Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson: An interview by Bob Morris

Yves Doz is Professor of Strategic Management and Solvay Chaired Professor of Technological Innovation, INSEAD. He started working on innovation and multinationals during his doctoral studies at the Harvard Business School, in the 1970s. Together with C.K. Prahalad, a close colleague and friend, he is at the origin of the integration responsiveness (I/R) grid, which became a core framework in international management. Their book, The Multinational Mission, provided a guide to corporate executives in structuring and leading global operations.

As Director of the Management of Technology and Innovation research initiative at INSEAD in the 1990s, Doz focused on various aspects of innovation, in particular collaborative innovation and technology alliances. His interest in global innovation was spurred by a focus on global competitiveness. A decade ago, together with two INSEAD colleagues he published From Global to Metanational, a manifesto for globally distributed innovation. The new book, Managing Global Innovation is a “How to “ exploration of further development of these ideas. Over the years his work won numerous academic awards, such as a Distinguished Scholar award from the Academy of Management and an Honorary Doctorate from Aalto University in Finland.

Keeley Wilson

Keeley Wilson is a Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD. She began her career as a management consultant in London for a large US practice before moving to Seoul in the mid 1990s to work for a Korean government-controlled policy bank. On returning to Europe at the end of the decade, she joined INSEAD’s EuroAsia as a senior researcher, focusing on the growth strategies of Asian firms. She then returned to London and joined Gary Hamel’s small research team at the Strategos Institute where she developed and helped implement tools and processes to support business model migration, manage strategic alliances and build a wide range of global innovation capabilities.

She began research related to global innovation with Yves Doz at INSEAD ten years ago and has undertaken numerous research projects looking at innovation strategies across a range of industrial sectors, the challenges of managing global projects, establishing and integrating innovation centres in China and India, optimising innovation footprints and innovation regime change.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of them. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing Managing Global Innovation, a few general questions. First, the greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Doz: As a student at Harvard in the mid 1970s I made strong and lasting professional and personal friendships with Joe Bower and C.K. Prahalad. The three of us worked closely together researching and developing ideas around the management of MNCs.  It was such a stimulating and exciting time and had a huge impact in shaping the direction of my research interests ever since.

Wilson: It would be impossible to single out one, or even a handful of events. I feel extremely privileged to see inside and learn about so many different companies in different industries in so many different parts of the world. Each and every one has an impact on my professional development as each offers new perspectives and insights.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Doz: In my own research, teaching and consulting experience I have to combine lessons from the field in a relatively inductive and open fashion with theoretical frameworks and conceptual arguments. The skills to deal with theory and conceptualization are a direct result of my formal education – reading, learning and conversations with other PhD students.

Wilson: I began my education studying music and then as a post grad moved to computing science. These subjects aren’t as worlds apart as you might think. In both you develop extremely strong analytical skills and a sense of logic as well creative ability. I use these skills in my work every day.

Morris:  From which non-business book have you learned the most valuable lessons about business? Please explain.

Wilson: For me, many of the things you learn about life in general are usually applicable to business. And one of the books that have made the most profound impression in recent years is Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. It’s set in India during the mid 1970s and through the lives of its four main characters, describes the impact and turmoil of coping with and adapting to huge societal change. It’s a story of the triumph of determination and ingenuity over adversity and the importance of friendship, working together and trust. It also describes life in an India which is a million miles away from the growing economic giant we are more used to seeing today.  I think for anyone doing business in or with India, this book provides an invaluable recent historical context and insight into the lives of many ordinary Indians.

Doz: I first read The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses as a student in the US. It’s title says it all! It’s not only a wonderful biography but also a fascinating insight into the power and politics in public administration in relation to urban development in New York City. It contains some valuable lessons about how to make things happen in complex contexts with multiple stakeholders and interest groups.

Morris: In Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”:

Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson: An interview by Bob Morris, Tom Davenport, Judgment Calls, Brooke Manville, the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”, INSEAD, Harvard Business School, C.K. Prahalad, The Multinational Mission, From Global to Metanational, Managing Global Innovation Academy of Management Aalto University in Finland, INSEAD’s EuroAsia, Gary Hamel, Strategos Institute

organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.” What do you think?

Doz: This captures one of the major challenges for modern large-scale organizations - it’s vital to find ways to mobilize the collective brainpower of people in these organizations. To think the opposite is naive – even if the image of the ‘great man leader’ exists the reality doesn’t.

Morris: In your opinion, why do so many C-level executives seem to have such a difficult time delegating work to others?

Doz: We know that there is a difficult transition in management from being the knowledgeable expert and the problem solver to becoming a process architect. The importance of good process in organizations is undervalued and people seldom get credited for putting good processes in place. It makes sense therefore that C-level executives don’t want to delegate expertise and problem solving tasks which help them to ‘shine’ and bring widespread recognition.

Morris: The greatest leaders throughout history (with rare exception) were great storytellers. What do you make of that?

Wilson: It makes perfect sense. To be a great leader you need to get people to understand and buy into your vision. Most people have difficulty processing complex and abstract ideas – they can be difficult to relate to and tricky to remember. In contrast, good story telling weaves those ideas into a context that people can relate to. It fires the imagination, enables orthodoxies and beliefs to be questioned and lessons to be learnt. Stories can be easily adapted and passed on so a shared understanding emerges across different cultures and locations.

It’s no coincidence that the case study is such a powerful teaching tool. By embedding the challenges and solutions in a story about a particular company or industry, the lessons are much more easily absorbed than if they came from a theoretical textbook. Students can transpose themselves into that situation and ask, ”What would I do and why?” And they can see the repercussions of the real-life decisions that were made.  Throughout our book, we have included story telling in the form of 18 short case studies that illustrate and bring our arguments to life by describing both the things some companies have done really well and also the mistakes some have made. If readers don’t remember the detail of our arguments, I’m sure they will recall the stories in each of the cases!

Morris: Looking ahead (let’s say) 3-5 years, what do you think will be the greatest challenge that CEOs will face? Any Advice?

Wilson: We start our book with a powerful quote from Sam Palmisano, the recently retired CEO of IBM in which he argues that corporate models that we know and have known are not suitable for meeting the challenges of global integration and innovation. We used this quote because we agree that this is one of the biggest challenges facing companies today: Building a networked (globally integrated) organization in which corporate culture rather than control measures encourage individual contributions and global collaboration. And how to achieve this is what our book is about.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Yves and Keeley cordially invite you to check out the resources at these websites:

Yves’s INSEAD faculty page

His strategy+business Thought Leader interview

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/21522?gko=3d02b

His Amazon.com page

Their INSEAD Knowledge interview

Morten Hansen on “How Great Leaders Make Their Own Luck”

Morten Hansen is a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and at INSEAD, France. He was previously a professor at Harvard Business School for a number of years. Prior to joining Harvard University, Hansen obtained his Ph.D. from the business school at Stanford University. In addition to his academic career, Hansen was a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in the London, Stockholm and San Francisco offices. He was part of the research teams for the international best-selling books Built to Last and Good to Great. Hansen’s research on collaboration has won several prestigious awards, including the best article awards from Sloan Management Review and Administrative Science Quarterly, the leading academic journal in the field. Several of his Harvard Business Review articles have been bestsellers for a number of years. He regularly consults with companies on collaboration and gives keynotes at leadership conferences. His new management book is Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results (Harvard Business School Press, 2009) and, more recently, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, co-authored with Jim Collins (HarperBusiness, 2011). A native of Norway, Hansen holds a Master’s degree in finance from London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Stanford University where he was a Fulbright scholar.

To watch an interview of Morten during which he shares his thoughts about “How Great Leaders Make Their Own Luck” please click here.

To read my interview of Morten and Jim Collins, please click here.

 

 

 

Richard P. Rumelt: An interview by Bob Morris

Richard P. Rumelt

Richard P. Rumelt received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School in 1972, having previously earned a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley. He worked as a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1976. During 1993-96 he was on long-term leave from UCLA, serving on the faculty at INSEAD, France. At INSEAD, Rumelt headed the Corporate Renewal Initiative, a research-intervention center devoted to the study and practice of corporate transformation. Rumelt was President of the Strategic Management Society in 1995-98. He received the Irwin Prize for his book Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance. In 1997, he was appointed Telecom Italia Strategy Fellow, a position he held until April 2000. He has won teaching awards at UCLA and received a “best paper prize” in 1997 from the Strategic Management Journal.

Rumelt’s research has centered on corporate diversification strategy and the sources of sustainable advantage to individual business strategies. He occupies the Harry and Elsa Kunin Chair in Business and Society. His published works include Fundamental Issues in Strategy: A Research Agenda co-authored with David Teece and more recently, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. His current research interests center on corporate strategy and issues of institutional governance. Education: D.B.A. Management, 1972, Harvard University; M.S. Electrical Engineering, 1965, UC Berkeley; and B.S. Electrical Engineering, 1963, UC Berkeley.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, a few general questions. First, to what extent (if any) has your formal training in electrical engineering proven invaluable to your work on strategy.

Rumelt: The gifts of my EE training were many. First there is a capability in mathematics. Second is an appreciation that technical skills are only acquired by drill and practice.  Finally, there is a confidence that I can understand almost all technical issues if I apply myself. That keeps me from shying away from a wide range of problems and settings.

Morris: Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original expectations. Why?

Rumelt: Change is difficult and it takes time. It is hard for people to change their own behavior, much less that of others. Change programs normally address attitudes, ideas, and rewards. But the behaviors of people in organizations are also strongly shaped by habits, routines, and social norms. Real change requires new power relationships, new work routines and new habits, not just intent.

Morris: In Leading Change, James O’Toole suggests some of the strongest resistance to change is cultural in nature, the result of what he so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” What do you think?

Rumelt: I agree with O’Toole that custom and comfort are impediments to change. However, it is important to recognize that resistance to change is logical as well. The new “change masters” literature seems to take change as the norm. It isn’t. Humans naturally see change as risky because it is risky, just as mutations in genes are mostly destructive. You would not want to go to work were everything changed every week! The phone system, the office assignments, who reports to who, and the whole set of job expectations.

Morris: How best to avoid or overcome such resistance?

Rumelt: You overcome the logical resistance to change by proving that a new approach actually works, usually on a small scale.

Morris: Peter Drucker and Michael Porter have provided many valuable insights. For example, from Drucker: ”There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” And now from Porter: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” What are your own thoughts about all this?

Rumelt: Drucker and Porter are each pointing at vital, though slightly different, aspects of strategy. A good strategy focuses efforts on a target, and that focus can only be achieved by not diffusing energy in other directions—that is the meaning of Porter’s dictum of  “choosing what not to do.” At the same time, a good strategy chooses the right target to focus on, not wasting the focus of energy on a target that cannot be affected or that is unimportant—that is the meaning of Drucker’s distinction between efficiency and effectiveness.

Morris: The percentages vary among recent research studies but they all suggest that, on average, C-level executives spend about 10% of their time discussing strategy on a weekly basis and a substantial majority of employees have no idea what their organization’s strategy is.  How do you explain these rather astonishing statistics?

Rumelt: Many C-level executives use the term to refer to big deals or forward-looking financial goals and plans. Others use it to mean overall “visions” or “missions,” or other corporate slogans. However, a real strategy is a coherent mix of policy and action designed to overcome a significant challenge. So a sensible employee might indeed say that they have no idea what the organization’s strategy is—because it seems to have none. Senior managers’ so-called “strategies” are heavy with aspirations and goals, but light on how resources and strengths will be combined to achieve them.

Morris: In your opinion, who in the given enterprise should be involved in the formulation of its strategy?

Rumelt: Small groups of very senior people. Real strategy is not bottom up because it deals with issues that require unexpected or unusual types action, especially of coordination among units.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Richard Rumelt cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x1700.xml

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategys_strategist_An_interview_with_Richard_Rumelt_2039

http://www.amazon.com/Richard-P.-Rumelt/e/B001KIRJP0

Learn How to Think Different(ly)

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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In the Economist review of our book, The Innovator’s DNA, the reviewer wondered whether genius-level innovators such as Marc Benioff, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Jobs challenge the idea that working adults can really learn how to think differently and become innovators.

We don’t think so. Remember, it was Steve Jobs who jump-started the now-famous “Think Different” advertising campaign as a way to inspire consumers and recharge Apple’s innovation efforts. It worked. Reflecting back on the campaign, Jobs said “The whole purpose of the ‘Think Different’ campaign was that people had forgotten what Apple stood for, including the employees.” And the best way to tell people what Apple stood for was to tell them who the company’s heroes were. The campaign reminded everyone — consumers and employees alike — that the “crazy ones…see things differently.”

Reams of relevant research (including our own) proves Jobs right. Innovators excel at connecting the unconnected. They engage in associational thinking. At Apple (or at any innovative company), they take a little bit of this, sprinkle in a little bit of that and that and that to churn out market-busting ideas such as iTunes, and the iPod, iPhone, and iPad (along with a few market disasters like the G4 Cube computer).

But neither Steve Jobs nor Apple nor any other high-profile innovator or company has a corner on the think-different market. In fact, our study of over 5,000 entrepreneurs and executives shows the opposite: almost anyone who consistently makes the effort to think different can think different.

Take Gavin Symanowitz, whom we recently met in South Africa. His original business, GetAGreatBoss.com, lets great managers showcase their skills to attract talent and boost their own careers by conducting a 360 review of the manager by his or her staff, and if the results are favorable, he links the results to job ads that the boss is trying to fill, making these job ads far more appealing. By connecting the unconnected — 360 leadership assessments and help wanted ads — Symanowitz forged an online business that sprouted in Africa and now grows globally.

Innovators (of new businesses, products, and processes) spend almost 50% more time trying to think different compared to non-innovators. In other words, non-innovators do occasionally think different (answering “at least a little bit” to questions like “I creatively solve challenging problems by drawing on diverse ideas or knowledge” to hit the 48th percentile in our global database). Yet compared to innovators, they just don’t do it as often. Generating new business ideas that make a positive financial impact takes time. Innovators who spend more time thinking different (scoring in the 70-80th percentile) consistently engage in associational thinking by “agreeing” or “strongly agreeing” with questions like the one above and they deliver innovative results more frequently than those who don’t. It’s that simple.

If thinking different can make such a positive difference, why don’t more people spend more time doing it? Researchers at Harvard Medical School opened our eyes to one compelling answer. Sixty to eighty percent of adults find the task of thinking different uncomfortable and some even find it exhausting. When adults must connect the unconnected through associational thinking, it wears them out. Why? Because most adults have lost the skills they once had (just watch almost every four-year old who relishes the chance to think different. And all of us were once four-year olds). We don’t lose this skill because genetic coding automatically shuts it down on our twenty-first birthday. Instead, most of us grew up in a world where thinking different was punished instead of praised (at home or school). So while roughly one-third of anyone’s innovation capacity comes from their genetic endowment, two-thirds of it is still driven by the environment. So here are a few simple suggestions to ratchet up your associating skills, the essence of thinking different.

[Here are two suggestions.]

Shake it up. When associations don’t come naturally, try forcing them to surface unnaturally — by shaking things up randomly. For example, try the Idea Generator app, which randomly combines three words together when you shake your smart phone. Shake it again and three more random words show up. You can get even more creative combinations by adding your own words to the mix (including foreign ones) and seeing what you get. For example, we just shook up the app while writing this blog and got three words — perforated, bite-sized, and humane — which might help generate a new idea. Perhaps putting bite-sized perforations into a new product could make a difference. That’s exactly what David Mullany did in 1953 by transforming a solid plastic ball into the Wiffle ball, a completely new product with bite-sized perforations in it.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that if adults practice associational thinking long enough, the task no longer exhausts but energizes them. Like most skill-based activities, if we slog away at it and practice over and over again, the task becomes not life taking but life giving. And that’s when the most creative ideas pop out.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Jeff Dyer is the Horace Beesley Professor of Strategy at the Marriott School, Brigham Young University; Hal Gregersenis a professor of leadership at INSEAD. They are co-authors with Clayton M. Christensen of the The Innovator’s DNA. To check out more blog posts by them, please click here.

Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen: An interview by Bob Morris

Jim Collins

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies — how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies.  Having invested nearly a quarter of a century of research into the topic, Jim has authored or co-authored six books that have sold more than ten million copies worldwide.  They include Built to Last, Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall. His most recent book is Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, co-authored with Morten Hansen.  Based on nine years of research, it answers the question: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?  Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Jim’s prior books by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today. Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and consults with executives from the corporate and social sectors.  He holds degrees in business administration and mathematical sciences from Stanford University, and honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Colorado and the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.

Morten T. Hansen

Morten T. Hansen is a management professor at the University of California, Berkeley (School of Information) and at INSEAD, France. Formerly a professor at the Harvard Business School, he holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright scholar and received the Jaedicke award for outstanding academic performance. His award-winning research has been published in leading academic journals, and he is the winner of the Administrative Science Quarterly award for having made exceptional contributions to the field of organization studies. Hansen has published several best-selling articles in the Harvard Business Review and is the author of the management book, Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results. A native of Norway and a former silver medalist in the Norwegian junior track and field championship, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two daughters, and enjoys running, hiking and traveling.

Here is an excerpt. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: When and why did you two decide to write Great by Choice and how was the division of labor determined?

Hansen: Around 2001, during the time of the dot.com boom and bust and 9/11, the world turned unstable and uncertain. People, including our students, kept asking us, how do you manage in unstable times? How do you prevail?  How do you become great in a world out of control? Finally, this topic grabbed us so completely that we both decided that we had to pursue it.

Morris: Were there any head-snapping revelations while you and your associates conducted the research over a period of nine years, 2002-2011?

Hansen: During this period, we experienced a recession (2001-02), a huge boom (2003-07), the great recession (2008-10) and the great uncertainty (2010-probably forever). These shifting circumstances just reinforced to us that we don’t live in stable times. In fact, we came to the conclusion that the past 50 years have been an abnormal period of stability and that what we will be experiencing going forward is a permanent state of instability, uncertainty, disruption, and even chaos.

Morris: To what extent (if any) does the book in final form differ from the one you originally envisioned?

Collins: We started the project with the idea that it would just be an article.  But the question and findings proved so fascinating, that we decided to shift gears into a full-blown multi-year research effort that could be a book.

Morris: To what extent does it differ significantly from those earlier works?

Collins: First, there are some important similarities across the four studies.  They all use the historical matched-pair research method.  They all proceed with a “let the data speak” approach, following the evidence rather than our own preconceptions.  They all have powerful conceptual frameworks.  They all use vivid stories as a pedagogical method for teaching the concepts.

There are three main differences between this study and the others.  First, is the question itself: why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others don’t?  Unlike any of the prior books, we deliberately selected on the severity and instability of the environment, not just on performance.  Second, this study deliberately examined small, vulnerable enterprises that rose to greatness, giving us insight into entrepreneurial leadership that we did not have in the prior works.  And finally—although we did not plan this—it has some of the most directly useful ideas that apply not just to building companies, but also to navigating a life in an uncertain and chaotic world.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

http://bobmorris.biz/jim-collins-and-morten-t-hansen-an-interview-by-bob-morris

Jim and Morten cordially invite you to check out the resources at these websites:

http://www.jimcollins.com/

http://www.mortenhansen.com/

The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators

Clay Christensen and Hal Gregersen

You really should take advantage of this exceptional gift from Harvard Business Review and be sure to tell your friends about it.

Here are the details.

COMPLIMENTARY LIVE AUDIO WEBINAR

Co-conductors: Clay Christensen and Hal Gregersen

Renowned innovation expert and HBS Professor, Clay Christensen, and Hal Gregersen, INSEAD Senior
Affiliate Professor, share secrets to cultivating innovation prowess throughout your organization

Wednesday, October 19, 2011
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon U.S./Canadian EST

Join us right from your office or conference room—by Internet link (no travel!)

About This Free, Interactive Webinar

Some people are natural innovators, right? They discover new products, services, and entire businesses with little effort, while the rest of us can’t keep up. Wrong.

Innovative capabilities are not innate, argues HBS professor Clay Christensen and INSEAD Professor Hal Gregersen and their co-author in The Innovator’s DNA. Anyone can master disruptive innovation by developing five skills:

1.  Associating: Drawing connections among questions, problems, or ideas from unrelated fields.
2. Questioning: Posing queries that challenge common wisdom.
3. Observing: Scrutinizing the behavior of customers, suppliers, and competitors to identify new ways of doing things.
4. Experimenting: Constructing interactive experiences and provoking unorthodox responses to see what insights emerge.
5. Networking: Mixing with people who have different ideas and perspectives.

In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar on October 19, Professors Christensen and Gregersen will explain how you and your team can cultivate these skills to become more innovative.

Professors Christensen and Gregersen will share how to generate ideas using these skills, collaborate with “delivery-driven” colleagues to implement ideas, and build innovation strength throughout an organization. Attendees will learn to rate their own “Innovator’s DNA.”

Having coined the term and the concept “disruptive innovation,” Professor Christensen is a world-renowned expert on innovation. Gather your team on October 19 to hear Professors Christensen and Gregersen detail how your company can use his insights to your advantage. No team seeking to develop its innovation prowess should skip this opportunity.

After the event, you will receive a Key Learnings Summary, which captures the key insights from the event.

To register, please click here.

Can’t make it? Click here for information.

Who Should be Your Chief Collaboration Officer?

Morten Hansen

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Morten T. Hansen and Scott Tapp for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

*     *     *

Companies need an executive responsible for integrating the enterprise — a Chief Collaboration Officer (CCO). Increasingly, companies are embracing collaboration as part of their strategy to grow, by cross-selling products to existing customers and innovating through the recombination of existing technologies. But this won’t work unless employees work effectively across silos — across sales offices, business units, sales, product development, and marketing.

And who’s in charge of such an effort? In most companies today, senior executives are still responsible for their

Scott Tapp

unit — sales, marketing, HR, division A, division B. Yes, they are told to be team players and work with their peers. But that is often not enough. You need someone to look after the whole, by taking a holistic view of what is needed to get employees to work across silos.

You may say, “sure, that’s the CEO’s role.” True. But the CEO cannot afford to spend too much time on it. The CEO needs someone more dedicated to the effort — a Chief Collaboration Officer. So who should that be? We’re not proposing a new person — yet another (expensive) executive in the C-suite. We think that a current C-level executive should assume the mantle. Here are five candidates:

The current CIO. This is a perfect area for the Chief Information Officer to go beyond IT, step up, and take an enterprise-wide view. If you’re a CIO looking to broaden your role and drive value across the company, this is your opportunity.

The current HR head. Good collaboration requires the right incentives, performance evaluations, promotion criteria, and people development. So it’s only natural for the head of HR to take on the CCO role; that entails going beyond HR issues and working with others, such as the CIO, to craft a holistic solution.

The current COO. Of course, if your company has a COO that oversees many parts of the business, adding the Chief Collaboration Officer role is a natural extension.

The current CFO. Now, this is less obvious. Why get the numbers person on board here? Well, collaboration is first and foremost about creating economic value; it’s a strategic search for good cross-company projects. Many CFOs also oversee the strategy department, so why not add cross-company strategic activities to the portfolio?
The current head of strategy. Good collaboration means finding and prioritizing areas of synergy, an exercise well suited for the executive responsible for the overall strategy of the firm.

Other candidates may also exist, such as Chief Technology Officers in high-tech companies. Some senior executives are less suited for the job: head of sales, head of countries, and business unit heads. They tend to be too focused on their primary role.

So what should a Chief Collaboration Officer do?

Let’s say Brian, the current CIO, assumes the role. First, Brian needs to work with the CFO and head of strategy to identify the strategic opportunities for collaboration across the company — that is, to establish the business case for collaboration. He also needs to involve business unit leaders and head of sales to craft goals related to collaboration initiatives — for example, how much sales they will generate. Then Brian needs to walk over to the head of HR to make sure that performance evaluations, bonuses, and promotions are depended on good collaborative behaviors. That is, he needs to align the entire organization to realize the business case.

Soon Brian will discover the truth about the Chief Collaboration Office role: while he is responsible for driving the collaboration effort, he needs to do so by working with his peers. His job is to craft a holistic solution to collaboration, one that involves strategy, HR, product development, sales solutions, marketing, and IT. In short, he needs to be a masterful collaborator. Choosing a CCO is less about which role a person currently occupies and more about whether he or she has the skills. Pick the best collaborator.

So, do you think you need a Chief Collaboration Officer, and who do you think it should be?

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Morten T. Hansen is a management professor at University of California, Berkeley, and INSEAD, France, and the author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results (Harvard Business Press). Scott Tapp is Senior Vice President and General Manager for Global Collaboration Services at PGi.

To check out my interview of Hansen, please click here.

What is the worst mistake a leader can make?

Through Imagining the Future of Leadership, a symposium at the Harvard Business School and accompanying blog series [click here], expert thinkers gathered to investigate what is necessary today to develop the leaders we need for tomorrow.

Here is a ”must watch” video during which nine world-renowned authorities on leadership discuss what they consider to be the worst mistake a leader can make.

To watch this video, please click here.

Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic
; co-author of Authentic Leadership and True North

Evan Wittenberg, Head of Global Leadership Development, Google, Inc.

Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor, Harvard University

Andrew Pettigrew, Professor, Sïad Business School, University of Oxford

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Affiliate Professor of Organizational Behavior, INSEAD

Carl Sloane, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Jonathan Doochin, Leadership Institute at Harvard College

Scott Snook, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School and retired Colonel, US Army Corps of Engineers

Daisy Wademan Dowling, Executive Director, Leadership Development at Morgan Stanley

Carolyn Hoyt’s interviews of four women gurus: Marianne Williamson, Charlene Li, Renée Mauborgne and Louise Hay

Here is an extension of an article that appeared in the February/March (2010) issue of PINK magazine. Carolyn Hoyt interviews four women gurus: I have selected one Q&A for each. To read the complete article, please click here. You can also sign up for a free subscription to PINK’s e-Newsletter.

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Women are upending the whole idea of a “business guru” by transcending business as usual. These four sages deliver wisdom and wit to millions – and impact every corner of women’s lives.
By Carolyn Hoyt

Our exclusive interviews with four of the most interesting, provocative and inspirational women gurus today – Marianne Williamson, Charlene Li, Renée Mauborgne and Louise Hay – were just too good to go partly unpublished. So in addition to their conversations with us that appear in the February.March issue of PINK here are the rest of their words of wisdom.

Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson’s legendary success includes a first book, A Return to Love, that spent 35 weeks as America’s No. 1 favorite read, and her most recent, The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife, which hit No. 2 on The New York Times best-seller list in its first week. Last fall she spoke to packed houses in Boston, Phoenix, London, Los Angeles and New York, to name just a few. With only a single employee, Williamson’s business is basically self-run and, reflecting the beliefs she preaches, pursues a spiritual path. She has been named by major publications as one of the 50 most influential baby boomers.

Hoyt: How is your own spirituality reflected in your work?

Williamson: In many ways. I have always taken my nonprofit work as seriously as my work within the profit-making sector. In 1989, I founded an organization in Los Angeles called Project Angel Food, which basically was meals on wheels for homebound people with AIDS. More recently, I am pushing an agenda of peace, with the founding of the Peace Alliance, which supports legislation to establish a United States Department of Peace. I have always wanted to play to an audience that is like me. I want to write books or give talks which, if I were in the audience or I were the reader, I would appreciate. And there have definitely been times in my life when I knew that what I wanted to talk about was not popular in the moment. For instance, in 1998, I wrote a book about healing the soul of America at a time when my primary readership, the spiritual and metaphysical community, didn’t want to hear about politics. Today, of course, that’s changed. With issues of social activism, sacred activism, a whole new conversation has emerged, where virtue is its own reward and the ultimate high is feeling, at the end of the day, like I contributed to my community or my society, whether or not it’s popular. I think that while this decision may have been, at times, to my detriment financially, it has contributed to my stature. I have a voice in society. And I have lived enough to know that, ultimately, abundance flows from your name as well as your product.

Charlene Li

Charlene Li’s breathtaking rise as an authority on emerging technologies has garnered her a long list of accolades, including “one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley.” In October, she was keynote speaker for an event that drew more than 300 attendees, and early this year she will headline a conference that draws more than 5000. But her biggest audiences are – where else? – online. She writes several popular and influential blogs found at altimetergroup.com, charleneli.com and svmoms.com. With two young children and a new office in her home (where she has yet to purchase bookshelves), Li has a lot to say about women professionals in the 21st century.

[Note: I highly recommend her recently published book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead.]

Hoyt: What’s next for women of your generation?

Li: I see women going anywhere they want to. And I do mean want to. Because a lot of people measure success merely by position, title and salary. I think women feel comfortable enough in their own skin to put that secondary to what they want. They don’t have to define success by the measure of society. People often say to me, “How come you don’t want to be CEO of a company?” And I tell them, “I don’t want to.” I know I can do it, but I don’t enjoy it. Why does that have to be the definition of success?

I also think that women no longer have to set up a boundary between work life and home life. One of the hallmarks of my thinking is that I bring a lot of my personal life into my work. That’s a huge advantage I have over men, who may feel they have to separate the two.

Renée Mauborgne

Renée Mauborgne

Along with her co-author, W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne has been called “the No. 1 guru of the future” by L/Expansion, France ‘s leading business magazine. Their book, Blue Ocean Strategy (Harvard Business School Press, 2005), ranks as the fastest-selling title in its publisher’s history. So it comes as no surprise that Mauborgne’s speaking skills are in high demand. She gave the keynote address to an audience of 5,000 at the World Business Forum in New York’s Radio City Music Hall, an event that also included speakers Bill Clinton, Jack Welch and Malcolm Gladwell. And she is a fellow of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the annual gathering of CEOs, political leaders and thought leaders from across the world. Mauborgne is a professor at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and is also co-founder and co-director of the Blue Ocean Strategy Institute.

Hoyt: What exactly is the “blue ocean”?

Mauborgne: As new global players enter the world stage from all corners of the globe, be it China, India, Brazil or Eastern Europe, companies in most industries are finding themselves stuck in what I call a “red ocean” of bloody competition. This environment is characterized by intense competition, market-share battles, declining price points and commodization of offerings. The question is, “What will it take to thrive in this new world economy?”

My answer is to create what I call “blue oceans” of uncontested market space. Here, the aim is not to compete, but to make the competition irrelevant and create a larger economic pie. It is worth noting that historically, the focus on beating rivals fundamentally traces back to military strategy. Under military strategy, because the land on the Earth is limited and given, the only way to expand territory or market share is at the expense of another. Hence, someone’s gain can only be achieved at another’s loss. To win, you must make another lose. What the world has shown us, however, is that while the land on Earth may be limited, the ‘blue ocean’ of new market space that can be created and captured is unlimited. Just think of how many multimillion- and multibillion-dollar businesses exist today that did not exist even 30 years ago: cell phones, biotechnology, snowboards, ring tones, social networking sites, search engines … tooth whitening!”

Louise Hay

Louise Hay

Louise Hay’s first book, Heal Your Body, started as a 12-page pamphlet but has since been translated into 25 languages. That kind of meteoric rise is the story of her entire career – which started in counseling in the early 1970s before growing into a veritable self-help empire, anchored by her publishing company, Hay House. Hay’s charitable offshoots – the Hay Foundation and the Louise L. Hay Charitable Fund – channel millions to people living with AIDS, battered women and other “challenged individuals” in society. Her monthly column, “Dear Louise,” appears in more than 50 worldwide publications. And she’s been dubbed the “Mother of the New Age,” the “Queen of Affirmation” and, in the Australian media, “the closest thing to a living saint.”

Hoyt: What are we forgetting as we focus more than ever on advancement?

Hay: Ourselves. How to fulfill ourselves. How to make ourselves happy. We get too caught up in the moneymaking part of life. My own biggest concerns are to stay healthy and happy. I think the business will take care of itself and, when I put that thought out into the world, it happens. My company is absolutely growing and growing and growing. We do seminars, sometimes, for 7,000 people. These are people, predominantly women, who are seeking, who want to know more, who want to improve the quality of their lives, who want to find themselves.”

I like to think about legacies. In this life, we all should leave a legacy. I didn’t enter this whole world until I was in my 50s, when my first book was published. Now I’m 81 and having an absolutely wonderful time in life. Recently a rose was named after me – an apricot hybrid. It is so beautiful, and long after I’m gone this rose will be around bringing beauty to the world. I like that idea very much.

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“It’s tempting to think that decisions that are not life-and-death are therefore unimportant, and that the little compromises we make don’t matter to our bottom line or our spiritual selves. How many of us are tempted, in business, to make a less-than-ethical decision? To appropriate someone else’s idea or fudge some numbers? We have to remember that maintaining our ethical and spiritual selves is absolutely linked with achieving the degree of success we’re working toward.” Marianne Williamson

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To read the complete article, please click here. You can also sign up for a free subscription to PINK’s e-Newsletter.

Are Social Media Worth Your Time?

Morten Hansen

Here is an article written by Morten Hansen. To check out other articles and resources and sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

Are Social Media Worth Your Time?
Morten Hansen

In the latest issue of BusinessWeek, Stephen Baker’s article “Beware Social Media Snake Oil” makes a provocative argument. He claims that all the hype around social networks, wikis, and blogs for business neglects the potential risks and time wasted. While I think he is overstating the argument, he is bringing up a vital question all managers and employees need to ask: What’s the business value of using social media? In my view, there has to be a crystal clear business impact for using these tools.

Consider collaboration inside companies (which differs from using these tools for marketing and PR). The promise of social media, or “enterprise 2.0″ as it is often called, is that employees can become much better at finding information and working together if they use blogs, wikis, social networking, document sharing, Facebook pages, and the like. But are these new activities valuable for a company? Well, that depends. The first obvious issue is that you can spend an awful lot of time on this, and that’s time not spent doing other things, such as finishing your job for the day. So it’s only valuable if the result (e.g., finding good information) justifies the effort (all the hours put into social media). That’s focusing on outputs, not inputs.

Some people miss this point: They think of adoption success in a company as the number of wikis, blogs, tweets, and Facebook pages that people have created and used. In other words, they measure success as the activity level. But that’s the same as saying, “in our company, we have lots of meetings so we must be doing something right.” As enterprise 2.0 expert Oliver Marks told me, “random Twitter and online dialog can be an even more disastrous use of time than endless unfocused meetings.” More is not necessarily better.

There is a bigger problem, however. Social media tools are only useful for some problems. Managers need to ask, do social media tools solve my key challenges? Consider again collaboration inside companies. Why are people in your company not collaborating better? There are potentially many different reasons for this. As I show in my book Collaboration, some barriers to collaboration are motivational — people are unwilling to share information and look for help, perhaps because they see colleagues as rivals or only care about their own performance. Social media tools are just not going to be good at fixing these motivational problems. You need other solutions for this, such as changing the incentive system so that people are rewarded for helping others.

If you blindly focus on investing in social network tools, wikis, and blogs in your company, without solving these motivational problems first, you have just committed a great managerial sin. You have applied the wrong solution to your problems. You have prescribed cough medicine for a broken leg.

We need to be precise and honest about where these new social media tools have great impact, and where they don’t. Then they will be seen as great tools, and we won’t hear the snake oil label anymore.

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Morten T. Hansen is the author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results (Harvard Business Press, 2009). He is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at INSEAD.

To check out other articles and resources, and sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.