Improving business performance often focuses on clearly articulated strategies, definite goals and structural change. However, even the best laid plans for change often fail to address that performance is inseparable from how an organization does what it does. Improved performance is impossible...

Globalization, deregulation, and a growing knowledge workforce have radically altered the role of the modern manager. The ability to lead organizational change is no longer a nice‐to‐have skill but a necessity. And as companies abandon traditional, hierarchies in favor of the flatter, more...

In this century there is likely to be more self‐examination by manufacturing industries. This is not a case of firms putting themselves in the psychiatrist’s chair; rather, companies will be looking more closely at the mechanics of how their organization works, to see where traditionally...

It is a comforting aspect of the business world that the race is not inevitably won by the biggest and meanest kids on the block. Smaller organizations can often compete with and even outwit their larger counterparts through smart strategy. It is this approach that enabled a comparatively small...

In 1985, Steve Jobs, CEO and co‐founder of Apple Computers Inc., was fired for his highly opinionated and visionary approach to management and leadership. In 1997, however, he came back and rescued the company from dire straits … by using the same means for which he was sacked.

Politicians are fond of talking about a “third way” which combines most effectively a free economy with social democratic ideals. There are parallels here with the business world. Attempts must be made to alter the systems of beliefs and values that shaped management during the last century....

The consultant who boasted about how much he got paid and how good his perks were to company employees facing redundancy may have been good at the technical side of his job, but his people skills obviously needed some attention. This was just one of the stories about consultants to emerge from a...

In 1996, Koji Oboshi, president of NTT DoCoMo, foresaw that the demand for new mobile phones would soon peak unless mobiles were developed with new capabilities and services so that consumers would trade in their old mobile for a new, improved one. NTT DoCoMo is Japan’s leading mobile...

When sales of shoes in the key holiday period kept slumping year after year, US retailer Marco called for help. Corporate executives had a feeling the fall‐off in sales was a direct result of poor communication of holiday product and set‐up information. They were not wrong. A series of focus...

When Bill Henderson, postmaster general of US Postal Service (USPS), turned up at the Tour de France in July 1999, things could not have been better. After making loss upon loss, his organization had finally turned things around. USPS was in profit with a strategic five‐year plan that was set...