More from the Author

• Article | Chief Executive | March 18, 2020

  How Honest Conversations Can Accelerate Corporate Transformation

  Michael Beer

  When CEOs engage a cross section of their key people in an honest conversation about organizational strengths and barriers to the execution of strategic changes required by the changing competitive landscape, transformations are accelerated. The honest conversation provides a valuable wide-angle lens for examining and changing the company’s system of organizing, managing, and leading. This article describes how an honest conversation led by Becton Dickinson’s CEO Vince Forlenza improved the company’s capability to innovate rapidly and simultaneously increased trust and commitment to change.

  Keywords: honesty; Communication; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation; Organizational Culture;

  Citation:

  Beer, Michael. "How Honest Conversations Can Accelerate Corporate Transformation." Chief Executive (March 18, 2020).  View Details

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• Article | ChangeThis (blog) | January 22, 2020

  Making Honest Conversations the Norm

  Michael Beer

  Much admired companies like Boeing and Wells Fargo sacrifice their competitive advantage. Some make huge ethical blunders. As a result, shareholders suffer huge losses in value while employees, customers, and society lose trust and confidence in the institution. Based on action research that investigated the effectiveness and content of honest conversations that were facilitated by the author, a method and principles were developed by which senior management can lead honest conversations. These conversations revealed six barriers that consistently undermine effectiveness.

  Keywords: honesty; Interpersonal Communication; Framework; Organizational Culture; Trust; Performance Effectiveness;

  Citation:

  Beer, Michael. "Making Honest Conversations the Norm." ChangeThis (blog) (January 22, 2020).  View Details

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• Book | 2020

  Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company's Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy

  Michael Beer

  Is Silence Killing Your Strategy?
  In his thirty years of working in corporations, Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer has witnessed firsthand how organizational silence derails strategic objectives. When employees can't speak truth to power, senior leaders don't hear what they need to hear about their company's fitness to compete, and employees lose trust in those leaders and become less committed to change.
  In Fit to Compete, Beer presents an antidote to silence—principles and a time-tested innovative process for holding honest conversations with everyone in your organization. Used by over 800 organizations across the globe, the strategic fitness process has helped leaders in a diverse range of industries—including medical technology, information technology, banking, restaurant chains, and pharmaceuticals—hear the raw but necessary truth about the sources of misalignment between their strategies and their organizations.
  In addition to step-by-step instructions, Beer offers detailed and illustrative case studies of companies that have conducted honest conversations to great effect. He also shows how to apply the process more broadly to a variety of strategic challenges and at multiple levels throughout the organization. Practical, enlightening, and comprehensive, Fit to Compete is the book you should turn to if you want to create winning strategies that your entire company will rally behind.

  Keywords: honesty; Communication; Organizational Culture; Trust; Strategy; Performance Effectiveness;

  Citation:

  Beer, Michael. Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company's Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.  View Details

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