Business Lessons Are HR Lessons - How Does Yours Stack Up?

There are many business lessons we take with us every day in the competitive landscape. From an HR prospective how many of you really apply them to your daily work life or even more important to your departments operation? 

Here are a few from Sun Tzu's " The Art of War" applied into business:

1. Fight for foreknowledge,
2. Be invincible, meaning have a superior team of HR professionals,
3. Attain strategic superiority,
4. Build a cohesive team, not a bunch of lone wolves,
5. Coordinate momentum and timing for projects, benefit, and community launches,
6. Ensure a solid organizational structure,
7. Be flexible,
8. Seek knowledge of the business and competitors constantly, and finally
9. Develop effective internal communications.

So, you really have to ask yourself, do you have these things in place and does your business also have them in place to maintain their competitive edge? 

Analogy: The New Way to Spot Strategic Opportunities

When Charlie Merrill (the Merrill in Merrill-Lynch) envisioned banks as becoming "financial supermarkets" in the 1930s, he was describing a new strategic opportunity that no one else had imagined. Using a powerful analogy not only helped Merrill think through the idea of offering a broad menu of financial services to the middle class, but also aided him in selling the idea to others.

Traditional strategy development relies on economic analysis. The problem is that this approach yields opportunities that more than likely will also be discovered by competitors. And thus the power of strategy development tied to analogy: visionaries see opportunity where no one else is looking.

Writing in the July-August Harvard Business Review, HBS professor Giovanni Gavetti calls this looking at "cognitively distant" opportunities because they require a mental leap. "This way of thinking suggests that a crucial component of strategic leadership is the mental capacity to spot opportunities that are invisible to rivals and to manage other relevant parties' perceptions to get them on board."

Harley-Davidson and Ducati envision themselves not as motorcycle manufacturers but as providers of entertainment. Google re-imagined the Internet portal business not as a media business -- the model used by rival Yahoo -- but rather as a technology business. When you re-imagine your business, new ways to compete appear.

In addition to overcoming set ways of seeing things, the visionary has another monumental task: to convince employees and other stakeholders to buy in. Gavetti writes that former Kodak CEOGeorge Fisher clearly envisioned the company's future in digital, but couldn't change the corporate DNA, which was bound to film.

Want to become a thinking-by-association leader? The article preaches the use of structured associative thinking, which is a process for recognizing and working around out our own cognitive biases.

For strategists, reading The New Psychology of Strategic Leadership could be a fruitful way to begin thinking "outside the box."


a reprint from CBS

Post-Crisis Strategy Moves

U.S. business leaders, and HR recognize the increased volatility associated with the post-crisis economy and are approaching their companies’ most strategic initiatives with more caution than ever before. Risk aversion still dominates corporate psyche especially HR, but concerns over risk are shifting from avoidance to successful management. Executives, reflecting on lessons learned in the downturn, are concerned about the impact of failure as never before. As a result, many are assuming a corporate strategy of “perfection,” tightly scrutinizing how capital is being spent.

It is no wonder three quarters of companies have changed their approach to strategic initiatives in the past year, according to the latest FD/Forbes Insights Strategic Initiatives survey of 180 C-level executives, senior strategists, and communications professionals. The study, done with the Council of Public Relations Firms and the Association for Strategic Planning, also uncovers overall optimism that well-considered plans can still yield productive initiatives. Respondents believe there is room for growth, but they are being more selective and taking careful steps to be more informed and better prepared than in recent years.

What are your thoughts on this post-crisis dilemma?