What Really Works

August 20, 2007 from Harvard Business Review and included in SAP’s newsletter – “Our findings took us quite by surprise. Most of the management tools and techniques we studied had no direct causal relationship to superior business performance. What does matter, it turns out, is having a strong grasp of the business basics. Without exception, companies that outperformed their industry peers excelled at what we call the four primary management practices—strategy, execution, culture, and structure. And they supplemented their great skill in those areas with a mastery of any two out of four secondary management practices—talent, innovation, leadership, and mergers and partnerships. We learned, for example, that it doesn’t really matter if you implement ERP software or a CRM system; it matters very much, though, that whatever technology you choose to implement you execute it flawlessly.

180 View – Although SAP’s newsletter showed this article under the heading “More Recent Headlines”, it was actually published in July 2003. Nevertheless the article is a good one and is not available from Harvard Business Review without a premium subscription. So check it out if you’re interested in management practices such as:

• Build a strategy around a clear value proposition for the customer.
• Develop strategy from the outside in, based on what your customers, partners, and investors have to say—and how they behave—not on gut feel or instinct.
• Continually fine-tune your strategy based on changes in the marketplace— for example, a new technology, a social trend, a government regulation, or a competitor’s breakaway product.
• Clearly communicate your strategy within the organization and to customers and other external stakeholders.
• Keep focused.
• Grow your core business, and beware the unfamiliar.