by Bruce | January 3, 2006 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Improve on your weaknesses or build on your strengths: Which one would you focus on to achieve greater success? If, like 59% of people surveyed by Marcus Buckingham, co-author of First, Break All the Rules, you chose "work on your weaknesses,"...
by Bruce | December 30, 2005 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
Is the merger wave going as strong in the UK as it is here? And if so, should we blame it on the Yanks? In a new survey of 85 of the 125 largest firms in the UK, four out of five of the managing partners or executive directors responding reported that they had...
by Bruce | December 30, 2005 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
At the intersection of strategic decision-making and human shortcoming is behavioral economics, which teaches that a host of biases, such as overoptimism about the likelihood of success, the "principal-agent problem," and undue loss aversion, combine to form...
by Bruce | December 28, 2005 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy, Technology strategy
Forgive me for an extensive quote, but it sets the stage for all that’s to follow here. From the redoubtable McKinsey: "In today’s developed economies, the significant nuances in employment concern interactions: the searching, monitoring, and...
by Bruce | December 23, 2005 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
I have posited before that the traditional one-size-fits-all associate-to-partner model is coming under increasing stress. Evidently Allen & Overy agrees. After suffering 25% attrition in its associate ranks last year, they have announced after a lengthy...
by Bruce | December 20, 2005 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Normally, the issue in succession planning—when a firm even goes through such planning in a sober and serious-minded fashion—is who among the next generation is best prepared and equipped, through both experience and innate constitution, to take over the...