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How to Bounce Your Business Off the Bottom

Businesses can decline over the years until they no longer have enough working capital to maintain their current course of action . Without drastic change , the business will either be sold or liquidated in bankruptcy court . Change requires a new way of thinking about things , taking risks and making better strategic choices that lead to higher outcomes . Organizations operate on processes & procedures . The culture of an organization will determine its overall communication and work patterns . When processes & procedures and culture are aligned to market needs it becomes more likely that the business will be able to pull out of its current predicament . Consider a company that produces a single product that once brought in a lot of money but over the years alternative products have been developed by competitors that are eating away at a shrinking market . Continuing to do the same thing

Considering Culture in Your Strategic Road Map

A strategy is a roadmap that guides organizations to higher levels of performance that encourages productive growth. Executives can develop excellent business strategies that take into consideration market projection, resource allocation, human capital, and financial streams. To their own detriment, many CEOs do not factor in organizational culture into their strategies and how it impacts organizational goal attainment. Culture should support business strategy (Eaton & Kilby, 2015). The values and semantics contained within culture should enhance business strategy through proper orientation of people's expectations. If there are contrary elements within a culture, the values should be adjusted to ensure they realign to meet organizational needs. Consider an example of how culture can support or detract from organizational objectives. Two companies seek to become market leaders, but one company promotes employees based on patronage and the other from performance. These val

Opening Communication Lines for Better Decision Making

Charles Dickens said in the Tail of Two Cities, “ A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other .” Communication is a process sharing information from one person to the next that lowers this mystery . Problems arise in organizations when communication is not accurate or reflective of actual events . Ensuring lines of communication are open is essential for creating more functional companies through better decision making. Poor communication wastes intangible assets and creates inefficiencies among resources (Mazzei & Ravazzani, 2015; Hola & Pikhart, 2014). Intangible assets form the nucleus of the company and include relationships , intellectual capital , and decision making . What makes one company different from the next are the internal soft mechanics often ignored because they are not easy to define . Misinformat

Short-term versus Long-Term Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is a major component of business planning that sets the course of action that leads to either business success or business failure. Short-term thinking can be problematic as resources are wasted fixing potholes and gaining immediate results without considering long-term solutions. Executives that focus exclusively on short-term results sometimes leave their organizations in worse shape. A great portion of our day is engaged in crisis management where new problems arise and we must deal with them immediately before the they spread. This process can be effective in the short run but can damage the company in the long-term when the root of the problem is not addressed. The crisis situations will continue to spread and grow as the underlying issues spread. A strategy should focus on limiting the damage caused by crisis problems while ensuring the root problem is still being addressed. Executives who think short-term will see immediate results but will often damage

CEO Career Breadth Creates Novel Strategies

Companies thrive or die off their ability to find the right type of leadership to manage their daily operations. Investors would be wise to consider the background and depth of experience when hiring their next CEO. A study of CEOs at 250 Fortune companies found that CEO career variety is positively associated with firm-level novelty that offers strategic dynamism and strategic distinctiveness that can help firms change and grow (Crossland, et. al. 2014).  Strategic novelty is the ability of CEOs to think out of the box and beyond the medium of traditional strategies of those firms within their field. Instead of using only the same strategies, as other firms, they often seek out alternative strategies that could potentially have more lucrative outcomes. Novelty can make the difference between a market leader and market follower. Career breadth is the multiple industries and places that people have worked over their careers. A CEO who worked in a single industry throughou

Service Logic That Solves Customer Problems

The process of developing a better service logic approach requires more than wishful thinking and running the same process over and over in hopes of doing something new. Organizations that focus on integrating their service concept throughout their operations will be rewarded through greater market relevance and customer support. It is helpful to encourage customers to be co-creators and then developing operations around their needs to ensure focus. Integrated service frameworks relies on taking customers suggestions based on their problems, using their input to develop a salable solution, and then integrating the information throughout operations. The lens of understanding requires the company to think through customer problems and service solutions to successfully move to the next level. Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) offers insight into organizational needs to solve customers problems while service-dominant logic (SDL) focuses efforts on the customers needs. Using jobs-to-be-done w

Breaking Strategy Into Measurable Employee Actions

All organizations have strategies that help them define their approach to competing on the market. In the corporate world the development of strategy is one important aspect of executive management while successful implementation of that strategy is a second. Solid strategies, that can compete on the market, should be implemented throughout the organization creating deep alignment and competitive advantages. Breaking strategies into executive, managerial, and employee functions helps in finding an improvement blueprint. The far majority of strategies don't fail at actual design but fail during the implementation process. As strategies are implemented throughout the organization they do not move deep enough to ensure that actions are integrated with operations. Understanding the activities needed at each level of the organization has its benefits for implementation and management. The process of breaking down strategy into definable actions helps companies convert employee actio

Guarding the Mind for Better Business Strategy

Strategic decision making is not easy and comes with a number of fallacies that blind us to the actuality of the world around us. Executives should be aware of their bias and how this impacts their strategic decision-making. Using a few critical thinking tools helps to guard the mind from bias and ensure that decisions are more likely to be successful and have the largest impact. Executives are faced with all types of different types of pressures that range from investors to employees. Each person comes with their own influence and opinion. At times a presiding opinion forms and this puts pressure on everyone else to accept the premises of those opinions without providing critical thought. When you are at the top and your decisions impact a large group of people you don't have the luxury of making momentous mistakes.  The mind is seen as a manufacturing unit that results in the product of thoughts. These thoughts help us to reach conclusions about varying topics, beliefs, debat

Call for Papers: Globalization of Capital Markets: Implications for Firm Strategies

The increasing integration of global capital markets now makes it easier for firms to access capital outside of their home countries. Firms access international capital markets through a variety of means such as initial public offerings (IPO), seasoned equity offerings (SEO), cross-listings, depository receipts, special purpose acquisition companies (SPACS), shelf offerings, private equity and other informal equity capital channels. Firms can also access debt resources outside their market through bank loans, and foreign bond issues. Finally, cross border flows of venture capital (VC) continue to increase rapidly. The objective of this Special Issue will be to explore the challenges firms face in capital markets beyond their domestic boundaries, be it equity, debt, or VC markets. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS The deadline for manuscript submission is May 15, 2015. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with Journal of International Management’s Style Guide for Authors: h

Poem: The Course Bearing Ship

The Benefits of Environmental Scanning for Business Decision Making

All executives must make decisions from time to time and these are based on the ability to understand the environment in which a company exists. Strategy should naturally follow an environmental scan. Only once a company understands the market, their resources, and their competitors should they formulate a strategy. A proper scan can encourage futures thinking, systems practice, scenario narratives and risk assessment that help companies meet their environmental challenges (Clemens, 2009).  An environmental scan affords organizations an opportunity to examine their internal and external environment to make better decisions. The scan generally requires the investigation of the internal environment, task environment, and the societal/global environment (Vesper, 1996). Using the three frameworks it is possible to put decisions through a larger decision making filter. They are as follows: Internal Environment: The internal abilities of the organization to meet new demands.