Can business do well by doing good - A Guide To Sustainability: Accenture Outlook:

October 2010 Today, there probably isn’t a company anywhere in the world that does not at least acknowledge the importance of sustainability—of doing business in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Indeed, for many companies, sustainability is now as much of a strategic priority as such traditional business concerns as technology, talent and customers. The commitment to sustainability has weathered the storm of the downturn well; in some cases, it has even been strengthened by it. Meanwhile, an emerging body of research suggests that sustainable business practices correlate closely with high performance. On an operational level, however, sustainability is not yet seamlessly woven into the fabric of business. Executives still must make, almost daily, difficult trade-offs between practices that meet short-term business needs and those that will contribute to sustaining the needs of future generations.

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7 Ways to help your employees understand and become involved in your company strategy - The Globe and Mail, Toronto

If your strategy is sensible but isn't working, it's because you have failed in implementation. Toronto-based consultant Morry Patoka, of iQuest Inc., says there are seven choke points to strategy implementation that we unfortunately create ourselves before we even reach the implementation stage. On his blog, CreateTheConditions.com, he notes if the strategy isn't being effectively implemented, it's likely because of one these problems:

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Adopt a Cow: Strategy as Improvisational Theater By Harvard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter is more like A Load of Bull...t!!

The article Adopt a Cow: Strategy as Improvisational Theater recently penned by Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter from Harvard Business School is a perfect example of why business schools and their academics are being questioned as to their relevancy to the real world of business. Professor Kanter is neither a business entrepreneur, although she gets paid well for public speaking about her writing on business, nor is she a person of the theatre, more like a theatre critic, someone who is not practised in the theatre but instead is practised writing about it.

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How to turn data into a strategic asset - a creative view: Accentures

Chances are, there are data gold mines buried among your company's most basic operations that could help you outperform the competition. Take Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company. A thorough examination of seven years' worth of ticket sales data allowed the RSC to sell more to existing customers and identify new audiences. Using analytics to look at names, addresses, performances attended and prices paid for tickets, the company developed a marketing program that increased the number of regular attendees at its showcase Stratford-upon-Avon location by more than 70 percent.

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How Intelligent Forecasting Can Lead to Better Decision Making - strategy + business

Peter Drucker once commented that “trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.” Though we agree with Drucker that forecasting is hard, managers are constantly asked to predict the future — be it to project future product sales, anticipate company profits, or plan for investment returns. Good forecasts hold the key to good plans. Simply complaining about the difficulty does not help.

Nonetheless, few forecasters receive any formal training, or even expert apprenticeship. Too many companies treat the forecasting process like a carnival game of guessing someone’s weight. And given the frequency of sandbagged (deliberately underestimated) sales forecasts and managed earnings, we even wonder how often the scale is rigged. This lack of attention to the quality of forecasting is a shame, because an effective vehicle for looking ahead can make all the difference in the success of a long-term investment or strategic decision.

Competence in forecasting does not mean being able to predict the future with certainty

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