What You Read: The 10 Most Popular s+b Articles of 2015
Among all the articles we’ve published over the last year, here are the ones that drew the most attention.
The Future of Management Is Teal
All of us yearn for better ways to work together — for more soulful workplaces where our talents are nurtured and our deepest aspirations are honored. According to anthropological research, there have been at least five distinct organizational paradigms in human history. Could the current organizational disillusionment be a sign that civilization is outgrowing the current model and getting ready for the next?
20 Questions for Business Leaders
On the eve of strategy+business’s 20th anniversary, we thought we’d celebrate our magazine by tracking the most influential business ideas throughout history. We refined them to the version you see here, and found that the entire history of management ideas can be seen as a series of answers to a few pragmatic queries.
Thinking Like a Leader: Three Big Shifts
Leadership development often focuses on doing — the mastering and use of certain desirable skills and behaviors that concretely show someone to be leading. Competency-based models can provide lists of such skills. But where leadership effectiveness really starts is with thinking — adopting a mental model that makes it possible to acquire those skills and demonstrate those behaviors in the first place.
The Redefined No of the CFO
To be a truly effective chief financial officer, you have to learn to be the champion of strategic discipline. Interviews with leading CFOs at Caterpillar, Philips, Sainsbury’s, Verizon, and Wells Fargo bring five traits of the strategic CFO to light.
Stop Wasting Your Employees’ Time
Employees don’t mind their smartphones — in fact, a survey of executives, managers, and professionals by the Center for Creative Leadership found that they appreciate the flexibility their devices provide. What people do resent is staying connected to their jobs after hours because their work time was wasted by bad management practices.
Hey, Leaders: Stop Thinking So Much and Just Do It
Trying on a new identity at work may seem anathema to the rising cult of authenticity. But INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra says that adhering strictly to behaviors that feel natural can inhibit career evolution.
The Future of Health Is More, Better, Cheaper
New entrants and established players are racing to create the next generation of medical products and services. Within a decade, the health market will look and feel much more like other consumer-oriented, technology-enabled industries. It will have its own iconic brands — companies that give consumers an easy way to access information, doctors, and treatments; provide them with a variety of services and products at a variety of prices; and centralize their care through user-friendly interfaces.
The Imagination Gap
When the future becomes the present, it bears little resemblance to how we had imagined it. Yet it is often similar enough to resonate, if only just a bit, with the expectations of the past.
Creating What Consumers Want
Consumer packaged goods companies are best at the early stages of innovation where they develop new products, and the late stages of innovation, where they commercialize them. But they’re not so good at the middle stage of learning which product features, prices, and packaging a consumer will be attracted to buy. A new approach can help.
Roger Martin’s Required Reading
One of the world’s most influential business thinkers talks about the books that shaped his approach to his career.