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My Notes — Teaching
June 26, 2022 · Uncategorized Teaching
Adam Grant on the Four Deadly Sins of Culture
He says: People often claim their cultures are unique. But when you study thousands of organizations, you can start to see underlying patterns. It all has to do with how we balance key priorities. Research reveals that there are two fundamental tensions in organizational culture: Results vs. relationships and rules vs. risk. If you ignore… More »
Purpose and the Employee
Economist reports on research on what motivates employees. The story identifies six different archetypes, far too few to reflect the complexity of individuals but a lot better than a single lump of employees. “Pioneers” are the people on a mission to change the world; “artisans” are interested in mastering a specific skill; “operators” derive a… More »
How Philco-Ford imagined in 1967 what daily life would be like in 1999
According to Wikipedia, Ford owned Philco for 10 years starting in 1961. Hence the name Philco-Ford. The brand is now owned by Philipps.
December 23, 2020 · Uncategorized Teaching
A Fly on the Wall in a Fearless Organization
JPM: Amy Edmondson has written a very thoughtful short overview of what an organization that creates psychological safety for its employees without sacrificing performance looks like. I highly recommend the piece. **What does psychological safety sound like?** The trickiest part of organizational change is translating the big idea into the little interactions that happen hundreds… More »
Peter Hessler: “How China Controlled the Coronavirus”
The China expert Peter Hessler has written an informative letter on How China Controlled the Coronavirus drawing on his experience on teaching a class on non-fiction writing in Sichuan during the pandemic. Read Article. You can listen to a podcast of the article as well.
March 21, 2020 · Uncategorized Teaching
Striking Similarities to Spanish Flue outbreak in 1918
We have heard about the similarities of COVID-19 to the Spanish flue, but here is it told well in a short video.
January 21, 2020 · Management Teaching
VW CEO uses history to explain why VW needs to speed up change to avoid the fate of Nokia
This is a Deepl AI translation of the speech of VW CEO to employees in January 2029. The complete speech of the VW boss in the wording:
“Ladies and gentlemen,
the world is on the move. Politically and technologically, we live in an incredibly dynamic time. A turn of an era stands before us – from the dimension of the industrial revolution. And Volkswagen is in the midst of the storm of the two greatest transformation processes:
– Climate change and the associated pressure to innovate towards emission-free driving.
– And digitalisation, which is fundamentally changing the automobile as a product.
Our Group is not always in the best position to react quickly and systematically enough to these developments. Measured against this, we have not done badly so far. This is also acknowledged by market observers. In 2019 in particular, analysts have gained new confidence in our strategy.
At the beginning of this year, Kepler Cheuvreux attested: “We think VW is the best positioned player in the industry to master the CO2 challenge. And Goldman Sachs says: “We expect VW Group to continue to prosper this year as a result of ongoing positive sales developments at VW brand, a pick-up in sales at Audi, and broadly flat margins.
In the Litigation area, we are making the risks from the diesel crisis more manageable step by step. In terms of corporate culture, we are seeing tangible and measurable progress. I am pleased that we have increased our integrity by three points in the sentiment barometer.
Our modern MQB-based model range in terms of volume and the new Porsches, Audis, Lamborghinis and Bentleys are convincing customers. We are improving the quality of our business. Revenue and earnings are growing faster than unit sales. In China, we increased our market share by 1.4 percent in a sharply declining market. This is a great achievement, which hardly anyone would have expected from us. Congratulations to Stephan Wöllenstein and his team on their outstanding performance!
In South America we are back in the black for the first time, and we have also turned our business around in Russia. In North America, we have significantly improved our earnings and are aiming to break even this year. Volkswagen Financial Services will have a record year in 2019, and the component has taken decisive steps in battery development and production.
At Audi, the e-tron got off to a successful start, development costs were reduced and a comprehensive cost reduction programme was launched. Porsche has once again delivered excellent figures and cars and set an example with the Taycan. Seat conquers new and young customers with Cupra. Skoda is running at full speed and will present the new models in India, an important future market for us, at the beginning of February.
VW Commercial Vehicles has put the extremely important Ford cooperation on track, and Traton has completed its IPO. We are seeing positive trends at Bentley, Ducati, Bugatti and Lamborghini, and Bentley in particular is back in the black. The Volkswagen core brand has worked hard to further increase returns. All in all: good developments.
“The storm is just beginning”
Framework and Toolkit for Improving Peripheral Strategic Vision
Day and Shoemaker have developed a useful framework and toolkit for assessing how much peripheral strategic vision your company needs.
An MIT Sloan article lays out the ideas in three steps.
More details on the toolkit are in their HBR article that can be assessed here.
On Strategic management, leadership & the success of Huawei
I did a four-minute interview with the HSG Focus Magazine.