researchers and practitioners about alternative big ideas that belong on their own most‐significant list.

This list is valuable to practitioners who want to become familiar with and use a full range of strategic management tools and analytic options.

The evaluations of the strategic management tools and techniques are up to date and are based on practical experience.

This masterclass seeks to identify the leaders others should emulate, what’s are best practices, how did the acclaimed exemplars get to be leaders, and what can we learn from their stories?

The author, a veteran practitioner and long-time observer of the evolution of strategic management regularly scans the business idea marketplace to identify any breakthroughs in the perennial quest for insights into the field of leadership.

Forget leadership – it’s strategy that matters. Companies excel when they adopt good strategies and implement them efficiently. The role of the leader is diminishing, and leadership has little utility as an organizing principle.

Look realistically at attempts to show how some CEOs shaped the future of their firms. Stories of success and failure typically exaggerate the impact of leadership style and management practices on performance. They focus on the singularities – the few extraordinary successes– and ignore the many events that failed to happen. We all fall prey to this affective fallacy when we extoll certain individuals – and then overweight their contribution to the success of their organizations.

We need to refocus our attention on strategy. Successful leadership ultimately comes down to good strategy and good fortune. We have little control over the vicissitudes of the macro-environment, but firms that adopt the right strategy will do better over the long term.

Many innovative companies are experimenting with a strategy of mass customization—the low‐cost production of high variety, even individually customized goods and services. Based on his experiences at IBM and research into mass customization conducted at MIT and at the IBM Consulting Group, the author has identified five basic methods for mass customizing products and services.

The author addresses the looming question in the digital era: Can long-established firms adopt an existential mindset that enables them to survive and prosper?

Disruptors take advantage of significant changes in the traditional value drivers in an existing market. The success of long-established companies often inhibits innovation, and most mature organizations struggle to excel.

Greater reliance on controlled experiments can mitigate the failures of innovation based primarily on focus group research.

Competitors can be transformed into collaborators in many parts of the value chain, and alliances are outperforming the more conventional business development approaches.

The author’s powerful message: Today’s leaders must adopt a new mindset in which bureaucracy is repudiated and responsiveness and adaptability are rewarded.

How will future events affect the way we manage? And how are top corporate executives meeting the challenge of change?