Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
Musings about Leadership, Decision Making, and Competitive Strategy
Monday, November 18, 2024
Why Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky Doesn't Believe in One-on-One Meetings
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Are You Willing to Pay More for Products Someone Loved Creating?
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Coping with Changing Priorities
Here are four practical questions that can guide our actions when executives confront us with changing priorities.
1. What clarifying questions should I ask?
Before one starts reallocating resources and taking decisive action in a new direction, a few clarifying questions might be illuminating. Don't just act without making sure you understand clearly what you are being asked to do differently. One question that I love: Is this a change in destination or just a change in our flight path? In other words, are we really aiming at a different outcome, or are we simply adjusting how we intend to arrive at that result?
2. Is this change a threat or an opportunity?
Many of us might naturally frame this type of shift in direction as a threat. If we do so, we may be subject to what scholars call "threat rigidity." In short, we tend to adopt well-established behavioral routines when framing an event as a threat. We tend to be more open and innovative if we frame a change as an opportunity.
3. What tradeoffs am I willing to make? What tradeoffs must I make?
We have to recognize that not all goals are equally important, and that we will have to make tradeoffs if we adding new priorities to an already lengthy list of goals and objectives. Being clear about those tradeoffs is essential. Moreover, we have to determine what criteria we should be using to make those tradeoffs.
4. Why might others resist the change?
Before we ask our employees to shift their behavior, we must put ourselves in their shoes. Why might they resist this change? What are their personal goals, motivations, and incentives? Why might this change in their daily routines or allocation of time be unsettling? By putting ourselves in their shoes, we can determine how to address this resistance.
Monday, October 14, 2024
Five Priorities Is Probably Too Many
Willie Pietersen, retired CEO of businesses Lever Foods, Seagram USA, and Tropicana has written a column for Fortune in which he argues that many leaders proclaim too many priorities. The article is titled, "You can’t have 5 priorities—even Steve Jobs and Bob Iger couldn’t." He writes:
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Successfully Onboarding New Employees
https://hires.shareable.com/ |
Friday, October 04, 2024
Careful about Romanticizing Failure
Source: Vistage |
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Why Might CVS Be Breaking Up?
Why might CVS Health be considering a break-up after moving so aggressively to transform themselves from a pharmacy retail chain to an integrated healthcare company? Several factors may explain the potential strategy reversal.
1. Diversification works best when the different business units within a corporation operate by the same "dominant logic." C.K. Prahalad and Richard Bettis coined this term in a very famous academic paper published in the 1980s. They defined dominant logic as "the way in which managers conceptualize the business and make critical resource allocation decisions..." In short, what is the mental model that leaders use to think about the business and make choices? Do the businesses make money in a similar manner, or are the value propositions and business models fundamentally different? They argued that strategic variety and complexity means that multiple "logics" exist across the portfolio of businesses, making it very difficult for the top management team to lead them all effectively. They cannot apply the same criteria, rules, and principles when making decisions across the businesses. One could easily argue that the dominant logics at CVS vary considerably from pharmacy retail to health insurance to primary care provision. Can one CEO and her leadership team manage all these businesses effectively?
2. Scale and scope do not always yield economies. We often hear about the benefits of bringing multiple units together. In short, what are the economies of scale and scope? I would argue that managers often focus on these potential economies when justifying acquisitions, yet they underestimate the potential diseconomies of scale and scope. How might the increased complexity of the business make it more difficult to manage effectively? What conflicts might emerge among business units? What costs and disruption might occur as a company tries to secure key synergies? Do the costs outweigh the benefits of collaboration and integration? CVS Health has become a behemoth, and at some point, that sprawling conglomerate becomes very hard to manage.
3. The existence of potential synergies alone does not justify mergers. One has to ask whether one could achieve some of these benefits through some other sort of organizational arrangement (stretching from contracts and partnerships through strategic alliances and joint ventures). Firms don't always have to merge to coordinate and collaborate in pursuit of certain economies of scale and scope. Consider Target's decision about its own pharmacy business. The company wanted to continue to have pharmacies within each of its stores. However, it came to the conclusion that it was best not to try to manage and operate these pharmacies themselves. Instead, they sold the business to CVS, letting the pharmacy experts run the "stores within a store" at each Target location. Target shed a business, but it retained some of the benefits of having a pharmacy within each of its stores (the pharmacies are good traffic drivers and lead to other incremental sales for Target).
4. Vertical integration has many potential benefits, but it does not come without substantial risks. One risk is that you find yourself competing with your own customers at times. That brings challenges for many companies, including in the healthcare space. CVS Health has embarked on quite a bit of vertical integration over the years, creating these potential conflicts of interest that can be challenging to manage.