Only the right people are strategic assets of the firm

Strategy and Leadership

Volumn 37, Issue 6, 2009, Pages 33-38

  Crain, David W ^a  

^a PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Balanced scorecard; Corporate strategy; Human resource management; Learning; Recruitment

Indexed keywords

EID: 72049107868     PISSN: 10878572     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/10878570911001471     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Author's interviews with Starbucks workers.
2. Peter F. Drucker was the first to note that one segment of the employee population, "knowledge workers," were no longer cost centers. See his Post-Capitalist Society, Harper Business, 1993 and The Essential Drucker, Harper Collins, 2001.
3. Michael Porter introduced the concept of activity maps in Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Free Press, 1985. The visual presentation of activity maps can be found in Porter's later article, "What is strategy," Harvard Business Review, November-December 1996. There are no arrows on activity maps because cause-and-effect relationships are fluid and often reversed.
4. Harvard Business School Case #9-794-024, "Walmart Stores, Inc.," August 6, 1996, provides a thorough review of Walmart's business practices up to its international (horizontal) expansion, while Harvard Business School Case #9-799-118, "Walmart in 1999," August 30, 1999, describes international expansion fueled by aggressive use of technology. The reader is also referred to the PBS program, "Is Walmart good for America?" WGBH Educational Foundation (2004), for insights into Walmart's supply-chain activities.
5. Margins are Walmart 5-year averages. Put another way, 2 percent of Walmart's 2008 revenue would be a not "insignificant" $8 billion in losses due to breakage and theft. The 2 percent shrink is a long-standing figure for retail. In 2007, the national retail average had fallen to 1.6 percent, likely due to Walmart's vigilance. See the National Retail Federation report dated June 11, 2007
6. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, The Strategy-focused Organization, Harvard Business School Press, 2001.
7. At Fluor Corporation (1999) a strategic goal involving weighted average cost of capital became embedded in management-training classes throughout the corporation: How is WACC calculated? Why is it important to company performance? And, what can employees do to meet WACC goals?
8. For a discussion linking critical success factors to strategic goals, seeStanley C. Abraham, Strategic Planning: A Practical Guide for Competitive Success, Thomson South-Western, 2006.
9. See, for example, Harvard Business School Case #9-801-354, "JetBlue Airways: Starting from Scratch," October 29, 2001, which describes the foundation and beginnings of JetBlue.
10. JetBlue, JetBlue Airways: Starting from Scratch
11. "Some companies rethink the telecommuting trend," The Wall Street Journal,February 28, 2008.
12. JetBlue's stated values have been unswerving in its annual filings from the beginning. This statement is from JetBlue's 2008 Annual Report, February 13, 2009.
13. James C. Collins, Good to Great, Harper Business, 2001. Collins' dictum often has been mistaken for selection and retention policy. But the emphasis is not on people's experience or even their skills and knowledge. Rather, employees' innate capabilities matter most - in short, do they share the firm's values and can they be trained?
14. Walmart's view is a reflection of the old adage, "Strategy is 90 percent implementation," attributable to a 1989 interview with Scandinavian Airlines' CEO Jan Carlzo.
15. Peter F. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, Harper Business, 1993.