409 Posts Found

Three essential questions can help companies determine when buying rather than building makes sense for them:

1. Does someone else have a capability that would enhance your business? There are many different kinds of capabilities-technologies, sales channels, operations in particular geographic areas and so forth. If no one else has the capabilities you need to strengthen or adapt your business, you obviously have to grow them yourself.

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Subject: Mergers and Acquisitions Questions

1. Are you able to break down your operating inventory into the three major categories when reporting levels-safety, replenishment and excess or obsolete stock?
2. Is your company using the most effective method to calculate your safety stock levels?
3. Do you recalculate safety stock levels on a regular basis to ensure they are up to date?
4. Who decides key inventory-related policy such as striking the right balance between customer service

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Operations Questions

Real opportunity exists to create differentiation and set new “community standards in honoring the spirit of personal privacy and property rights while enhancing and protecting the value of a brand and enterprise. Some policy questions to be considered:

Transparency

• Do customers understand how our company uses the data gathered from their interactions and transactions?
• If customers knew the full extent of its use, would they agree to it?
• Does

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Subjects: Customer Questions, IT Questions, Marketing Questions

1. How will IT change the basis of competition in our industry?
   • Who are our emerging competitors?
   • How is technology helping us win against traditional and new competitors?
   • How can we use technology to enter new markets?
2. What will it take to exceed our customers´ expectations in a digital world?
   • How does our customer experience compare with that of leaders in other sectors?
   • What will our customers expect in the future, and

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Subjects: Crisis Management Questions, IT Questions

The potentially all-knowing capabilities of companies and organizations that collect data raise questions.

• What are an individual´s privacy rights given the particular and dynamic dimensions of the digital world: the amount of data, the real time processing of and actions taken based on the data?
• Should there be limits as to how data can be collected or used?
• Who owns the data?
• Who should benefit from the value it

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Customer Questions, IT Questions, Marketing Questions

In order to serve this channel-savvy, highly mobile, multidevice-happy consumer, chief marketing officers (CMOs) have their work cut out for them. These CMOs need to have an accurate understanding of consumers-their intentions, impressions of products and services and their behavior; to pinpoint exactly which marketing channels-online or offline-are yielding maximum MROI.

For example, knowing the impact of paid search engine marketing (SEM), online display media, natural … [ Read more ]

Subject: Marketing Questions

If you’re involved in activities that you’re already naturally inclined to do well, your attitude toward work is different and you contribute more to your workplace compared with someone who may have similar skills but less natural ability. Doing what you do best is essential to being a star performer at work. As an employee, you should ask yourself these questions:

• Do I know what I

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Human Resources Questions, Leadership Questions, Management Questions, Organization Questions

Jim Collins has spent a career probing the inner workings of great companies. Below, he boils 25 years of research into 12 questions that leaders must grapple with if they truly want to excel. Collins’s advice: Be systematic. Every month, have your leadership team discuss one of the following questions. Repeat the process annually for five years.

1. Do we want to build a great company, and

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Management Questions

We have identified four critical areas where organizations can focus their time, energy, and resources to more effectively use analytics to improve workforce productivity and capability.  Answering these questions is critical to demonstrating how the human resource function can add substantially to the strategy and operations of the company.

1. Based on the organization´s strategy, what is the work that needs to be done, and are the

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Subject: Human Resources Questions

As organizations consider candidates for collaborative leadership roles, they should ask the following six questions:

1. Can this leader achieve results by influencing rather than directing?
2. Can this leader share ownership, even if it means sharing credit and rewards?
3. Can this leader delegate and let others deliver results?
4. Has this leader demonstrated the ability to motivate groups of diverse individuals who may not share her viewpoints or perspectives?
5. Has this leader

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Human Resources Questions, Leadership Questions, Organization Questions

How can you tell if your company is fit for growth? Here is a simple, three-question diagnostic:

1. Do you have clear priorities, focused on strategic growth, that drive your investments?
2. Do your costs line up with those priorities? In other words, do you deploy your resources toward them efficiently and effectively?
3. Is your organization set up to enable you to achieve those priorities?

Source: Is Your Company Fit … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Management Questions, Strategy Questions

• What is unique about the target company´s capabilities system? How does this company create value for customers?
• How does the acquired company´s capabilities system differ from our own?
• If we are buying the company for its product and service portfolio (a leverage deal), are we sure that those products and services will thrive within our current capabilities system?
• If we are acquiring the target company for its capabilities

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Mergers and Acquisitions Questions

1. How willing are customers to continue to pay for further improvements in performance that historically merited attractive price premiums? One of the key tipping points in a market occurs when a company, in Christensen’s language, overshoots a given market tier by providing them performance that they can’t use. Your television remote control probably serves as a daily reminder of overshooting. Each of those buttons can

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Subject: Strategy Questions

1. What are the boundaries of the corporation-which businesses should be part of the corporate portfolio and what is the underlying logic?
2. How should resources-and capital, in particular-be allocated to the different businesses?
3. How can the goals and actions of the individual business units be aligned with the interests of the corporation as a whole and with the interests of its shareholders?
4. What is the real operating value of

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Management Questions, Strategy Questions

To determine how well an organization exhibits respect, leaders can ask the following types of questions:

• Recognition respect: Do we know who our customers are? Does our market research treat customers simply as numbers or does it reveal their values, wants, and needs? Do we understand the cultural context?
• Evaluation respect: Which customers can we best serve? Are these our current market segments? How can we treat

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Customer Questions

• What does success look like in this scenario?
• In what markets will we play and which customers will we serve?
• How will we serve those customers?
• What capabilities will we need to have in place?
• Which actions should we prioritize? Which ones are robust across all scenarios and which are contingent depending on how the future unfolds?
• How would we know if this scenario were going to come true (in

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Strategy Questions

The Harvard Business Review pulled together a list of questions that CEOs and boards can ask each other to try to bring their mutual goals more in line with each other.

1. Where should we place our primary focus – shareholders, stakeholders or society at large?
2. What is long-term shareholder value really about and how is it created?
3. Can we influence who our shareholders are?
4. What is our responsibility

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Corporate Governance Questions

• What should our business model look like in three to five years as the implications of our business strategy play out?
• What balance do we need on the spectrum of centralization vs. a distributed network of business entities? How should we be structured to best support our business strategy: by geography, product, function, customer-or a hybrid arrangement?
• Do we have the right organization design in place to

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Management Questions, Organization Questions

1. How are you going to handle the problem for the customer? Think about an immediate solution, delivered with the right attitude and a sense of urgency that will restore the customer´s confidence in you.Photo: Gene Selkov/Flickr (Creative Commons)
2. Why did it happen? Do an analysis to determine why this happened.
3. Has it happened before? If it has happened before, why did it happen again? Do an analysis

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Customer Questions

• Who is responsible for developing and maintaining our cross-functional approach to cybersecurity? To what extent are business leaders (as opposed to IT or risk executives) owning this issue?
• Which information assets are most critical, and what is the “value at stake” in the event of a breach? What promises-implicit or explicit-have we made to our customers and partners to protect their information?
• What roles do cybersecurity and

… [ Read more ]

Subject: IT Questions