Nota di Pao: Trovo ironico il fatto che in Italia la TNT abbia aderito* al Progetto10×10 di Quattroruote con il quale ci si impegna a ridurre del 10% le emissioni di CO2 dei veicoli e poi in Inghilterra sia inserita nella lista dei più cattivi in assoluto.

* Vedi > http://www.quattroruote.it/eco10×10/azienda_tnt.cfm

°°°

Rimandati a settembre, o forse addirittura bocciati. Questa dovrebbe essere la sorte scolastica di molte aziende inglesi, che dimostrano un atteggiamento ancora troppo poco collaborativo nelle proprie politiche ecologiche.

Secondo una ricerca britannica (promossa da Marketing magazine e Brand Republic, con la collaborazione di ENDS Carbon e l’Università di Edimburgo) dal titolo Brand Emissions che ha coinvolto 600 marchi, molti hanno ancora politiche ambientali lacunose e non pubblicano nemmeno i dati riguardanti le emissioni di gas serra. Ma non c’è limite al peggio e c’è chi addirittura, in tempi di allarme climatico, è riuscito ad aumentare le proprie emissioni di CO2.

Gli insufficienti, a vari livelli, sono circa i due terzi dei marchi più noti che sono molto lontani dall’obiettivo governativo del 2020 di ridurre le emissioni del 20 per cento rispetto al 1990.

Tra i più attenti all’ambiente troviamo Tesco, T-Mobile, Dell, BMW, Eurotunnel, Accenture, Standard Chartered, Ericsson, KPMG, AMD, mentre tra coloro che dimenticano di pubblicare le informazioni ci sono Google, McKinsey e Amazon.

Per ben 320 delle aziende osservate, tra cui Porsche, Harvey Nichols e McDonald’s, non è stato registrato alcun proposito di ridurre le proprie emissioni inquinanti. Inoltre 122 brand, tra cui Barclays, Sky e eBay, sono riusciti addirittura ad aumentare i propri gas serra nel corso del 2008.

Infine ci sono i più cattivi in assoluto, tra cui Acer, Juniper Networks, Billabong International, Finnair, Premier Inn, Costa, Gossard, Aegon, Unisys, TNT, ovvero quelli che sono riusciti nel duplice obiettivo di innalzare le emissioni di anidride carbonica e di non avere alcun proposito di cambiare.

Fonte: www.corriere.it

A report released on November 23 by McKinsey and Co., commissioned by the World Bank and several water-dependent companies, offers an ambivalent prognosis regarding the water crisis.  South Africa, China, India, and Brazil are utilized as case studies in the report.  These four nations are projected to account for 40% of the world’s population, 30% of global GDP and 42% of water demand in 2030.

At present, the global demand for water exceeds supply.  Roughly 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.  Although this water gap is growing at an increasing rate, the report identifies cost-effective, sustainable solutions to help close the gap.  Such solutions require that governments and businesses alike focus their efforts on reducing demand rather than attempting to increase supply.  The real challenge, however, is overcoming the notion that water is a human right.  On the contrary, water is a scarce resource which must be priced in a way that promotes conservation.

Water problems are just as complex as energy.  Water issues are arguably more significant than energy as far as prospects for sustainable development are concerned.  But water problems are local by nature, and thus they lack the same global media attention as energy.

One central issue is agricultural productivity–what is known in the industry as more crop per drop.  Biotech crops are being developed around the world.  Drought-resistant strains of wheat, corn and other crops will help water-constrained and water-rich nations alike.  Higher crop yields in water-rich nations will allow excess output to be sold to water-constrained nations.  Moreover, drought-resistant crops may mean the difference between a smaller yield and outright famine to nations in the developing world.  Agriculture currently accounts for 70% of global water use.  Biotech crops may certainly play a meaningful role in closing the water gap.  But their proliferation will require that governments and environmental groups be convinced that genetic engineering creates more good than harm.

Pricing is another potential tool that can be utilized to close the water gap.  In South Africa, for example, residents are given a monthly allocation of  subsidized water to meet their presumed needs for drinking, cooking, bathing, and santitation.  There is a premium charged for usage beyond that point.  But South Africa faces a variety of challenges that make pricing alone an ineffective tool.  Centers of water demand are often far removed from additional supply, and the need for developing costly inter-basin transfer schemes arises.  Unexpectedly high economic growth, which leads to increasing per capita demand for water, presents a potential threat in South Africa.  In addition, climate change is expected to affect water availability in the entirety of southern Africa.  South Africa plans to double its power-generation capacity by 2025 through a combination of coal, gas, hydro, wind and nuclear power plants.  The McKinsey report suggests that dry-cooling technology will be used to cool such facilities.  This technology uses 90% less water than traditional means.  However, it is much  less efficient in cooling and creates higher carbon emissions.

Ashby Monk

In October, David Murray, in his role as Chair of the IFSWF, noted that front running had become a real problem for SWFs:

“Because we are generally large institutional investors, there is the whole community of investment banks, brokers, analysts and others who want to front-run our investments in the market.”

As it turns out, Murray was right to be worried. In a recent high-profile insider trading bust in the Bay Area, it was shown that one individual used inside information to front run two SWFs.

According to SF Gate’s Andrew Ross, Anil Kumar, who is a senior partner at McKinsey in Palo Alto, was arrested for allegedly sharing inside information about pending transactions involving Sunnyvale’s Advanced Micro Devices and two Abu Dhabi SWFs. Based on the information, Raj Rajaratnam made some trades in AMD options.

This illustrates that SWFs, like all large investors, are targets for this type of opportunistic behavior. However, despite Murray’s suggestions in October, I still don’t see transparency as the culprit here; insider trading is the problem. These guys (allegedly) broke the law, and they will pay the price. (It’s also interesting to note that they didn’t even profit from the front running.) So, in my view, this is not an excuse to scale back disclosure at SWFs; it’s a reason to continue cracking down on the abuse of insider information.

On a separate point, McKinsey has some damage control to do here (which it has already started with the removal of Kumar). My experience is that trust and discretion are absolutely critical in forging and maintaining relationships with SWFs. In the short-term, this leak may affect McKinsey’s ability to work with SWFs (either through their clients or as clients of their own).

A great piece in the new McKinsey Quarterly by Charles Roxburgh about the value of scenario planning prompts me to share our own version of scenario planning we call “issues mapping.”  Whereas Charles uses certain criteria he calls pre-determined outcomes to frame scenarios, we frame our process using four forces: economics, demographics, technology change and culture change.  We map these four forces against the entire value chain of an organization to identify reputation risks and opportunities that arise as these four forces interact over time.  What this process does is it throws into sharp relief how an organization that fails to adapt can go from being a reputation leader to a reputation laggard or be exposed to a crisis that could have been predicted.  Charles offers an example of a pre-determined outcome as used by Shell Oil, a pioneer in scenario planning: “Rainfall in the mountains means flooding in the plains.”  A simple example of our issues mapping process is what happens when a smaller than average 18-34 year old age cohort interacts with a strong economy: front line customer service quality declines because more qualified workers can find better jobs in a strong economy.  The answer — investment in training and supervision.  These are certainly times for companies and organization to take the time to think through the unthinkable.  Issues mapping isn’t a bad way to do it, when reputation is at risk.

Bangalore (IANS) In a clear sign that the impact of the slowdown is behind, multinationals flocked to Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B) to offer placements to the entire batch of 348 first year students of the two-year post-graduate programme in management.

 ’For the first time, niche consulting firms such as Wolff Olins and Global E-Procure came calling to recruit our students for internships in 2010 summer,’ IIM-B director Pankaj Chandra told IANS Thursday.

 The annual exercise lasted for five days (Nov 6-10), with 180 students snapped up on the first day (slot zero), the largest across all state-run B-schools in the country. Of the 59 women in the batch, 18 were placed in slot zero.

 Similarly, for the first time, the US-based global asset management and financial services firm Blackstone Group recruited a summer intern from the prestigious B-school for its Real Estate PE (private equity) London desk.

 Global investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Citi and Standard Chartered recruited the highest number of interns.

 Goldman Sachs, which made 13 offers, selected one student for its SSG (special situations group) division.

 About 150 firms, including 74 new companies, made a beeline to offer internships in diverse verticals such as pharma, real estate, venture capital, hedge funds and niche consulting joining regular recruiters.

 ’The mood is certainly upbeat this year, as evident from the return of investment banks, consulting and marketing firms in good numbers,’ Chandra said.

 International hedge funds like Cowell and Lee and Sabre Capital, coming for the first time, offered intern positions across geographies to students.

 Among consulting firms were McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Booz, AT Kearney, Arthur D Little, Deloitte, KPMG and Alvarez and Marsal.

 Bain and Co was the single largest recruiter among the consulting firms, inducting five students in its fold.

 Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan were among the multinationals that made summer offers.

 ’Of the total, 64 students opted to intern for international firms overseas,’ IIM-B placement chairperson P.D. Jose said.

 International offers continued on the second day (slot one), with global firms such as Lotus Forex, UAE Exchange, Bank Muscat, Bates Pan Gulf making offers for diverse profiles, he added.

 ’The number of global recruiters at our B-schools bears a strong testimony to its maturing global reputation,’ Jose added.

 Indo Asian News Service

In a rare & welcome show of regulatory backbone, the Florida Public Service Commission pushed back on proposed energy-saving goals for Florida utilities.

The commissioners characterized the proposal, drafted by their own staff, as a giveaway to power producers, who have long advocated weak (or non-existent) goals.

“When you have incentives, the goals need to be robust,” said Commissioner Nathan Skop, “not less than what the utilities proposed in some instances.”

Under the staff’s proposal, utilities would essentially get more money for doing little more than the status quo when it comes to helping their customers save energy.

The Commission’s decision to reject that arrangement was in line with the editorial pages of at least 5 Florida newspapers, which have generally agreed that it is time for Florida to join the rest of the country (beyond the Southeast, that is) in seriously promoting energy efficiency as a resource alternative to new nuclear, coal or gas power plants — not just a educational sideline to the utilities’ usual efforts to build stuff and raise rates.

The staff now has until December 1st to come back with a new proposal.

The staff’s argument in siding with the utilities was essentially that focusing on energy efficiency programs would cost money, which would necessarily raise rates, which is unacceptable in the current economic climate.

What the staff apparently fails to recognize is that utilities are already attempting to raise rates to build huge new power plants. These plants cost three to four times more than an equal amount of power saved through energy efficiency programs. So both building power plants and energy efficiency programs can raise rates. The question is why the more expensive option would be preferable?

But it doesn’t end there. Unlike power plants, which just generate power and actually compel utilities to sell you more of it than you need, efficiency programs actually save energy. Meaning that the more your utility works to help you save, the lower your power bill, the more money you keep in your pocket –  even if  rates go up a bit in the process.

I don’t know about you, but I am more interested in what my bill says I have to pay than my rates. Seems like lowering bills is exactly what the staff of the Public Service Commission should be promoting in these strapped economic times.

So why aren’t they?  Thankfully, Florida’s PSC asked that question.

Om de cultuur binnen je bedrijf te analyseren kun je natuurlijk gaan voor de prima ESH-methode van Mc Kinsey. Echter is het nooit verkeerd om eens verder te kijken, en wat andere testen te proberen! En laat eentje daarvan nou OCAI zijn.

OCAI staat voor Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument. De test staat erom bekend dat ze binnen 17 minuten in te vullen is, en het resultaat direct zichtbaar is. In de vragenlijst moeten respondenten telkens 100 punten verdelen over uitspraken die met de vier cultuurtypen overeenkomen. Dit doen ze zowel voor de huidige situatie als voor de gewenste situatie in de toekomst. Respondenten beoordelen zes factoren van een organisatie:

1. de dominante kenmerken van de organisatie: de ‘uitstraling’
2. de stijl van leidinggeven
3. het personeelsmanagement
4. het ‘bindmiddel’
5. de strategische accenten
6. de succescriteria.

Deze respondenten kunnen iedereen zijn. Om geen ongelijkheid te creëren, en een zo eerlijk mogelijk beeld te verkrijgen van de cultuur van je organisatie, is het echter wel verstandig ervoor te zorgen dat de test door alle ‘lagen’ van je bedrijf wordt ingevuld. Door deze individuele scores te middelen ontstaat een cultuurprofiel van je organisatie of team. Hieruit blijkt:

• De dominante werkcultuur
• Het verschil tussen de huidige en gewenste cultuur
• Hoe sterk de dominante cultuur is
• Hoe ‘congruent’ deze cultuur is op de zes factoren
• Of er verschillen zijn tussen leidinggevenden en medewerkers of tussen afdelingen
• Een vergelijking met andere organisaties in uw branche (indien beschikbaar)
• De ontwikkelingsfase van uw organisatie.

Mijns inziens een hele goede methode om vooral snel een beeld te krijgen van de cultuur die heerst binnen een organisatie. Wanneer je er ook nog voor zorgt dat deze test wordt ingevuld door zoveel mogelijk verschillende werknemers met verschillende functies binnen je organisatie, ontstaat er een heel duidelijk en eerlijk beeld van de heersende én de gewenste cultuur.

Interesse gewekt en graag deze test zelf eens doen? Kijk op http://www.ocai-online.nl/ocai/ en post hier je resultaat;-)

McKinsey has published an article on a better way to cut costs. This is an area I’ve been helping companies and non-profit organizations with for well over 2 years now and it continues to surprise me how many organizations are willing to use the knife without much thought behind where to cut and why. This article picks up on that theme.

According to a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey, 79 percent of all companies have cut costs in response to the global economic crisis—but only 53 percent of executives think that doing so has helped their companies weather it. Yet organizations continue to cut. Cost reductions often go wrong, we believe, and our experience suggests that they can be done in a better way.

In an example of how badly things can go wrong, McKinsey offers a story.

An international energy company that needed to save money fast started by simply defining the amount of savings it needed and then required each department to cut costs by a similar amount, primarily through head count reductions, which varied from 17 to 22 percent. The reality, however, was that the company needed to invest more in certain technological areas that were changing quickly, as well as in operations, where performance was far below industry benchmarks. What’s more, the HR and IT departments substantially duplicated certain activities because different layers in the organization were doing similar things. Much deeper cuts could therefore be made in these functions, with little strategic risk. But the company cut costs across the board, and just six months later, technology and operations were lobbying hard to bring in new staff to take on an “uncontrollable workload,” while substantial duplication remained in HR and IT.

McKinsey has published a paper on how to survive a merger and combine sales forces. By involving employees and customers in the integration process, it is possible to retain critical staff, generate momentum with key accounts, and increase customer satisfaction. If you are in the process of approaching an integration, can you risk loosing these key elements by doing a botched job?

We have identified four steps essential to facilitating the successful integration of sales operations. At the top of the list: understanding the importance of sharing information about the integration process with customers and the sales force. Many companies take the opposite approach and are surprised when postmerger revenue fails to meet expectations. In addition, the combined sales team must quickly win prominent accounts to build momentum and generate internal confidence in the merger. The executives running the integration effort must also recognize that, as important as sales reps are, essential support people must be identified and retained. Finally, senior managers should review the merged portfolio of customers and make tough calls about those that are worth new investments and those that might be shed or given less attention.

This post is dedicated to all those MBA students recruiting for consulting. The first difference among consulting firms you realize when you are recruiting is their terminology. I would like to bring some light to this.

MBAs apply to the row underlined.

Feng Shui Consultant (www.spi-visual.co.uk)

McKinseys have published an interesting article on the tricky subject of valuing collaborations. The bottom line:

Furthering collaboration excellence demands mind-sets and capabilities that are unfamiliar and sometimes even counterintuitive to many business managers. It requires trusting your collaboration workers to arrive at creative solutions rather than enforcing top-down policies.

Una sorprendente, per il sottoscritto, intervista di Vittorio Terzi (responsabile di McKinsey in Italia e nel Mediterraneo) a cura di Andrea Di Biase ed apparsa su Milano Finanza il 24 ottobre scorso torna sul tema, più che mai d’attualità, della diversità di atteggiamento delle grandi banche nei confronti delle imprese. L’intervistato, in particolare, mostra fin dalle prime battute di avere a cuore una sola idea di vicinanza alle imprese, quella per cui le banche migliori sarebbero quelle che finanzierebbero anche chi non possiede nessun merito di credito.

Le affermazioni di Terzi sono sorprendenti perché l’equivoco, se di equivoco si tratta e non di forzatura polemica, non dovrebbe sfiorare un personaggio di questo calibro. La vicinanza alle imprese, quella a cui si richiamano le banche locali o banche di prossimità -ovvero, in Italia, le Bcc- è vicinanza al territorio nel senso migliore della parola, non sostegno assistenziale. Lo dimostra la storia delle Bcc italiane, caratterizzata da sempre da un modestissimo livello di sofferenze rispetto al resto del sistema. Ed è questo che, soprattutto in questo momento, servirebbe alle Pmi italiane.

L’intervista, tuttavia, prosegue con altre affermazioni quanto meno discutibili: “Le grandi banche come le piccole sono presenti sul territorio, ma con una differenza. Che mentre entrambe hanno la vicinanza al cliente-impresa, le grandi banche hanno qualcosa in più delle piccole: hanno i mezzi da investire, come hanno fatto, in competenze e capacità che permettono loro di assumere in modo più corretto i rischi di credito”. E ancora: “Chi sostiene che le grandi banche facciano erogazione di credito guardando solo ai modelli di rating, dice una cosa errata.” La prima affermazione andrebbe rettificata: gli investimenti sono stati effettuati, ma non in competenze e capacità, bensì in modelli automatici così perfetti da permettere l’erogazione solo a clienti del tutto privi di profili di rischio. A breve un post con le linee-guida di un grande istituto di credito, proprio a partire dalle logiche di Basilea 2. La seconda è stata smentita, icto oculi, presente cioè il sottoscritto, qualche giorno fa, nel corso di un incontro con alcuni istituti bancari, per i quali un altissimo dirigente ha testualmente affermato:“Quello che esce dal modello per noi non è modificabile”.

Nessuno contesta all’impresa-banca il dovere, prima ancora che il diritto, di fare utili. Ma che non si possa neppure mettere in discussione un modello di intermediazione oggettivamente lontano dalla realtà, pare una posizione francamente indifendibile. Tanto più che, nella stessa intervista, si afferma che “le banche dovranno imparare a fare un mestiere nuovo, comprendendo a fondo i rischi delle imprese anche nel medio termine.” Ma non ne sono, le grandi, già capaci?

I would like to share with you this interview by McKinsey Quarterly to Paul Polman (Unilever CEO’s), especially regarding his views on leadership because I agree on the main point: We’re all leaders, and you don’t need to be a manager to behave as one. I will write more carefully my ideas on this topic later, for now, please hear how a mayor CEO talk about Gandhi’s leadership.

McKinsey interview here (sorry, they don’t allowed me to embedded it)

The other paper this week from McKinsey takes a closer look at how to use the economic crisis as an opportunity to create better boards. Essentially, economic condition justified self-assessment of a board can make huge gains towards improving an organization’s performance. We are working with a few boards at the moment who need a cleansing like this and the use of a mirror is the first step to understanding what’s currently going wrong and working well.

Today, boards are probably underreacting to the stresses—and opportunities—of economic turmoil. Directors themselves seem to agree: a McKinsey survey conducted in conjunction with an article published earlier this year1 showed that only half of the 186 directors responding thought their boards had met the demands of the crisis. Just 30 percent reported that a wider range of information was now presented at board meetings or that conversations were more frank than usual (exhibit). Even among directors who believed that their boards had responded effectively, overall, to the crisis, only 19 percent felt that those boards had really addressed the problems of talent management—meaning not only the composition of the board but also its role in hiring and remunerating senior executives.

Gespenster der Vergangenheit.

Oder wie es ein Insider sagt, den die Zeit zitiert:

Mit van Gemmeren könne der Bank »wieder ein Risiko vor die Füße fallen

Ganz unwahrscheinlich ist das nicht. Schließlich war MvG (HSH-Sprech) ja die letzten Jahre immer Bereichsleiter für das Risikocontrolling. Als solcher möglicherweise auch in die eine oder andere brisante Entscheidung tiefer eingebunden. Und wenn er es nicht war, so spricht das auch nicht für ihn.

Leadership theories are fascinating.  Here’s the latest from McKinsey researchers.  It’s a refreshing take on contemporary leadership, distilled into 5 key elements:

1) Meaning – coming from your authentic core to lead with creativity and purpose

2) Framing – view situations clearly to avoid downward spirals

3) Connecting – gathering a like-minded tribe

4) Engaging - taking risks, displaying ownership and being adaptive

5) Managing energy – learning to manage energy reserves and tap into flow

What appears to set this framework apart from its predecessors is its significant person- and change-centric approach.  Effective leadership begins with a deep self-understanding, and then radiating that out to the team and the community at large.  This leads to a more joyful, fulfilling and successful life.

Finding meaning, connecting, engaging managing your energy and having a positive framework are the drivers that McKinsey found in a survey on woman leadership and what later called Centered Leadership.

Heavily influenced by the positive psychology, Centered Leadership emphasizes the role of positive emotions to excel as a leader and have a fulfilled life. Reed more here.