CEO Talk Radio

FORECASTING INNOVATION:  Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries.  Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data and lead to costly errors in judgment.  In a follow up to our last episode on innovation, Maxwell Wessel, a Senior Fellow 
with Harvard Business School’s Forum for Growth and Innovation, shares with us a practical three-part model to help decision-makers spot the signals of industry change, determine the likely outcome of competitive battles, and assess whether a firm's actions will ensure or threaten future success. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

THE INNOVATORS DILEMMA AND SOLUTION:  Max Wessel, a Senior Fellow with Harvard Business School’s Forum for Growth and Innovation, explains how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right – yet still lose market leadership and relevance.   By placing too great an emphasis on satisfying customers’ current needs, established industry participants regularly fail to adapt or adopt new technologies that will meet customers’ unstated or future needs.  Instead, disruptive innovation overwhelmingly is introduced to an industry by outsiders who often displace established players.  Max explains this dilemma and offers some suggestions for how established companies can improve their chances of introducing disruptive innovations to their own industries and how to respond to the disruptive innovations of outsiders.   ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com.   CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

THE STRATEGIST:  What is strategy?  What characterizes a strategist?  During this episode we speak with Harvard Business School’s Timken Professor of Business Administration and the immediate past chair of the Strategy Unit of Harvard Business School, Cynthia Montgomery about her recently released book “The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs.”  In addition to defining strategy and what it takes to be a strategist, Cynthia also shares lessons from Apple and the late Steve Jobs, discusses the battle between strategy development and execution, and provides some ideas for how companies can best capture and maintain an industry leading position. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCTIVITY & EFFECTIVENESS:  Every day, businesses face new issues and opportunities; talent management, decision speed, competitive forces and emerging technologies, to name a few.  Any of these can lead to overwhelm, uncertainty and stagnation.  Without an effective method to address these symptoms, it can become costly in resources and human capital.  David Allen joins us to discuss many of the principles and tools contained within his best-selling books Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything.  David works with many of the brightest and most progressive companies around the world and explains how to increase performance, capacity, and align execution.  During our discussion, David introduces the Getting Things Done philosophy, the Five Stages of Mastering Workflow, the Five Phases of Project Planning, and additional advice on how the CEO, COO, CFO and other senior executives can best manage their time and personal performance. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

EXECUTION DYNAMICS:  Anil Menawat and Adam Garfien join us to talk about the ideas and principles contained within their book Execution Dynamics in the second of a two-part episode.   The discussion focuses on operational and business transformation. Leading organizations understand the importance of competing on more than just their structural capabilities; they also master time-based competition.  Often and without realizing it, organizations are immersed in improvement efforts that only harvest the lower hanging fruit when much more is within grasp.  Superior business execution calls for more than the status quo of process improvement as product flows and financials are integrally tied to customer, process, and supply chain dynamics.  Closely linked to their book Profit Mapping, Execution Dynamics encompasses business methods, systems thinking, and dynamic analysis tools.  The purpose is not simply to drive profitability but to pursue all of the business objectives in unison to out-compete others and win in the marketplace through superior customer focus and business execution. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

PROFIT MAPPING: Anil Menawat and Adam Garfien, cofounders of Menawat & Company and coauthors of Profit Mapping join us to explain how to use their ProFITMAP method is a navigation system for operations that has been used successfully with leading businesses such as Ford Motor Company and General Motors.  A wise manager knows that success only comes with operational excellence that is properly aligned with strategy.  Profit Mapping enables you to test the impact of any number of factors on operational execution -- from product demand and mix changes to process and technology changes to resource limitations -- prior to taking any action. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

YOUR NEXT MOVE: Author Michael Watkins explains that all leaders – no matter how seasoned – need guidance through the professional changes that define a career.  In fact, transitions into new roles are the crucibles in which leaders get their toughest tests, and they're the defining factor in professional careers today.  Yet far too often, leaders fail to transition effectively into new roles.  The resulting costs are high, for individual careers and for organizations.  Dr. Watkins discusses how listeners can survive and thrive in all the major transitions you will face during your career—including promotions, leading former peers, on-boarding into a new organization, making an international move, or turning around or realigning an organization.  The discussion provides the insights, strategies, and tools you'll need to accelerate through these crucial turning points and continue moving up in your career. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

INFLATION AND PROFITABILITY: Georg Tacke has joined us to talk more about the largely unrecognized impact of inflation on profitability and cash flow and provides some practical advice on better managing pricing in an era of inflation.   Georg explains pricing’s increasingly critical role in the global economy, especially in light of current challenges such as struggling markets, inflation and the resulting price instability.   “Inflation is already here, it will continue to grow, and it will erode profits,” Dr. Tacke says. “The major question is how managers can make their company inflation-safe to secure margins. The challenge is simply to get prices up once costs are rising. It sounds easy, but in practice it’s not. Many companies are insufficiently prepared for the task.”  After many years of price stability, companies have forgotten how to deal with the challenges of inflation, Dr. Tacke explains. As a result, inflation will become a significant risk for almost every industry and is an acid test for every company's price performance. Top managers have to react quickly and make their firms "inflation-safe” and strategies have to be developed to cover rising costs and to offset the effects of money devaluation.   Georg is the CEO of Simon Kucher & Partners – a global management consultancy based in Bonn, Germany with over 500 professionals and more than 20 offices worldwide. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com.  In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change.  Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million.  If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

Hidden Value: Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer helps us discover how the best companies win not by acquiring the right people - but by building the right organization. The 'war for talent' is one battle every company believes it should be waging. But while competitors are busy chasing after the same 'hot' individuals, smart companies are doing something infinitely more useful and far more difficult to copy - they're building organizations that make it possible for ordinary people at every desk and cubicle in their companies to perform as if they were stars. Blowing up the prevailing wisdom that companies must chase and acquire top talent in order to remain successful, "Hidden Value" argues instead that the source of sustained competitive advantage already exists within every organization. Co-authors O'Reilly and Pfeffer, leading experts on organizational behavior and human resources, argue that how a firm creates and uses talent is far more important than how the firm attracts talent. Professor Pfeffer illustrates how long-term success comes from value-driven, interrelated systems that align good people management with corporate strategy. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

Strategy-Focused Organization: Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan discusses how such companies as Mobil, CIGNA, and AT&T Canada have used the scorecard to create an entirely new performance management framework that puts strategy at the center of key management processes and systems. Professor Kaplan explains the five key principles required for building strategy-focused organizations: 1) translate the strategy into operational terms, 2) align the organization to the strategy, 3) make strategy everyone's everyday job, 4) make strategy a continual process, and 5) mobilize change through strong, effective leadership. Together with David P. Norton, Professor Kaplan served as co-creator of the balanced scorecard – a means of linking a company's current actions to its long-term goals. Kaplan and Norton introduced the balanced scorecard method in their 1992 Harvard Business Review article, The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance. This method has been endorsed by companies such as Mobil and Sears. The balanced scorecard envisages executives as pilots with a range of controls and indicators in front of them, based upon which they make decisions and develop strategies. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

The Balanced Scorecard: Robert S. Kaplan is the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and co-creator, together with David P. Norton, of the balanced scorecard, a means of linking a company's current actions to its long-term goals. Kaplan and Norton introduced the balanced scorecard method in their 1992 Harvard Business Review article, The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance. The BSC methodology has been endorsed by companies such as Mobil and Sears. The balanced scorecard envisages executives as pilots with a range of controls and indicators in front of them, based upon which they make decisions and develop strategies. More specifically, the BSC translates a company's vision and strategy into a coherent set of performance measures. The four perspectives of the scorecard--financial measures, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth--offer a balance between short-term and long-term objectives, between outcomes desired and performance drivers of those outcomes, and between hard objective measures and softer, more subjective measures. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

Peripheral Vision: Wharton Professor George Day explain s that tremendous opportunities and threats often begin as weak signals from the periphery. From emerging technologies to changes in consumer tastes, tremendous opportunities and threats often begin as weak signals from the periphery. Professor Day describes how vigilant organizations win by: scoping widely and asking the right questions; scanning actively in the right places; interpreting what signals mean; probing carefully for more information; and acting wisely on signals before competitors do. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

Post-Layoff Management: Mitchell Marks, a former senior director at Delta Consulting Group and national chair of the HR Management Practice Group at William H. Mercer, Inc. is a leading independent management consultant specializing in helping firms plan and implement mergers, restructurings, and other transitions. Mitchell joins us to discuss his book “Charging Back Up the Hill: Workplace Recovery After Mergers, Acquisitions, and Downsizings” with a particular focus on post-layoff management and performance. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

Path to CEO: Justin Menkes, a leading consultant and advisor with Spencer Stuart and prior CEO Talk Radio guest, joins us to discuss the path to CEO – from college to corner office. He talks about various stages of an executives’ career as he or she ages from University and graduate school graduate to their mid-forties and beyond. Justin also talks about the CEO search from the company’s and board’s perspective. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.

GE Work-Out: Steve Kerr, the former Vice-President of Leadership Development and Chief Learning Officer at General Electric’s famed Crotonville Leadership Center, about his book “The GE Work-Out: How to Implement GE’s Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy and Attacking Organizational Problems – Fast!” which he co-authored with previous CEO Talk Radio guests, Dave Ulrich and Ron Ashkenas. During our conversation, Steve talks about (i) the underlying principles of work-out; (ii) planning, conducting, and implementing a work-out (iii) customizing work-out for your organization; and (iv) how to use work-out to develop effective, visionary leaders. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A pdf transcript of this episode is available (or will be made available shortly) for download at robertgbarnwell.com. In addition, listeners are invited to explore the many executive briefings, whitepapers, case studies and other information and tools available (no registration required) at robertgbarnwell.com. CONSULTING SERVICES: On a limited basis and subject to availability, professor Barnwell is pleased to work with the senior leadership of companies undergoing significant strategic or enterprise-wide change. Clients are typically multi-national corporations or the large subsidiaries of such companies with revenues in excess of $250.0 million. If you would like to learn more about Professor Barnwell and his services, please visit robertgbarnwell.com or email Robert directly at Robert@robertgbarnwell.com.