Effective boards are a foundational necessity for a well-run company. Conversely, a weak board opens a company and its stakeholders to significant risks. An ineffective board leaves a company's prospects to chance due to the group's passive, inexperienced, or biased nature. Board development focuses on convenience rather than effectiveness too often. So, let’s explore how we would build an effective board. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/board-of-directors-what-does-good-look-like).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
31 Aug 2023
The Productivity Crisis series: Employee guide to predict and avoid layoffs
Unlike previous economic crises, sustained government policies have masked the ill effects of long-term easy monetary policy. As government tools that hide these effects weaken, hard-working people will face a rough transition in their employment relationships. Transparency and predictability are the most basic expectations in any relationship, including an employment contract. Avoiding ecosystems prone to suboptimal outcomes with personal and professional costs is optimal. Minimally, it is prudent to predict involuntary separations to minimize impact. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/employee-guide-to-predict-and-avoid-layoffs).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
21 Jun 2023
The Productivity Crisis series: Rediscover investment effectiveness to exit The Productivity Crisis
Investors, CEOs, executives, supervisors, and all spend approvers must develop an objective investment effectiveness mindset to reverse their companies' productivity challenges. The first lever to drive productivity improvements is to embrace an opt-in mindset to curb wasteful investments. The second lever is to optimize human capital investment, which involves a fundamentals-focused recalibration of our labor force towards customer-centric work, skill-focused staffing, and reintroduction of up-skilling and performance management. An ability to connect every investment dollar to tangible intrinsic value creation for internal and external customers will characterize companies that can profitably and sustainably grow. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/rediscover-investment-effectiveness-to-exit-the-productivity-crisis).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
13 Jun 2023
Digest #103: Enable top players to thrive and encourage competition to build market-leading companies
Organizations that manage for the middle use likability factors to measure success. It results in a skill drain and encourages mediocrity even among highly competent individuals. Companies that strive to lead their space invest in proactively identifying, hiring, and spotlighting individuals with strong competencies, deep skills, and high-quality experience from a customer value creation lens. They also build a system to enable these top players to succeed and encourage others to raise their game. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/digest/enable-top-players-to-thrive-and-encourage-competition-to-build-market-leading-companies).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
4 Jun 2023
The Productivity Crisis series: Have roles & seniority decoupled from skills & experience? An organizational self-assessment.
We are experiencing The Productivity Crisis worldwide, as companies and individuals. The predicament results from the easy money era of the last decade. Cost insensitivity, followed by investment ineffectiveness, set off The Productivity Crisis domino. Poor organizational designs, over-staffing, seniority and pay inflation, and decoupling of skill from employment rewards formed the domino that epitomizes this crisis. Self-diagnosing our organizations for this domino will set us up for remedial actions. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/have-roles-seniority-decoupled-from-skills-experience-an-organizational-self-assessment).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
7 Apr 2023
Digest #102: “AI” exploration is a test of human critical thinking | Not a test of “artificial intelligence”
Given recent excitement and apprehension around “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) triggered by the public release of ChatGPT, the popular platform powered by OpenAI’s algorithm, we must parse reality from sensation and prepare for pretenders jumping in to clutter the powerful and dangerous space. Internalizing what really constitutes “AI”, what can “AI” really do for us, and what should scare us will simplify the conversation. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/digest/ai-exploration-is-a-test-of-human-critical-thinking-not-a-test-of-artificial-intelligence).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/)
31 Mar 2023
Digest #101: Necessity to Relearn Risk Management
March 2023 has been a month of banking turbulence in the United States and Europe. It was triggered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) takeover of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). I have been thinking about these events and the history of affected companies and the sector. I want to share some key takeaways. Read the complete article (https://www.acumes.com/digest/necessity-to-relearn-risk-management).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen)
13 Jul 2022
Holistic Companies series: Why must we build holistic companies?
We need a cohesive and comprehensive definition of a 'good' company. The lack of such a definition and its broad acceptance gives rise to dysfunctional behaviors within the concept of companies which is as natural to all of us as air and water. A holistic company satisfies all the intended conditions of a capitalistic enterprise while avoiding the most common form of its mutation - capital engineering. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/what-is-a-holistic-company-and-why-must-we-build-them).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
24 May 2022
The Productivity Crisis series: What is capital engineering and why is it unproductive?
Growth-at-any-cost era, spurred on by easy-money for fifteen years, is over. We turned a great and necessary idea of privately funded companies into an unproductive, artificially inflated asset class. Let’s internalize the harmful distortions caused by the pervasive tendency to focus on capital engineering. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/what-does-the-report-card-for-the-growth-at-any-cost-cycle-look-like).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
9 Feb 2022
Operational Enablers series: How should we prioritize investment to enable customer stickiness?
Many companies have built their businesses around recurring revenue models that determine everything from company valuations to employee compensation. Stickiness is the lifeblood of such a business model. Losing focus on aspects that truly impact stickiness risks losing the entire plot. Almost every sustainably growing company has one common factor—they directly inject value into a critical operational component within the customers’ journey. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/b2b-stickiness-levers).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
5 Oct 2021
Strategic Planning series: What is unique about your solution and how does it align with your strengths?
The crux of a strategic plan is the firm articulation of how we solve the market problem using our unique strengths and how those strengths will be evolved to deliver our solution sustainably. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/2022-strategic-planning-part-4).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
27 Sept 2021
Strategic Planning series: How will you reset to accommodate macroscopic disrupters?
Macroscopic factors may not influence the short-term valuation or value creation ability of a company if they do not come to pass immediately. But when they eventually transpire, there won’t be a rock to hide under if we do not prepare a company for it. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/2022-strategic-planning-series-part-3-reset-to-accommodate-macroscopic-disrupters).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
19 Sept 2021
Strategic Planning series: Will you redefine your people agenda to focus on customers?
A company’s people agenda dictates how it delivers value to customers. An effective strategic plan will frame an approach to dovetail the company’s people to behaviors customers consider valuable. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/2022-strategic-planning-series-2-reset-people-agenda).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
7 Sept 2021
Strategic Planning series: What is your company-level intent - operate or exit?
A company’s strategy and plan entirely depend on the ownership time horizon of majority shareholders. An effective strategic plan creates accountability by affirming our intentions and communicating our game plan to all stakeholders affected by ownership changes. Read the article here (https://www.acumes.com/strategic-insights/2022-strategic-planning-series-part-1-operate-vs-exit-choice).
Author: John Oommen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoommen/).
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