Author Archives: Joseph Robinson

About Joseph Robinson

Joseph Robinson is the Vice President of Strategy at Flevy. Flevy is a marketplace for business documents--specifically, documents used by folks who work in a business function (e.g. Marketing, Corporate Finance, IT, etc.). These documents can range from Excel Financial Models to customizable PowerPoint Templates to "How-To"​ Business Frameworks, covering management topics from Digital Transformation to Growth Strategy to Lean Management. You can peruse a full list of management topics available on Flevy here. Prior to Flevy, Joseph worked as an Associate at BCG and holds an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. You can connect with Joseph on LinkedIn here.

Taking Your Facilitation to the Next Level: Master the 12 Workshop Facilitation Techniques

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Dynamics of every workshop is unique – a unique set of techniques is needed for workshop leaders to achieve expected results.Workshop Technique Facilitation Volume 1

Facilitation is going to be a key component of work in the future as employers and society face bigger and more complex problems and ideas. However, facilitation is never an easy task. It requires a certain level of facilitation skills which can be enhanced by mastering the use of Workshop Facilitation Techniques.  Note that Workshop Facilitation requires different techniques and skills than normal (smaller) Meeting Facilitation.

Using a variety of techniques will help people engage fully in workshops and meetings. In organizations, workshops and meetings are normally undertaken to discuss and address problems and issues while, at the same time, intended to come up with the best ideas and solutions. This can only be achieved when we get to involve more people. But when people vary in things like how we take in information most easily, whether we prefer to speak in large groups or small ones, how much reflection time is needed to make up our minds, this calls for a range of different activities that will engage people to be active generators of ideas, information, and solutions.

The Dynamics of Workshop Facilitation Techniques

Workshop Facilitation Techniques are practical applications of the principles and concepts of group dynamics, behavioral psychology, and communication science essential to facilitate progress and success.

These are essential tools for workshop leaders to facilitate workshops such as Design Planning Sessions, Joint Requirements Planning Workshop or Strategic Planning Workshops. Workshop leaders must employ various techniques to accelerate the capture of planning, analysis, and design information, as well as ensure that participants work effectively together.

Failure to effectively harness the knowledge of participants and manage participant behavior can lead to the inability to accomplish a set of pre-defined objectives that can hamper organizational effectiveness.

Discovering the 12 Techniques in Workshop Facilitation

There are 12 Techniques in Workshop Facilitation. Learning to identify and use the proper technique will maximize workshop facilitators’ capability to engage participation, harness and integrate ideas, and effectively promote in-depth thinking to achieve the workshop objectives and purpose.

  1. 1-2-4-All.  A technique that facilitates rich conversation in small groups and integrates small groups ideas around an important issue or question.
  1. 25-to-10 (Crowdsourcing). A technique for quickly generating and rating ideas.
  1. Card Sorting. A technique of gathering and organizing ideas that draw on the knowledge of the whole group.
  1. Field Trip around the Room.  A technique used to organize how members of the group discuss several topics and integrate ideas on how to address them.
  1. Gallery Walk.  A technique that gets the whole room on its feet to take a walking tour of posters for flip chart pages that reflect each group’s answers to questions.
  1. Knowledge Café. A method that fosters discussion about topics important to participants.
  1. Popcorn Report. A technique for eliciting comments from those who feel moved to share.
  1. Speed Consulting. A technique that draws on experiences of participants to advise another participant on how to address specific problems.
  1. Speed Networking. A technique that gets all participants to reflect on a question and share their insights.
  1. Storytelling. A technique of sharing the knowledge that incorporates the context, emotion, and tacit knowledge.
  1. TRIZ. A technique that helps groups think creatively how to solve a problem or improve a complex process.
  1. Voting with Your Feed. A technique for engaging participants to express their views for or against a position by moving from one side of the room or the other.

Each Workshop Facilitation Technique has its own specific objective and application. Their approaches may be different but there are also some techniques whose approach may be a bit similar. Regardless of what technique is used, what is important is that participants are completely engaged and the objectives set forth are met.

In the end, an effective Workshop Facilitator is one who makes use of various techniques to keep the discussion moving. When tension or discussion comes to a halt, the facilitator must be prepared and know which technique to use to continue the learning and continually make it happen.

Interested in gaining more understanding of Workshop Facilitation Techniques? You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint about Workshop Facilitation Techniques (Volume 1)  and Workshop Facilitation Techniques (Volume 2) here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Leveraging the Innovation Effectiveness Curve: Your Key to Growth

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For many companies, developing new products is a hit-or-miss proposition. Successful innovation–the kind that leads to customer engagement Innovation effectiveness curve pixand profits–is rare and hard to achieve. Some have tried investing intensively in research and development.

In a recent study conducted by booz&co. on public companies representing almost 60% of global R&D expenditures, it was found out that there is generally no correlation between R&D spending and financial metrics such as sales or profit growth. Open innovation has been resorted to by some companies but this, too, does not necessarily lead to higher innovation returns. A strategy of tacit benchmarking has also been pursued. Near the average amount of R&D spending has been invested but this led to a greater number of minor product line extensions with often diminishing returns.

On the other hand, there are companies that do best at dreaming up great new products while spending less to do it. One of these is Apple, which commits 5.9% of sales to R&D, less than its industry’s average of 7.6%. This shows that, when it comes to innovation investment, the key question is not how much to spend but how to spend it.

Indeed, innovation success depends on mysterious factors. But there are companies that can overcome these hurdles and regularly product high-yield innovations. The answer is the use of the best approach in determining which innovation success and why others fail.

What is Innovation Effectiveness Curve

The Innovation Effectiveness Curve is the marginal return on innovation investment. It represents the individual innovation profile of the company. It is the value and quality of a company’s innovation portfolio.

The Innovation Effectiveness Curve is done on a project-by-project basis. It contains data about every active project in the pipeline of the company. Each point represents a return on innovation investment for a particular project.

Organizations must be able to understand their project portfolio and diagnose their innovation practices and capabilities to be able to create an Innovation Effectiveness Curve. This is essential as the height of the curve provides a definitive verdict on the power of the innovation capability to drive returns and generate growth.

The 3 Core Properties of an Innovation Effectiveness Curve

An Innovation Effectiveness Curve must be Comprehensive, Stable, and correlates with Growth.

  1. Comprehensive
    An Innovation Effectiveness Curve that is comprehensive has a holistic view of R & D, marketing, strategy, and operations. These are activities that directly bear upon the creation and launch of new products.
  2. Stable
    When the Innovation Effectiveness Curve is stable, it remains consistent over time. The overall shape of the curve remains the same despite changes in innovation projects.
  3. Correlated to Growth
    An Innovation Effectiveness Curve must correlate to growth. There should be an established connection between the effectiveness of innovation efforts and the growth of the company.

When the 3 Core Properties are in place, this makes the Innovation Effectiveness Curve a very powerful analytical tool. On the other hand, when these core properties are not in place, the Innovation Effectiveness Curve falters. This is a signal that growth is slow or may slow down. This is one occurrence not one organization would like to happen.

Interested in gaining more understanding of Innovation Effectiveness Curve and how your organization can strategically use it as a powerful analytical tool? You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint about Innovation Effectiveness Curve here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Organizational Silos 101: Breaking Barriers to Performance Excellence

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Despite the emergence of new devices and software products designed to unite employees in more ways than ever before, the threat of Organizational Silos Primer pic1organizational silos is still very real. While silos deter customer experiences and producing correctly functioning products – the root of the problem is that many managers fail to spot those silos as they formulate in front of their very eyes.

What are Silos? Organization silos describe the isolation that occurs when employees or entire departments within an organization do not want to or do not have adequate means to share information or knowledge with each other. Siloed teams often end up working in isolation from the rest of the company. This leads to a plethora of internal and external problems for employees, executives, partners, and customers.

In Organizational Design, it is critical to also consider the risks of unintended silos within the organization.  Having organizational silos can lead to duplicate work, inefficiency, bugs and generalized employee disenfranchisement at a granular level. Work is being done without regard to how the work impacts other departments. Departments start having tunnel vision, solely focused on their own functional area. In the end, there is a breakdown in communication and transparency leading to organizational dysfunction on multiple levels. This can greatly affect the company’s ability to deliver excellent Customer Experience.

Breaking Down Organizational Silos: The 5 Key Symptoms

Understanding the 5 Key Symptoms of Organizational Silos will guide companies in breaking down silos and limiting their effect on performance, goals, and targets.

  1. Broken Customer Experiences. This is the most obvious sign of a siloed team. Eventually, this symptom will ultimately make the company undesirable.
  1. Internal Unfamiliarity. There is internal unfamiliarity when employees or colleagues are not on a first name basis. Employees are not familiar with the majority of the people outside the team and what they do.
  1. The Us vs. Them Mentalities. When your department sees other departments as competitors and obstacles to success, then there exists the us vs. them mentality. In the us vs. them mentality, protectionist thinking exists. When this happens, information is not shared for fear that another team’s gain will be their loss.  This leads to the creation of cliques with its own distinct culture that is not aligned with the company’s overall mission and culture.
  1. Disenfranchised Employees. Having employees who feel that they are not part of the team is a symptom of organizational silos. Disenfranchised employees are unhappy, unproductive, and pose the risk of sharing negativity with coworkers.
  1. Task Duplication. Have you seen people of different teams working on similar assignments and projects? That is a symptom that there are organizational silos within your company. When there is task duplication, this can lead to inefficiencies and loss of productivity.

Companies can immediately break down barriers to communication and collaboration once the key symptoms are detected. Silos in business have two sides to the coin. The good side is variety, ownership, accountability, specialization, and efficiency. However, on the other side, the bad side means short-sightedness, inaccessibility, and inefficiency. This can harm your organization.

Organizations must be able to deal with silos inside a business. This can be done by expanding our perspectives and motivation in the work we do.

Interested in gaining more understanding of Organizational Silos, the different types, and proper ways of addressing them? You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint of Organizational Silos here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Customer-centric Culture: An Imperative in Today’s Age of the Customer

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The use of the internet and other online tools have turned consumers to be more empowered and are now shopping differently. Customers are customer centric culture 1becoming more demanding and accustomed to getting what they want. With greater access to reviews and online ratings, customers are better equipped to switch to new products and services. Consumers now want to buy products and services when, where, and however they like. They expect companies to interact with them seamlessly, in an easy, integrated fashion with very little friction across channels.

As customer expectation continues to evolve – accelerated by the amplifying forces of interconnectivity and technology – markets are becoming increasingly fragmented with demand for greater product variety, more price points, and numerous purchasing and distribution channels.

Companies should be able to adapt to these increasingly disparate demands quickly and at scale. Staying close to the customer experience across an increasingly diverse customer base changing over time is no longer a matter of choice. It is a business imperative and a matter of corporate survival.

The Age of the Customer now calls for companies to be a customer-centric company. Successful ones have discovered that building a customer-centric company depends, first and foremost, on building a customer-centric culture.

The Case for Customer-centricity

In the Age of the Customer, business as usual is not enough. Customers expect companies to interact with them seamlessly. Customers want companies to anticipate their needs and technology must have lowered barriers to entry to allow unorthodox competitors to disrupt markets.

The Age of the Customer has made it imperative for companies to have a customer-centric culture. A customer-centric culture can empower and control employee behavior. It is a culture that prioritizes the common understanding, sense of purpose, emotional commitment, and resilience. It is a culture where leaders and employees understand the company’s brand promise. Finally, and most importantly, a customer-centric culture is a culture that is committed to delivering exceptional customer experience.
Companies with a customer-centric culture must integrate, within its core, primary and secondary cultural attributes essential to complete its customer-centric culture framework.

The Corporate Culture Framework: Its Primary and Secondary Cultural Attributes

In a corporate culture framework, the primary cultural attributes are critical in building a customer-centric culture. It also has 4 Secondary Cultural Attributes to complete that transformation.

The 4 Primary Cultural Attributes

  1. Collective Focus
    This is a shared vision articulated on what it means to deliver great customer service. Significant resources are devoted to communicating the customer value and all employees understand their role in delivering value.
  2. External Orientation
    External Orientation is having a full understanding of the company through the customer’s eyes. Outside-in perspectives are taken, seeing themselves as customers see them.
  3. Change and Innovation
    In Change and Innovation, the corporate value system is in place that values failing fast and learning quickly. The notion that mistakes are learning opportunities is embedded in the organization.
  4. Shared Beliefs
    Shared Beliefs is an attribute where employees share a common ideology and commitment to core values. The company strongly encourages strong service mentality and the desire to help others.

The 4 Secondary Cultural Attributes

  1. Risk and Governance
    In Risk and Governance, the company must have a strong collective focus and shared beliefs about the boundaries of acceptable risk and appropriate behavior.
  2. Courage
    A customer-centric culture with this secondary attribute has the resilience to bounce back when things don’t go as planned.
  3. Commitment
    Commitment is the third secondary attribute where employees show dedication to the customer-centric ethos.
  4. Inclusion
    Inclusion, the fourth secondary attribute, is one attribute that reinforces values diversity, authenticity, and uniqueness.

Inculcating these attributes has become imperative to achieve a successful transformation towards a customer-centric culture. Organizations just need to master the necessary practices to instill these attributes and the essential reinforcement to ensure that it is sustained.

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Sustained Solutions to Profitable Growth: the Dimensions of Intelligent Innovation

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Over the last decade, companies have made greater strides in retooling their innovation intelligent innovation1engines. Leaner and faster, products are developed from concept and delivered to customers in record time. But even a Ferrari does not know where to drive.

There are plenty of opportunities to enhance execution. Yet, inspiration and insights are increasingly getting to be a challenge for innovation executives. Innovation executives know that a new approach is needed. To boost performance to the next level, executives need to simultaneously loosen and tighten approaches to innovation management. We must start looking outward and opening ourselves to customers, collaborators, and our own creative side. At the same time, we need to tighten it through continuous improvement by attempting to embed an innovation culture to the organization.

Intelligent Innovation is considered a comprehensive approach that can support the next phase of Innovation Performance Improvement. The practice of Intelligent Innovation must complement the strengths of the current control regime to achieve innovative excellence.

Why Intelligent Innovation

Innovation Performance Improvement has been driven by initiatives that are highly analytical, inward-looking, and focused largely on retooling the innovation engine. There are 3 Stages of Performance Improvement. First is Management Control where innovation was treated like any other process and controlled with traditional management techniques. The second is Cost Control where innovation is redesigned to minimize cost. And the third is Profit Control where innovation was managed as projects with each project needing to be profitable in its own right.

Each successive stage built on the previous one. These stages are called “control regimes.” While these have built a critical foundation for future progress, they cannot deliver the desired results on their own.

To boost performance to the next level, Intelligent Innovation must be put in place. Intelligent Innovation completes the 4 Stages of Innovation Performance Improvement.

Intelligent Innovation and its 4 Dimensions

Intelligent Innovation cuts across 4 critical dimensions. It complements the strengths of the current control regime with excellence in 4 dimensions.

1st Dimension: Customer Insight
Customer Insight is considered the most important performance improvement level. It improves customer understanding with regards the evolving needs and critical priorities of customers. It can also increase customer participation in the innovation process.

Understanding what the customers want is important to drive ideation and execution.

According to Henry Ford, “If I’d only listened to customers, I’d have developed faster horses.”

By listening to customers, the more we learn what our customers need or want. And by knowing what our customers want, our organization will be in a better position to uncover tacit priorities that will fuel the most attractive development and innovative options.

2nd Dimension: Global Network
Global Network allows intelligent innovators to leverage dispersed knowledge across the globe. Each site or external partner is integrated into a seamlessly managed innovation network.

By having a Global Innovation Network, our organization will have the impetus to grow faster than its market.

3rd Dimension: Future Foresight
A well-tuned future trends capability can be a powerful strategic and competitive weapon in today’s global environment. It can identify tomorrow’s market opportunities and risks to drive innovation. Detailed and imaginative, this envisions the future competitive environment which better prepares our organization how to approach it.

4th Dimension: Innovation Organization
A critical element of success is the way organizations foster an innovation culture. An Innovation Organization carries within its DNA the intelligent innovation principles – senior management commitment to innovation, knowledge sharing, cross-functional teaming, freedom to pursue ideas, and innovation-friendly incentives. These are all embedded in the organization.

Intelligent innovators must work hard to unlock the innovation potential within the organization and use the tools available to direct organizations to take advantage of market opportunities. With a clear destination in mind, an innovative organization can accelerate its potential to gaining the winning edge when it comes to innovation, customer excellence, and profit.

Interested in gaining more understanding of the Dimensions of Intelligent Innovation? You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint about Dimensions of Intelligent Innovation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Why Knowledge Management Strategy Is Important for Business Sustainability

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In today’s business environment, learning and knowledge have become key success factors internationally and intangible resources are of vital knowledge management strategyimportance. The struggle between competing firms has moved from tangible resources to intangible resources where knowledge and the ability to use knowledge have crucial roles.

Organizations are becoming more global, multilingual, and multicultural with people being required to work smarter and faster. People have become more connected with them being expected to be “on” all the time and the response time measured in minutes instead of weeks.

Indeed, today’s work environment has become more complex with businesses being threatened by the vulnerability, uncertainty, and crisis that could have been prevented if Knowledge was better managed. Better KM can help companies anticipate uncertainties and design strategies to lessen their impact.

While managers would like to take a strategic approach to avoid an impending crisis, often they find themselves fire-fighting. With a Knowledge Management Strategy, corporate executives can better manage the complex, chaotic, and non-predictable environment, in which companies must achieve performance.

Putting Strategy on Knowledge Management

Knowledge is important to efficiency and productivity. Hence it is critical that organizations manage their Knowledge effectively and strategically. Having a strategy for Knowledge Management will provide companies a plan to better manage information and knowledge for the benefit of the organization.

Effectively, a good KM Strategy can gain senior management commitment to KM initiatives and attract resources for implementation. In the end, it can provide the basis against which the organization can measure its progress.

Taking the 3 Knowledge Management Strategies to Fore

Companies are now feeling the pressure of the need to be more competitive. Taking on a Knowledge Management Strategy can lead competing firms to take the high road to success.

KM Strategy 1: Reckless Negligence
Reckless Negligence is doing little or nothing to improve capabilities in information, data, and KM. This is one strategy that has ceased to be viable in today’s business environment.

KM Strategy 2: Knowledge Competence
The goal of Knowledge Competence is to be an efficient and effective company with sufficient emphasis on responsible management of Knowledge. To date, at least 50% of the companies in the world are in this category.

KM Strategy 3: Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage
The goal of Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage is to up the ante in the spirit of continuous improvement. Undertaking the third strategy involves making KM a critical capability of the organization.  At least 20% of the companies in this world are in this category. This is often adopted by Knowledge-Intensive Industries.

Essentially, our company must create a robust Knowledge environment. However, this can only be achieved when 8 KM critical success factors are put in place.

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Understanding Enterprise Architecture: Is it Really Important Today?

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Information Technology works best when it is tied tightly to our company’s overall business goals.  On the other hand, business unit executivesEnterprise Architecture have remained doubtful about IT’s ability to support them in creating value. Despite the best intentions of managers of both sides, companies continue to struggle to integrate IT systems and to determine whether IT actually improves performance.

This problematic tension between the IT departments and business units has inflicted on many companies for years.

One approach to closing this gap is the discipline called Enterprise Architecture (EA).

What is Enterprise Architecture (EA)?

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a logical framework that establishes the links between business strategy and organizational structures, processes, databases, and technologies.  The goal of EA is twofold. The first goal is to add value through its support of business goals. Second is to enable companies to measure the value added.

If a company wants to capture better customer information in order to energize an effort to sell additional higher margin products and services to existing customers, the company can use an EA system to align its customer relationship management, information retrieval, and sales planning software. EA applications can also be set up for staff training, account management, and frequent assessments of the campaign’s efficacy.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been known to add value through its support of business goals, improve operational efficiency, and agility.  There are identified changes visible upon the application of Enterprise Architecture on organizations.

The architecture of an enterprise is described with a view to improving the manageability, effectiveness, efficiency, or agility of the business, and ensuring that money spent on IT is justified.

The 4 Key Elements to Gaining Enterprise Architecture Maturity

Application of Enterprise Architecture (EA) requires certain levels of maturity. This is necessary for EA to be able to deliver greater impact on bottom lines. The amount of value our company gets depends on the level of maturity of the EA efforts.

There are 4 key elements to Enterprise Architecture Maturity that must be addressed.

  1. Strategic Alignment. The first key element ensures that the design of EA functions is included in both technology and the strategic planning process.
  2. Leadership and Talent Development. The second key element relies on the training and development of Enterprise Architects who understand the business and can further strengthen the organization’s EA capability.
  3. Performance Management. Performance Management accurately measures the results of EA efforts that show an impact on the business.
  4. Organizational Design. Organizational Design is the foundational element of Enterprise Architecture. It involves the frameworks, the tools, and the methodologies necessary in developing a functional capability.

Enterprise Architecture is not an easy task. But, is it worth it?

Based on a survey conducted by Booz & Company (now PwC), executives of 60 financial services companies and government agencies were asked to evaluate EA’s effect on performance.

Organizations that had implemented Enterprise Architecture (EA) reported that the approach had impact and value. It has decreased their cost, reduced complexity, reduced risk, and increased agility.

In this world where operational efficiency, risk mitigation, and agility have become essentially important to achieving competitive advantage and business sustainability, companies have no other recourse but take the road to achieve Enterprise Architecture (EA) maturity and readiness.

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Knowledge Management 101: A Practical Guide for Beginners and Practitioners

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“Knowledge has power because it controls access to opportunity and advancement.” – Peter DruckerKnowledge Management primer

The 21st century is undoubtedly a century of knowledge. The everyday usage of available advanced information and business technologies, and internet in business activities just show how rampant corporations are engaged in information exchange and Knowledge Management.

In the light of globalization, companies are now exposed to an unpredictable and complex competitive environment. Pressures are put on companies to adapt quickly to survive in the competitive market. The vital strategic resource is Knowledge. Companies have started to realize the major value of an intellectual resource. The central role of Knowledge Management in making a quality decision has never been emphasized as much as today.

Intellectual resources and Knowledge are now contributing to revenue generation and increasing reputation. It has contributed to creating barriers to entry of potential competitors, increase customer loyalty, and create innovation. In today’s world, the success of the organization now depends largely on continual investment in learning and acquiring new Knowledge that creates new business and improves current performance.

Understanding Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management (KM) is a multidisciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives
It is an integrated approach to gathering, analyzing, storing, and sharing knowledge and information within an organization. It ensures that the right information is delivered to the appropriate place or person at the right time to enable informed decision making.

An enterprise-wide ability must be created to transition data and information into critical knowledge. This is to ensure service stability, maintainability, and performance leading to organization wisdom.

Knowledge Management evolves around 3 primary spheres that are closely integrated with each other.

  1. Technology. Technology provides a secure central space where employees, customers, partners, and suppliers exchange information, share knowledge and guide each other and the organization to better decisions.
  2. KM Processes. KM Processes include standard processes for knowledge contribution, content management, retrieval
  3. People. This refers to the participation of team members in knowledge sharing, collaboration, and reuse to achieve business results.

At Flevy, we’ve developed a Knowledge Management Primer that examines and discussed the purpose and nature of the key components of Knowledge Management. It demystifies the KM field by explaining in a precise manner the key concepts of KM tools, strategies, and techniques, and their benefits to organizations.

The quest to set up a Knowledge Management system requires an understanding of the essential elements integrated within the Knowledge Management Approach. This includes an understanding of the DIKW Model or Pyramid, the importance of Knowledge Assets, and the structure and priority of information based on its Knowledge Hierarchy.

What is Knowledge Hierarchy

slide 1 Knowledge Management Primer

  1. Operational Knowledge. The focus of Operational Knowledge is to gain operational effectiveness. It helps organizations understand how service performance, compliance, and overall IT operational effectiveness is managed.
  2. Tactical Knowledge. Tactical Knowledge is focused on service value. It helps organizations understand how to manage and ensure service value.
  3. Strategic Knowledge. Strategic Knowledge is focused on benchmarking and advanced analytics. It helps organizations understand the effects of operational decisions.

In the Knowledge Hierarchy, it must ensure that resulting knowledge is well defined, specific, comprehensive, and with high average quality information.

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Why Agile Activity Groups are Important in Managing an Agile Company

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Big corporations, by nature, maneuver like battleships. Held back by their own inertia and current business strategies, turning quickly can be Agile Activity Groupsdifficult when the competitive environment changes. Likewise, high performance as measured by shareholder returns is impossible to sustain over a long period of time.  No company consistently beats the market.

A recent in-depth study of long-term performance, however, suggests an alternative point of view about business strategy. A few large companies outperform peers when the measure of performance is profitability. They maintain this performance edge even during a significant business change in their competitive environments. Agility is one factor that differentiates them from others.

Agile companies adapt business change more quickly and reliably than competitors.  Even as battleships, they have learned to turn quickly as speedboats. Learning the routines of agility makes them be at the forefront of competition.

The Link Between Agility and Performance

 A survey was conducted to determine the link between agility and performance. The survey was focused on determining the way organizations formulated strategy, designed their structures and processes, led their people, and made changes and innovation.

More than 4,700 Directors and Executives from 56 companies were surveyed, of which 34 companies were Fortune 500 firms.

The survey was able to find out that when markets and technologies changed rapidly and unpredictably, the outperformers had the capability to anticipate and respond to events, solve problems, and implement change. As such, this enables Agile companies to easily adapt. Agility is not just the ability to change – it is a cultivated capability that enables organizations to respond in a timely, effective, and sustainable way when changing circumstances require it.

Many an Agile organization involves 4 complementary sets of activities, what we will call Agile Activity Groups.

The 4 Agile Activity Groups to Managing an Agile Company

Agile Activity Groups

  1. Dynamic Strategy Development. This is having a clear, relevant, and shared strategy that is undertaken with 3 key activities integrated within the strategy.
  1. Market Environment Response. This ensures an effective response to the implications of outside signals. Market Environment Response provides an accurate sense of what is going on in the environment.
  1. Response Refinement. This encourages innovation and tolerates failures. These are insights refined from the perceiving routing with a relatively high number of low-cost experiments.
  1. Change Management. Change Management is the mastery of internal program management capabilities needed to convert successful test and innovations into widespread practice. It builds the company’s capability to adopt unambiguous commitment with speed, certainty, and precision.

With the 4 Agile Activity Groups, Competitive Advantage is gained through an ongoing series of advantages that exploit current business conditions.

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Using Knowledge Management Strategy for Business Sustainability

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In today’s business environment, learning and knowledge have become key success factors internationally and intangible resources are of vital knowledge management strategyimportance. The struggle between competing firms has moved from tangible resources to intangible resources where knowledge and the ability to use knowledge have crucial roles.

Organizations are becoming more global, multilingual, and multicultural with people being required to work smarter and faster. People have become more connected with them being expected to be “on” all the time and the response time measured in minutes instead of weeks.

Indeed, today’s work environment has become more complex with businesses being threatened by the vulnerability, uncertainty, and crisis that could have been prevented if Knowledge was better managed. Better KM can help companies anticipate uncertainties and design strategies to lessen their impact.

While managers would like to take a strategic approach to avoid an impending crisis, often they find themselves fire-fighting. With a Knowledge Management Strategy, corporate executives can better manage the complex, chaotic, and non-predictable environment, in which companies must achieve performance.

Putting Strategy on Knowledge Management

Knowledge is important to efficiency and productivity. Hence it is critical that organizations manage their Knowledge effectively and strategically. Having a strategy for Knowledge Management will provide companies a plan to better manage information and knowledge for the benefit of the organization.

Effectively, a good KM Strategy can gain senior management commitment to KM initiatives and attract resources for implementation. In the end, it can provide the basis against which the organization can measure its progress.

Taking the 3 Knowledge Management Strategies to Fore

Companies are now feeling the pressure of the need to be more competitive. Taking on a Knowledge Management Strategy can lead competing firms to take the high road to success.

Knowledge Management Strategy

KM Strategy 1: Reckless Negligence
Reckless Negligence is doing little or nothing to improve capabilities in information, data, and KM. This is one strategy that has ceased to be viable in today’s business environment.

KM Strategy 2: Knowledge Competence
The goal of Knowledge Competence is to be an efficient and effective company with sufficient emphasis on responsible management of Knowledge. To date, at least 50% of the companies in the world are in this category.

KM Strategy 3: Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage
The goal of Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage is to up the ante in the spirit of continuous improvement. Undertaking the third strategy involves making KM a critical capability of the organization.  At least 20% of the companies in this world are in this category. This is often adopted by Knowledge-Intensive Industries.

Essentially, our company must create a robust Knowledge environment. However, this can only be achieved when 8 KM critical success factors are put in place.

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