Leading global consultant, business author, A-list blogger and podcaster David Maister presents a podcast of highlights from his speaking engagements covering his four main topic areas: Strategy, Management, Client Relations, and Careers.
Strategy in Professional Businesses
For many firms and companies, strategy is a process of selecting market segments to compete in, clients to target and service to offer. Unfortunately, this analysis only gets you to the starting gate, since most sensible competitors will also identify the most attractive markets and services. "Doing strategy" in a professional business means creating an organization that can outperform competitors on sometimes obvious things, but one that wins through more diligent execution. In this seminar series, we will explore the policies and practices necessary to create the dynamic, energized organization that can act and respond strategically.
As a new feature to my podcast, I will be including a link to the executive summary of each chapter of my book as a pdf. I encourage you to forward these to friends and colleagues who may be interested in the materials covered in this series.
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14. The Courage to Manage | (17:14) |
How does a manager get his or her operation to begin to behave strategically? What systems are needed and what personal behavior by the manager?
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13. Ready, Set, Go: Fast-track Strategy | (14:43) |
How can companies get started on operating strategically with a minimum of bureaucracy and planning? How to focus on the four key improvement areas of all sensible strategic plans.
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12. Competing through Organizational Functioning | (20:26) |
Modern organizations often have complex structures with departments, industry teams, major account teams and geographic locations. How does a company ensure that these overlapping structures function smoothly together?
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11. More Things in More Places | (22:36) |
What is the key ingredient in the successful implementation of any multidisciplinary and/or geographic expansion strategy? Expansion is not what you do in order to achieve excellence – it’s what you are allowed to do after you have achieved it.
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10. Why Merge? | (23:09) |
What are the separate goals that professional businesses seek in engaging in mergers? We identify a number of types of mergers and examine the pro’s and con’s of each of them.
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9. Adapting to the Future – Whatever It Is… | (17:42) |
How do you ensure that your firm is good at identifying emerging needs, examining them and devising responses? A set of managerial processes is described to ensure that an professional business can evolve along with its marketplace.
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8. Justifying the Company | (16:49) |
In an organization where every decentralized operating unit is responsible for its own strategic plan, what is the role of the company itself? This seminar explores how to ensure that the company or firm acts as more than just a holding company.
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7. Play Nice – Creating the Collaborative Firm | (20:31) |
How do you get people in multiple disciplines, industries and offices to work for the good of the firm? A wide variety of approaches, ordered from high to low effectiveness are discussed.
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6. The One Firm Firm | (20:28) |
What do Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Accenture, Latham and Watkins and Hewitt Associates have in common? A commitment to a model of professional business management which stresses teamwork, collaboration and and institutional loyalty.
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5. Values in Action | (16:51) |
Why don’t most firms actually live up to the standards and values espoused in their mission statements? Because it’s one thing to say you believe in something; it’s another to be willing to be held accountable.
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4. Strategy Means Saying No | (17:45) |
Why do most firms in an industry end up looking very similar, offering the same services to the same clients, stressing the same client benefits? Because they don’t have the courage to accomplish true differentiation by saying no to off-strategy work.
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3. Practice What You Preach | (15:09) |
What do the Most Successful Businesses in a 139-business, 15-country database do to achieve doubled margins and doubled growth rates? Appoint managers who know how to excite, enthuse and energize their people.
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2. Strategy and the Fat Smoker | (19:50) |
Why is Strategy Like Staying Fit? Because we know what to do, why to do it and how to do it, but still not everybody does the right things. Why strategy is more about developing resolve than is about analytical plans.
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1. How to Create A Strategy | (14:55) |
What is a Strategy and How Do You Develop One? This episode explains the sources of competitive advantage, and describes a process to be followed to identify a competitive strategy.