A few of TSI’s favorite Harvard Business Review articles come to us from over the years, focused on a number of organizational topics, from transformational leadership to machine intelligence; even how to talk to your boss about the possibility of working from home. The following list is comprised of seven intriguing articles we’ve found recently, that are still trending today. Below each link is an interesting highlight from the article’s content. 

Check out our favorite Harvard Business Review (HBR) articles below (they are listed in no particular order), and let us know your thoughts! 

What the Best Transformational Leaders Do, by Scott Anthony and Evan I. Schwartz

Quite possibly the most critical of which are the tendency to “Develop a Road Map Before Disruption Takes Hold”, and the ability to “Communicate Powerful Narratives About the Future”. (Anthony & Schwartz, 2017)

The Most Important Leadership Competencies, According to Leaders Around the World, by Sunny Giles

When the top 10 leadership competencies were grouped into 5 themes, the most common theme was noted to involve strong ethics & safety within the organization: “This theme combines two of the three most highly rated attributes: “high ethical and moral standards” (67% selected it as one of the most important) and “communicating clear expectations” (56%).” (Giles, 2016)

The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence, by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

Disruption in the way of machine intelligence proves the ever-changing dynamic of business process and automation: “As machine intelligence improves, the value of human prediction skills will decrease because machine prediction will provide a cheaper and better substitute for human prediction, just as machines did for arithmetic.” (Agrawal, et al., 2016)

Four Tips for Better Strategic Planning, by Ron Ashkenas

Ashkenas details four key steps to follow in order to improve your organization’s strategic planning capabilities, as well as execution, as follows:

1. Insist on experiments to test the assumptions you’ve made
2. Banish fuzzy language
3. Escape from template tyranny
4. Ask provocative questions (Ashkenas, 2013)

A Healthier Approach to Business Travel, by Peter Bregman

“Although business travel can be exciting and even fun, it is a surprisingly profound stressor on the body, mind, emotions, and spirit.” (Bergman, 2015)

The Truth About Customer Experience, by Alex Rawson, Ewan Duncan, and Conor Jones

Customer experience can often be overlooked due to the multitude of tasks and projects underway, but the authors describe the overall benefits of effectively managing your customer experience by stating: “In our research and consulting on customer journeys, we’ve found that organizations able to skillfully manage the entire experience reap enormous rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction. They also discover more-effective ways to collaborate across functions and levels, a process that delivers gains throughout the company.” (Rawson, et al., 2013)

How to Convince Your Boss to Let You Work from Home, by Rebecca Knight

Knight’s list of “Do’s” when attempting to convince your boss to let you work from home:

• “Be honest with yourself about your motivations for wanting to work from home
• Make your case with empirical evidence. It’s hard to argue with someone who is reasonable and prepared
• Experiment with a three- or six-month test run, after which you and your boss discuss what went well and what needs fine-tuning” (Knight, 2017)

TSI’s Resource Library:

TSI also has a comprehensive resource library, comprised of Blogs, Case Studies, and White Papers. See our expert team’s thoughts on various industry trends and other important content related to technology strategy, process improvement, organizational change management, business transformation, management consulting, and much more here.

The post TSI’s Favorite Harvard Business Review (HBR) Articles: May, 2017 appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

This $300M durable goods manufacturer and distributor was growing by over 40% annually.  It had outgrown its systems, and in an attempt to automate manual processes, suffered through a poor implementation of Oracle.  This caused this organization to struggle to have efficient Marketing, New Product Development, Sales, Order Management, Distribution/Supply Chain and Financial processes. As a result, this company struggled to get meaningful customer and financial data from its systems even though it had invested a significant amount in hardware, software and custom development.

TSI’s Role

Worked with the Executive team to understand the organization’s direction and with an operational team to define and analyze its current processes, define operational and technology recommendations, and define future processes while performing a cost-benefit analysis on the recommendations. TSI recommended the implementation of a mid-tier ERP/Financial system and assisted with the requirements evaluation, vendor selection, contract negotiation and project management of the system implementation. TSI also created a data warehouse and assisted with the data extraction and cleanup to make this warehouse useful.

Results

Quantified over $24 million in tangible savings resulting from replacing Oracle and improving its business and IT processes. Performed the requirements definition and vendor selection within 10 weeks. Defined detailed “to be” processes in conjunction with the system implementation within 12 weeks. Realized significant software and services discounts due to effective negotiations. TSI hit every project milestone that was set, while completing the project under budget.

The post Durable Goods Manufacturer and Distributor appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..