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21 – 30 of over 1000A report on a management conference with a notable history of showcasing world leading firms—the Global Peter Drucker Forum—which met in the Imperial Palace in Vienna Austria for…
Abstract
Purpose
A report on a management conference with a notable history of showcasing world leading firms—the Global Peter Drucker Forum—which met in the Imperial Palace in Vienna Austria for its eleventh annual get-together, this time on the overall theme of “the power of ecosystems.”
Design/methodology/approach
The report presents the highlights of the presentations by a number of the top leaders of the world's leading companies, all of which are experimenting with new ways of transforming management to foster innovation.
Findings
The most important things about ecosystems are their stability, their inter-operability and their ability to adapt to and accept change.
Practical implications
In a world where the life expectancy of competitive advantage was getting shorter, innovation and strategy—once very separate—are joining hands.
Originality/value
The report encourages managers at all levels to pay attention to the management experiments going on at leading firms which are adopting the ecosystem model.
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Keywords
If leaders really want to change people’s minds and enlist them in existential endeavors, they need an understanding of the dynamics of persuasion and the craft of leadership…
Abstract
Purpose
If leaders really want to change people’s minds and enlist them in existential endeavors, they need an understanding of the dynamics of persuasion and the craft of leadership storytelling.
Design/methodology/approach
Stories that do change minds and inspire different behavior tend to have a particular narrative pattern. The author offers a set of key elements.
Findings
To inspire customer-focused, continuous innovation, leadership storytelling has untapped potential.
Practical implications
Leadership storytelling, when done right, at least gives company change agents a fighting chance of success.
Originality/value
The ongoing reinvention of management to transform workplaces of the 20th century into the lively centers of inspiration and creativity that are needed for the creative economy of the 21st century necessitates the elevation of change-agent storytelling to the central place in leadership that it deserves. The author offers a primer.
Soon leaders in many top-down managed organization may face the necessity of undertaking a company-wide Agile transformation.First adopted by digital innovation teams, the Agile…
Abstract
Purpose
Soon leaders in many top-down managed organization may face the necessity of undertaking a company-wide Agile transformation.First adopted by digital innovation teams, the Agile mindset is spreading to middle management operations and top level leadership initiatives in many established organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
A guide to the ten stages of implementing an Agile mindset and practices through out an organization are detailed.
Findings
For traditionally managed hierarchical organizations, the transformation will include radical shifts in power, attitudes, values, mindsets, ways of thinking and ways of interacting with stakeholders—customers, employee talent, shareholders and partners. The goal is to enable the organization to generate instant, frictionless, intimate, incremental, risk-free value at scale, and to gain the financial rewards that flow from that capability.In the race for such outcomes, rigidly hierarchical firms are at a disadvantage.
Practical implications
The idea of Agile itself will continue to evolve as it is adapted by the organization. The process is not a matter of crafting a plan and then rolling it out across the organization. It’s not a mechanical eight-step program. It requires continuously adapting the idea to the circumstances of the organization. As the organization and everyone in it adapts the Agile approach to their own context, each individual needs to own it.
Originality/value
This map of the Agile implementation process enables top management and Agile champions to envision how to prepare an organization to change to a customer-focused, business that operates with Strategic Agility.
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Agile is the umbrella term for a family of management practices, which include Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. To investigate Agile management as it was being practiced in large firms…
Abstract
Purpose
Agile is the umbrella term for a family of management practices, which include Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. To investigate Agile management as it was being practiced in large firms, in 2015 Scrum Alliance, whose mission is “to transform the world of work,” launched a Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy (LC), composed of a group of firms that included Microsoft, Ericsson, Magna International, Riot Games and others.
Design/methodology/approach
The group conducted site visits to learn from each other’s experiences with Agile. The questions to be explored included: To what extent are Agile management practices in fact occurring at scale in old and new firms? How effective are these management practices? Is it possible for the whole firm, particularly older firms with entrenched bureaucratic cultures, to become Agile?
Findings
The LC found that Agile management is already taking hold in large-scale implementations in both new and old firms. The LC observed that some firms were implementing Agile for large-scale, complex business challenges in areas beyond software, including operations where reliability is an issue.
Practical implications
Agile was seen as a different way of understanding and acting in the world. The successful firms were “being Agile,” not merely “doing Agile” within their existing management framework.
Originality/value
In the world of Agile management, delivering value to customers is the goal of every individual in the organization. Profits are seen as the result, not the goal. The Learning consortium sites visit offer managers an opportunity to study this philosophy in practice.
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The article offers a clear and succinct account of the Amazon approach to Agile management (though it doesn’t call it that, and offers best practices to enable others to learn how…
Abstract
Purpose
The article offers a clear and succinct account of the Amazon approach to Agile management (though it doesn’t call it that, and offers best practices to enable others to learn how to think–and act–like Amazon.
Design/methodology/approach
The article draws on the insights and experiences of John Rossman an Amazon senior manager who was an effective innovator for the company.
Findings
Amazon has a distinctive approach to implementing the three principles of Agile: 10;∙9; Customer-obsessed. 10;∙9; Small is beautiful. 10;∙9; Networks.
Practical implications
Customer obsession at Amazon is enabled and driven by customer-driven metrics.
Originality/value
Drawing on his experience innovating for the company, John Rossman describes in detail how Amazon created an environment with very different values and behaviors, an approach that employs the principles of Agile management.
Because too many firms are stuck on the treadmill of producing quarterly returns, often to be achieved through financial engineering, a new management mindset is needed set them…
Abstract
Purpose
Because too many firms are stuck on the treadmill of producing quarterly returns, often to be achieved through financial engineering, a new management mindset is needed set them to exploring new opportunities through innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
A new kind of management is emerging–called the Agile model– in which firms emphasize searching out opportunities, finding solutions through rapid experimentation, and achieving agility through decisiveness.
Findings
In organizations that have implemented the Agile model Agile, the distinction between exploration and exploitation tends to blur and even dissolve. Those involved in exploitation are also continuously looking for ways to improve performance. Those involved in exploration and development are continuously seeking ways to deliver value to customers sooner
Practical implications
Agile managements are learning to shift from scalable efficiency to scalable learning, where everyone is driven by the need to learn faster and accelerate performance improvement
Originality/value
This overview of how explains how all members of a organization–from the CEO to the front-line worker–will need to be involved in the implementation of the Agile model.
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The author offers The Principles, Processes, Practices (PPP) Worksheet, an analytic tool that can help firms diagnose their current status in relation to the transformation from…
Abstract
Purpose
The author offers The Principles, Processes, Practices (PPP) Worksheet, an analytic tool that can help firms diagnose their current status in relation to the transformation from 20th Century to 21st Century management.
Design/methodology/approach
The author posits that there are currently two strikingly different ways of running a corporation in a coherent and consistent fashion. The predominant mode of 20th Century management refined over the last 50 years has the goal of maximizing shareholder value. 10;By contrast, for 21st Century management–the pioneering mode of Agile enterprises and of leading Silicon Valley firms, the goal leads to principles and processes that enable agility. The principles and processes help firms mobilize talent to create instant, intimate, incremental value for customers. 10;
Findings
The Principles, Processes, Practices (PPP) Worksheet an be applied either to the entire organization or to any part of that organization, such as the leadership team, or any department, or any team, at any point in time.
Practical implications
Leaders using the PPP worksheet will become, in effect, what Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, calls “a high tech anthropologist” probing what is going on.
Originality/value
This is the first description of a potent analytical tool that can help a firm plan and implement a management transformation to 21st Century Agile practices.
The authors reviews the leadership responsibilities involved in managing an organization that practices Agile management.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors reviews the leadership responsibilities involved in managing an organization that practices Agile management.
Design/methodology/approach
Outlines the best practices of major corporations that have adopted Agile processes both for teams and C-suite leadership.
Findings
Agile leaders spend less time reviewing the work of subordinates. They add value by adapting corporate strategies, leading critical agile teams, spending time with customers, mentoring individuals and coaching teams.
Practical implications
It is the C-suite leadership’s responsibility to establish and maintain a hierarchy of competence rather than a bureaucratic hierarchy of authority.
Originality/value
Describes how top management at some of the world’s largest and most successful corporations are adopting Agile practices to spur innovation and promote continuously adding customer vale.
The author asserts that Gary Hamel’s decade-old prediction of an oncoming avalanche of ‘radical management innovations’ has come true. They are already staring us in the face, not…
Abstract
Purpose
The author asserts that Gary Hamel’s decade-old prediction of an oncoming avalanche of ‘radical management innovations’ has come true. They are already staring us in the face, not in a couple of tiny obscure foreign firms, but in the success of the most valuable firms in the world.
Design/methodology/approach
Whether traditional management thinkers want to recognize it or not, we are already living in a new economic age–with radically different management practices that are driving the growth of the economy.
Findings
The current new age has been triggered by combining extraordinary new technologies and new management principles.
Practical/implications
New technologies, without the change in management principles, are not enough to achieve transformative advantage.
Originality/value
Innovative firms with a total value of more than half the economy are being run with a radically different management mindset, principles and skills that ambitious managers need to adopt.