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Leading by Cause

Lead Change Blog

Appearance of Improvement vs. Improvement – In the effects domain, managers often look for steps to improve the appearance of their P&L results, yet no real, underlying change takes place. Behavior – Operating results presented in an organization’s P&L reflect an aggregation of activities.

P&L 220
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How Big Data Brings Marketing and Finance Together

Harvard Business Review

When Raja Rajamannar became CMO of MasterCard Worldwide in 2013, he moved quickly to transform how the credit card giant measures marketing. But the real power and full potential of data was not being fully realized by marketing. As an ingredient brand, Intel often struggled to link marketing to P&L impact.

Finance 13
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Serving on Boards Helps Executives Get Promoted

Harvard Business Review

When you consider all of the retreats, travel, reading, meeting prep time, transactions, and committee meetings involved, it is a wonder anyone serves at all. In an effort to explore executives’ motivations for serving on boards, we looked at how board service is evaluated in the executive labor market.

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Why Face-to-Face Meetings Make All the Difference

Harvard Business Review

In today's economy, where the fast growth of emerging markets outpaces America and the developed world, if you haven't gone global yet, it's time to get moving. We came up with a system that shared the travel burden but, most important, made "local" management a part of the global corporation.

P&L 15
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5 Ways to Increase Your Cross-Selling

Harvard Business Review

In the past, marketers have struggled to deliver the higher response rates they need from existing customers — a smaller group than potential new customers. Digital channels now allow companies to fine-tune marketing messages based on observed behavior. USAA is something of an exception, though.

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Microsoft Taxes Itself

Harvard Business Review

The company will measure carbon footprint in different operational buckets such as plug load (electricity used) and business travel, and then offset each category "like for like" (i.e., buying RECs for electricity and offsets for travel). Even so, they will collect north of $10 million, which is enough to buy offsets.

Price 13
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Is It Heresy to Make Salespeople Pay Their Expenses? An HBR Management Puzzle

Harvard Business Review

Cespedes and Benson P. All this relationship building over vast territories takes a lot of traveling and a lot of wining and dining. In fact it's not mainly about cost management at all — though that's certainly important in these market conditions. You're going to have a mutiny on your hands," said Jo-Ann, the VP.

P&L 12