![]() That is a big mistake, especially given the huge and growing amount of money involved. In many firms, functions just exist, serving the company in whatever manner and at whatever scale the business units demand. For corporate functions-shared service organizations such as IT, HR, R&D, finance, and so on-the need for strategy is less widely understood. Leaders might not be great at crafting them-or executing on them-but they do at least recognize the value of clearly articulating how their companies and businesses will win in a particular way. Most companies accept the notion that corporations and business units need strategies. It’s a dynamic we’ve seen again and again in our work consulting with and studying dozens of firms (including some mentioned in this article) across a variety of industries. And as a result, his team was failing to achieve much at all. By denying that he needed to make strategic choices as the head of a function-about how his team allocated resources, what it prioritized, what it ignored-Stephen was in fact making a choice. Inevitably, work was falling through the cracks as his team tried to do everything for everyone. He was trying his best to serve the company and was struggling to keep up. Stephen’s team had more work than it could possibly do. In fact, we have more work than we can handle.”Īnd there it was: the very best reason to start with strategy. Creating a strategy would be a waste of time-and we’re overwhelmed as it is. “We don’t need a strategy for our team,” he said. This, we said, would help his team understand where it was headed and how it would get there. Begin by thoughtfully articulating the critical choices facing the innovation function. So, at the end of an innovation workshop we led for him, he asked us for advice on the smartest place to get started. ![]() Recently appointed head of innovation at a large, diversified apparel company, Stephen had been tasked with building a culture of innovation across a pretty traditional, operations-focused set of brands. ![]()
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