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Recommended Resource – What I Didn’t Learn in Business School

What I Didn’t Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World
by Jay B. Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford

About the Reference

What I Didn’t Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World by Jay Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford reveals the shortfalls of the principles learned in the idealistic academic environment when applied directly to the messy, unpredictable and politically charged business world. Through a storied approach, Jay and Trish reveal the inadequacies of modeling to fully predict business outcomes and the challenge of creating alignment among leaders with differing points of view and personal agendas. They go on to illustrate the power of moving leaders past the limits of these barriers and their own collective experience to gain significant marketplace advantages and organizational prosperity.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like What I Didn’t Learn in Business School because it so clearly illustrates the premise for our website, namely, that while highly beneficial, academic principles must be adapted from the ideal environment of the classroom to the unpredictable environment of the shop floor in order to provide real value to any organization. Furthermore, no single model or performance measure can adequately portray a given situation in such a way that a definitive decision can be made. Rather, multiple models and measures should be employed to create a complete picture of performance from differing perspectives to enable robust decision-making.

Its well supported, fully illustrated assertion that strong business performance is achieved through the application of sound academic principles tempered by real-world business experience makes What I Didn’t Learn in Business School a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Corporate Cultures – Individual Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment

The Individual Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a culture that seeks to actively harness and channel worker creativity. These organizations foster creativity among workers in a controlled manner that enables the company achieve its mission objectives while making room for a degree of experimentation. This culture set benefits from some added creativity and consistency but does stifle full-fledged creativity in order to minimize risks.


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StrategyDriven Podcast Video Edition 2 – What makes an organization StrategyDriven?

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 2 – What makes an organization StrategyDriven? examines the qualities and characteristics of a StrategyDriven organization as well as the benefits these organizations realize over competing firms not so well aligned.
 


 
Learn more about how to become truly StrategyDriven by reading: The StrategyDriven Organization.

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures Forum

StrategyDriven Introduction to Corporate CulturesOrganization members share a collective values system reflected in managerial decisions, individual behaviors, and codified within operating procedures. These values are shaped by both individual beliefs and collective experiences. Taken together, these values form the corporation’s culture.

Corporate culture contributes or detracts from the organization’s success. Regardless of the company’s written objectives, the existing culture will drive the critical decisions and actions that ultimately determine whether or not these goals will be achieved. Therefore, it is not only important to critically and honestly identify the organization’s culture but to also assess the organization’s ability to achieve its mission goals via its chose strategy in light of its culture. Where gaps exist, either the culture or strategy must be changed in order to achieve optimal success.

Finally, it is important to recognize that there is no ‘right’ culture and that no one set of organizational values is superior to another. Rather, differing cultures each present a unique set of benefits and liabilities that should be identified, understood, and incorporated into the organization’s planning and execution process so to ensure optimal organizational effectiveness.

Focus of the Corporate Cultures Forum

Materials within this forum will address the methods to identify the organization’s values and the various value sets, their benefits and their drawbacks.

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Corporate Cultures – Leader Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment

The Leader Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a unique cultural blend that develops over a long period of time. These organizations often begin as Leader Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled and, as the workforce gains experience over time, evolves into the use of less prescriptive processes; deeming them to be an unnecessary administrative burden. These organizations tend to have a relatively high tenure among executives, managers, and employees. This culture set benefits from experience-based efficiencies with limited consistency risk but often suffer a lack of creativity as employees perform work ‘the way it has always been done.’


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