04.04.2024 Today’s Insights from Harvard Business Review: 6 Strategic Concepts that Set High-Performing Companies Apart
Dear Students,
It’s great to see that key MCI concepts are also evidenced by superior industry performers, not only in the US, but across the globe, as highlighted in this month’s HBR.
Such constructs, within what Kaihan Krippendorff (recognized as “one of the world’s top thinkers in strategy and innovation”) calls “A New Strategic Playbook,” comprise the following:
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Borrow someone’s road and Partner with a third party (reflecting the Western values of collaboration and an abundance mindset, vs. fearing that tapping external relationships may mean losing dominance)
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Reveal your strategy (counterintuitively reflecting the importance of transparent written and verbal communication and demonstrated ethics to build trust, as components of Western-style teamwork)
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Be good (reflecting the Western notion of leadership through enabling others’ success – and concern for collective welfare, or CSR – vs. adopting a zero-sum, winner-take-all, mentality)
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Let the competition go (reflecting the usefulness of analytical skills, critical thinking, listening skills and resilience, to at times simply watch from the sidelines, rather than succumbing to societal and media pressure to “jump in” and “do something”)
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Adopt small scale attacks (reflecting the values of curiosity, adaptability/flexibility, open-mindedness and iterative thinking as a path to success, rather than pre-planning a supposedly-water-tight strategy, in advance, for an ever-changing marketplace)
And while some of these ideas may, at first, feel counterintuitive to ambitious international students like you, who may have been raised to view business through a different lens, you will soon become much more familiar with their benefits through coaching. The “ecosystems” approach espoused by Krippendorff and others makes sense, once candidates like you and your friends consider it, because everyone, around the world, is increasingly interdependent on each other for our collective progression as a society.
Some food for thought for aspiring talent like you, seeking to shape the global marketplace in the 21st century.