Speaker(s):   Bruce Chew (Monitor)
Title:                  The Geometry of Competition: Moving Managers to Action

Abstract

This discussion will focus on insights I have gained working with managers since leaving HBS to join Monitor Group. I will also share some of the tools, frameworks, and applications based on these new insights that I have developed with Monitor Group colleagues over the past few years.  This body of work goes under the name Geometry of Competition, but as you will see its focus is not on strategy in the classical sense, but rather on building a clear “line of sight” to guide managers’ choices and actions concerning capabilities, configuration, assets, business systems, and so on.

I joined Monitor Group with the task of bringing new HBS ideas to bear on client problems (to facilitate this effort I co-founded the Activities, Processes, and Systems group). I soon learned that there is a world of difference between “what you need to know to understand a phenomenon” and “what you need to communicate to move a manager to action.”

In this discussion I will demonstrate the power of a more integrated, granular, nuanced, and clearly defined approach that frames problems and their solutions in a (for lack of a better term) “manager-centric” fashion. Some of the examples I will draw from include: manufacturing network architecture redesign, understanding the root causes of cost problems, plant metrics, and chronic performance shortfalls.