How should you grow your organization?It’s one of the most challenging questions an executive team faces-and the wrong answer can break your firm.The problem is most firms’ growth strategies emphasize just one type of growth-some focus on organic growth, others on M&A. When these strategies falter, the common response is simply to try harder-but firms falling into this implementation trap” usually end up losing out to a competitor whose approach is more in...

Is your company spending too much time on strategy development—with too little to show for it?If you read nothing else on strategy, read these 10 articles (featuring “What Is Strategy?” by Michael E. Porter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you catalyze your organization's strategy development and execution.HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy will i...

Competitive advantage. The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter’s frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter’s name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter’s revolutionar...

International expert and consultant David Maister offers a brilliant and accessible guide to every management issue at play in professional firms.Professional firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first, they provide highly customized services and thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalized, involving the skills of individuals. Such fir...

More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the Balanced Scorecard into action.Now, using their ongoing resea...

The creators of the revolutionary performance management tool called the Balanced Scorecard introduce a new approach that makes strategy a continuous process owned not just by top management, but by everyone. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Robert Kaplan and David Norton share the results of ten years of learning and research into more than 200 companies that have implemented the Balanced Scorecard. Drawing from more than twenty in-depth case studies--including Mobil, CIGNA,...

Successful leaders know that leadership is less often about having all the answers—and more often about asking the right questions. The challenge lies in being able to step back, reflect, and ask the key questions that are critical to your performance and your organization’s effectiveness.In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, leadership expert Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necess...

The new grand theory of leadership by Ram Charan . . . The breakthrough book that links know-how—the skills of people who know what they are doing— with the personal and psychological traits of the successful leader.How often have you heard someone with a commanding presence deliver a bold vision that turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric and hot air? All too often we mistake the appearance of leadership for the real deal. Without a doubt, intelligence, vision, and the ability to com...

To innovate profitably, you need more than just creativity. Do you have what it takes?If you read nothing else on inspiring and executing innovation, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you innovate effectively.Leading experts such as Clayton Christensen, Peter Drucker, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter provide the insights and advice yo...

An argument for simplicity from the bestselling authors of Profit from the CoreIs radical reinvention the key to winning in today’s fast-paced world? Not judging by the results of some of the world’s best-performing companies.In Repeatability, Chris Zook and James Allen-leaders of Bain & Company’s influential Strategy practice-warn that complexity is a silent killer of profitable growth. Successful companies endure by maintaining simplicit...

Practical ideas from the best brains in BusinessA sharp, jargon-free guide to the core curriculum of an MBA program, MBA in a Book shows how to master the big ideas of business and use them in a practical way to build and enhance career success.“In the world of business, ideas matter. . . . Some of the sharpest minds in the business world give perceptive looks into innovation, marketing, finance, strategy, and leadership, providing stimulating, useful perspectives ...

Provocative new management principles and practices that create effective organizations for shareholders and societyManagement experts Lawler and Worley have developed a set of management principles that enable organizations to be both successful and responsible. Existing command & control and high-involvement management styles depend too much on stable conditions and focus too narrowly on economic outcomes. They convincingly argue that we need to "reset" our appro...