Organization design blog

Space as a strategic asset was last week's question. I got it three times in different ways but they are focused on the same idea – how do we know what space we'll need in the future, and then how do we use it to get best possible performance from the space and the people in it? Here they are:

1. In the last week we've been approached on the subject of domestic companies (in China) looking to make significant change to how they use space as a strategic asset of the business.
2. Wondering if you have any info or articles on how companies are responding to contraction and expansion in their real estate portfolios? Efficiency and cost effectiveness – while also maintaining great environments?
3. A client is looking for benchmarking metrics which would tell him at what point in eroding away his vacant space (flexible/soft/surge space) should he look at options to build or lease more space or look at significant consolidation.

The interesting things about the questions are the challenges and opportunities they imply. Although framed as workplace/workspace issues they are also about the design of the organization and the external trends and context that the business operation has to respond to as it develops and delivers its business strategy.

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In a few weeks (43 days according to the website countdown clock) I am speaking at the Talent Management Summit 2013. This is billed as asking the right questions on talent management:

• Is your business prepared for the way we'll work in the future?
• Does your organization have the right people to succeed in the future business landscape?
• What are the talent requirements of tomorrow's business and how can we meet them?
• Much has been written about the need for a mobile, agile workforce, but what does this mean in practice, and how can we measure it?

and 'will consider the questions from a broader perspective – taking in the economic and political context and emerging macro trends for society and business ... as talent is no longer an issue confined to the HR department but is rising to the top of the agenda for senior executives across the board. ... This reflects the importance of talent for competitive advantage in today's global knowledge economy.'
The effect of the countdown clock was to focus my attention on the questions and to make me wonder what I'm going to say. Then I remembered that in my recently published book Organizational Health I have a whole chapter on business trends and fads and included in the discussion a list asking readers whether they thought something was a trend to act on or a fad to ignore. The list reads:

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Last week a client said that what her employees were really looking for in the coming months, as they go through a change in responsibilities was a roadmap. That set me wondering what a roadmap is, what it is used for and what I've learned about them.

What a roadmap is
People in the organizational development and design fields often talk about roadmaps. Just take a look at Google Images response to the question: 'What is an organization development roadmap?' and you will see a huge number of possibilities. I was struck by the one that's actually a book title: Roadmap: How to Understand, Diagnose and Fix Your Organization. There seems to be some mix-up in ideas here. The sub-title is more like a car maintenance manual, though I guess if I'm driving along and the car breaks down then the maintenance manual might help.

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I've been working with an organization, like many others, that wants to improve its decision making processes. Employees are saying things like:

'There's a lack of understanding around decision criteria. We have a tendency to push decisions up and over-bureaucratize. Currently the senior leaders make most of the decisions, but their role should be more about direction setting, and then setting people up to succeed. They need to step back. There's no definition on what decisions should be made at what level. People ask whether a decision is in their remit. There are too many decision points.'

For them, an improved process would:

• Make it quicker and easier to make decisions whilst maintaining the right level of controls.
• Create an organization that is more customer focused, market alert and fast on its feet
• Give staff the mandate and confidence to make decisions at their level without unnecessary referring up

Probing a bit more on this reveals that what people mean by 'decisions' varies from the high level strategic things like 'Shall we buy this business?' to the day to day operational decisions that frontline staff need to make in their interactions with customers. I had an interesting one of the latter the other day at Doncaster Station in the Pumpkin café there.

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HRM systems and processes are a significant part of enabling an organization to achieve a successful IPO. Not just pre-IPO but also post. But what I've found in my looking into this topic over the last couple of weeks is that there isn't much in the way of useful, practical information to draw on and tracking it down has been time consuming. However, some of what I've turned up has been useful and interesting so collected here is a small selection of the stuff that I've found most helpful in preparing the report I was writing.

I located a 1999 research article by Theresa Welbourne and Linda Cyr called The Human Resource Executive Effect in Initial Public Offering Firms that is available through Cornell's Digital Commons. Although it is 13 years since it was written it proved an excellent start point as the researchers

"By applying organizational inertia concepts, studied whether having a senior HRM executive, reporting to the CEO, affects firm performance in a sample of initial public offering (IPO) firms. Results indicate that smaller and fast-growth IPOs experience the most gain from having a senior human resource executive."

The company I am working with does not have a senior HR executive but is thinking about recruiting one so I contacted Dr Welbourne who is now at the Center for Effective Organizations to find out if she is still pursuing this line of research and the answer is yes.

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Back in September 2011 a friend emailed me saying he was planning a new book that will be a collection of articles that follow the evolution of strategic workforce planning (SWP). It is to be divided it into a historical section that will trace the early development of SWP practices, a larger section that will deal with current practices within a cross section of leading organizations and a final section that will offer some thought leader perspectives on future directions for this whole prospect of resourcing workforce capabilities.

He asked me if I would be willing to contribute a piece, saying he was "open to ideas, but I initially had in mind something from you that would be in the future directions section -- perhaps suggesting some ways that virtual organizations may pursue to deal with cultural challenges when organizations are loosely tethered networks."

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I was on a flight last week reading the European Wall Street Journal. The front page (October 31) had a great photomontage showing that

1. Truck maker Scania plans to pare production by as much as 15%, beginning in November.
2. Volvo intends to scale back truck manufacturing next year.
3. PSA Peugeot Citroën plans to suspend production at a plant in Slovakia. The company also said it would lay off 6,000 workers, mostly in France.
4. Liquor maker Diageo restructured its European operation by centralizing certain functions and shifting investment away from Western European markets.
5. Saab Automobile agreed to sell Saab to Chinese companies Pang Da and Zhejiang Youngman for $141.9 million, following a two-year struggle to turn the company around after decades of losses.

On the next page were a further set of news items:

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Beyond any move logistics - which are critically important to get right - other conscious choices and decisions need to be made in preparing people for an office move. Typically before a move, in many real estate moves or office space redesigns we ask people to complete a survey on work style (are they deskbound, etc.). Then we gather 'requirements' on what they'll need in the new space. However, there is a tension here. People will base requirements on what they know, or what they are assuming or have heard from others about the new space. What we get from 'requirements' gathering is, for the most part, uninformed by actual experience of working in new space styles and new work ways. People have little ability to make informed choices and decisions on what they don't know or haven't experienced. Addressing that knowledge gap is essential in order to get informed requirements that help us meet any business goals related to real estate and/or carbon footprint reductions combined with business process streamlining and delivering the business strategy.

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This week has been one of discussions on value propositions. In the first we were working out what we were offering various stakeholders in returning for investing time, effort, and obvious commitment into supporting the development of 'living labs'. On this project we are planning intentional experimentation on the interactions between people and workspace. So, for example, if we invite people to work in open bench style workspace rather than the current individual high walled cubicles and they accept the invitation what impact does it have on things including their work practices, the work flow, and their productivity?

Clearly inviting people to work in a different space layout will incur various costs e.g. in new layouts, perhaps new furniture, risks to productivity and business continuity, etc. But there may be benefits - more collaboration resulting in higher customer satisfaction, higher productivity, swifter decision making because people are communicating more effectively and so on. But we don't know and this is the 'lab' part of the project. Thus the value proposition discussion.

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I got the following email from someone who'd just read my book Corporate Culture: Getting it Right (in the UK published as Organisation Culture: Getting it Right).

"Something is wearing on me, something I can't get around. I am calling it the Walmart paradox. If indeed we believe (almost religiously) in the culture / business model connection, and that organizational success is in partly predicated on the tightly woven alignment between the two, how can we explain Walmart success? I mean the almost flagrant and overt inconsistency between Wal-Mart business practices and the so-called "respect for the individual" (one of three) core value is hard to reconcile. And I mention this because I am trying to do more transformational consulting and I espouse everything you put forth, and just wondering what do I say when someone says in a meeting, "what about Wal-Mart?"

I know you mention that one must consider the complexity of Wal-Mart's environment and all of the trade offs involved ... and that determining cause and effect is a futile endeavor. But isn't that inconsistency between culture and behavior ultimately unsustainable? That's the kind of irreconcilable stuff that incite revolutions and over throws governments, yet Wal-Mart's been at it for decades - and thriving!!!! Naomi help!"

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Several people during the past week have asked me what I see as the organizational trends that are having an impact both on organization designs and on the Human Resource/Organization Development functions.

It's an interesting question that you can look at from a macro/global level, or at a single small organization in a specific market sector or geography. It seems that the people who were asking were more interested in what the macro level trends were that they would then be able to interpret and assess the impact of in their local markets.

But how useful is to know about a macro level trend? Everyone knows that rapidly advancing communication and collaboration technologies are having a major impact on organizational operations, but maybe that macro level statement is too general to be useful. Would it be more helpful to ask "Are there some specific communication and collaboration technologies that are having more of an impact on organizational designs than others". For example, is Twitter more of an organizational game changer than Facebook? Or Google more than Microsoft? Or Cisco's telepresence more than webcams on individual computers?

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Question: We are responsible for assisting government offices to design their organizational structure. The process is as follows:

1) Government Ministries/Department draw up their strategic plans

2) Once the plan has been accepted they start working how they need to adjust their organization design to ensure implementation of the plan. Some do Business Process Re-engineering and some don't because it is not a requirement.

3) When the request for structural help come to our Department, we tackle the request by looking at the following elements:

• Unity of command and direction
• Chain of command
• Span of control
• Division of work
• Standardisation

We do workflow studies and we use the norms to design positions on the structure.

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This past week I've heard the words 'business model innovation' several times. So now I'm curious to know whether this is a passing fad or a more sustained interest in the topic. Four different things all took me to the business model innovation place:

First, an HBR Idea Cast, Finding Profits in a World of Free, interviews Saul Berman of IBM who is just about to publish (February 17 according to Amazon), a new book Not for Free: Revenue Strategies for a New World. The puff on the book says:

It used to be only dotcom start-ups lacked workable business models. But now the ubiquity of cheap communications and computing is deeply wounding business models across the board. ...

What can you do to ensure that you have a business model that will work today and in the future? Create new revenue models, advises Saul J. Berman in Not for Free. The most important strategy now is wringing new income streams from existing assets, physical and digital, by exploiting new segments, new uses and new value additions.

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I was sitting in a meeting yesterday where we were discussing the impending office move. One of the effects of the move could be - if we drove it in that direction - a significant shift in the organization's culture. The amount of space people are moving to is much less than they currently have, and the layout is completely different: open plan, little in the way of cubicle divider height, and much less storage space.

The instruction has gone out that people will get no more that two crates to put all their items in and they are not to bring certain things - personal plug in electrical appliances, etc. The plan is that over the next two years people will practice hoteling, teleworking, free addressing and other ways of working that do not include having a designated personal desk space of their own.

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Here's an extract from an article I wrote that was published in July 2005 in Professional Consultancy. As I re-read it still seemed as relevant for many of the companies I'm working with today as it did five years ago. Their focus is still on the human resource rather than human capital.

HCM is the management of an intangible and volatile organizational asset. This asset being the collective sum of the attributes, life experience, knowledge, inventiveness, energy, and enthusiasm that the organization's people choose to invest in their work.

"Like financial capital, people need to be treated with care, respect, and commitment if the organization expects them to stay invested. It must also provide them with the returns they need. Just as in managing financial capital, organizations cannot afford to waste their human capital or risk it going to places where it can get a better return. Like financial capital, human capital needs to be carefully allocated, utilized, and managed." (Lawler, 2003).

Unlike financial capital, human capital is much more of an elusive asset - it can be influenced but not controlled. People determine via their commitment to the organization and their engagement in their job whether or not to invest their capital for the benefit of the organization.

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Strategy+Business has an informative article 'Cleaning the Crystal Ball'. In it the authors suggest that

Competence in forecasting does not mean being able to predict the future with certainty. It means accepting the role that uncertainty plays in the world, engaging in a continuous improvement process of building your firm's forecasting capability, and paving the way for corporate success. A good forecast leads, through either direct recommendations or informal conversation, to robust actions.

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In this month's World Future Society email newsletter that I get I read that foresight is the single most critical skill for the 21st century. Here's why:

Foresight is critical to achievement in all areas of your life, including your major life decisions. People who lack foresight are likely to find themselves unemployed when jobs are unexpectedly lost to new technologies, competition from overseas, or shifts in consumer tastes. Foresight is the key to survival in a world of disruptive innovation.

Foresight enables you to see opportunities, avoid threats, and chart the fastest path to your goals. The key to success is seizing opportunity when it arises. But you need to see the opportunity and be prepared to take action. That's why foresight gives you power and agility to achieve any goal you want to achieve.

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Someone just sent me a Gartner report called Introducing Hybrid Thinking for Transformation, Innovation and Strategy that offers the view that:

Hybrid thinking integrates the increasingly popular business concept of design thinking with other ways of thinking in order to take on "wicked problems" in business transformation, innovation and strategy. Design thinking's fundamental emphasis on creating meaningful, human-centered experiences provides the core for hybrid thinking, which is an emerging "discipline of disciplines." Hybrid thinking goes beyond design thinking by integrating other forms of creative thinking to take on the most ambiguous, contradictory and complex problems.

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Until earlier this week I had not come across an organization that had introduced a formal policy, procedure and guidance note for its organisation design methodology. So it was an interesting read when I received just such a set of information.

The policy document specifies that its main purpose is to ensure that

• Organisation designs (including restructures) take place in a planned, consistent way in line with the Organisational Design methodology.

• The reasons for change are clear and transparent and that the risks of change and doing nothing are demonstrated.

• Design work takes place in partnership with stakeholders, ensuring their involvement at the earliest opportunity.

• Employees and their representatives are fully consulted concerning any changes that impact them throughout the process.

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In a results oriented world of measurement, analytics, and accountability there is little room for functions that are unable to prove that they add value to the bottom line. Evaluating the link between organizational performance and OD/HR practices is complex and there is no one right way to do it.

A report commissioned by the UK's Institute of Personnel and Development in 1997 (Patterson, M. G., West, M.A., Lawthorn, R. and Nickell, S. Impact of People Management Practices on Business Performance) sought to establish a link between Human Resource Management (HRM) practices and the financial performance of organizations: one in a series of efforts to prove that HRM contributes positively to the 'bottom line'. The findings from this research did reveal the possibilities of demonstrating a measurable impact of HRM on organisation performance and productivity.

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Yesterday I was facilitating the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Organization Design progam. One of the attendees asked what the difference is between a business model and an operating model is and where organization design fits into either. That's a good question. A couple of years ago I taught a 12 week course on the California College of the Arts Design Strategy MBA on Business Models and Stakeholders.

I started that course with the question 'what is a business model'. Harvard Business School (case study number 9-708-452, revised June 23 2008) has a module, Competing Through Business Models that answers the question, making the point that:

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Someone last week sent me a link to Simon Sinek talking at the TED conference on the topic 'How Great Leaders Inspire Action'. I've just listened to it and discover that it's about the power of knowing 'why' you do something. Sinek has a website and a book devoted to the topic 'Start with Why'. He has taken a simple idea - the power of what, how, why - and converted it into a money-spinner.

Basically, he suggests that unless people know 'why' they do something, or belived in what they do they will get know where. His view is that it is not enough to know 'what' you do. To inspire followers you have to show your belief in 'why' you do it. Among the examples in the TED video are apple, the Wright brothers, and Martin Luther King ("who gave the 'I have a dream' speech, and not the 'I have a plan' speech").

I found the talk, website, (and free download book chapter) interesting on a number of counts

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I'm working with a client who currently has a hiring process that takes 198 days. Using a six sigma approach she has reduced it to 80 and is about to launch it on that basis. However, an internal client has come with the request for a 'bulk hiring' of 200 people to be done within 30 days. The question is, can the hiring process be accelerated to that level. What are the risks, and what would be compromised?

This is where people need to agree on the design criteria. Essentially design criteria

• Clarify what the new organization design must do well
• Identify 'problems' that must be solved in the new design
• Develop the 'benchmark profile' to guide the design and use in evaluating the design alternatives
• Take the emotion out of organization design and provides tangible data with which to assess options
• Provide focus for design or redesign that improves performance
• Lay the foundation for trade-off decisions - they articulate priorities that guide the design through conflicting needs.
• Keep members focused on the same outcomes of designing
• Enable differences to be surfaced and discussed
• Can be used to evaluate different design solutions

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This week's Economist has two articles in it that caught my eye. The first is about NGOs and their relationships with corporate for-profits. Called Reaching for a Longer Spoon it outlines the closer relationships that activist non-profit groups are developing with for profit companies. The Nature Conservancy, for example, has received large sums of money from BP, while Conservation International has been paid, again by BP for advising on its oil extraction method. Environmental Defense Fund another non-profit collaborates with "such frequent targets of activists' ire as Wal-Mart, a giant retailer with no time for unions, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a private-equity firm often depicted as a financial predator."

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Human Capital Management (HCM) is not the same as Human Resource Management (HRM). HCM involves strategic investment in the intangible assets that the human side of the enterprise represents. The aim is to achieve individual and organizational return on the investment in a way that develops the business, and that can be reported on an annual balance sheet if required.

HCM is the management of an intangible and volatile organizational asset. This asset being the collective sum of the attributes, life experience, knowledge, inventiveness, energy, and enthusiasm that the organization's people choose to invest in their work.

"Like financial capital, people need to be treated with care, respect, and commitment if the organization expects them to stay invested. It must also provide them with the returns they need. Just as in managing financial capital, organizations cannot afford to waste their human capital or risk it going to places where it can get a better return. Like financial capital, human capital needs to be carefully allocated, utilized, and managed." (Lawler, 2003).

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Business Week has a special report on The Value of Design (February 1 2010). It "takes a closer look at how design can impact the bottom line of businesses in any industry

"attempting "to pick apart the issue a little further, with opinion pieces on the value of design from those within and outside the profession. IDEO partner Diego Rodriguez makes the case that good business arises from a design-centric process that incorporates marketing, research, and ideas. RKS Design's Ravi Sawhney and Deepa Prahalad http://rksdesign.com/blog/index.php/what_we_think/ outline four specific areas in which design can create value: understanding the consumer; mitigating risk; boosting marketing and branding; and driving sustainable business practices."

The section I read first was the RKS piece on the role of design in business: about which more and more is being written as the boundaries between architects, product designers, and organization designers are blurring. Which brought to mind the work of The US General Services Administration.

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At the conference I was at yesterday Traci Entel, from Booz, presented on 'The Power of the Coherence Premium'. She talked about a revised 'palette' of organizational elements which combined the forma (F) and informal (I) of the organization.

Structure (F) and networks (I)
Decision rights/management information (F) and behaviors (I)
Motivators (F) and identity (I)
Information (F) and beliefs (I)

She told us that organizations must decide what capability they are trying to compete on. Having done this ensuring 'coherence' amongst and between the palette elements in a way that delivers the capability is the route to success.

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The New York Times today has an article about an incubator company Betaworks . It "has guided some entrepreneurs to lucrative sales and helped others raise cash from notable New York and Silicon Valley investment firms".

What's notable about Betaworks is that it has an unconventional business model. The founders, John Borthwick and Andrew Weissman, "spent nine months deliberating over how to structure their company before settling on a hybrid of an investment firm and an incubator. " Borthwick says that "our goal is to create a network of companies with lots of connections between them that increases the likelihood of success between all of them."

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The article 'Here be Dragons' in the Economist notes that Business travellers in today's emerging markets ... constantly come across what to Western eyes look like exotic corporate species and new, unfamiliar kinds of business which raise profound questions about the evolution of companies and business models.

What I've found is that people are confused about what a business model is. Briefly, it is the 'what and how' of a business: in graphical terms it is a simplified representation of its business logic. It describes what a company offers its customers, how it reaches them and relates to them, through which resources, activities and partners it achieves this and finally, how it earns money". In a sense a business model is what someone seeking investor support to set up a company would describe in the business plan.

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One of the case studies in my forthcoming book on organization culture (due out in July 2010) is on Toyota. I wrote it last December before the news broke of the recalls. Back then, in what now seems a 'hurrah for self' prescient moment I wondered whether the company would survive or die - mainly because the research I'd been doing on strong cultures suggested that too strong a culture had, in effect, built-in blinkers. The assumptions and norms around the ways of doing things - even when they were, as in Toyota's case, aimed at reducing errors and maintaining quality seemed to stop people from seeing patterns and trends that didn't fit on their 'radar screen'.

Gary Klein, in his book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, remarks on a phenomenon in relation to decisions that result in an undesirable outcome. He talks about three categories of decision making that resulted in error:

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The report Retrench or Refresh puts the proposition that to stay competitive companies need to be innovative in their business model. In the final part of the report "experts explain how they feel business models need to change for survival, what leaders should focus on and what are the weaknesses in current models". What comes out of this section is more or less a list of the characteristics of a re-charged business model that is viable and successful in today's context and has features that improve competitiveness, increase efficiencies, use resources better and focuses on the customer. Characteristics include:

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The authors of the report Retrench or refresh? Do existing business models still deliver the goods? recently published by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Grant Thornton make the point that organizations expecting to survive the recession should do more than control costs. They should look at their business model and change it appropriately. Rightly, the report authors point out that the notion of a business model 'defies easy definition'. One that I've found helpful is that it is the 'what and how' of a business. "The business model of a company is a simplified representation of its business logic. It describes what a company offers its customers, how it reaches them and relates to them, through which resources, activities and partners it achieves this and finally, how it earns money". (For a more detailed discussion of this definition see Osterwalder, A. (2007). How to describe and assess your business model to compete better.

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The CIO's jargon busting blog has an excellent discussion of cloud computing a term that is bandied about and which came back into my conversations when I was working with a UK city council earlier this week. (We were discussing 'consumerization of IT', another phrase to go in the jargon buster). The CIOs discussion points out that:

Many of you are now realizing that you know more about cloud computing than you'd thought. If you're using a SaaS app in your enterprise, you're using "the cloud." If you run your personal life via Google tools, you're tapping into "the cloud.

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In the past few weeks the word 'frugality' has cropped up in connection with organizations and consumers. I wonder if it is the new buzz word and we are now going to see a crop of books on 'frugal organizations'? This could be a good author opportunity - there are many books on frugal living including 'Frugal Living for Dummies' but nothing specifically about frugal organizations that I stumbled across when interrogating amazon.com.

An article in strategy+business, March 15 2010, 'The New Consumer Frugality' reports that

A new frugality, characterized by a strong value consciousness that dictates trade-offs in price,
brand, and convenience, has become the dominant mind-set among consumers in the United States - and probably in other wealthy countries as well. Two-thirds of American shoppers are cutting coupons more frequently, buying low price over convenience, and emphasizing saving over spending. Per capita consumption expenditure has declined across demographic groups. Consumer sentiment remains weak. These trends are not going to change, no matter the pace of economic change.

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Richard Seymour, of SeymourPowell speaking on Day Two of the Big Rethink Conference (The Redesigning Business Summit) was interesting on the connection between anthropology and design. He made the point that 'what we say and what we do are often different', a fairly obvious fact, but he noted that it is observing these disconnects that make for good design information. He is of the view that taking the stance of an anthropologist and closely watching what is going on is the way to approach design. "Anthropology is before technology" is one of the phrases he used. Another sound bite of his that caught my attention is that "the future is in emergent behavior" (relating back to the anthropology). I'm not sure what 'emergent behavior' is. How does it differ from behavior?

He showed a video clip of people trying to open a packet of frozen peas - ultimately attacking the poorly designed packaging with a pair of scissors. The mantra around this: "Fix things that are bust." This seems obvious when you watch the packet of peas scenario - and these actions that he mentioned: watching for disconnects, looking at behaviors, and fixing things that are bust, used in his case in relation to product design - are also applicable to organization design.

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This was written while traveling in to Day 2 of the conference. Having just read an article on sleep and memory it was fun to see what stuck in mind in since writing about it traveling back on from Day 1.

Will Hutton, of the Work Foundation, getting impassioned about the relatives merits of China v Korea on where new business models and innovative ideas would generate. He had an impressive array of facts and figures at his disposal to back up his views that South Korea is the place to watch. He also put forward a concept of "manu-services - manufacturing companies offering both services and products." See the Work Foundation's report Manufacturing and the Knowledge Economy on this topic.

Ideo's Paul Bennett putting forward their ideas on the four pillars of a new business model. Purpose, talent, something I don't remember and money. The focus throughout Ideo's presentation on money was a jarring note - no mention from them of sustainability, ethics, climate change, social concerns, triple bottom line, and so on that informed most of the other presentations, that combined with presentations of distinctly uninnovative business models made this segment much less than expected.

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Thursday March 11 was day one of the Economist Conference The Big Rethink: The Redesigning Business Summit and, having spent the day there I'm wondering a) what I learned, and b) was it worth the time and money investment? It's a bit early in the process to make any judgment on either. I've found that on this type of learning event it's what sticks in my mind several weeks later that gives some indication. At this stage I'm guessing about what might stick in my mind.

On immediate recall - I was not very happy on two housekeeping accounts a) there was no postal address for the venue on the program. King's Place, London is not easy to track down. b) when I got there I didn't appear in their register of attendees, and having given my name I was asked "Are you sure that's your name?" Fortunately, I have the receipt and the name on it is my name. But not being listed may explain why I didn't get any venue or other details (beyond the receipt). UPDATE on this. Day 2 the same thing happened but was sorted out by the conference Logistics Manager who apologized for the error and offered me free attendance at any future Economist Conference.

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Here's an interesting turn. The FT recently reported that

"DSM and TNT, the Dutch life sciences group and postal operator respectively, this week join a multiplying band of companies - predominantly from the Netherlands - that link part of the bonuses senior managers receive to sustainability, an all-encompassing term that refers not only to the environment but to issues such as employee satisfaction and safety."

As they rightly point out

"The decision raises questions such as how to measure sustainability as distinct from something more tangible such as a rise or fall in a share price, and whether it makes sense to do it."

This is a particularly thorny issue since 'sustainability' is an ill-defined term. For example, if you take the reasonably well-accepted definition of the Brundtland Declaration "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" and try to apply this to executive pay seems you would be entering a minefield.

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Earlier today I was looking at McKinsey Quarterly's Risk Roundup for 2010. They ask the question "where will the greatest risks-known and unknown-flare up on the global business landscape this year?"

Looking at the three sets of information (the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Eurasia Group, and the World Economic Forum) they present it is alarming to see the wide ranging nature of the risks, and this is before the 66 (so far) people who have left comments weigh in with the additional risks they've spotted. It's all very gloomy and depressing.

But the Eurasia Group Report reminds us that 2009 has, in fact, been quite ok. So looking forward into bleakness we can remember happier times. It opens with the paragraph:

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Fast Company, last week, reported that:

"Activity and skepticism have been the first by-products of Walmart's audacious plan to create a label that would tell a shopper the environmental toll of every product it sells, from the greenhouse-gas emissons of an Xbox to the water used to produce your Sunday bacon."

I went to the supermarket yesterday with a question in the back of my mind - could I usefully use another label to help make shopping decisions? I've already written about Ethiscore and the way they rank ethical companies (this time I did buy the Equal Exchange tea!). I always scan labels for nutritional content - I like Michael Pollan's (author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma) 7 'rules' for food buying and consumption. Two of which I bear in mind when I'm food shopping:

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This morning there were three news items that caught my eye. All related to changes in business strategy.

The first was a lengthy piece in the New York Times on the anniversary of the AOL-Time Warner merger. . It was then (and still is) the largest merger in American history. But, despite the hype at the time, it never fulfilled any of the promises that it hoped to. In fact, as the report points out:

"The trail of despair in subsequent years included countless job losses, the decimation of retirement accounts, investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, and countless executive upheavals. Today, the combined values of the companies, which have been separated, is about one-seventh of their worth on the day of the merger."

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How should strategic planning be done? Unfortunately there is no right answer on this. Some commentators think any strategic planning is virtually impossible in a constantly changing and unpredictable environment - there's an interesting article on this called Strategic Planning in a Turbulent Environment: Evidence from the Oil Majors, by Robert M. Grant, in Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 24, No. 6 (Jun., 2003).

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The CCA Design and Strategy MBA is getting ready to go. It's a new program starting September at the CCA and I'm teaching the Business Models and Stakeholders module. Last week I was asked what books I would like the library to buy (not textbooks). Here's the list as it currently stands:

Bhagwati, Jagdish. (2007). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford University Press

Egan, Gerard. (1994). Working the Shadow Side. Jossey Bass

Freedman, Edward, R. et al. (2007). Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation, and Success. Yale University Press

Ghemawat, Pankaj. (2007). Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter. Harvard Business Press

Heskett, J. (2005). A Very Short Introduction to Design. Oxford University Press

Klein, G. (1999). Sources of Power. MIT Press

Meyerson, Debra, E. (2003). Tempered Radicals: How Everyday Leaders Inspire Change at Work

Morgan, Gareth. (1996). Images of Organization. Sage Publication.

Nadler, D. et al (2005). Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance. Jossey Bass

Phillips, R. (2003). Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics. Berrett-Koehler

Pink, Daniel, H. (2005). A Whole New Mind. The Berkeley Publishing Group

Seely-Brown, J. and Duguid, P. (2002). The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press

Senge, Peter, M. et al. (1999). The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations. Currency

Stanford, N. (2005). Organization Design the Collaborative Approach. Elsevier

Stanford, N. (2007). The Economist Guide to Organisation Design. Profile Books

Tennent, J. and Friend, G. (2005). The Economist Guide to Business Modelling. Profile Books

Weick, Karl, E. (2000). Making Sense of the Organization. Wiley