A traditional Value Chain involves a linear sequence of activities—from conversion of raw materials into components which are assembled into products. The products are then distributed, marketed, sold, and serviced. Management plans and execute strategies and operations based on this sequence. This set of activities worked well for organizations in the past. However, this linear […]
About Mark Bridges
Mark Bridges is a Senior Director of Strategy at Flevy. Flevy is your go-to resource for best practices in business management, covering management topics from Strategic Planning to Operational Excellence to Digital Transformation (view full list here). Learn how the Fortune 100 and global consulting firms do it. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by leveraging Flevy's library of best practice methodologies and templates. Prior to Flevy, Mark worked as an Associate at McKinsey & Co. and holds an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn here.Author Archive | Mark Bridges
Best Practices Transfer Program: Its Significance in Driving Productivity and Becoming a Learning Organization
Most large organizations, nowadays, are determined to foster change and become agile. Transforming into a learning organization is what they aspire to become. To this end, they are reforming their structures, facilitating shared services operations, and enabling a streamlined core. The main role of the streamlined core is to enable knowledge transfer across departments and […]
3 Decision Making Models of Human Decision Making Process
How do people make decisions? Do they always follow a rational linear process to come to a conclusion? Studies have suggested that the traditional Decision Making model—commonly known as the Rational Decision Making Model—does not explain the whole ambit of Decision Making. People, including managers of organizations, arrive at decisions using a variety of routes. […]
Retail Strategy: Directing IT Investments in the Right Areas
Staying ahead of the curve in the retail sector is nothing short of an ordeal. A fundamental element in beating competition entails developing capabilities critical for the future. To this end, it is critical for organizations to reinvest the savings achieved through IT Cost Management into building those critical capabilities. Before finalizing the areas to […]
How Do We Combat Deceptive Corporate Communication?
Inaccurate or deceptive messages are detrimental for an organization. Business leaders often grumble about these cognitive perversions that kill the essence of harmony and cohesion, where everybody seems to be deceiving one another. Such organizational communication is frequent across organizations, involving a constant barrage of false but compelling stories that propagate disappointment, negatively influence the […]
Process Communication Model (PCM): Personality Types
Understanding others has a lot to do with collaboration, performance management, and building effective teams. Developed by Taibi Kahler in the 1970s, Process Communication Model (PCM) is a prominent psychometric tool for individual and team development. The main utility of the PCM model is in understanding others’ personality types, discovering one’s own personality, and personifying […]
Customer Experience (CX) Pyramid
Most organizations aren’t ready to deliver great Customer Experiences across all channels. Many of them have invested heavily in conventional methods of doing business, backed by in person or over-the-phone customer experience. This has led to creation of siloed operational structures within companies, where each silo operates individually. With the advent of digital channels, these […]
Strategy Execution: Would the Executives in Your Firm Qualify the 10 Strategy Tests?
Developing a winning strategy is an uphill task for leadership at most organizations. One of the reason is not digging enough to answer the right questions. The mainstay of a successful strategy is creation of Competitive Advantage. However, for most organizations Competitive Advantage is a moving target, which is hard to pin down. A global […]
Economies of Unscale
Futuristic, technology-driven business models are weakening the conventional advantages of Economies of Scale. Large corporations, founded on Scale, nevertheless have areas that they can exploit if they reposition rapidly. For the best part of over a century, Economies of Scale—Cost Advantages that businesses achieve owing to their scale of operation—fashioned the corporation into a perfect […]
2×2 Matrix for Platform Scaling Strategy
The phenomenal success of tech innovators using Platforms has spurred a desire in companies, from a greater variety of sectors and markets, to gain advantage of Product to Platform Transformation. This Transformation is based on the need to model businesses on a Customer-Centric Design approach. The need has arisen because the concept of Economies of […]
3 Critical Behaviors of Good Listeners
Humans instinctively want to share their experiences. The more experienced a person, the fuller they are with ideas. Many people view Listening Skills to be of lesser consequence than articulation and focus on learning how they can present their own views more effectively. Good listening—the keen and orderly pursuit of probing and challenging the information […]
Learning Organization: Leveraging Best Practices
Globalization and the resulting intense competition has forced the organizations to continually seek efficient ways to improve. They plan and undertake various initiatives to accomplish this. A potent method to drive revolutionary improvement in productivity and enhance the enterprise’s ability to become a “Learning Organization” is to implement a Best Practices Transfer program. Sharing business […]
