Insight from Hugh Courtney and Cristian Dezso
Featured by McKinsey & Company
Smith School faculty are doing more than leading the way with their research,
they are also making an impact on corporate best practices. Case in point --
business intelligence and quotes from Smith faculty were recently highlighted in
publications from McKinsey & Company, a leading source of business management
consulting services and insight.
As
the U.S. economy is officially recognized as being in the midst of recession the
importance of being able to make strategic decisions under high uncertainty
becomes even more critical to success. McKinsey & Company got up close and
personal with Associate Dean of Executive Programs
Hugh Courtney during a
December 2008 Q&A where he outlines his trademark strategies for dealing with
uncertainty as presented in his book "20/20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an
Uncertain World."
Among Courtney's advice is to see the opportunity that is the flip side of
the unknown: "So we ought to pay attention to this wake-up call. Embrace
uncertainty. Get to know it. In uncertainty lies great opportunity. If you don’t
try to understand what’s separating the known from the unknown from the
unknowable, you’re really missing out. You’re just playing roulette with big
money—usually other people’s money. It behooves us to take uncertainty seriously
and to fundamentally rethink the way we do strategic thinking and planning."
New
research from Cristian Dezso,
assistant professor of logistics, business and public policy, finds that firms
benefit when they add women to their senior management teams -- this is despite
the fact fewer than a third of the leading 1,500 companies in the United States
had a single woman among their top executives in 2006. In "A Business Case for
Women, " published by McKinsey in September 2008, findings and quotes from
Dezso's working paper, "Girl Power: Female Participation in Top Management and
Firm Performance," help make the point that a more proportionate number of
female executives brings value to the corporate bottom line.
Angela Toda, Office of
Marketing Communications
