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It’s 10 AM. Do You Know What Your Sales Reps Are Doing?

Harvard Business Review

Sales executives with even moderately large, distributed sales forces rely on data to help them understand which activities and behaviors lead to the best outcomes. That leaves executives in the dark about what is actually occurring on the front lines, or whether those activities advance or impede progress toward desired outcomes.

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Don’t Turn Your Sales Team Loose Without a Strategy

Harvard Business Review

When formulating a strategy, markets and segments are important categories to consider. But a market never buys anything. To borrow a telecom industry metaphor, a deal with a customer is the “last mile” in connecting any strategy with business development efforts and marketplace results. Only customers buy.

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How Leading Companies Build the Workforces They Need to Stay Ahead

Harvard Business Review

New innovations will change the basis of competition in many markets and alter the sources of advantage for most companies. Business-critical roles — that is, the jobs that are central to differentiating a company from its competitors and successfully executing its strategy — will also change.

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Many Companies Still Don’t Know How to Compete in the Digital Age

Harvard Business Review

Success in this environment will depend on more than just creating better digital-enabled products; it will depend on building ecosystem-level strategies that encompass the many moving pieces that come together to create the new value proposition. 4 in the inkjet-printer market, where it joined the likes of HP, Lexmark, and Canon.

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There Are Two Types of Performance — but Most Organizations Only Focus on One

Harvard Business Review

Tactical performance is how effectively your organization sticks to its strategy. The second type, known as adaptive performance , is how effectively your organization diverges from its strategy. military says, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity , where technology and strategy changes rapidly. Related Video.

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Yes, Managing IT Is Your Job

Harvard Business Review

Instead of thinking about driving value from the perspective of IT, or HR, finance, sales, or operations, leadership teams will think about a problem they want to solve or a process they want to change, and then align the full breadth of services (IT, HR, operations) needed to accomplish it. Reinventing Corporate IT An HBR Insight Center.

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Corporate Reporting Needs a Reboot

Harvard Business Review

This can result in market valuations that do not reflect the fundamental performance or prospects of the business, leading to a misallocation of capital and reduced visibility for investors, reinforcing short-term decision-making.

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