Once again, I find myself flabbergasted at service levels in the midst of the worst recession most of us have ever seen. In my post How not to make a sale, I describe how a retailer drove us from a physical establishment after we had committed to buy. But it appears that direct retail operations are also not immune mistakes in organization, job design and incentives that result in lousy service. Read the rest of this entry »
Why do companies fail to make the matrix work?
Hay Group’s research on the Fortune Most Admired Companies shows that those who make the matrix work get results: better and faster decisions. The seemingly simple trick is getting managers to act in the best interests of the company as a whole, not just maximizing their own results.
But this has implications for jobs, rewards, behaviors, culture and structure. Most critical: command-and-control management styles must give way to collaboration and cooperation. To crack the matrix code, organizations must: Read the rest of this entry »
Since 2005, Hay Group has researched the Best Companies for Leadership. In previous years our research focused on understanding how organizations were planning on meeting the impending leadership shortage, driven by growth in emerging markets coinciding with the retirement of the baby boomer generation. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to my Hay Group colleague Scott Spreier, who has done a lot of work with CEOs, for this guest post. NOTE – since the original posting, I’ve received a number of partisan comments, which was far from our intent; we were really looking at how leaders communicate and so, to be fair, we are going to code one of Reagan’s early term speeches for comparison. Stay tuned…
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Memo to senior executives in the finance and auto industry:
Regardless of your political persuasion, before you leave the office today have your assistant print out a copy of President Obama’s Cairo speech. When you get home, pour yourself a Scotch, pull it out of your briefcase, and read it – slowly and carefully. It may be the most productive time you’ve spent all day. There’s a lot you can learn from the President on how to talk to the public and regain your credibility. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever been so put off by bad selling that you simply walked, even when you were really, really ready to buy?
My wife and I did just that yesterday – stunned that the retail establishment drove us do this in the midst of the worst recession most of us have ever seen. But the really sad thing to me is that management wasted all its marketing, branding and PoS advertising investments by cutting investments in its people. Read the rest of this entry »
The last year has seen an increased focus on perceived excesses in executive pay, leading to a new level of involvement by the federal government. In particular, under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), institutions that are receiving financial assistance through the Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) became subject to several rounds of increasingly intrusive restrictions on executive pay.
While these restrictions do not directly impact companies that are not participating in TARP, few companies will be immune from the impact of the legislation. A common question we are receiving from clients is how these rules and restrictions may affect their own companies and the future of executive compensation in the United States.
Click to read more on Hay Group’s view of key restrictions and their potential impacts
I was intrigued by an online discussion the other day about what marketing is – or isn’t. So I decided to find some giants’ shoulders to stand on, and herewith share some of my favorites:
Phil Kotler: ”Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.”
George Day: “Understanding, attracting, and keeping valuable customers.”
Sergio Zyman: ”Selling more stuff to more people more often for more money more efficiently.”
Peter Drucker: “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him [or her! - DH] and sells itself.”
Theodore Levitt: “Marketing is a stepchild in most corporations because of an overemphasis on creating and selling products. But selling is not marketing. [Selling] is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariably does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs.”
What are your favorites? Leave a comment.
While CEO succession is much in the news, it is often discussed from the point of view of board members, consultants and search firms. To understand the perspectives of today’s CEOs on succession planning, we spoke with 18 sitting CEOs, one recently retired CEO and one sitting chairman…They shared practical suggestions on how to make CEO succession work more effectively for the company, the board, potential candidates and the CEO in this Chief Executive magazine article entitle Succession in practice.
The median salaries and bonuses for the chief executives of 200 big U.S. companies fell 8.5% to $2.24 million, according to an analysis for The Wall Street Journal by Hay Group, a management consulting firm. The analysis examined proxy statements for companies with more than $5 billion in annual revenue. Survey details here.
[from the Hay Group Leader:] While companies are battening down the hatches trying to weather today’s tough economic climate, the best companies for leaders also have their eyes on the long-term. Read the rest of this entry »
“By most measures, 2008 was a terrible year for home builder Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. Its stock plunged 62%, revenue fell 31% and the company posted a $1.1 billion loss in the fiscal year ended Oct. 31. Yet Hovnanian’s board awarded Chief Executive Ara Hovnanian a bonus of $1.5 million in cash and stock. The reason: Mr. Hovnanian had helped the company stockpile cash, according to Hovnanian’s Feb. 4 proxy statement…” Read more here of Phred Dvorak’s WSJ article here: Poor year doesn’t stop CEO bonuses.
Apple tops the list for the second year in a row. Who else made the top 50 this year? 2009 Fortune Most Admired Companies
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