Troubled companies, of course, need to transform themselves. But so do the world's most successful companies. Apple's greatness is due to its multiple reinventions. Microsoft will require a transformation to counteract Google, and Google continues to look for opportunities to reinvent itself. All great companies, at least periodically, look for ways to fundamentally enhance their trajectory. Almost always the search requires attacking three elements:
Winning in the medium term—leveraging strengths and building new ones to allow measurable out-performance
Funding the journey—successfully dealing with near term pressures by freeing up cash and achieving quick wins
Ensuring a team, organization, and culture that has the right ambitions and ability to deliver
Concurrently attacking all three elements is, of course, challenging, but it is a challenge that more and more CEOs feel the need to confront. Our view is that although driving change is hard, the root causes of what makes it so hard are not unique.
Instead, there are some common pitfalls that with the right level of focus and commitment can be avoided. More than 50 percent of our work is related to collaborating with CEOs to overcome these common pitfalls to help drive significant, accelerated change. Read More