Covid-19 and the Future of Cultural Changes

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Covid-19 and the Future of Cultural Changes

August 13th, 2021 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Success in the post-COVID world can be more effective when executives manifest themselves as change agents who reshape, and in some cases, manipulate corporate culture to better apply knowledge and create competitive advantage.

Building on the three aspects of corporate culture (collaboration, trust, and learning), companies can attempt to continuously innovate and create new and valuable services or products by applying new ideas and knowledge. This article is set in place to inspire executives to create effective cultural changes in order to meet and exceed the challenges of not only today but also what we see as the onset of new advances in the future. The practices mentioned in this article can represent a complete answer to the need for cultural changes in today’s global market environment.

What Corporate Culture Is

Corporate culture is reflected in shared assumptions, symbols, beliefs, values, and norms that specify how employees understand problems and appropriately react to them. Executives today are focusing on company culture. They can build an effective corporate culture to improve customer satisfaction through acquiring additional knowledge from customers, developing better relationships with them, and providing a higher quality of service for them. Company performance is determined through various aspects, such as customer satisfaction. And executives can positively affect company performance through increased customer satisfaction. Company performance is what every executive is concerned about. Thus, there is a global need to cultivate a strong corporate culture to accomplish sustainable competitiveness in global markets. This strong corporate culture includes the three aspects of collaboration, trust, and learning.

How Corporate Culture Works

These three cultural aspects play a critical role in improving innovation and enhancing the effectiveness of organizational knowledge management. For example, collaboration provides a shared understanding of the current issues and problems among employees, which helps to generate new ideas within organizations. Trust towards their leader’s decisions is also a necessary precursor to create new knowledge and improve company performance through increased quality of products and services. Moreover, the amount of time spent learning is positively related to the amount of knowledge gained, shared, and implemented, aiming at breaking through performance gaps in corporations.

Executives are highly involved in cultural change initiatives and, in particular, by creating more effective workplaces, developing people, and shifting organizations toward the creation of new services and products. Knowledge, in itself, is a by-product of culture, and culture’s role in guiding and facilitating people’s actions is the key to executive decision-making. Through an effective company culture, executives can contribute to new products and services to meet dynamic market needs, through higher expectations and stimulation for new and strategic opportunities to meet the expectations of strategic goals and the needs of customers in the marketplace. Executives can build this such company culture to serve the customer needs and become more profitable.

By influencing behavior and providing valuable resources, executives can change the culture of an organization. This new focus helps the organization develop a unique culture that is hard for the competition to duplicate. Executives can act as change agents who provide a more humanistic and applicable approach to create a great company culture. For example, executives can facilitate collaboration by developing relationships in organizations. An executive can contribute to the cultural aspect of trust by considering both employee’s individual interests and the company’s essential needs. Executives can also identify the individual needs of employees and develop a learning culture to generate new knowledge and share it with others. The next section particularly presents a set of actions that can be taken by executives to build an effective corporate culture within corporations.

How to Do It Right

Building a True Collaboration Culture

To build a collaboration culture, executives need to improve the degree to which employees actively support and provide significant contributions to each other in their work. In doing this, executives can take the following actions:

-Develop a collaborative work climate in which employees are satisfied by the degree of collaboration between departments

-Develop a collaborative work climate in which employees are supportive.

-Employees are helpful.

-Develop a collaborative work climate in which there is a willingness to accept responsibility for failure.

Creating a No-Fail Trust Culture

To create a trust culture, executives need to maintain the volume of reciprocal faith in terms of behaviors and intentions. In doing this, executives can take the following actions:

-Build an atmosphere of trust and openness in which employees are generally trustworthy.

-Build an atmosphere of trust and openness in which employees have reciprocal faith in other members’ intentions and behaviors.

-Build an atmosphere of trust and openness in which employees have reciprocal faith in others’ ability.

-Build an atmosphere of trust and openness in which employees have reciprocal faith in others’ behaviors to work toward organizational goals.

-Build an atmosphere of trust and openness in which employees have reciprocal faith in others’ decision towards organizational interests than individual interests.

-Build an atmosphere of trust and openness in which employees have relationships based on reciprocal faith.

Cultivating a Successful Learning Culture

To foster a learning culture, executives need to enhance the extent to which learning is motivated within the workplace. In doing this, executives can take the following actions:

-Develop a learning workplace in which various formal training programs are provided to improve the performance of duties.

-Develop a learning workplace in which opportunities are provided for informal individual development other than formal training such as work assignments and job rotation.

-Develop a learning workplace in which there is an encouragement to attend external seminars, symposia, etc.

-Develop a learning workplace in which various social mechanisms such as clubs and community gatherings are provided.

-Develop a learning workplace in which employees are satisfied by the contents of job training or self-development programs.

In Conclusion

Now that we have identified that company culture has risen to a phenomenon that is worth understanding, learning, and using in organizations around the world. This introduces a new and dynamic perspective of organizational culture and suggests that corporate culture constitutes the foundation of a supportive workplace to improve knowledge management performance. I indicate that corporate culture is a major internal resource for knowledge management success. Without a grasp on these two tenets executives are bound to fail in the post-COVID world.

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Is Your Company Designed for a Post-Pandemic Future?

August 2nd, 2021 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Executives are under a tremendous amount of pressure in today’s post-pandemic knowledge-driven economy. They began to listen and respond to the plethora of information in the form of articles, books, and models attempting to provide effective leadership to help impact not only the productivity and profitability of the organization but also competitive advantage. This article is set in place to inspire leaders to effectively lead their companies to meet and exceed the global challenges today. It is about getting the information needed to be successful in the right hands of executives worldwide in a post-COVID world.

Today‘s post-pandemic knowledge-driven economy is placing more pressure on companies to achieve a high level of knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. There are many academic studies that focus on the organizational and managerial factors that drive knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. Knowledge is one such area that plays a critical role and is a strategic prerequisite for business success in the post-pandemic knowledge-driven economy. Executives that manage knowledge and use it as an important driving force for business success find their organization to be more competitive and on the cutting edge in the new economic normal. For now, executives can develop conducive organizational climates that foster an atmosphere of trust and openness in which knowledge, as a driver of improved knowledge-driven performance.

This article blends scholarly concepts with real-world application and places a great deal of emphasis on the literature on organizational resources as significant indicators for knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. This also has several implications for practitioners. First, it adds to a relatively small body of business literature and develops our understanding of today’s post-pandemic knowledge-driven economy. Second, it develops a new and dynamic conception of organizational resources. Particularly, I advance the current literature on the post-pandemic knowledge-driven economy by offering novel insights into how organizational resources affect knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. Further, I show that a firm’s ability to enhance knowledge-driven performance, create competitive advantage and also recognize the global changes occurring in the post-COVID business environments and effectively respond to them can be significantly affected by organizational resources.

The Pillars of Post-Pandemic Knowledge-Driven Economy

In a post-pandemic world, the business environment is constantly changing. Knowledge is a crucial part of hypercompetitive environments. Organizations can design, copy, or update products and services easier with more adaptability than ever today. Organizations compete globally but must think locally if they expect to exceed. And new markets place demands on the roles of change leaders in organizations operating in this modern environment.

Today‘s knowledge-driven economy is placing more pressure on organizations to employ effective leaders who are capable of developing knowledge-based organizations and creating competitive advantage. Culture, structure, strategy, networks, and stakeholders are internal resources that can increasingly facilitate knowledge-driven performance and improve the search for knowledge.

Executives are now introduced to The Proposed Model

Based on an integrated framework of the above ideas and scholarly research, I depict an applicable and reliable model for executives as Figure 1. This framework of the model highlights a relationship between organizational resources and knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. In Figure 1, organizational resources have sizable impacts on knowledge-driven performance which also leads to better competitive advantage. In fact, better strategy, better culture, better structure, better networks, and better stakeholder orientation can lead to higher knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness.

Figure 1: The New Proposed Framework

There are some executives that like to look at academic journals but unfortunately, crossover literature has not reached them enough. I attempt to blend scholarly concepts with real-world application. Insufficient consideration of the impacts of organizational resources on knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness has been exposed. Thus, for executives, this article can portray a more detailed picture of the effects of these organizational factors on knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.

In Conclusion

This article raises vital questions as to how executives can successfully contribute to knowledge-driven performance and subsequently improve competitiveness at all levels of the organization and overcome threats to one’s survival as a company. It also offers practical contributions for managers at all levels of the organization. I stress that knowledge is a strategic resource for organizational portfolios in a post-pandemic world. Many organizations still implement knowledge development initiatives without sufficient consideration of their organizational resources. When executives ensure the effectiveness of organizational resources they increase knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness and also lessen operational risk.

This piece suggests that five organizational factors of culture, structure, strategy, networks stakeholder orientation constitute the foundation of a supportive workplace to improve knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. The nature of the interactions between these organizational resources and knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness can suggest several complementary insights for the existing business literature.

This focus is based upon the critical role of these organizational resources which allows a rich basis to understanding the mechanisms by which knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness are influenced. It articulates a different approach. I simply extended the business literature by showing how executives can also contribute to knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness by fostering a trust-based culture, a flexible structure, an agile strategy, and more effective networks stakeholder orientation.

These five factors coupled with knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness are presented as a new approach for executive implementation.

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How and Why Your Business Strategy Eats Your Business Culture for Breakfast

January 15th, 2021 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Global leaders across the globe have found that corporate strategy is critical to business success. Corporate strategy could be the most important component of success in the ever-changing business environment of today.

Executives evaluate the success of corporate strategy. Corporate strategy reflects the degree to which a company can expand and determine the right pathway to success. The key function of a corporate strategy is to help executives utilize it for goal achievement. In this context, corporate strategy is becoming the forefront of success in corporations worldwide. Success, therefore, is dependent upon how executives formulated their organization’s strategy. Corporate strategy has been a focal point of the executive span of control but has not been associated with leadership enough to make it an integral part of organizational success.

One outcome of corporate strategy is to connect knowledge with other companies that want to share successes and failures. Leaders can inspire organizational members to network with more successful competitors by sharing successes to build alliances and not only enhance competition but communicate best practices as a way of keeping the highest standard of operation in the industry. In doing this, leaders implement a corporate strategy to develop relationships with external environments to identify new opportunities that occur in an ever-changing hypercompetitive marketplace. Leaders, in fact, implement a corporate strategy to expand the growth opportunities available to organizations that may be challenging, but, important to close the gap between success and failure. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that contribute to success.

Furthermore, executives focus on individuals as the major source of knowledge and show how follower’s ties together so that they can affect the sharing, storage, transfer, and apply knowledge within organizations. Executives, therefore, see these connections, and the related shared knowledge and memory, as central to the effectiveness of corporate culture. Executives know that corporate strategy through sharing individual knowledge around the organizations can positively contribute to building a strong corporate culture. Therefore, executives should build an atmosphere of trust and openness and use corporate strategy to convert individual knowledge into valuable resources for their organization to close the performance gap and help organizations prosper.

The key is for executives to inculcate corporate culture within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously. Corporate culture enables organizations to promote the depth and range of knowledge access and sharing within companies.

Corporate culture is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge, and stimulate new ideas and knowledge generation, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments, and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aiming at achieving organizational goals.

Executives that employ corporate strategy can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas and solutions for new and demanding issues that come up constantly in our hypercompetitive economic environment. In doing this, executives can employ corporate strategy through implementing coaching and mentoring practices by sharing experiences gained by imitating, observing and practicing. Executives that use corporate strategy have found that it builds a strong corporate culture through facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization.

Corporate strategy focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, coordinating expert opinions, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their products or services continuously improving. Corporate strategy, therefore, is an essential requirement of corporate culture by which knowledge is shared among people.

However, executives may lack the required corporate strategy to interact with other organizations or distrust sharing their knowledge. Executives are, therefore, clearly the right focal point for developing networking with environmental components by adopting corporate strategy to develop relationships and interactions. The key here is to inspire their organizations as a whole to develop networking with more effective enterprises through employing corporate strategy directed at connecting knowledge with other companies. Executives are finding that corporate strategy creates a shared understanding of problems which can develop an effective corporate culture that enhances the knowledge sharing process.

Through the corporate strategy, executives could build a climate inspiring followers to share their knowledge, and facilitate the knowledge sharing process. Thus, executives can apply corporate strategy to enhance knowledge sharing among human capital and stipulate knowledge to be shared around the organization and with other companies.

Global leaders can now see how they not only can directly support corporate strategy, but it can also cultivate an effective strategic decision-making process, which will enable corporate culture within organizations. Executives can also see that cultivating an effective strategic plan coupled with cultural issues requires developing leadership within organizations—not only at the higher echelons of the organization but at every level. Thus, in light of the increased pressures of the global workplace that inspires leaders to exert effective change at the organizational level, this article points out the vital importance of business leadership in reshaping an organization’s strategy to have access to higher performing culture within organizations. This article also suggests that corporate strategy and corporate culture constitute the foundation of a supportive workplace to improve business success and reduce operational risk.

Standing on the shoulders of scholars before us, I indicate that corporate strategy and corporate culture are major resources for business success and support the positive impact of these two vital factors on business success.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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Global Leaders Require Transactional Leadership Style

December 25th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Transactional leadership means just what it says. It is a quid per quo type of relationship between the follower and leader – a carrot on the stick approach. Two prominent scholars by the names of Antonio Marturano and Jonathan Gosling in the University of Rome and the University of Exeter believe that the effectiveness of this leadership style is dependent on two conditions: one being that the current differences in organizational hierarchies and structures are totally accepted by subordinates and the second being that all the employees are able to work towards a mutual exchange of benefits in which they are rewarded for achieving determined goals.

It is somewhat reactive, however, because a benefit can be held back or taken away if the follower did not achieve the determined goals. Scholars look at it as a passing fancy, a myth, or a schematic diagram that has not been tried and true. Unfortunately for scholars, this is not true. Millions of managers were trained in transactional leadership and it has advanced into an organization’s success-both from a performance and management level.

There is a plethora of leadership theories and models that attempt to consider leadership as an enabler of firm performance. There’s an increased emphasis on the important role of leaders when interacting with followers and stakeholders. Transactional leadership involves determining the tasks, rewarding goal achievement, and punishing failure in attaining goals. Transactional leadership style is a new performance paradigm evident in organizations today. Understanding this dimension from a transactional leadership and performance paradigm may provide a significant realization bridging this important field of leadership and management.

Some scholars such as James MacGregor Burns, Edwin Hollander, and Arthur Jue illustrate that transactional leadership is successful in developing mutual exchange between leaders and employees in organizations. This leadership form actually assumes impersonal interactions in a reality where leaders do not consider higher humanistic desires or relationships between leaders and followers. This form of leadership is still based on the grounded theory that does not explore a desired probable situation. While it has its limitations, it is still widely used in organizations. This leadership style is very popular among practicing managers today. Transactional leadership is linked with organizational effectiveness, particularly in terms of achieving goals. The key is for managers to use it sparingly, on occasion, when new details and tasks are assigned but not as the main type of leadership.

Another aspect of the transactional leadership style is that managers using this style are passive by exception or laissez-faire when applying leadership. Laissez-faire is characterized by managing the situation where a problem has occurred, and leaders take a reactive approach to correct mistakes or to overcome problems. This was uncovered by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton in the management grid research and still has importance in clarifying the type of transactional leader in some instances. Transactional leadership style has been critiqued by scholars as a leadership approach that is not concerned with proactively identifying or preventing problems. Transactional leaders do advocate for knowledge sharing and joint problem solving with subordinates.

Laissez-faire leaders do not possess high commitment in seeking the proposed solutions jointly with their subordinates. When such leaders assume the responsibility or intervention to solve problems, they rarely consider the empowerment of their employees to assist in problem-solving and goal setting. To overcome this obstacle, a scholar at the University of Aalborg by the name of Josef Frischer suggests that leaders today should empower followers to engage in problem-solving.

Therefore, transactional leadership can be used to review the tasks, goals, and requirements of subordinates. Leaders would begin using transactional leadership to set goals and determine tasks and then, when time allows, move toward more transformational leadership and place more emphasis to engage followers. This supports the approach for leadership to generate two sides of an X and Y-axis. On one side is the concept of leadership that creates change through taking a process-oriented (transformational leadership) and the other as more of a relationship-oriented approach (transactional leadership).

Thus, transactional leadership does affect organizational performance by achieving business goals. And four scholars by the names of Timothy Obiwuru, Andy Okwu, Victoria Akpa, and Idowu Nwankwere affirm this relationship. They shed light on the critical role of transactional leaders in enhancing non-financial performances, particularly in terms of improving organizational commitment. Transformational leadership provides a frank appellation of the importance when beginning a leader-follower relationship, downsizing, upsizing, onboarding, and making significant changes to the structure and organizational improvements, but leaders must be aware of its limitations.

Just as leaders need to be both autocratic and democratic at times they also need to be both transactional and transformational at times also. Knowing both styles and when is best to use them is an important concern here and will defunct the myth of transactional leadership as being an adequate style of leading in and of itself.

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What Every Global Leader Needs to Know About Authentic Leadership

December 24th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Leadership falls into the functions of management and is at the core of being a great manager. Without great leadership, a manager is stagnant, only concerned for the status-quo. Leadership, being the core of management, is crucial to an organization’s success from a performance and management level. Leadership is critical to business success and has relative value in organizations throughout North American and the rest of developed countries.

However, leadership, when assessed from a distance, is somewhat elusive. For instance, four scholars by the names of Francis Yammarino, Shelley Dionne, Jae Uk, and Fred Dansereau found some mismatches between theoretical concepts of leadership and empirical investigations and explained that while the theoretical concepts of leadership are extensive, empirical studies could not have sufficiently supported these theoretical concepts.

In fact, past studies about leadership lacked a multilevel approach and only focused on downward control. Not accounting for a middle-level leader who takes a two-way approach to influence both superiors and subordinates—more of liaison. Another reason was that there is no determined set of variables used to investigate effective leadership, owing to the diversity of leadership theories with different perspectives about effective leadership. A third reason relates to studies about leadership that lack a systematic approach and stem from interdisciplinary approaches. Thus, leadership has remained relatively silent on how to integrate theories, methods, and concepts from diverse disciplinary domains to provide a rich basis for understanding the true leadership theoretical and applicable concepts.

Several authors focus on different aspects of leadership models and argue that existing leadership models could have reasonably developed some ways of appraising an effective leader versus an ineffective leader. They also identified a number of variables potentially affecting the effectiveness of leadership. Unfortunately, these leadership models have been challenged by various researchers and leadership has still left executives with rudimental and anecdotal ways to lead, leaving a gap between leadership effectiveness, satisfying followers, and meeting customer needs. These leadership models have failed to disclose the nature of filling the leadership gaps between performance and success.

When looking at leadership from a new perspective, executives should understand leadership models but place more emphasis on applying what works best for them in their current work environment. Many executives wonder what academic and leadership writers are trying to explain through such models. There is not much difference, except that a theoretical framework has been tried and tested while a model may be an application that leaders can learn and teach others.

For instance, various models are presented in an attempt to portray the concept of leadership. However, there have been several shifts in the thought of leadership, and subsequently, newer approaches to leadership emerged leading up to the rise of an authentic leadership model.

Authentic leadership provides prescriptive and anecdotal applications that leaders and supervisors can grasp. It is straightforward and uses a variety of guidelines for both leaders and followers alike. A prominent scholar that is well known in the Academy of Management by the name of Bill George explain authentic leaders as those managers who “recognize their shortcomings, and work hard to overcome them. They lead with purpose, meaning, and values. They build enduring relationships with people. Others follow them because they know where they stand. They are consistent and self-disciplined. When their principles are tested, they refuse to compromise.”

However, authentic leadership has not evaded the criticism by scholars that normally are associated with leadership models and theories. For example, two scholars by the names of Jackie Ford and Nancy Harding maintain that the foundations of authentic leadership are somewhat vague, and the lack of attention to how an authentic leader can adapt to every situation and present different faces to different followers while remaining authentic. They also challenge authentic leadership in terms of its theoretical foundations and approach to adapting people to the collective. It’s argued that this leadership style fails to consider the fact that each person is full of contradictions. In addition, Rita Gardiner, an author and scholar in the area of management at the University of Western Ontario, critiques authentic leadership for the lack of a theoretical rationale by which the essential role of social and historical factors can be justified. She posits that “authentic leadership is deeply problematic because it fails to take into account how social and historical circumstances affect a person’s ability to be a leader.”

For a leader to be completely authentic, telling the truth is not always easy. Therefore, is being an authentic leader a good thing? Yes. Does it work in every situation? No. Should a leader know about it and consider being as authentic as possible when determining his or her strengths and weaknesses? Absolutely.

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Corporate Culture, Knowledge Management and Talent Management: How Are They Linked?

December 19th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

This article portrays a more detailed picture of the effects of corporate culture on knowledge management and talent management that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.

How Corporate Culture Elevates Knowledge Management?

Culture is the resource that builds upon the foundation that helps organizations prosper. Edgar Schein, one of the prominent management scholars, describes corporate culture as a “pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”

Corporate culture is, therefore, reflected in shared assumptions, symbols, beliefs, values, and norms that specify how employees understand problems and appropriately react to them.

Executives can manifest themselves as change agents who manipulate corporate culture with the aim of improving knowledge management. Organizational culture includes three dimensions of collaboration, trust, and learning. Executives can facilitate collaboration by developing relationships in organizations. Executives can contribute to the cultural aspect of trust, by considering both employee’s individual interests and the company’s essential needs. Also, executives identify the individual needs of their employees and develop a learning culture by intellectually stimulating them to generate new knowledge and share it with others. Executives can, therefore, highly manipulate a firm’s culture to conform to the needs and expectations of strategic goals and objectives.

Knowledge management is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge, and stimulate new ideas and knowledge generation, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aiming at achieving organizational goals. Executives can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas and solutions for new and demanding issues that come up constantly in our hypercompetitive economic environment. By doing this, executives can build a strong corporate culture to share experiences gained by imitating, observing, and practicing.

Executives have found that corporate culture impacts knowledge management through facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization. Corporate culture focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their product or services continuously improving. Therefore, corporate culture is an essential requirement of corporate learning by which knowledge is shared among people.

Particularly, the three cultural aspects of collaboration, trust, and learning play a critical role in enhancing the effectiveness of corporate learning. For example, collaboration provides a shared understanding of the current issues and problems among employees, which helps to generate new ideas within organizations. Trust towards their leader’s decisions is a necessary precursor to creating new knowledge. The key is for executives to inculcate a culture of trust and transparency of knowledge sharing within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously.

Moreover, the amount of time spent learning is positively related to the amount of knowledge gained, shared, and implemented. Therefore, executives can reshape, and in some cases, manipulate corporate culture to facilitate corporate learning within departmental and business units of organizations. Executives can now see how corporate culture constitutes the foundation of a supportive workplace to share and synthesize organizational knowledge and subsequently limit the gaps between success and possible failure.

How Knowledge Management Elevates Talent Management

Executives have found that knowledge management is modifying behaviors resulting in newer insight and knowledge. Changing the existing behaviors of followers generating new knowledge is a key factor in improving a firm’s competitive advantage. This is a fact but it happens through the way talented employees are managed by executives. Why is this, you may ask? Because knowledge management is a process that leads to acquiring new insights and knowledge, and potentially to correct sub-optimal or ineffective actions and behaviors that cause companies to spiral out of control.

Executives need to first support this approach for knowledge management. Talent management in organizations is the ultimate outcome of the knowledge management by which it is created and acquired by connecting with others that want to share successes and failures. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that either contribute or inhibit success. Many executives see talent management as an outcome of various factors such as knowledge management and a climate inspiring innovation and creativity within organizations. However, a more comprehensive approach needs to be introduced to put together the various aspects of potential contributions to talent management.

Knowledge management requires various processes such as knowledge acquisition, collaboration, dissemination, sharing, generation, and storage to acquire knowledge within an organization. A question remains: how can we establish the relationship between knowledge management and talent management?

Well, there are scholars that highlight the strategic role of knowledge management in enhancing the effectiveness of talent management. For example, one scholar by the name of Bayyavarapu at the University of Western Ontario suggests a learning-based approach to talent management to understand how knowledge management is related to various practices of talent management. More importantly, the effective implementation of talent management requires the sharing of best practices and experiences among employees. Knowledge management improves organizational processes by sharing knowledge that can increase both follower engagement and personal development.

Executives can, in fact, enhance knowledge management when they would like to concentrate on sharing it to empower followers in order to build a learning climate. Most importantly, knowledge is managed through “learning by doing” which is more engaging. Executives around the globe realize that they play a critical role to achieve the best learning climate and for improving knowledge management that creates learning and growing the organization. Engaging followers and getting them to participate in knowledge management activities is an important part of talent management. Thus, knowledge management positively impacts the effectiveness of talent management through facilitating knowledge sharing by all executives and employees of the organization. Shared knowledge can contribute to the development of a learning organization in which people continuously grow and develop both personally and professionally. Executives require people who are engaged and inspired to meet the demands of day-to-day operations.

For now, executives can develop conducive learning climates that foster collaboration and knowledge management in which knowledge is shared and exploited. Unshared knowledge is like lettuce in the refrigerator—if eaten and shared, everyone enjoys it, if not, it could go bad and not have any use. Executives found that shared knowledge enables companies to improve knowledge management, and that talent management is highly dependent on stimulating continuous learning within organizations. Executives play a crucial role in elevating talent management by enhancing knowledge management to empower employees to pursue organizational goals.

The following figure provides a snapshot of how executives steering corporate culture enhance knowledge management and talent management.

In Conclusion

Insufficient consideration of the impact of knowledge management on the organization’s talent management has been also exposed. Thus, I suggest that scholars take our ideas and continue to conduct research using executives as the focal point so that academic scholarship can meet the needs of managerial implications at the higher echelons of organizations worldwide.

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How Management Consultants Can Fix Knowledge Management

December 5th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

There is a scientific, philosophical, and organizational side to knowledge that executives should at least be aware of in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. Scientific knowledge is objective and manifests itself as provable and verifiable knowledge or truth, while philosophical knowledge clarifies that truth is inaccessible. The key for executives is that organizational knowledge, unlike scientific and philosophical knowledge, focuses on enhancing effective performance. Answering the questions executives often ask: “What works?”

Based on this view, this kind of knowledge empowers the capabilities of an organization, and actively improves its competitive advantage in the marketplace. Executives are already aware that organizational knowledge takes an objective approach and can positively contribute to a firm’s performance. This is why executives care whether knowledge is organizational or not? The simple answer is that if organizational knowledge is not shared and managed, companies may become obsolete, taken over, or acquired. The key is how to use this knowledge, enhance it, distribute it, and capture it.

Every executive is held to the grindstone of maximizing financial and non-financial measures—their careers are tied to company performance measures. Every executive also knows that company performance measures can illustrate whether knowledge management is contributing to bottom-line improvement. This article articulates a different approach and introduces a new perspective of knowledge management by showing how knowledge management consultants can help companies to better manage knowledge, meaning that organizational knowledge is power and can be used as an asset when competing with rivals. This is my experience of working with a team of top-level management consultants around the globe.

Consultants can look at three-step processes of knowledge accumulation, integration, and reconfiguration. This model to managing knowledge reflects a more strategic and practical perspective, as it is process-oriented and most applicable in the context of leading organizations. Consultants know that applying this model is advantageous and good sound strategic implementation. In this model, organizational knowledge is accumulated by creating new knowledge from organizational intellectual capital and acquiring knowledge from external environments. In the process of knowledge accumulation, the exchange of knowledge with external business partners can develop innovative environments.

Consultants can play a strategic role in expanding knowledge accumulation by applying incentives as mechanisms to develop a more innovative climate and managing effective tools to acquire knowledge from external sources. They can particularly develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Acquiring knowledge about new products/services within our industry.

-Benchmarking performance with competitors or industry.

-Using feedback to improve subsequent practices.

-Utilizing teams (e.g. committees or management teams) to manage knowledge resources.

-Developing and implementing education or training programs.

-Carrying out a career path program or recruitment program to acquire experts.

-Conducting organizational events (such as a “knowledge contest” or “knowledge fair”) that promote knowledge activities.

Secondly, consultants can improve knowledge integration by facilitating knowledge sharing around the organization. In fact, they can positively impact knowledge integration by creating expert groups and enhancing dynamic relationships among employees and departments and within companies. A systematic process of coordinating company-wide experts will enable companies by developing a more innovative climate within organizations. Further, it can be seen that some qualities indicating a high-performing expert group (such as trust and reciprocity) are highly overlapped with the definition of organizational effectiveness describing organizational capabilities in creating trust and reciprocity. Based on this view, it could be argued that effective coordination of company-wide experts itself can provide a significant contribution to organizational effectiveness, thereby developing a climate that all leaders aim to create. In particular, consultants can develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Monitoring or controlling organizational knowledge to keep products or services in line with market requirements.

-Regularly assessing knowledge requirements according to environmental changes.

-Linking the knowledge sharing system using various software and programs.

-Defining “core knowledge” or “core competence” areas.

-Using expert groups to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of organizational knowledge.

-Disseminating organizational knowledge among employees.

-Rewarding individuals or teams based on the quality of knowledge generated.

Thirdly, the knowledge within organizations needs to be reconfigured to meet environmental changes and new challenges. In this process, knowledge is globally shared with other organizations in the environment. Consultants can promote knowledge reconfiguration by improving networking with external sources and developing relationships. Further, they can also inspire organizational members to network with more successful companies. It is evident that networking with external business partners improves effectiveness, thereby providing directions for chief executive officers to develop a more effective corporate vision incorporating various concerns and values of external business partners.

Moreover, it is believed that networking with other companies contributes to the effectiveness of learning, which in turn empowers human resources by creating new knowledge and solutions. Accordingly, the process of knowledge reconfiguration can play a crucial role in enhancing organizational effectiveness. Especially at the corporate level, consultants can develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Creating knowledge alliances with suppliers, customers, or other partners.

-Sharing knowledge management visions and goals with external partners (such as suppliers and customers or other partners) to develop collaborative activities, shared goals, and trust-based relationships with them.

-Extending (or linking) knowledge-related policies or rules (measurement, rewards) with external partners (such as customers, suppliers, or other partners).

-Linking our knowledge-sharing system with external partners (such as customers, suppliers, or other partners).

-Facilitating and implementing activities such as conferences, contests, seminars with external partners.

In conclusion, organizational knowledge must be guarded and not shared with the competition. Any leak of such information may expose the organization and increase the operational risk. The three processes of knowledge management mentioned above, when carried out correctly, can prevent further operational risk in today’s knowledge-based economy.

One important dimension that all leaders world-wide can learn from this article is that knowledge management consultants can help clients’ companies to address the current gaps in knowledge management performance and improve their competitiveness in today’s uncertain business environment.

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Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

In The Digital Age, Leadership Is More Important Than Ever

November 27th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

There are some executives that like to look at academic journals but unfortunately, the crossover literature has not reached them enough. I attempt to blend scholarly concepts with real-world applications. For the executive’s corner, I place a great deal of emphasis on the literature of leadership and information technology as two significant indicators for financial performance. This article adds to a relatively small body of literature but pays homage to the scholarly contributions. I highlight the direct impact of leadership on financial performance, and also simultaneously portray the indirect contribution of leadership in improving organizational outcomes by implementing information technology as another important component of organizational performance. This article actually investigates the crossover potential of scholarly research and how it can be applied in the organizational boardroom.

Executives will also see that cultivating effective technological initiatives requires developing leadership within companies—not only at the higher echelons of the company but at every level. In light of the increased pressures of the global workplace that inspires executives to exert effective change at the organizational level, this article points out the vital importance of leadership in reshaping and, in some cases, manipulating a company’s internal resources to have access to higher performing technology within companies.

The focus of this article is based upon the critical role of leadership which allows a rich basis for understanding the mechanisms by which knowledge integration and financial performance are influenced. Scholars repeatedly uncovered leadership impacts on knowledge integration and financial performance. This article articulates a different approach. I simply extended the current literature by showing how executives can contribute to knowledge integration and financial performance by fostering effective technological platforms. These two factors coupled with leadership are presented as a new approach for executive implementation.

I also suggest that executives embrace leadership. Leadership influences some of the spans of control of executive responsibility. My primary focus is on one factor (i.e. information technology) but there are many more important components of the managerial function that can be enhanced when leadership is embraced. The key here is that there are positive effects of information technology, knowledge integration, and financial performance.

Executives will also see that I expand upon the subject matter of a company’s internal resources. Through articulating the impacts of leadership on information technology, I add to the current and extant literature. Insufficient consideration of the impact of leadership on the companies’ internal resources has been exposed and I attempt to address this concern for the first time. For executives, this article can portray a more detailed picture of the effects of leadership on information technology, knowledge integration, and financial performance that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.

Leadership and Information Technology

The only thing we know is technological change is on the rise. With the inception of new technology and services quickly becoming obsolete, executives are staid with managing the future that is somewhat evasive.

Executives can develop relationships and interactions within companies, set desired expectations, and inspire employees to identify further opportunities in their business environment. When executives view information technology as a vital important organizational resource that facilitates organizational communications and improves the search for knowledge, they begin to see opportunities for successful business ventures.

Executives also spend a great deal of time conceptualizing strategic endeavors, and scholars affirm that the strategic role of leadership is enhanced when the implementation of information technology successfully occurs at the right time and place. Thus, executives raise the levels of awareness on the importance of technology and empower employees to improve the effectiveness of information technology implementation within companies. Therefore, executives can positively affect information technology implementation within companies. Executives must understand that leadership can highly support information technology to improve knowledge integration and financial performance and, therefore, remain competitive.

Leadership and Financial Performance

Executives develop organizational communications aimed at providing valuable resources for all employees. Thus, executives can enhance knowledge sharing among employees and stipulate knowledge to be shared around the company. Sharing the best practices and experiences could positively impact aspects of organizational performance such as innovation and providing learning and growth opportunities for employees. Empowered employees can also enable a company to actively respond to environmental changes and collective-interests. The key idea is to identify employee’s needs and show concern for both organizational needs and employee’s interests concurrently.

When executives show concern for the employee’s individual needs, individuals begin to contribute more commitment and they become more inspired to put extra effort into their work. This extra effort improves the quality of services, customer satisfaction, and impacts the return on assets, sales, shareholder value, and improves operational risk management.

Executives can also inspire employees by setting highly desired expectations. A higher level of follower expectation can enhance productivity and perhaps decrease organizational costs. Scholars agree that executives positively affect financial performance through improving the price of stock, decreasing costs, increasing sales, improving innovation, increasing the rate of responses to environmental changes, improving the quality of services, along with a stronger customer focus and developing learning opportunities for employees. Thus, leadership is positively associated with companies’ financial performance.

Information Technology and Financial Performance

Information technology significantly contributes to company financial performance. Scholars acknowledge that information technology is an important enabler to effectively implement organizational processes. Communication technologies can, in fact, reduce paper-based transactions for companies that can potentially decrease costs and subsequently improve profitability for companies. Furthermore, it can be seen that communication technologies contribute to companies to effectively identify opportunities in the business environment that leads to identifying the best opportunities for investment in the industry that potentially leads to improve financial performance for companies in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Decision-aid technologies as another kind of information technology can also help companies to effectively create more innovative solutions for their organizational problems. Executives can, therefore, build a high-performance company through implementing information technology.

Information Technology and Knowledge Integration

Information Technology is the new competitive advantage and the companies that embrace it will survive while those that do not will find their companies facing possible acquisition. Information technology is a resource for knowledge integration. With knowledge integration, executives can sustain current operations while preparing future endeavors. Information technology, as a competitive resource, encourages employees to embark on technological facilities such as shared electronic workspaces to provide new ideas and possible solutions for solving problems. Problems that may leave a company to debunk and less competitive.

Scholars found that the lack of innovative workplaces adversely impacts the company’s capability to integrate knowledge, and they suggest that companies use information technology to successfully facilitate knowledge integration. Information technology, therefore, plays a critical role in integrating knowledge by executives and is also aligned with the knowledge-based view of the firm which not only builds upon the dissemination of information but also how it is restored and retrieved.

Some Lessons for Executives

This article theorizes that leadership has significant effects on information technology. It follows that cultivating effective impacts on information technology is assisted by developing leadership within companies. The practical contribution of this article lies in explaining how executives influence information technology.

This article suggests that information technology constitutes the foundation of a supportive framework to improve knowledge integration and financial performance. In fact, it can be argued that if information technology is not completely supportive of knowledge integration, companies cannot expect to benefit fully from knowledge management projects.

Both in theory and in practice, information technology is depicted as an important enabler for knowledge integration and financial performance. Scholars noted that a strong alignment exists between the success of knowledge management projects and information technology implementation and found that knowledge management projects are more likely to succeed when companies develop and use broader technological infrastructures. This article goes further and provides elaborative insights for executives by modeling how information technology mediates the relationship between leadership, knowledge integration, and financial performance.

This article reveals that executives actively deploy this organizational resource (i.e. information technology) to improve knowledge integration, and it is quite understandable that leaders are better suited to enable knowledge management projects within companies through channeling knowledge management efforts into employing supportive information technology. Therefore, this article suggests that it is critical that executives understand that leadership supports information technology implementation to effectively manage knowledge management projects.

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Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

Executive Leadership, Culture, Strategy: How Are They Aligned?

November 26th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Executives are faced with challenging economic conditions today with global competition increasing and the need to be number one or two in an industry or fail to keep up with the market place. This new economic environment may have a negative emotionality that can seriously reduce people’s capabilities in changing and overcoming challenging situations.

To offset the negativity associated with widening the gaps of success and failure, executives that act as leaders can manage a firm’s internal resources (corporate culture and corporate strategy) and use them as an important driving force for business success. This may be the answer executives need but may also lack the fundamental fortitude necessary to be an all-encompassing model to predict customer satisfaction, employee or follower satisfaction, and financial profitability. Executives that embrace leadership around the globe realize that they have a positive impact on corporate culture, corporate strategy, and play a critical role to achieve the best climate for implementing strategic changes that create learning and growing the organization. This effective leadership will be covered in-depth throughout the rest of the article with the main focal point being introduced here as the simple application of executive leadership.

How Can Leaders Leverage the Power of a Strategic Approach?

Leaders across the globe have found that corporate strategy is critical to business success. A corporate strategy could be the most important component of success in this ever-changing business environment of today.

Executives evaluate the success of a corporate strategy. The corporate strategy reflects the degree to which a company can expand and determine the right pathway to success. The key function of a corporate strategy is to help executives with the achievement of goals. In this context, corporate strategy is becoming the forefront of success in corporations worldwide. Success, therefore, is dependent upon how executives formulated their organization’s strategy. Thus, corporate strategy has been a focal point of the executive span of control but has not been associated with leadership enough to make it an integral part of organizational success.

One outcome of corporate strategy is to connect knowledge with other companies that want to share successes and failures. Leaders can inspire organizational members to network with more successful competitors by sharing successes to build alliances and not only enhance competition but communicate best practices as a way of keeping the highest standard of operation in the industry. In doing this, leaders implement corporate strategy to develop relationships with external environments to identify new opportunities that occur in an ever-changing hypercompetitive marketplace. Leaders, in fact, implement corporate strategy to expand the growth opportunities available to organizations that may be challenging but important to close the gap between success and failure. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that contribute success. Therefore, leadership is pertinent to corporate strategy implementation and an organization’s success.

Does Corporate Strategy Really Build Corporate Culture?

Executives focus on individuals as the major source of knowledge. This shows how followers tie together so that they can impact the sharing, storage, transfer, and application of knowledge within organizations. Executives, therefore, see these connections, and the related shared knowledge and memory, as central to the effectiveness of corporate culture. Executives know that corporate strategy through sharing individual knowledge around the organization can positively contribute to building a strong corporate culture. Therefore, executives should build an atmosphere of trust and openness and use corporate strategy to convert individual knowledge into valuable resources. This will allow their organization to close the performance gap and help it prosper. The key is for executives to inculcate corporate culture within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously. Corporate culture enables organizations to promote the depth and range of knowledge access within companies.

Corporate culture is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge, stimulate new ideas, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments, and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aimed at achieving organizational goals. Executives that employ corporate strategy can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas for new and demanding issues that come up in our hypercompetitive economic environment. In doing this, executives can employ corporate strategy through implementing coaching and mentoring practices by sharing experiences gained by imitating, observing, and practicing.

Executives that use corporate strategy have found that it builds a strong corporate culture by facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization. Corporate strategy focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, coordinating expert opinions, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their products or services continuously improving. Corporate strategy, therefore, is an essential requirement of corporate culture by which knowledge is shared among people.

However, executives may lack the required corporate strategy to interact with other organizations or distrust sharing their knowledge. Executives are, therefore, clearly the right focal point for developing networking with environmental components by adopting a corporate strategy to develop relationships and interactions. The key here is to inspire their organizations as a whole to develop networking with more effective enterprises through employing corporate strategy directed at connecting knowledge with other companies. Executives are finding that corporate strategy creates a shared understanding of problems which can develop an effective corporate culture that enhances the knowledge sharing process.

Through the corporate strategy, executives can build a climate inspiring followers to share their knowledge, and facilitate the knowledge sharing process. Thus, executives can apply corporate strategy to enhance knowledge sharing among human capital and stipulate knowledge to be shared around the organization and with other companies. The following figure provides a snapshot of how leadership, corporate strategy, and corporate culture are linked in companies.

In Conclusion

Executives can now see how leadership not only directly supports corporate strategy but can also cultivate an effective strategic decision-making process, enabling corporate culture within organizations. Leadership has a significant effect on an organization’s internal resources. Executives can also see that cultivating an effective strategic plan coupled with cultural issues requires developing leadership within organizations—not only at the higher echelons of the organization but at every level. Thus, in light of the increased pressures of the global workplace that inspires leaders to exert effective change at the organizational level, this article points out the vital importance of leadership in reshaping an organization’s internal resources to have access to more effective strategic initiatives and higher performing culture within organizations.

This article also suggests that both internal resources of corporate strategy and corporate culture constitute the foundation of a supportive workplace to improve business success and reduce operational risk. Standing on the shoulders of scholars before us, I indicate that corporate strategy and corporate culture are major internal resources for business success and support the positive impact of these two vital factors on business success.

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Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

Strategy Consulting Needs To Change. Here’s How.

November 25th, 2020 Mostafa Sayyadi Leave a comment

Strategy is a competitive advantage and the organizations that embrace it will survive, while those that do not will find their organizations facing possible acquisition. A firm’s strategy primarily develops plans to restructure unclear and vague situations to enhance competitive advantage. This article is set in place to inspire consultants to effectively develop and implement a corporate strategy to meet the challenges of today’s business world. It adds to a relatively small body of literature and develops our understanding of the direct contribution of management consulting in formulating and executing strategy in organizations.

This article also offers practical contributions for consultants from a broad-based, industry-wide concentration. It highlights the potential of the application of management consulting through illuminating how consultants can contribute to the company’s strategy development and execution. Scholars may also find that this article contributes to research on an organization’s internal resources, through articulating the impact of management consulting on corporate strategy.

The 4 Pillars of Corporate Strategy

Consultants can take a look at six aspects of strategic formulation based upon a prominent scholar by the name of Venkat Venkatraman:

-analysis,

-pro-activeness,

-defensiveness,

-futurity,

-riskiness, and;

-aggressiveness

Consultants are aware that a few scholars, such as Francois Bergeron, Louis Raymond, and Suzanne Rivard, found that two strategic dimensions—-aggressiveness and riskiness, were separate and did not fall under the same strategic dimension as the other four. These scholars concluded that strategy mainly encompasses four aspects: analysis, pro-activeness, defensiveness, and futurity. Thus, riskiness and aggressiveness, or what I would prefer to call assertiveness, fall under the operational risk category and must be managed but also monitored due to fluctuations in the dynamic economic environment of today.

So how can you as a consultant use these four dimensions? Venkat Venkatraman provides a blueprint to follow:

-Analysis refers to the degree to which the roots of problems are analyzed to provide the best solutions, which ultimately results in a more efficient allocation of resources to solve problems and also achieve organizational goals.

-Pro-activeness is defined as the extent to which a firm continuously searches for emerging opportunities in its business environment, and then actively participates in these opportunities by responding to changing trends.

-Defensiveness, which recommends undertaking defensive behaviors that manifest themselves in enhancing efficiency and in cutting costs while maintaining continuous budget-analysis and break-even points.

-Futurity is reflected in the degree to which the strategic decision-making process takes a two-way approach—-an emphasis on both long-term effectiveness and shorter-term efficiency concurrently.

Consultants need to know how they can help in managerial decision making and planning and executing strategy. To help consultants narrow the gaps, this next section provides a formalized application that can be implemented by consultants when implementing corporate strategy in companies.

Leveraging the Power of a Strategic Approach in Companies

When consultants analyze strategy, they aim to create more knowledge and find the best solution using a problematic search of various options. The type of strategy stimulates organizations to apply information systems in their decision-making processes in order to investigate various alternatives and options. It is also important for consultants to provide a high degree of freedom for employees to explore their own new ideas and solutions to organizational opportunities while solving problems. They can analyze strategic milestones to meet the goals of the employee’s intellectual stimulation and personal development. This provides new and more innovative solutions for organizational problems as they arise. Furthermore, consultants can inculcate human capital into social capital to exert change at the organizational level. To develop this strategy, consultants can particularly contribute to the development of a workplace in which there is/are:

1. Emphasis on effective coordination among different functional areas.

2. Extensive use of information systems to support decision making.

3. Comprehensive analysis undertaken when confronted with an important decision.

4. Use of planning techniques.

5. Effective deployment of management information and control systems.

6. Use of manpower planning and performance appraisal of senior managers.

Consultants can also develop a futurity strategy to implement a series of basic research aimed at developing a more comprehensive vision for the future by incorporating upcoming trends in the business environment. They use futurity to expand the growth opportunities available to organizations that may be challenging but important to close the gap between success and failure. To create a futurity strategy, consultants can contribute to the development of a workplace in which there is/are:

1. Specific criteria used for resource allocation which generally reflect short-term considerations.

2. Emphasis on basic research to provide us with a competitive edge for the future.

3. Key indicators of operations forecasted.

4. Formal tracking of significant and general trends.

5. Regular analyses of critical issues.

Furthermore, consultants can develop relationships and interactions to provide valuable resources for the organization as a whole. They must also take an offensive approach at times and in this case, they employ a defensive strategy. A defensive strategy utilizes modifications in order to efficiently and effectively use organizational resources, decrease costs, and control operational risk. To foster this strategy, consultants can particularly contribute to the development of a workplace in which there is/are:

1. Regular modifications to the manufacturing/service technology.

2. Use cost control systems for monitoring performance.

3. Use of current management techniques to ensure that we move smoothly at the required level.

4. Emphasis on product/service quality through the use of work improvement teams.

Pro-activeness is a strategy element used by consultants who take a proactive approach to search for better positions in the business environment. In this case, consultants can inspire employees to find better opportunities and solutions to problems. Thus, consultants positively contribute to pro-activeness strategy by setting highly desired expectations and providing a suitable situation for employees to identify new opportunities. To cultivate a pro-activeness strategy, consultants can contribute to the development of a workplace in which there is/are:

1. Constant search for new opportunities.

2. Attempt to introduce new brands or products in the market.

3. Constant search for businesses that can be acquired.

4. More effective expansion of capacities when compared to our competitors.

5. Strategic elimination of those operations that are no longer profitable in later stages of life cycles.

In Conclusion

This article raises vital questions as to how consultants can successfully develop and implement a corporate strategy in companies. Therefore, I suggest that consultants can positively affect the company’s strategy formulation and execution. This managerial implementation improves both competitive advantages and enhances the time and efficiency of task significance leading to satisfied followers who take better care of stakeholders. This finding indicates that consultants can build a suitable workplace for better implementing corporate strategy through facilitating the four strategic aspects of analysis, pro-activeness, defensiveness, and futurity. Consultants can now see how they can cultivate an effective corporate strategy, which will enable superior performance for companies.

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References Used

Bergeron, F., Raymond, L., & Rivard, S. (2004). Ideal patterns of strategic alignment and business performance. Information & management, vol. 41, no. 8, pp. 1003-1020.

Venkatraman, N. (1989). Strategic orientation of business enterprises: the construct, dimensionality, and measurement. Management Science, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 942-962.

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