Microsoft Executive Leadership

The relentless pursuit of industrial efficiency no longer yields the profits it once did because it requires a level of business predictability that no longer exists. Instead, the Internet and global video and telecom systems provide a massive and continuous flow of data that causes the whole world to behave like a giant stock market, with all the volatility and uncertainty that goes along with such markets. Responsiveness now trumps efficiency. By being responsive to the evolving needs and desires of specific groups of customers, companies can wrap their products and services in a tailored blanket of value-added services to consistently earn an additional four percent or more gross margin than they would otherwise earn for the product or service alone. This customer and market specialization is the most promising and the most sustainable source of profits in our fluid, real-time economy. Part of the Microsoft Executive Leadership Series, Business Agility discusses the three fundamental process loops that drive an agile enterprise and how they work together to deliver the responsiveness that generates profits in a high-change economy. Providing strategies for innovative and pragmatic use of people, process, and technology to drive operations in an agile enterprise, this book reveals the principles of the agile enterprise, backed by real-world case studies from the author's own experience. Michael Hugos is a speaker, writer, and practitioner in IT and business agility, and agile system development methods. He writes a column for Computerworld and a blog titled "Doing Business in Real Time" for CIO magazine.

LEADING THE VIRTUAL WORKFORCE World markets are unsteady, unemployment is on the rise, housing foreclosures are up, asset values are down, and the political landscape is shifting. Under such tumultuous conditions, people often look to leaders to soothe battered nerves. But in today's rough and tumble environment, there are reportedly few leaders the average person relies upon. Over 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in the midst of a major leadership crisis. And over 75 percent of executives from around the world are seriously concerned about whether businesses can develop good leaders for the future. And yet not one leadership book squarely addresses the issue of the changed workforce, the virtual workforce, and why old leadership models just don't work, until now. Leading the Virtual Workforce builds off the groundbreaking concept of Virtual Distance introduced in Sobel Lojeski's seminal first book, Uniting the Virtual Workforce. And in never-before-published interviews, leaders from IBM, Merck, Western Union, Alcatel-Lucent, HP, AT&T, and more share detailed case studies about what's different about leadership today and how to become a great leader in the Digital Age. “Leading the Virtual Workforce” covers: • The most common myths about leadership for today's virtual workforce • Why old leadership models need to be reshaped for a new era • What great leaders do differently to thrive in the globally connected enterprise • A new leadership model custom-built for today's workforce realities • Advice from the greats for those looking to advance their leadership and management effectiveness for the virtual workforce The virtual workforce is a relatively new phenomenon. “The Virtual Distance Model” provides the quantitative data and predictive power needed to understand how new behaviors, born out of the Digital Age, impact performance, innovation, and other critical success factors. And now the time has come to reshape leadership models to best serve worldwide organizations in the twenty-first century. Leading the Virtual Workforce does just that, paving the way for future leaders to create unmatched competitive advantage and performance improvements in the growing world of virtual work.

This groundbreaking guide provides a deep understanding of how to achieve enterprise performance management objectives, backed up by first-hand accounts from Fortune 500 companies who are winning by building accountability, intelligence, and informed decision-making into their organizational DNA. Drive Business Performance explains the competitive advantage experienced by organizations that create and manage a "Culture of Performance."

Lead change through strategic alignment of project and process performance Practical and filled with expert advice, Strategic Project Portfolio Management: Enabling a Productive Organization presents a clear framework for your organization to complete impactful strategic projects. Providing executive-level guidance to build a powerful and efficient process from initial adoption to portfolio alignment, this essential resource contains case studies from small to global multinational organizations, arming you with the insights to ensure your strategic projects are given the resources they need to deliver business impact. This important guide • Shows executives how to align their projects and processes with their business strategy for compelling competitive advantage • Provides cases from best in class organizations, showing how they were able to achieve results by using processes outlined in the book • Reveals how technology is the key to developing new collaborative platforms and innovative work management environments that have not been possible until now • Defines a framework for assessing project portfolio management competence within your organization and driving momentum for compelling improvements • Explores how to go beyond project portfolio management to a holistic work management system Strategic Project Portfolio Management: Enabling a Productive Organization offers the practical recommendations, guidance, and real world insights you need to immediately begin driving better project management strategy.

Listening to the Future: Why It's Everybody's Business explores the challenges and opportunities facing organizations, the transformations that will ripple through the political, economic, and social environments, and the implications for different industries in the 21st century workplace. Written by Microsoft forecasters Daniel W. Rasmus and Rob Salkowitz, this important book equips your business to get out in front of new technology innovations in the consumer world with the knowledge, practices, and tools to differentiate your business in our competitive, fast-moving global economy.

Remain competitive by offering more accessible, affordable, and relevant information technologies that meet mass-market needs Technology at the Margins demonstrates that by making IT more accessible, affordable, and relevant, new mass markets can be opened. Based on solid insights generated in key areas of health, education, finance and the environment, the book offers practical recommendations and insights from world leaders, innovators, practitioners and new users of emergent technologies. • Offers recommendations on how companies can ensure their own competitiveness by offering more accessible, affordable, and relevant information technologies to support mass market needs • Suggests practical recommendations and insights from world leaders, innovators, practitioners and new users of emergent technologies • Challenges businesses to rethink their uses of existing technologies Technology at the Margins will be of interest to decision makers in the private, public and nonprofit sectors who are interested in opportunities offered by IT in meeting the needs of those at the base of the world’s economic pyramid.

An effective framework for strengthening competitiveness by learning from past deals and applying insights derived from them. Every sales opportunity, whether won or lost, has useful nuggets of information that can be harvested and used to improve performance. When those pieces of information are aggregated, analyzed and made available for all to use, the organization's competitive position is greatly enhanced. • Reveals how to turn field sales teams, a mostly underutilized resource, into net producers of competitive intelligence • Exposes new and unconventional approaches for gathering and democratizing sales insights for a broad stakeholder audience • Presents a proven knowledge sharing model that is being adopted by major companies worldwide Win/Loss Reviews shows how every company can improve top and bottom line performance by systematically capturing the key insights from deals that have been won, lost or delayed. While the book talks to decision makers and business strategists, the principles and disciplines explored are aimed at bridging the flow of competitive intelligence between sales and marketing, simultaneously providing insights and line-of-site to the dynamics affecting business performance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: False Assumptions Chapter 2: "Value" Is the New "Profit" Chapter 3: Customers Are a Scarce Resource Chapter 4: In the Long Term, the Good Guys Really Do Win Chapter 5: Increasing the Value of Your Business Chapter 6: Culture Rules Chapter 7: Capitalism Redux: Greed Is Good, but Trust Is Even Better Chapter 8: Customers and Honeybees Chapter 9: Oops! Mistakes Happen: Recovering Lost Trust Chapter 10: Innovate or Die Chapter 11: Order and Chaos Chapter 12: The Wisdom of Dissent Chapter 13: Engaged and Enabled Chapter 14: Leaders Needed. Inquire Within Notes References Index