The Quest for Agility in Leading Transformations (video+books)
Quest identifies seven key transformation journeys that companies are embarking on, along with valuable knowledge on how to get on track quickly and how to avoid derailment.
IMD’s book Quest: Leading Global Transformations by Professor Anand Narasimhan and Jean-Louis Barsoux, senior research fellow at IMD.
Quest identifies seven key transformation journeys that companies are embarking on, along with valuable knowledge on how to get on track quickly and how to avoid derailment.
The book, which stems from an exciting, distinctive, and integrative research project at IMD titled ‘Leading Global Transformations,’ features important insights from IMD faculty — who through Open and Partnership Programs are uniquely positioned to both study and participate in the ways companies are realigning themselves to the new global order.
PERSPECTIVES FOR MANAGERS
ANCHORED AGILITY: THE HOLY GRAIL OF COMPETITIVENESS
Many organizations face a central dilemma: How to balance local flexibility and global efficiency.
Professors Bettina Buechel and Michael Wade’s research, which is based on interviews with senior executives at twelve multinational organizations with combined revenue of US$750 billion, has uncovered a new approach for reaching the correct equilibrium: we call it anchored agility.
They will describe how some firms have achieved anchored agility by implementing strategies that are both locally agile and globally efficient.
Two strategic initiatives out of three fail. They are actually a huge challenge for “more-of-the-same, better-and-better”, companies.Indeed, their cross-organization scope violates all principles of silo efficiency.Strategic initiatives are precisely not “more of the same.”
Smarter Execution identifies seven key steps that managers need to get to grips with if they are to reap the full benefits of their strategic initiatives:
Focus first – less is more
Pick the best possible team – don’t compromise
Set the course – learn to navigate to a destination that is not yet fully defined
Set up to win – there is no “commitment switch”: it starts with you
Think it through – rehearse mentally each next step, leaving no stone unturned
Get all aboard – it’s about getting people to change the way they work
Follow through – to learn on the go.
The authors, Xavier Gilbert, Bettina Büchel, and Rhoda Davidson, have been working with several hundred executives to help them execute their strategic initiatives.
Time and again, they have seen how these seemingly common-sense insights were actually unexpectedly difficult to apply in most “efficient” organizations.
Filled with case studies from firms such as GT Automotive, GE Healthcare China, Vale, Dominos, Swiss Re Americas Division, and Polar Bank, among others, this book combines twenty years of research and survey results to illustrate a critical set of cultural dynamics that firms need to manage in order to remain competitive.Each chapter uses a case as a means to illustrate an important aspect of culture change focusing on seven common culture-change dilemmas including creating a strategic alignment, keeping strategy simple, and more.
