Robert H. Miles

Authority on Corporate Transformation and Renewal

BIG IDEAS

• Yes You Can: Corporate Change You Can Believe In
  In every company’s life there comes a time to shift course abruptly. Most efforts fail. Whether it’s a new leader's "taking charge," launching a new phase in the organization, integrating a new acquisition, or executing a new strategy, change is hard. And dramatic change—transformation—is hardest. Launching and leading a successful corporate transformation needs affirmative, committed leadership and a rapid pace.
  
  Bob Miles has been the principal process architect in over 30 successful corporate transformations. In this talk, he reveals the key inhibitors that become embedded in all organizations, each of which can derail an attempt by a leader to launch the next major phase in a business or organization. He explores the biggest blockages to speedy change including: cautious management culture, business-as-usual management processes, initiative gridlock, recalcitrant executives, expectation setting and disengaged employees. He also identifies the predictable "slumps" that occur during the first year of execution. He then reveals how to release each inhibitor and the sequence in which to accomplish this critical leadership task with speed and engagement.
• Getting from BIG Ideas to BIG Results
  Why do most executive leaders fail to achieve breakthrough performance? They make things too complex. They clutter the company with jargon. They hire too many consultants, chase too many fads.
  
  Drawing on the foundations laid in the highly innovative program Bob chaired at the Harvard Business School and continuing with his experience working with hundreds of senior executives, he presents the action levers companies need to follow to quickly and reliably achieve breakthrough results in the business transformation process.
  
  In this presentation, Bob will present how to align your organization behind a few core initiatives, bias your organization toward speed, create leaders at every level, and achieve traction and accountability in all facets of execution.
  
  Whether you’re executing a new initiative, restoring your company’s growth, entering a new market, or attempting to transform your enterprise, this presentation will help you identify the right path, clear the obstacles, and achieve breakthrough performance.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Renowned thought and practice leader in the fields of corporate transformation, organizational effectiveness, culture change, and executive leadership, Bob Miles is a gifted business advisor, process architect, and executive speaker. Bob pioneered the Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) methodology, a powerful approach for accelerating and achieving breakthrough results across a variety of corporate transformation challenges. By applying the ACT methodology, CEOs are able to greatly compress and accelerate the process for launching an organization’s new direction or executing a new set of initiatives.

Bob is the President of Corporate Transformation Resources and Senior Advisor on corporate transformation to Monitor. He also is a co-founder and Chairman of Galloway Consulting Group, a healthcare transformation consulting firm.

Frequently serving as a Senior Advisor to executive teams as they plan, launch and refocus corporate transformation efforts, Bob has been intensely involved in shaping some of the world’s most important business transformations for companies such as General Electric, IBM Global Services, National Semiconductor, Office Depot, the PGA TOUR, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rockwell International, Southern Company and Symantec, as well as a number of emerging high-tech companies.

He has authored many books on corporate transformation and organizational effectiveness, including most recently Corporate Comeback: The Story of Renewal and Transformation at National Semiconductor, Leading Corporate Transformation: A Blueprint for Business Renewal, and Big Ideas to Big Results. He recently had a lead article in the Harvard Business Review, titled "Don't Lose Your Nerve—Accelerating Corporate Transformations," in which he shared the major insights from his quarter-century of work in support of major corporate transformations. He is a frequent speaker on these topics to senior executive audiences.

Bob has served on the Yale School of Management and the Harvard Business School faculties, teaching in the MBA, doctoral, and executive programs. At Harvard he was Faculty Chairman of the intensive Managing Organizational Effectiveness executive program, which helped CEOs, business presidents and their teams plan major transformation efforts. He was Dean of the Faculty and the Isaac Stiles Hopkins Professor at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, where he also held the rank of University Distinguished Professor. Bob has served for over a decade as a member of the Stanford Executive Institute faculty at Stanford University and on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Organizational Effectiveness Division of The Conference Board, and several leading business schools.

A Closer Look at Bob

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Bob's current research agenda?

Bob has been conducting field-based research through direct involvement as principal process architect in a wide variety of corporate transformations during the past two and a half decades. The results that are converging after so many practical trials are both profound and powerful.

For one, transformation launches have to be bold and rapid right out of the starting gate. Otherwise, in a fast-paced business world, with all of its distractions, such attempts lose energy and focus before they even launch. In addition, where executive leaders have been pursuing roughly the same business model for an extended period of time, a half dozen or so inhibitors tend to become imbedded in the organization. These inhibitors are sometimes irritating, but they remain fairly benign until everyone must rise to a fundamental transformation challenge; at which time any one of them, if left unattended, can derail the whole effort. Finally, the sequence in which you deal with them during the launch and execution phases of a transformation effort turns out to be critical your ultimate success.

These insights have been summarized in an article to appear in the Harvard Business Review in January of 2010.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Bob's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Bob continues to capture insights from his experience in coaching leaders of major coporate transformations in a series of articles and books which he shares around the world as part of his speaking activities. His current speeches focus on the insights in his latest book, BIG Ideas to BIG Results: How to Remake and Recharge Your Company, Fast (Financial Times Press, 2008) and in an article on "Accelerating Corporate Transformations," which will be forthcoming in the Harvard Business Review in January 2010.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Bob's thinking and inspires his work?

Bob regularly scans several newspapers a day and a dozen journals a month to keep abreast of breaking new ideas about and opportunities to engage with emerging corporate transformation challenges. He personally loves the craft skills of writing a book. But Bob reports that he seldom finds his new ideas and opportunities in books given that it takes an author a year or two to write one and another year, sometimes two to go through the publishing cycle. By that time a new book is all about a half-decade-old idea!

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Bob tap into to feed his mind and fuel his creativity?

Bob maintains an active network of the most active academic thought leaders in his areas of expertise, many of whom have been friends and sometime colleagues on projects for several decades. Bob also routinely follows the web site developments and blogs of the leading general management consulting firms.

OUTREACH
What are Bob's pressing questions, and on which topics does he seek your feedback?

The kinds of questions that keep Bob's attention are:

• What are the ultimate speed governors on the rate of corporate transformation and how may they be released?
• What else can be done to maintain focus, overcome the slumps, ands increase execution traction downstream during corporate transformations?
• What new practices may be deployed to engage people and create committed employees in a business world full of distractions?
• What are the best ways to prepare individuals and teams to lead corporate transformations?
• What are the best ways to enable managers at all levels in an organization to lead a corporate transformation in their area of responsibility?