Best Thought Leadership in Social Business Elements for 2011

We thought you might like to see some of what has influenced our thinking this year, and how we think these concepts will impact business improvement efforts in 2012 and beyond.

The following are our favorite thought provoking articles, books and web-based tidbits from this past year.  Six topics span a wide range of perspectives: the underlying drivers of business and economic uncertainty, evolving demands on management and leadership, and our own points of view on the business improvement that supports enterprise/employee transformation.

Note: This is an abridged version of our client and colleague 2011 Year-end favorites email.  If you have trouble reading the following table in RSS or feedblitz please click here

Business + Economics
A macroeconomic view

Click here for 44M narrated slide presentation
Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, a venture capital firm,  presents a sobering view of the United States government- as if it was a company. In her July ‘11 USA, INC presentation, Meeker addresses: our biggest macro economic issue (healthcare), the scale of recent efforts (2.5% deficit reduction compromise almost shut down the government), and the fact it will require both reduced costs and increased taxes (neither alone is palatable, e.g., requirement to double taxes).  The implications for the environment we will have to lead in and manage in are significant.
Management
The future of management

Click here for 17M video presentation
For a clear articulation of the motivation to achieve high performance, Gary Hamel lays out his perspective on the drivers of management innovation in a TED-like presentation.

As a reference, Hamel’s MIX site also categorizes a number of companies, mini-cases and thought leaders all focused on the future of management. “The Management Innovation eXchange” (MIX) is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.”
Change Leadership
Statistical validation of our 20 year focus on engagement’s role in change

Click here for our published POV
Our favorite statistic of the year is based on nearly 1,400 responses tied to business success…

Favorite Book
Improving decisioning

Like the generic process roles tool ARCI or RACI (responsible, accountable, consult and inform), RAPID (Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input and Decide) addresses responsibilities specific to the decision process
Decide and Deliver, 2010. Bain has produced a great “how to” book for the decision process. Although their RAPID framework has been previously published in Harvard Business Review, building a decision process capability is already critical for quick decision making.  Looking toward the future, a flexible decisioning capability is foundational for more distributed and social enterprise.
Business Improvement:
Favorite Engagement
Our favorite engagement of the year

Click here for 45 min video of Tom Reeder’s iCitizen presentation (keynote on far right) NOTE: Requires Adobe’s Flash
Delivering on two fronts- achieving our business outcome, while building social business capabilities– we were able to deliver against business outcomes while creating a vision and roadmap for a client to become a social, high performance business.  We presented key elements of this thinking applied to a hyper-dynamic segment in today’s business world- a conference of digital marketers.
Business Improvement:
Most popular post
Role of social media in enterprise transformation

Click here for our published POV
We have written a number of posts this year, but the one most visited at our site, according to Google analytics, is our Can Social Media Drive Enterprise Change?  The piece gives a quick overview of some of the most relevant published findings and articulates our point of view to our approach, including the necessary focus on first achieving business outcomes while secondarily building social business capabilities- an evolutionary approach.

At NextForge, we are in the business of advancing the business improvement process.  We do this in part by sharing our thinking and tools with our clients and our fellow consultants through, for example, our Points of View and Library of tools.

We have captured the essence of more than two decades of business improvement experience in the constantly expanding Help Yourself section of our website.  Should you need additional support achieving your business improvement outcomes, we would be honored to work with you and talk about the appropriate blend of traditional and emerging management practices we can help you realize.

We hope you find these year-end favorite materials as interesting as we have in unearthing and developing them.

Best wishes for 2012!

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