Weekly Pulse is content curation and highlights from readings, books, podcasts, insights, ramblings, and other interesting things I discovered and digested during the week.
So, let's go with some discoveries from the week!
#1 - We Need Better Managers, Not More Technocrats
#2 - Successfully Transitioning to New Leadership Roles
#3 - Warning: Habits May Be Good For You
#4 - The Great Leap: Driving Innovation From the Base of the Pyramid
#5 - Getting Serious About Diversity
#6 - What is Reverse Mentoring
#7 - Book Notes: Build Your Dream Network - J. Kelly Hoey
We Need Better Managers, Not More Technocrats
Source: Harvard Business ReviewAuthor: Didier Bonnet and George Westerman
Year: 2014
Summary: Business model innovation is hard. But managers make it harder when they think about it only as radical industry reinvention. While revolutionary business model changes can be valuable, you don’t necessarily need to transform your industry. You don’t need to destroy your current business model. There is another way to make money from business model innovation.
3 Highlights:
"... Digital technology is changing the way companies work, and the way customers expect them to work. Many opportunities exist to profit from digital business models. But building radically new ones can be expensive, difficult, and highly risky..."
"... Yet huge opportunities exist in using digital technology to evolve your business model by rethinking your existing products, economic models, and digital assets..."
"... Digital technology is changing the way companies work and the way customers expect them to work..."
Successfully Transitioning to New Leadership Roles
Source: McKinseyAuthor: Scott Keller
Year: 2018
Summary: Leadership transition is more common and important than ever. Every leadership transition creates uncertainty. Will the new leader uncover and seize opportunities and assemble the right team? Will the changes be sustainable? Will a worthy successor be developed? These questions boil down to one: Will the leader be successful?
3 Highlights:
"... Newly appointed leaders should take stock of their situation in five areas and then take action to deal with them. They should also clearly state not only what they will do but what they won’t, as well as forget the idea that they have only 100 days to make an impact..."
"... As leaders take action, they should not only be clear about what will stop and start but also adopt a philosophy from the world of good housekeeping: one thing in, one thing out. When people propose new initiatives, leaders should ask what the company will stop doing to free up the time, money, resources, and focus needed to implement them well..."
"... A year into her role, not everything had gone according to plan: unforeseen economic changes dictated a strategic decision to focus more on the consumer business..."
Warning: Habits May Be Good For You
Source: New York TimesAuthor: Charles Duhigg
Year: 2008
Summary: This article describes with some stories how Eric Ries developed a scientific method for launching profitable companies, realizing when a company was going to fail, and creating what was known as Lean Startup.
3 Highlights:
"... Habits are formed when the memory associates specific actions with specific places or moods..."
"... Our capacity to develop such habits is an invaluable evolutionary advantage. But when they run amok, things can become tricky..."
"... Those and other studies revealed that as much as 45 percent of what we do every day is habitual that is, performed almost without thinking in the same location or at the same time each day, usually because of subtle cues..."
The Great Leap: Driving Innovation From the Base of the Pyramid
Source: MIT Sloan Management ReviewAuthor: Clayton M. Christensen
Year: 2002
Summary: As multinationals unrelentingly seek new growth to satisfy shareholders, they increasingly hear concerns from many quarters about environmental degradation, labor exploitation, cultural hegemony, and local autonomy. What is to be done? Must corporations’ thirst for growth and profits serve only to exacerbate the antiglobalization movement?
3 Highlights:
"... Economist Joseph Schumpeter’s term “creative destruction” has become justifiably well known in recent years, but it tells only half the story. Before the destruction of industry leaders occurs as a result of disruptive innovation, a long period of “creative creation” typically can be discerned..."
"... We’ve learned, however, that companies are profitably disrupting traditional approaches to business problems in such industries as telecommunications, consumer electronics, and energy production, to name just a few. These and many other opportunities are ready to explode in the coming years..."
"... Our thinking about the potential rewards resulting from a great leap to the base of the pyramid extends this concept as a framework not just for corporate growth but also for more balanced macroeconomic development. Indeed, the great leap holds the potential to address the root causes of antiglobalization sentiments..."
Getting Serious About Diversity
Source: Harvard Business ReviewAuthor: Robin J. Ely and David A. Thomas
Year: 2020
Summary: Four actions are key for leaders: building trust and creating a workplace where people feel free to express themselves; actively combating bias and systems of oppression; embracing a variety of styles and voices inside the organization, and using employees’ identity-related knowledge and experiences to learn how best to accomplish the firm’s core work.
3 Highlights:
"... Managers may believe they’re giving helpful feedback when they tell a large Black man to smile more so that his white colleagues won’t fear him, when they ask a Latina who advocates passionately for a project to dial it down, when they encourage a no-nonsense white woman to be “nicer,” or when they urge a soft-spoken woman of East Asian descent to speak more forcefully. But all such messages communicate that these employees must be ever-mindful of how others see them in relation to stereotyped images of their group, making it harder for them to bring their talents and perspectives to the table...."
"... Companies will not reap benefits from diversity unless they build a culture that insists on equality. Treating differences as a source of knowledge and connection lays the groundwork for such a culture. But as part of that process, firms may have to make financial investments that they won’t recoup, at least in the short run, and more will be required of top leaders, managers, and rank-and-file employees alike..."
"... We should make the necessary investment because doing so honors our own and others’ humanity and gives our lives meaning..."
What is Reverse Mentoring
Source: William Meller - New articleSummary: Reverse mentoring occurs when young people become mentors of executives to guide them on various topics of strategic and cultural relevance. Reverse mentoring could be a solution to keep the organizational environment dynamic, in the sense of keeping its managers up to date, once managers learn that younger employees can provide different insights, perspectives, and knowledge in a variety of areas. It inverts the perspective of conventional mentoring.
3 Highlights:
"... As a result, executives are beginning to realize that knowledge share is not a one-way street. The goal is to use the knowledge that resides within an organization to take advantage of it..."
"... These programs can increase retention, help senior executives to become more sophisticated about social media, drive cultural change and promote diversity..."
"... For those who grew up in a world without technology, it can be a huge challenge not only to keep up to date on the latest social platforms, collaboration tools, and technological trends but to find out how to make them applicable to their business..."
Book Notes: Build Your Dream Network - J. Kelly Hoey
Source: William Meller - Book Notes
If you think of networking as schmoozing at boring cocktail parties or scrolling through LinkedIn for new contacts to add, think again. In the social media age, you need a modern roadmap for creating and cultivating meaningful connections to stand out from the crowd and achieve any of your goals, no matter how big or small.
In Build Your Dream Network, acclaimed business columnist and networking expert J. Kelly Hoey offers a fresh new approach to mastering this timeworn skill in a world where everyone is posting, liking, and friending fast and furiously, but many are failing to leverage their connections successfully.
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