Border busting

Growth strategies for international success

Designed to Win

Globalization has, and will continue, to change the way we do business. Not everyone successfully navigates international growth — the cultural differences, international regulations, the complexity of international supply chains. That is why the stories of those who do manage this well are so remarkable.

Designed to Win: Strategies for building a thriving global business was written by two global business advisors to explain exactly what makes such companies so special. They use extensive case studies and interviews with executives at BMW, Caterpillar, Intel, Matsushita, Toyota, and other international heavyweights, to explain global business best practices.

Topics discussed include continuous value creation through outsourcing and advanced business process management; cross-functional knowledge collaboration; corporate identity and brand management; and global change.

By Hiroaki Yoshihara and Mary Pat McCarthy. Published by McGraw-Hill. For more information visit www.books.mcgraw-hill.com.

Building Better Boards

Boards of directors across North America are changing with the times, forging new working relationships at the top of the corporation. Changes made now will affect shareholders, employees and corporate leaders for some time to come.

Building Better Boards offers a blueprint for helping CEOs and boards create real value by striking the right balance between contention and collaboration. It encourages team performance at the board level, to improve the quality of management’s decisions without interfering with management’s prerogatives.

Board transformation relies heavily on creating the right culture, one in which board members learn to work together and maximize the variety of skills and experience they bring to the table. This book offers seven core principles that form the blueprint for effective governance and the foundation upon which great boards can be built. These include:

1. Stepping back, from time to time, to take an honest, systematic look at the board’s own performance.

2. Every board and CEO should understand clearly which responsibilities are the board’s and which are the CEO’s .

3. Every board should understand the difference between the board’s current makeup and its ideal composition - and use every opportunity to close the gap.

4. Every board should step up to director performance issues.

5. Every board should formally designate a leader of its independent directors.

6. Every board should design work processes to enhance their ability to raise important concerns.

7. Every board should foster and maintain a culture of openness, independence, broad participation and constructive dissent.

Edited by David A. Nadler, Beverly A. Behan, and Mark B. Nadler. Published by Jossey-Bass. For more information visit www.josseybass.com.

Multisourcing

The importance of outsourcing for establishing a competitive advantage seems to be a byword in business today. But is it always the best course of action? Many executives seem to pursue it almost compulsively, putting everything in the outsourcing ring without carefully considering the strategic value of such a move.

Multisourcing: Moving beyond outsourcing to achieve growth and agility attempts to return some reason to this fray. According to this book, research shows that 50% of outsourcing contracts signed during the past three years will fail to meet expectations. The authors of Multisourcing encourage a new approach that involves seamlessly blending internally and externally delivered services, governing the process closely, and continuously evaluating sourcing arrangements for effectiveness and efficiency.

The authors stress the need to look beyond the quick-fix cost-cutting concept of outsourcing to a more strategically astute approach to sourcing in general.

By Linda Cohen and Allie Young. Published by Harvard Business School Press. For more information visit www.HBSPress.org.

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