The Ideas That Matter Most  

Oleh:

Stewart, Thomas A.

Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Harvard Business Review bisa di lihat di link (http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/command/detail?sid=f227f0b4-7315-44a4-a7f7-a7cd8cbad80b%40sessionmgr114&vid=12&hid=105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=bth&jid=HBR) vol. 86 no. 7-8 (Jul. 2008), page 12.
Topik: ideas; matter most

Ketersediaan

Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: HH10.36 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

Lihat Detail Induk

Isi artikel

Big ideas come from tackling big problems. When one is confronted with an overwhelming task, it’s natural to try to break it down into manageable pieces. Business jargon is full of phrases about that, like “pilot projects” and “low - hanging fruit.” They have their place, but in the repertory of management practice, they should share their place with bold approaches to big challenges. Much of today’s most valuable management knowledge came from wrestling with such issues. The most complicated workplace in the middle of the last century was the automobile assembly plant. Drawn to its complexity were Peter F. Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, and Taiichi Ohno, among others. The work they and their disciples did, applied in industry after industry, is the basis of the best that we know about operations, managing people, innovation, organizational design, and much more. The most complex workplaces today are tertiary care hospitals. These vast enterprises employ tens of thousands of people who, under one roof, do everything from neurosurgery to laundry. Each patient - that is to say, each “job” - calls on a different set of people with a different constellation of skills ; even when two patients have the same diagnosis, success may be measured differently. This is complexity an order of magnitude greater than automobile assembly, and anyone who has been hospitalized knows that management has thus far been unequal to the scope of the task. The workers, managers, consultants, and scholars who crack this nut will reshape industries and institutions just as profoundly as Drucker, Deming, and Ohno did. Amy Edmondson’s article in this issue, “The Competitive Imperative of Learning,” discusses hospitals and offers a powerful hypothesis about how to think about the management of complex, knowledge - based organizations. The central challenge of industrial - age work was efficiency, Edmondson says ; for knowledge - age work, it’s learning. An organization designed to maximize learning will look, feel, and behave differently from one whose primary purpose is efficiency. In suggesting “different how,” Edmondson begins to define the agenda for research and practice in twenty - first - century organizations. This month’s HBR is about that agenda. It is the second of two special issues to mark Harvard Business School’s centennial year. (The first was published in January.) This issue, written entirely by HBS faculty or executive alumni, focuses on the sources and uses of competitive advantage : how to get an edge, keep it sharp, and employ it. Thus Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda - Eling Lee, building on work by HBS’s Paul Lawrence, propose a new way to understand employee motivation ; their article makes a good pair with “Why Did We Ever Go Into HR ?” by two recent MBAs whose career choice surprised some of their classmates. Anand Mahindra, CEO of Mahindra & Mahindra, describes how his company must change to compete in developed markets - and maintain its position of strength at home as Western companies enter India. Two articles offer smart advice for getting an edge from functions that are often allowed to be dull utilities : finance (an article by Mihir Desai) and IT (Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson). A brilliant article by Anita Elberse does what research should do : It examines a popular notion, in this case “the long tail,” and reveals how much is fact and how much fad. Leaders, too, need a competitive edge. To that end I recommend Robert S. Kaplan’s “Reaching Your Potential” and “The Uncompromising Leader,” by a group led by Russell Eisenstat and Michael Beer. The mission of Harvard Business School is “to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.” Those two articles in particular show how it’s done.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali