Organizational transformation

In 1970, Citibank’s services rated poorly when compared with other banks’. In response, management ordered an overhaul of the services area and brought in managers with experience in manufacturing environments to make the services more efficient. That program succeeded in ensuring new processing efficiency and management control; yet it did not go far enough in […]

Many degrees don’t teach students the skills they’ll need in the future.

They keep things fresh and fair.

Lessons from the Special Forces and Blockbuster.

Nowhere in a company is the need for coordination more acute than between the people who are responsible for product design and those responsible for manufacturing. As Daniel E. Whitney argued in these pages recently (“Manufacturing by Design,” July–August 1988), most companies have operated for years in an environment where design and manufacturing communicate infrequently, […]

What do IBM, Texas Instruments, Owens Corning, and Duke Power have in common? They’re all redesigning their organizations around their core processes—and reaping enormous benefits as a result.

It’s time to clean up the antiquated, functionally isolated, and customer-disconnected ways of doing work.

Looking to make your organization more responsive and efficient? You needn’t break down the walls between your units. Instead, manage your information so that every customer sees a united front.

Like manufacturers, service organizations find operational economies of scale in investments in fixed facilities, inventories, and transportation. It’s generally advantageous to centralize these operations, as in the following cases. Some repair facilities cut costs by limiting the number of spare parts and field service locations, or at least by limiting the stocking locations for low-demand […]

Digital talent platforms have matured, and many companies are using them to hire skilled gig workers. Now they need to get strategic about it.

A closer look at four distinct ways to drive transformation.

In 1978, before restructuring was a common boardroom term, Jewel sold its Turn-Style discount department store business to the May Department Store Company. Because May could not immediately use many of the Turn-Style stores outside metropolitan Chicago, Jewel closed them. This meant that almost 3,000 full-and part-time employees were no longer needed. We in Jewel’s […]

In the fall of 2012 the author decided he needed to do some soul searching. The start-up he'd founded six years earlier had grown into a global company...

Dynamic Manufacturing: Creating the Learning Organization, Robert H. Hayes, Steven C. Wheelwright, and Kim B. Clark (New York: Free Press, 1988) 429 pages, $24.95. American Business: A Two-Minute Warning, C. Jackson Grayson, Jr. and Carla O’Dell (New York: Free Press, 1988) 368 pages, $24.95. In the fall of 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor rushed into print […]

In many countries, diversified business groups substitute for the institutions that support effective markets in capital, labor, and goods and services. Their capacity for doing this must be strengthened through restructuring, not destroyed through dismantling.

The Dayton Hudson Corporation is known for its profitable growth as a diversified retailing company, for its merchandising strategy, for its objective to be premier in every facet of its business, and for its detailed attention to issues of management and governance. Its former chairman describes here the role of a strong board in making […]

There is such a thing as an organization that’s too responsive.

Criticism of the increasing number and complex collection of mergers, tender offers, leveraged buy outs, and proxy offerings has come from consumers, government, and business. The general negative reaction focuses on the amount of money involved and the complex managerial maneuvering among industrial giants. In the view of some financial economists, however, corporate takeovers are […]

Here are some DIY experiments to try.

Companies have been doing this since the 1920s.