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Articles of Interest
Find the IT Innovator Within
2:17 PM Tuesday June 2, 2009
Eric Hippel, in his book Democratizing Innovation, says that every organization has "lead users" who "engage in developing and modifying products" so that they get "exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents." In the midst of this half-empty economy, it's comforting to know that innovation is happening at the front lines of every organization.
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/cramm/2009/06/find-the-it-innovator-within.html
Best Business Books 2007
In 2001, when strategy+business first published this now-annual review of best business books, we knew we had a tough audience to please. Indeed, as leadership scholar James O’Toole notes in one of the following reviews, a recent New York Times article about the reading habits of successful business leaders found that they read everything but business and management books.
So every year, we look for nominees in unexpected places. We carefully select reviewers, like O’Toole, who have a wide range of experiences and perspectives, who are willing to look far and wide for the ideas and stories that executives will find most relevant to their work and their thinking.
21st-Century Leadership: by Mark David Nevins and Stephen A. Stumpf
Redefining Management Education - Companies need new techniques to train their professionals for the challenges of the 21st century. It takes more than schoolwork.
A Blueprint for Strategic Leadership: by Steven Wheeler, Walter McFarland, and Art Kleiner
Taken as a whole, the Best Business Books of 2006 reflect the political, social, technological, and economic churn that is reshaping the way business is done. In media, old and new forms of communication are both converging and coming into conflict. In governance, following Enron’s example (we’re still digesting it), the rules of the boardroom seem on the cusp of upheaval. In marketing, true accountability is replacing such fuzzy concepts as “mindshare.” In warfare, mercenaries play an increasingly prominent role. Everywhere, the players, dynamics, and rules of traditional systems are in flux. How can a corporate leader make sense of all this? Our reviewers, all eminent authors and thinkers in their fields, have singled out those books that incisively portray the causes and implications of the gyrations roiling today’s business environment.
Aligning Your Support Functions by Kaplan and Norton
The famous authors of The Balance Scorecard are back with the importance of establishing an alignment process for the support organizations with the business goals and objectives for creating and sustaining value services.
Sharpening Your Business Acumen by Ram Charan
The white paper focuses on the importance of Business Acumen as a required managerial skill. Mr. Charan shares his years of experience and access to business clients and senior executives to create a six-step guide for incorporating external trends into your internal strategies.
Best Business Books 2005
Of the shelfloads of business books produced this year, strategy+business has selected the eight titles you don't want to miss. We asked some of the world's most distinguished business thinkers to help us choose our winners from among 32 notable books published in the last 12 months.
20 Thoughts About Money
Including a few facts, several famous quotations, a couple of anecdotes and one conclusion.
By David Rosenbaum
What CIOs Need to Know About Money
Equal partnership with your enterprise's business leaders is not a matter of saving a nickel here, amortizing an investment there. It's about knowing the language of business and how to enhance the company's value.
BY Kim Girard
The Three "Ds" of Customer Experience
Eighty percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of their customers agree, says Bain & Company. Here's how to repair the disconnect. Call it the dominance trap: The larger a company's market share, the greater the risk it will take its customers for granted. As the money flows in, management begins confusing customer profitability with customer loyalty, never realizing that the most lucrative buyers may also be the angriest and most alienated. Worse, traditional market research may lead the firm to view customers as statistics. Managers can become so focused on the data that they stop hearing the real voices of their customers. Financial software powerhouse Intuit briefly fell into this trap, despite a history of excellent customer service...
Actions Do Speak Louder Than Words
Of all the bad habits and nervous traits that can ruin a speakers' image and presentation, four cardinal sins stand out. Here are some simple cures. The world's most charismatic business professionals have great body language -- a commanding presence that reflects confidence, competence, and charisma. "Command presence" is a military term used to describe someone who presents himself or herself as a person with authority, someone who is to be respected and followed.
Overcoming Barriers That Destroy Teams
Organizations increasingly turn to teams to get work done, but institutional barriers can quickly corral collaboration. Harvard Management Update reports on the merits of presenting your team with an irresistible challenge. It's not easy, pulling a group of diverse individuals together to work as a team. Barriers abound, in the form of fierce territoriality, incentive systems that reward individual rather than collective achievement, and mistrust spawned by an acquisition, merger, or major internal restructuring. Yet at a time when companies are increasingly relying on cross-functional teams at every level to generate innovative ideas, it's more crucial than ever to tap the fresh thinking that teams can provide.
“Answering E-Mail From Angry Customers: How To Turn Furious People Into Fans.”
By Leslie O’Flahavan and Marilynne Rudick, E-WRITE
By Jean-Pierre Garbani with Thomas Powell
A Center's Strategic Direction Starts With Questions
By Brad Cleveland
Extending Your Competitive Edge: A New Model for High-Touch Self-Service
By Allen Bonde
You're Not in the Sales Business, You're in the Relationship Business
By Alan Weiss, Ph. D.
Getting Control of Customer Communications Across the Enterprise Delivers Bottom-Line Impact
By Davis Marksbury
The Underrated Differentiators
By Coreen Bailor
Best Business Books 2004
strategy+business has has selected the nine best business books of 2004. The winners, along with 26 other works on strategy,management, innovation, and other timely topics, are explored, debated, and recommended in nine essays by some of the world's most prominent business thinkers.
Do the Math!
This Computerworld Special Report has numerous short, concise articles on calculating the return on investment for big IT projects that can yield big dividends if it's done properly. They provide a CIO's guide to the strengths and weaknesses of 10 different ROI models. Please read and enjoy - it is what all of IT spending is coming down to. Carol and I are working to get some of these writers as speakers at the Symposium.
Your To-Do List for Managing Demand
As your business clamors for more and more IT, you need a strategy for determining value.
By Susan Cramm
ITIL Power
Why the IT Infrastructure Library is becoming the most popular process framework for running IT in America, and what it can do for you.
How to Become a Change Agent
If you want people to follow you, take a walk in their shoes
Six Simple Rules For Successful Self-Service
You can save money, increase revenues and generate loyalty when you let customers help themselves. But only if you do it right
ByAlice Dragoon
How to Write a Memorable Memo
By Michael Fitzgerald
The five questions to answer when writing a business memo
How to Involve the Business to Create a Solid Continuity Plan
Business-continuity planning has grown more sophisticated in the past few years, going beyond the technical recovery of IT systems and getting networks back online.
By Carrie Mathews
Infrastructure Change Management Is The Key To Business Service Management
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Change or Irrelevance: Career Changing Technologies
07/14/2011
Rapid, breathtaking technology advances are forcing radical changes not only in how IT organizations function, but also in terms of their culture, leadership, and even careers. Combined with business, social and global trends, as well as technology investing (spending), IT organizations must accelerate their organizational change plans in order to survive and thrive. They must assess and plan for complete transformation - strategy, structure, people, processes, and tools.
Are we preparing our IT professionals to plan for and make these changes? Are we helping them position themselves and their organizations for success in this dynamically evolving world?
This Cutter Consortium article assess and addresses the impacting wave of the rapidly changing IT and business trends on traditional IT careers, positions, and skill sets.
This wake-up call is best described by a quote from four-star US General (Ret.) Eric Shineski: "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."
The “Business” Service Leadership Agenda
07/14/2011
BSMReview.com
Next Practices in Business Service Management
The “Business” Service Leadership Agenda by Peter J. McGarahan
The Defining Moment of Truth
Why do some companies consistently exceed their business customers’ expectations and others fail to meet their customer’s basic demands and needs? Why do smaller, flexible companies seem to care more about the business impact of customer service than larger credit card, banking and cable organizations? Does the exuberant profits and size of these larger companies (“Too Big To Fail”) create a situation where customer service is no longer a competitive differentiator nor a strategic imperative? MSN Money’s fifth annual Customer Service Survey was recently published revealing the top ten companies earning a place in their Customer Service Hall of Shame and Hall of Fame. The “business” service differentiation comes down to knowledgeable and friendly staff, available and responsive staff, trust, transparency, genuine care and understanding of their customer. Simple you say, obviously not!
The Service Leadership Agenda
11/21/2011
The Service Leadership Agenda
The Defining Moment of Truth
Why do some companies consistently exceed their customers’ expectations and others fail to meet their customer’s basic demands and needs? Why do smaller, flexible companies seem to care more about customer service than larger credit card, banking and cable organizations? Does the exuberant profits and size of these larger companies (“Too Big To Fail”) create a situation where customer service is no longer a competitive differentiator nor a strategic imperative?
Learn How to Create a Highly Efficient and Effective Support Organization
04/21/2011
SupportIndustry.com Webinar:
Best Practice Strategies for Creating a Highly Efficient
and Effective Support Organization
In case you missed it, SupportIndustry.com recently conducted a webinar on Best Practice Strategies for Creating a Highly Efficient and Effective Support Organization, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive by attendees. In response to this, we are offering the on-demand version to you to watch at your convenience. More information about the event is below!
Professionalism in the Contact Center
04/21/2011
What is professionalism anyway & why does it matter?
Dana Pigford, founder of Professionalism Matters, Inc, defines professionalism as "being responsible and accountable and treating people the way you would like to be treated."1 Service and support consultants, Pete McGarahan and Ric Mims, in an excellent article, "The Essence of Professionalism,"2 suggest that professionalism is composed of such values as courtesy, respect in dealing with clients and, "Do they take pride in their appearance, their work ethic, and the quality of the work they do?"3 In addition, they observe that "In simpler days, professionalism had everything to do with customer service, relationship building, and creating the foundation for effective, persuasive communication across all levels of the organization."4 They also suggest that a good definition of professionalism "...isn’t your appearance and your aptitude, its attitude: knowing what to do, and doing it with passion and purpose."5
A CRM Approach to Business Service Management?
04/21/2011
A CRM Approach to Business Service Management?
by Peter J. McGarahan
I have been designing, delivering and supporting IT services for most of my 27 years as an IT professional. Time and time again I’ve encountered IT organizations that didn’t keep the customer or their business top of mind when designing and delivering services. Instead, they delivered “cool” technologies or strategies that met IT’s expectation and requirements, but didn’t directly benefit the business customers.
Are You Missing The Point About Customer Care?
12/04/2010
Are You Missing The Point About Customer Care?
By Peter J. McGarahan
Inbound Magazine - Issue 01:2010
Design customer centric services that improve service deliver.
Reducing Support Costs!
06/01/2010
Reducing Support Costs with a "Shift-Left" Strategy: An Interview with Pete McGarahan
By Cinda Daly
"Arise, ye service leader! The time is now!" proclaims Pete McGarahan, an industry thought leader and respected consultant for twenty-five years. It's not a new concept that service leaders need to run their support organization like a business. Achieving that point, however, is challenging. With continuing pressures to drive down support costs, service leaders need to optimize the business model: determine what's really important, then dive deep into the detail of structure, process, people, and tools. [More]
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