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The Not-So-Secret Secrets to Making It Big: Five Surprisingly Doable Steps That Will Propel You to the Top

Strategy Driven

And I think that making sure that you constantly work with focus and discipline, and always, always follow up are crucial ingredients of getting the results you want – whether you’re launching a start-up, leading a team of employees, or going after that big promotion. I can’t afford to have people on the team who are undependable.

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Your Whole Company Needs to Be Distinctive, Not Just Your Product

Harvard Business Review

Ever since the idea of strategy came to the business world in the early 1960s, the goal of differentiation has been paramount. Thus American Express had an extremely valuable “one-hit wonder”– an exclusive arrangement for years with the CostCo retail chain in the U.S.,

IAM 11
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Make Priorities Clear with Green, Yellow, and Red

Harvard Business Review

The basic task of defining goals and keeping score is so critical, yet not accomplished frequently or consistently enough. Be crystal clear on your top three to five goals. After that, establish the critical tasks required to achieve those goals AND identify the right metrics and benchmarks to know if you are getting there.

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The Radical Beauty of Three Simple Management Practices

Harvard Business Review

The reality is that many of them are unable to take such basic steps as setting achievable benchmarks, removing underperformers, collecting useful data, or offering coherent bonus schemes to motivate employees. These deficiencies are as common in health care and education as they are in manufacturing and retail.

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Metrics Are Easy; Insight Is Hard

Harvard Business Review

Consider that improving Netflix's recommendation-engine accuracy by about 10% proved so challenging that only two teams — of tens of thousands from over 180 countries competing for the $1 million prize — were able to hit the goal. Will Big Data Kill All But the Biggest Retailers? BIG DATA INSIGHT CENTER. More >>.

Metrics 16
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Touchpoints Bring the Customer Experience to Life

Harvard Business Review

A customer journey looks at things entirely from the customers' point of view:; their actions, goals, questions, and barriers over time. An interesting contrast is online shoe retailer Zappos, which wants customers to call, as the company sees that as a loyalty-builder for the brand, even if it's relatively expensive.

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People Are the Puck

Harvard Business Review

This is often the reason why thoughtful quantitative analysis that incorporates macro-economic trends, market share, competitive strategies, retail analysis and technological assessments so often misses the mark. Remember also that that most macroeconomic and corporate financial data provide only a snapshot on where things have been.