Versatile Amphibian

A quick post today to provide a look at the different average sizes of ExCo by industrial sector across the S&P 500. I don't know if there's anything massively surprising in the findings - businesses that tend to operate in a matrix and those that tend to have very high and complex R&D needs have larger executive teams. In any case, perhaps it'll be useful for you to see how your business compares to the average. In the second chart I look at the number of employees by ExCo member to see it there is any relationship across the sectors. There isn't, but I'll be repeating the analysis within the industries as the analysis progresses.

In order to help me understand how executive teams are configured, I’ve chosen to classify the nature of the different jobs into a number of categories. I imagine that as my analysis proceeds these will change somewhat, To keep things simple I will leave this page as the master set of definitions so that I/ you can refer back to it and keep tabs on changes. At the bottom of the post you can find a working list of roles by category. Types of executive team role: Strategic Roles , the purpose of which is to define the direction of the organisation beyond the current trading year (and ideally 10 years out - more on that another time) and to construct new structures and capabilities that will enable that direction to be achieved Revenue Creation Roles , the purpose of which is to deliver revenue in the current year Platform Operation Roles , the purpose of which is to enable value to be created from revenue by operating the processes that fulfil demand or enable it to be generat...

As promised in my update on the research I'm doing on executive team roles and configurations , here is the first deep dive into an industry. I've chosen to start with Retail for a couple of reasons. First - selfishly - I have some ongoing cases that can make use of the data. Second, retail is a nice, simple business to understand. True, many companies make it complex to manage and understand, but relative to many other sectors retail is very easy. You buy products (some or all of which you may have designed), you move them into a market in which there is demand and then you sell them for more than you bought them for. Sure, there are many twists on this ('total lifetime value', as an excuse for discounting, for example), but fundamentally, you buy, you ship, you sell for more than your costs. You would think that with such a well understood model that there would be a consistent 'best' configuration for both leadership and the organisation that those people l...

Back in February I embarked on a new research project, looking at the configuration of executive teams today and how they might change in the future . Working in London, my first thought was to use the FTSE 100 as a data set. Although it generated some interesting results and a lot of conversation (thanks to the many of you who sent me thoughts, involved me in conversations on the topic and so on), the FTSE 100 proved a slightly frustrating set of companies to research. There were two reasons for this. First, 100 companies represents too small a set to give good coverage on all industries, particularly when the natural slant in the FTSE 100 towards areas such as resources and financial services is taken into account. Second, it turns out that UK listed companies are actually relatively untransparent. Fully a quarter of the UK's largest PLCs publish no information on their management team, their biographies and their roles. Although I was able to fill in some of the gaps through ...

Yesterday’s news cycle brought with it the announcement that Debenhams, a staple of the UK high street, was now in the control of its lenders . This kind of news is sad for the employees of Debenhams and certainly for its shareholders, but it is also a good opportunity for reflection. A business that can trace its history back to 1778 may be about to cease trading forever. For leaders in the retail and associated consumer industries, now is a good time to consider what lessons can be learnt from Debenhams and what could be done to seize the opportunity presented by its passing. I’m thinking about the topic of strategic responses to emerging events at the moment because of the seeming inevitability of a recession this year or next, which will doubtless bring with it many similar situations. Before I get started, a disclaimer. I have no inside knowledge of Debenhams, I have never consulted for them, pitched to them or even met anyone in their management team. This post uses Debenham...

I'm on a bit of a journey right now, the objective of which is to systematise my process for devising strategic concepts to suit all of the situations my clients find them in. To that end, I'm going to share one of the ideas in the book : that we can classify concepts using a matrix of purpose/ intent against nature of response. Like so: Purpose (or intent) is the principal axis of this matrix because it articulates the sentiment behind the organisation’s goals Defensive purpose is most common in that it represents a defence of the oligarchy in order to continue to extract increasing profits from falling utility Offensive purpose is more attractive but also riskier because it represents the taking of value from other sources in the economy through acquisition or aggressive entry into other geographic markets In both purposes one can choose to be orthodox (as stated in the above examples) or unorthodox; for example: To defend by extending ubiquity and thus...

I recently made this graphic for a presentation and thought it was worth sharing as a reminder that for all of the talk of 'exponential technologies' and innovation, most 'digital' businesses are actually quite simple. Leaders are under pressure to do crazy digital things, particularly with respect to technology, and yet I would contend that getting to the best in class technology and operating (organisational etc...) infrastructure for the business model you are currently working with or striving for would be a better basis for lasting growth. Boring as it sounds, that means ERP, WMS systems if you're pre-digital; CRM, CMS at al if you're 1st Wave; event streaming and simulation if you're 2nd Wave... and if you're 3rd Wave you don't need my advice! The other observation I have about this picture is that every wave comes with a deeper, but also leaner and more productive operational stack that benefits it in competition with the previous wave. ...

I find myself consistently interested by the idea that for all the overt recent progress that we’ve experienced we are in fact in a lull, waiting for the next big thing to emerge. That’s made me think about the way in which the digital computing era has evolved over the last fifty years. This post sets out some thinking about how monopolies have formed and been broken in the Digital Economy to date as a precursor to further posts on future strategies and business models. Four great computing platforms The first Intel Microprocessor – the 4004 – was revealed to the world in November 1971. Although at the time few predicted its impact, the 4004 was the Big Bang event that launched the fifth great techno-economic revolution: the era of digital computing. Before the 4004 and the vast range of other microprocessors that followed it, computing power came at far too great a cost and complexity to be readily useful for the majority of everyday use cases. As we approach the fiftieth annive...

When I published my first post on the current and future structure of Executive Leadership Teams (ExCos) I promised that I was in the process of extending the data set to encompass the S&P 500 as well as the FTSE 100. As you can imagine, this is a mammoth undertaking given that my time is restricted to evenings (when not looking after my son), weekends (ditto), the commute and snatched sidebar conversations with colleagues. Nonetheless I am making some progress in my analysis... my data gathering for all companies beginning with 'A' on the S&P 500 are now complete. Rather than wait for all letters to be completed, I thought I'd throw out a few findings and see what you all think of them. So, in no particular order: I was able to look at 63  organisations, although 3 of them declined to publish details of their leadership structure and I was unable to get the information from within my network. One of these, incidentally, is Alphabet... In ...