Keeping the Weight Off: Sustaining Cost Reduction Over The Long Term

Traditional cost-cutting programs only address an organization's structure and overlook the other aspects of Org DNA that affect costs: decision rights, information flows, and motivators. download (271kb, PDF) >

How to Prevent Self-Inflicted Disasters

All too often, companies unintentionally create their own worst crises. With a little awareness of your organizational DNA, you can avoid that fate — and the headlines that go with it. read more >

Eat Your Peas: A Recipe for Culture Change

The methods used by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to promote health in a West Virginia city can also be used to raise organizational performance. read more >

Stop Blaming Your Culture

Start using it instead — to reinforce and build the new behaviors that will give you the high-performance company you want. read more >

Unleashing the Potential of Pride Builders

Nearly all companies have some master motivators — what we call “pride builders” — at the front line who able to achieve exceptional performance with their teams by fostering pride in the work each team member does. download (275kb, PDF) >

The Four Bases of Organizational DNA

Trait by trait, companies can evolve their own execution cultures. read more >

The Work of Teams

Teams are a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Yet today’s business leaders consistently overlook their potential. read more >

The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution

Ranked by HBR as a Top 10 must read on strategy. Research shows that enterprises fail at execution because they go straight to structural reorganization and neglect the most powerful drivers of effectiveness — decision rights and information flow. read more >

Exercising Common Sense

Ten critical factors — from setting aggressive targets to balancing the need for new capabilities with the need to cut costs — can prevent common mistakes in major change programs. download (122kb, PDF) >

The Right Fight

Counter to conventional wisdom, a leader’s time is not always best spent trying to help teams make nice and get along. It turns out that a certain amount of healthy struggle is good for organizations. download (238kb, PDF) >

Putting Headquarters in Its Place: A Lean, Global Corporate Core

This perspective addresses the challenges of organizational design and proposes a new approach to organizing senior management around the Global Core. It presents four models for this new view of senior management, drawn from our own consulting experience and the firm’s study of hundreds of other corporations. download (419kb, PDF) >

The Dominant Genes: Organizational Survival of the Fittest

Organizational success hinges on effective execution, and effective execution is a matter of ability and agility. Our research shows that there are two key levers to pull in building an able, agile organization. download (909kb, PDF) >

Innovation's Org DNA

Innovation — the ability to define and develop new products and services and deliver them to market — is the fundamental source of value creation in companies and an important enable of competitive advantage. download (533kb, PDF) >

Headquarters: Irrelevant or Irreplaceable?

For years, the prevailing wisdom has dictated a lean, mean corporate core. There's nothing wrong with this logic, but the implied premise that "bigger means bloated" is also faulty. download (375kb, PDF) >

The Matrix Reloaded

Consumer packaged goods companies that master the matrix organization enjoy a competitive advantage that is powerful, sustainable, and highly adaptable as market and company priorities change over time. download (364kb, PDF) >

Shared Services in Marketing Organizations: A Model for Improving Effectiveness and Efficiency

Leading companies are capturing scale from transactional activities and developing advantaged capabilibties using marketing shared services — a coordinated, consistent, and collaborative approach to their marketing service delivery model. This Perspective outlines a four-step program that companies can apply to avoid pitfalls and adopt best practices as they adopt or expand their marketing shared services model. download (478kb, PDF) >

Outsourcing Thought Leaders: Managing Business without Borders

This reader reveals that a clear view is emerging of the changes that lie ahead for the global services industry, as well as of the most effective approach for dealing with these changes. read more >

The Globalization of White-Collar Work

This paper summarizes the results of a study conducted jointly with Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, which revealed that offshoring has evolved from a tactical cost-saving exercise to a strategic imperative in competing for talent. download (520kb, PDF) >

CFO Thought Leaders

Few business roles have changed as dramatically during the last generation as that of the chief financial officer. The classic model — the CFO as chief accountant and technical expert focused narrowly on the firm’s financial statements and capital structure — has been passé for a decade or more. Today’s CFOs have become a vital part of the corporation’s leadership team and have assumed responsibilities of a breadth and magnitude that make the title “chief financial officer” slightly antiquated. read more >

Shared Services Inc.?: From Back-Office to Profit-Maker

Companies have invested millions of dollars and accumulated years of experience in running highly efficient internal shared services operations. Now many are wondering how to unleash the next wave of value. Many believe that the next breakout strategy will take the form of an extended enterprise play, in which shared services will move beyond the walls of the corporation, either as a seller of services to external customers or as a buyer and aggregator of external services for internal clients. download (337kb, PDF) >

Driving Demand Management for Internal Services

To date companies have have attacked internal service costs from the supply side. Our client experience suggests that there are benefits from managing the demand for such services. download (297kb, PDF) >

The New CFO Agenda: Global G&A Survey Insights and Implications

For most companies, significant challenges remain in improving the cost-effectiveness of their internal services. As the external environment shifts for a company's core business and the marketplace for G&A services, so too does the internal economy of the firm as BU customers demand increasingly customized services. In this charged environment, G&A practices are evolving rapidly and fundamentally. This report examines both the traditional and leading-edge approaches to G&A management and the impact on company performance. download (547kb, PDF) >

Next Generation Global Sourcing Opportunities

Consumer products companies today face a set of challenges that are different from any they have experienced before. On one hand, market saturation, retailer consolidation, and increasingly specialized consumer preferences have slowed growth and made it more important than ever before to be first to market with customer-relevant products. On the other hand, increasing retailer power, customer price sensitivity, and mounting supply-chain complexity are exacerbating cost pressures and distracting management from its core mission. download (415kb, PDF) >

Process Ownership: The Overlooked Driver

To some extent, we are now facing "the day after" in the BPR revolution. This does not mean that we must throw out the concept in favor of a new strategic management technique. BPR remains a compelling tool for value creation, but only if we understand what has gone wrong and adapt new approaches based on these lessons learned. This study says companies must adopt new forms of process governance that are appropriate to a new process orientation. download (415kb, PDF) >

Global Talent Innovation: Strategies for Breakthrough Innovation

Managing talent well creates value for companies — that's the bottom line. To remain competitive, particularly in difficult times, they must not only cut costs; they must also seize future advantage by revamping their talent management strategies. download (1.2mb, PDF) >

Building Talent Advantage in Recession and Recovery: A Memo to the Chief Human Resources Officer

The CHRO's responses to this recession will contribute to both a company's long-term success and its short-term survival. CHROs can help their companies attain both goals by quickly cutting unnecessary costs from the employee base and the HR function and then addressing four major issues: the proper alignment of people and HR strategies to business needs, the overall talent portrait of the company and enhanced performance management, the vitalization of the workforce, and sustainable leadership development. download (218kb, PDF) >

The Third Billion

As growing numbers of women enter the economic mainstream, they will have a profound effect on global business. read more >

The Next Management Crisis in China: Developing and Retaining Highly Skilled Young Managers

This perspective highlights selected insights from Katzenbach’s “CHINA 2024: A New Generation of Leaders” program, a 20-year longitudinal study of 114 Chinese nationals who received MBAs from prestigious Chinese and U.S. business schools. The private, candid views of these managers in regard to their careers, goals, and personal lives can help employers in China better formulate how to reshape their organizations in order to hire, develop and retain top tier talent. download (672kb, PDF) >

Smart Workforce Management: How to Successfully Address Changing Demographics

Companies must adopt HR strategies that reflect the aging of the working population or they will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. They need to analyze their workforce demographics to identify areas that will be affected by waves of retirement and develop strategies to fill the gaps. The authors of this perspective call this approach Smart Workforce Management. download (454kb, PDF) >

Mind the Gap: Finding Where IT Skills Fall Short in Financial Services

Some companies tackle IT talent shortages by recruiting aggressively. But recruitment alone is not the answer: To address these issues, Booz & Company has developed a framework that can identify shortfalls in IT skills and capability targets based on the overall business strategy. This framework also provides a road map for improving IT teams' efficiency, value, and return on investment. download (353kb, PDF) >

The Talent Innovation Imperative

Any company that competes on the global stage must, in light of today’s changing workforce, rethink the way it manages people. read more >

A Talent for Talent

In facing business complexities, a robust and creative human capital plan could be your most effective strategy. read more >

Making Change Happen, And Making it Stick: Delivering Sustainable Organizational Change

This Perspective describes Booz & Company’s approach to change management and lays out the five key success steps in any successful change management program. download (458kb, PDF) >

Mobilizing the Informal Organization

In spite of many leaders’ concern that the informal organization operates by its own rules, its impact on performance doesn’t need to be left to chance. By considering how the informal organization can support the formal, and by managing each in its own way, leaders can guide the informal organization and achieve results beyond what their formal organization alone can deliver. download (381kb, PDF) >

Elevating Employee Performance: How to Get the Best from Your People

To get the best from their people, organizations must first address a set of fundamental “hygiene factors” to motivate employees to deliver standard performance. Only when these factors are addressed can employees be energized by “commitment drivers” to elevate performance. download (332kb, PDF) >

Change Management Graduates to the Boardroom: From Afterthought to Prerequisite

A new study from Booz & Company shows that there is a better way to sustainably execute change. download (517kb, PDF) >

Navigating the Network: Communications That Create Lasting Change in Today's Dynamic World

Companies facing the prospect of radical change often succeed in engineering the business aspect of the change, but fall short in genuinely engaging key stakeholders in understanding and embracing the change. download (327kb, PDF) >

It Makes Sense to Adjust

Business transformation is now a continuous process that most companies haven’t mastered. Here’s a formula for managing ongoing change. read more >

Inside the Kraft Foods Transformation

Eleven of the top leaders from the largest food and beverage company in the U.S. talk about their three-year turnaround and their campaign to reorganize for growth. read more >

Managing with the Brain in Mind

Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace. read more >

Change Management: Who’s in Charge?

A new survey finds that transformations succeed when top executives pay attention. read more >

A Blueprint for Strategic Leadership

How to build an organization in which executives will flourish. read more >

Tailored to Fit

As the Brazilian economy grows and becomes more complex, the mechanisms that represent shareholders and debt holders must become more sophisticated. Each company must take a tailored approach to corporate governance that suits its needs and ensures lasting change and the long-term sustainability of the enterprise. download (455kb, PDF) >

Headquarters: Irrelevant or Replaceable?

For years, the prevailing wisdom has dictated a lean, mean corporate core. There's nothing wrong with this logic, but the implied premise that "bigger means bloated" is faulty. download (375kb, PDF) >

CEO Succession 2000-2009: A Decade of Convergence and Compression

The role of the chief executive is evolving. CEOs from around the world discuss the game-changing practices that lead to success. read more >

Boards of Prevention

Corporate directors can – and should – play a much more active role in overseeing risk and avoiding major crises. read more >

Welcome, "Stateholder"

The newest corporate stakeholders — government representatives — must learn to become effective agents for reform. read more >

Leadership Lessons and the Economic Crisis

Predictably, one result of the economic crisis is the cry for a new style of leadership. In thinking about what qualities are needed as we move forward, it’s helpful to consider where we’ve been and what the times will require from the next generation of leaders. read more >

GCC Family Businesses Face Challenges

Family businesses in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region face the dual challenges of operating in a difficult global economic environment and managing the transition of the business to a third generation of family control. In order to survive, grow, and take their places among the many family-run firms that have achieved enduring success in the global economy, firms must tame the "restless entrepreneur" syndrome, and develop and enact a long-term strategy to manage both the family and the business. download (851kb, PDF) >