StrategyDriven

The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L. Friedman

About the Reference

The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman examines the social, political, and technological forces that are bringing the peoples of our world closer together. Within its pages, Mr. Friedman illustrates how the flattening of the world is creating an increasingly interconnected business environment where businesses large and small as well as knowledge workers from the United States to India will compete in the global marketplace.

Benefits of Using this Reference

Globalization of the marketplace presents new opportunities and new challenges to businesses of all sizes and people of all countries. As the speed of communication and transportation increases, so does the ability of a company or a person to deliver products and services anywhere in the world. With billions of highly educated and motivated people entering the marketplace from India and China, competition is increasing exponentially.

While many of us sensed the flattening of the world, The World Is Flat expertly illustrates what and how these forces are shaping our environment. StrategyDriven contributors believe executives and managers armed with this insight will be better able to take advantage of existing flat world opportunities and envision and leverage future changes; enabling their organizations to remain competitive in the ever flattening world.

Popularity: 30% [?]

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An integral part of the learning organization’s evaluation and control program, the self assessment program provides in-depth evaluations of particular organizational functions or characteristics for the purpose of identifying improvement opportunities.  Self assessments are powerful tools deriving their heightened value from the synthesis of information from multiple sources; creating a rich, integrated picture of organizational performance as compared to established standards and marketplace benchmarks.  This integrated picture of performance also benefits from the progressive infusion of knowledge and experience applied to the initial interpretation of data used to develop the assessment’s source information.

Self assessment programs are comprised of periodically scheduled and event driven assessments.  Because self assessments are not performed on a continual basis, they are inappropriate for the monitoring of rapidly changing conditions.  Circumstances for which periodic and event driven self assessments are performed can be described as:

• Periodic: often recurring on an annual basis, these evaluations focus on those critical organizational functions and characteristics which present significant risk, must be performed with precision, or require continuous improvement to maintain marketplace competitiveness
• Event Driven: initiated based on environmental or performance trends, these self assessments are used to enhance limiting or deficient practices to drive performance improvement

As illustrated by the Information Development Model, self assessments belong to the third tier of performance data refinement.  Performance reports at this level benefit from human intelligence added to supporting data during:  initial data synthesis, basic trend identification and analysis, multi-trend synthesis, and basic model application.  It is the infusion of human knowledge and experience at these points that makes self assessments broadly integrated and highly insightful.

An organization’s self assessment program plays a key role in identifying the performance improvement opportunities that will propel an organization to the next level of performance.  Posts in this category are dedicated to discussing the leading practices of companies successfully executing a self assessment program in support of strategic business planning and tactical business execution.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Long awaited companion to StrategyDriven’s best practices and warning flags, the StrategyDriven Podcast will make its debut on Tuesday, November 27!

Hosted by Nathan Ives and Howard Dickens, this free podcast series focuses on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve better results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag postings on the StrategyDriven website; offering rich examples and additional insights.

We believe the StrategyDriven Podcast series offers tremendous value for executives and managers at all levels of the organization. This series will be available for download to your favorite mp3 service, such as iTunes, Yahoo! Podcasts, PodcastAlley, and BluBrry, or can be listened to directly from the StrategyDriven website. Why not schedule time today to subscribe to the StrategyDriven Podcast on Tuesday, November 27?!

Popularity: 31% [?]

StrategyDriven contributors are pleased to introduce the strategic planning whitepaper: Analysis. This whitepaper outlines and describes the major steps taken to assess the organization’s internal performance and external environment in support of long range activity planning.

Strategic analysis is a critical component of the strategic planning process. An integral part of a company’s evaluation and control program, it provides executives and managers with a comprehensive assessment of the organization’s capabilities and market factors; revealing growth opportunities and vulnerabilities. Armed with this information, managers can more effectively chose from among today’s strategic alternatives to create the greatest future reward potential.

StrategyDriven whitepapers are available to Registered Members and registration is FREE! If you have not already done so, please click here to register and join the conversation.

Popularity: 50% [?]