Strategic U-turn

Author: Amo Hartman
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: This book focuses on the primary challenges faced by corporate leaders: managing stagnant companies and preparing them for renewed success. Amo Hartman presents core elements that help businesses break free from and achieve brilliance, and through real-world cases, authentically demonstrates the methods and significant results of applying these elements in practice. You will learn the following: How to re-establish and balance the relationship between performance and growth, how to enhance employee accountability with new approaches, how to leverage performance metrics without entangling employees in tedious tasks, and how to promote true discipline without fostering bureaucratic practices. You will also learn the critical core competencies required to elevate business performance to breakthrough levels. Most "stagnant" companies struggle to survive. However, a few rare companies have found the secrets to renewed growth and innovation. This book will show you how to apply the lessons learned to revitalize your own business. It is a book about leadership, values, and management methods; it is a book about cost control, productivity, and prioritization. It is also a book about how successful companies like GE, Novartis, Cisco, IBM, and Honeywell have overcome and achieved success. The chapter on "Stagnation" explains the methods and strategies that companies, even those with limited growth opportunities, can use to eliminate obstacles hindering performance improvement. The term "strict execution" was first coined by me and my friend and former partner, John Siffness, in 1996 when we were both at HP. Later, the term gained widespread use in the book "Network-Ready," summarizing the critical measures companies must take to prepare for the network era. As I gathered material for this book and sought a way to package my ideas, I became increasingly aware that the term also encapsulates the essence of the strategies leaders use to overcome. There are few books about and how to escape it. Most books on business survival offer advice on how to lead companies to success and glory. Over the past two or three decades, with the soaring stock market and rapidly evolving economy, as business theorists repeatedly declared strong growth momentum, corporate leaders craved guidance to ensure they achieved the same success as others. Business book authors focus on strategies and corporate culture that ensure business success. Many overlook the topic of dealing with major business reversals. As long as the economy is growing, no one dedicates effort to researching or reading books on the unsettling topic of business downturns. The modern situation is entirely different. Turbulent economic conditions have arrived, and people are increasingly realizing that businesses are more like roller coasters than ascending spacecraft. As more companies plummet from their growth peaks, the new, painful side of business life is gradually becoming familiar: no business can guarantee continuous upward growth. Eventually, every company will face various troubles, and the rise and fall of businesses will become an unchanging pattern. Therefore, business books should genuinely and practically address the issue of business downturns, offering feasible solutions. This is the true purpose of this book. "Stagnation" has become the new business law I define "stagnation" as: when a company, after experiencing sustained rapid growth, faces new problems such as economic downturns, lack of product innovation, excessive growth, missed market opportunities, or, in most cases, ineffective execution. Due to these new factors, the company cannot maintain profitability for a sufficiently long period (at least two years). This is a harsh reality that most corporate leaders fail to recognize, as it always occurs after the company achieves strong performance.