Clarkston Blog

In my previous blog post, The Heart of Talent Management: Skills, we made the case that an understanding of the importance of skills is at the heart of talent management. When we know what skills we need, and what skills we have as an organization, then we can properly manage the talent requirements of our organization. Let’s now take that concept and broaden it out just a bit. ... Read More»

I recently had the honor of moderating an informative panel discussion for the Research Triangle Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). In an engaging discussion with Dr. Victor Dzau, Bob Ingram, and Stephen Wiehe, we were able to shed light on the issues boards face in balancing what management communicates and what the board needs to know to ensure ... Read More»

In my previous blog, Welcome to the Real World,  I stressed the importance of planning for the world of real time analytics and real time decision making. Today, I would like to drill deeper into this topic in light of a couple of recent announcements from SAP.  This week is SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE NOW + ASUG conference, and these new solutions are all the talk. SAP Business Suite ... Read More»

I am excited to introduce one of my Clarkston colleagues, Nicole Prince, to the blog today. Nicole and I have been working on the pursuit to articulate the benefits of Integrated Reporting, and I have asked her to share why she is interested in seeing companies create an Integrated Report. Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines, is famous for saying, “I want one version of the ... Read More»

Major retail players know that if they want to win in the marketplace, they must provide a seamless and consistent experience to the consumer as they move from channel to channel.  But what about the manufacturers?  What role do they play in meeting the demands of the consumer? Over the past few years, the omni-channel discussions have been focused on retailer challenges - IT ... Read More»

As mentioned in our initial post, The Dimensions of Doing Good, companies are more frequently concentrating efforts on People-Planet-Profit principles.  This post addresses the perception that “big is bad” when it comes to sustainability and provides an alternative point of view on how we think about big (billion dollar) companies. It can be difficult to separate “progressive ... Read More»

This is the fourth post in my blog series on the evolution of the CMO industry. Today, I would like to focus on the opportunity to differentiate through customer service, and how this can make a meaningful impact to not only your customer satisfaction, but also your bottom line. What is the age-old adage? If what you sell is the same, than what you do had better be different.Nothing ... Read More»

I’m a huge fan of developing the discipline of Talent Management. I’m not talking about a squishy, feel-good, platitude that never develops into real action. I’m describing a careful and disciplined approach to strategically managing the talent needs of an organization. Given my interest in the topic, it's natural that I’m excited to be helping a life sciences client launch a ... Read More»

Last week, Clarkston hosted our most recent Consumer Products Executive Exchange Dinner in New York City, the 16th gathering of this group of Business and IT industry leaders.  As always, the forum allowed for a great mix of relationship building and sharing of leading practices across various companies. For this particular dinner, we introduced a theme from our 2013 CP Trends ... Read More»

In my last blog, Piloting Serialization for the Real World, I highlighted that many organizations implementing serialization are very focused on the technical solution and often do not consider real world business scenarios that prepare them to move into production.  Certainly this myopic focus creates process challenges, but it also causes organizations to overlook one of the most ... Read More»