Fearless change

HR, marketing and strategic innovation all need to be reconsidered. Is your company considering all the options?

Experience the Message

Today’s consumer is exposed to more than 4,000 marketing messages every day. Trying to capture and keep an audience in such an environment seems an impossible task. To do so requires fresh thinking, and often a completely new approach.

In Experience the Message, author Max Lenderman explores what he calls the Experiential Marketing (XM) revolution and how it is proving effective for many companies. XM markets brands the way people make friends: by using word-of-mouth and common interests to get the message out. XM tries to hit an emotional or intellectual chord in each individual consumer by thinking of brands from the consumer’s perspective.

As much as one could say traditional advertising is really attempting to do the same thing, Lenderman offers a number of case studies that explain how XM does it better. Through discussions of the latest trends — product placements, blogs, flash mobs, causal marketing, etc. — he demonstrates just how broad the XM landscape is, and how much more creative companies are going to have to be to grab elusive market share.

By Max Lenderman. Published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd. For more information visit www.mcclelland.com.

10 Rules for Strategic Innovators

Tackling a rising trend, Tuck School professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble have added to a growing lexicon about how to succeed at innovation. The focus in 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution is how established companies can beat startups at the innovation game by building new businesses within the  organization.

When companies that have been shaped for excellence in an old business build a new one with different rules for success, it requires a near-impossible balancing act, but it may be a necessity for growth. Examples include General Motors, which launched the cutting edge OnStar in-vehicle communication system; Procter & Gamble, currently reaching out to the coveted teen market with word-of-mouth marketing service Tremor; and the Walt Disney Company, which recently introduced MovieBeam to break into the lucrative in-home video rental market. This new book explains how these in-house innovations have been managed.

Among the in-depth stories in the book are Corning’s behind-the-scenes entry into the high-risk biotechnology industry, Hasbro’s aggressive pursuit of interactive video games and the hurdles it faced in getting there, the contentious rise of New York Times Digital, and the costly entry of Analog Devices into the market for a new kind of semiconductor chip.

The book’s strong message is that large, established companies don’t have to be the underdog when it comes to innovation.

By Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. Published by Harvard Business School Press. For more information visit www.hbsp.harvard.edu.

Forced Ranking

The procedure known as forced ranking has received a fair amount of negative attention in the past few years. It involves assessing employee performance relative to peers rather than against predetermined goals. It’s a performance management tool that, when used correctly, has increased productivity, profitability, and shareholder value at many companies. Unfortunately, some firms have misunderstood what forced ranking is, or have implemented it poorly — resulting in confusion and controversy. It has been referred to as the “rank and yank” process, suggesting that employees ranked low on a general scale are automatically turfed from the company.

In Forced Ranking: Making Performance Management Work, the author dispels common misperceptions about forced ranking and offers a clear-headed argument for why it should be a necessary part of any robust performance appraisal system. Research, case studies, and the author’s own consulting experience helps to create a practical framework for developing a forced-ranking system that is fair and effective. The book discusses establishing appropriate guidelines, accurately categorizing employees, managing A, B, and C talent differently, along with many other related issues. The book focuses on giving employees honest performance feedback, and developing the right talent to make an organization successful.

By Dick Grote. Published by Harvard Business School Press. For more information visit www.hbsp.harvard.edu.

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