All Posts Tagged With: "Business"
Strategic Value of Corporate Social Responsibility
The evolution of corporate social responsibility from charity to strategy is one of the great business stories of the past decade. The leaders in CSR are finding ways to enter new markets that seemed undesirable and impenetrable. It takes longer, the profit margins are smaller, and the challenges are greater, but the payoff, both for the company and its customers, is huge.
Pamela Hawley describes these benefits in her article on Fast Company about Danone and Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (“Corporate Social Responsibility: How You Can Profit – and Kick Poverty Out,” March 4, 2011). Grameen Bank pretty much invented microfinancing as a way of lending small amounts of money to those who had little, primarily women. Danone makes yogurt.
Danone wanted to enter the Bangladesh market so it partnered with Grameen to create a unique, community-based model. “Those of us who are involved in CSR know we need to have experts on the ground,” Hawley writes. “It’s important to establish local buy-in, which can take years of relationship building. And we need to have experience, or rely on those who do.”
The annual income of a Bangladeshi is $497. The country has one of the highest child and maternal malnutrition rates in the world. One cup of Danone yogurt would provide 30% of a child’s recommended daily nutrients.
Grameen Danone Foods Ltd. built a production plant near Bogra, Bangladesh. It branded the yogurt as “shokti,” which means strength in Bengali.…
7Mar2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Are You Looking For?
Baldrige.com now has 500 articles available that provide “the information you need to build the organization you want.” That includes your guide to building the career you want, The Baldrige Edge, available here.
What are you looking for? Here’s a sample of what you can find on Baldrige.com:
Baldrige: What it is, integrating Baldrige, starting points, Baldrige Criteria, Baldrige assessment, Baldrige Award, the organization you want, 10 questions to ask
Leadership: Leaders’ job, leadership matters most, priorities, mission and vision, managing, innovation, building a great organization, sustainability, 5 deadly diseases, change management, 10 critical questions
Planning: First phase of strategic planning, innovation and planning, challenging your assumptions, blind spots, revolutionary thinking, testing strategies, prioritizing initiatives, alignment and integration, plan deployment, 90-day action plans, 10 critical questions
Customers: Who are they, dangerous assumptions, customer knowledge, identifying requirements, engagement, increasing satisfaction, measuring satisfaction, 10 critical questions
Measurement: How do you know that, management by fact, performance measurement, aligning strategies and measures, balanced scorecard, communicating performance, knowledge management, 10 critical questions
Workforce: Valuing employees, driving out fear, identifying requirements, workforce planning, succession planning, employee engagement, communication, diversity, training effectiveness, workforce well-being, 10 critical questions
Process: What’s the process, process thinking, identifying key processes, value creation processes, process matrix, 5 process questions, keys to process improvement, lean, 10 critical questions
Results: Financial, quality, workforce, customer, interpreting results, 10 critical questions
Business: Small business fundamentals, critical capabilities, managing complexity, sharing the wealth, 3 innovation processes, staying on top, corporate citizenship, triple bottom…
24Feb2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedHow to Hire for Values
One of the first questions asked by the Baldrige Criteria is for the distinctive characteristics of your organizational culture. The entire Leadership category revolves around culture including how you set and deploy your vision and values, create your culture, promote legal and ethical behavior, and fulfill your societal responsibilities.
Culture is critical because it reflects “the principles that define who you are as an organization and that shape day-to-day business decisions,” according to Alan Lewis, owner and chairman of Grand Circle Travel, a $600 million tour business for Americans ages 50 and over. Lewis recognizes that an organization’s culture is carried by its people. “Employees who do not adhere to a shared corporate culture dilute it,” he writes, “detracting from the essence that gives your company its identity and helps it achieve aggressive goal.”
His views explain his January 26 article in HBR: “Why My Company Hires for Culture First, Skills Second.” Grand Circle Travel uses a values-based hiring model to interview potential job candidates for values. Lewis states, “This decision has not only enhanced our recruiting efforts, it has contributed to the long-term success of our associates and of our organization.”
He offers three pieces of advice for developing a values-based hiring process:
- Involve job candidates in activities that reveal their values. Grand Circle uses a group interview with quirky challenges that require them to interact, work with each other, solve problems, and exhibit leadership. He describes a “raw-egg drop…
The Local Impact of Global Markets
The biggest and fastest-growing markets for almost everything lie in China, India, Brazil, and other emerging markets. It doesn’t matter whether you or your organization sells to these markets: They directly affect your business.
An obvious impact has been on jobs. It’s not just that American manufacturers have been moving production out of the country, but the jobs that have been lost often paid more than what displaced workers are left with. People in other countries who work for a fraction of what American workers make directly affect what American workers make.
Another impact, described recently in The Economist, is on the medical device market. (“Life should be cheap,” January 20, 2011) Innovators in China and India must, of necessity, develop products that are significantly cheaper than their Western equivalents to serve the “bottom of the pyramid,” the four billion people who live on less than $2 a day. As the article notes, “They create products that are stripped to their essentials: scanners that cost $10,000 rather than $100,000; portable electrocardiographs that cost $500 instead of $5,000.”
American medical device manufacturers struggle to compete in these markets, which is why many are investing in research centers and factories in China and India, “developing frugal inventions of their own, which they gleefully sell both locally and in other emerging markets.”
But not back here in the U.S.
The Economist attributes this to two factors: (1) health care is not an efficient market in…
25Jan2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedSmall Business Fundamentals
Small business owners and leaders must wear many hats. With fewer employees than a big company, they are closer to the action, their days filled with pivotal moments when decisions must be made and steps taken that could alter the fortunes of their company.
In such a challenging environment, it helps to have a management system that can guide your decisions and support the steps you take. The Baldrige model provides such a framework.
Twenty-two small businesses have won the Baldrige Award, including three in 2010. While a company may have up to 500 employees to qualify for the small business category, several winners have had fewer than 100 including Stoner, the smallest company ever to win. Stoner had 43 employees when it received the Baldrige Award in 2003.
I worked with Custom Research, which had 75 employees at the time, when it won the Award in 1996. I remember the tension that the Baldrige framework created by requiring formal processes in a few key places, like strategic planning, where informal approaches had served the company well. Custom Research strengthened its processes and, to the Baldrige program’s credit, Baldrige examiners received specific training on how to better evaluate small businesses.
The small business leader who is looking for a proven approach to building a strong, sustainable, high-performing company should consider integrating the Baldrige model. It can help:
- Define the roles of senior leaders and improve communication, accountability, and performance
- Clarify what…
Another Warning Sign for U.S. Manufacturing
Two articles over the weekend in the local Star Tribune offered insights into a systems perspective of manufacturing in the United States. It’s common knowledge that manufacturing jobs, which tend to be well-paying jobs, have been dwindling because of productivity gains and outsourcing, shrinking from nearly 20 million jobs in 1979 to less than 12 million in 2010. While the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion in 2008, the U.S. trade deficit has grown dramatically since then to $500 billion in 2010.
A clue as to the impact of this trend can be found in a PwC study released today (“Study: U.S. med-tech industry losing edge,” Janet Moore, Star Tribune, January 17, 2011). The study showed that:
- China, India, and Brazil will make the strongest gains in developing next-generation, lifesaving products over the next decade.
- The U.S. position will erode in five areas that support med-tech innovation: (1) availability of financial incentives; (2) havens for innovation such as universities; (3) a supportive regulatory system; (4) a pool of patients demanding the best treatments; and (5) a supportive investment community.
“The key finding is that the U.S. is declining when compared with other countries across the globe. And we’re in real jeopardy of losing our lead,” said PwC’s Tracy Lefteroff.
At one time, the U.S. was the global leader in electronics manufacturing. Now very little of it is done in this country. At one time,…
18Jan2011 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedMeaningful Innovation
One of the great strengths of the Baldrige model is that it starts at the beginning. How do you set your mission and vision? How do you determine what your strategic plan should address? How do you identify your key customer groups and markets? How do you know what motivates your employees? How do you design your work processes?
These are foundational questions: If you don’t have rock-solid answers for them, everything that follows will be shaky.
The same is true for innovation. The most innovative organizations start at the beginning with a rock-solid understanding of customer wants and needs, organizational capabilities, and transformational trends that could disrupt their markets and give them a competitive advantage.
The transformational potential of innovation is the subject of “On Tracking Transformational Trends” by Scott Anthony (HBR, January 17, 2011). From his experience, he identifies three areas to assess whether a trend is or is not transformation, using the iPod and 3-D television as examples:
- Market fit. The innovation makes is easier and simpler to do what people are already doing. The iPod provides music on the go. The 3-D television prioritizes something that wasn’t that important. “Do people really want to make the effort to watch 3-D television?”
- Performance. “Strategically sacrifices raw performance in the name of simplicity or affordability.” The iPod deliver lower fidelity but greater convenience, but the 3-D television offers no performance compromises.
- Innovation focus. The innovation is not limited to the…
