Blog

See our experts’ latest contributions on consulting, execution, growth, simplification and other key topics in today’s industry-leading blog posts.

Rethinking Strategy: Using Incremental Successes to Achieve Major Shifts

The incremental successes approach is not just a way to achieve more correct decisions – it is a way to change strategic decision-making itself from a high risk game to a minimum risk game. It may not be applicable in every situation, but it will be a powerful meth…

04.10.20  Matthew McCreight

The Super Bowl of Rapid Results?

Over the last few weeks, thousands of organizations have innovated and delivered results that were unthinkable just one month before – building field hospitals in a week, enabling thousands of staff to work from home, creating new ways to reach customers and much m…

07.22.15  Jonathan Stearn

How to Design Work Projects for Maximum Learning

The most common skill development tools - executive education, training programs, cases, simulations, etc. - are all at least one step removed from practice. Live business projects aimed at achieving dramatic outcomes in tight timeframes close this gap. Read the bl…

06.06.14  Jonathan Stearn

Skip the “Best Practices”: How Several Hospitals Used Disciplined Experimentation to Make Complex Initiatives Successful

As a consultant, I have the privilege of working with leading organizations in a variety of industries around the world. Despite the wide diversity in geography, size, and industry of our client base, I can confirm that there is one thing that every single organiza…

10.14.13  Daniel Dworkin

Steal This Idea: How to Solve our Wicked Healthcare Challenge

There are issues that are so big, so seemingly intractable that it’s hard to know the right way to cut into them. In 1973, Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, professors of design and urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, referred to these…

07.17.13  Robert Schaffer

Principles That Stand the Test of Time

Imagine coming face to face today with a problem you “solved” in the distant past. A weird phenomenon that occurs in Montreal every year was the subject of a recent New York Times story. Everyone who is moving his household tries to do it on (or very near) July 1 b…

06.22.13  Ron Ashkenas

The Power of Rapid Results

Last year, my fellow HBR blogger Daniel Markovitz suggested that stretch goals can be demotivating, and should be replaced by confidence-building “quick wins.” Frankly, this is like saying that the taste of food is more important than its nutrient value. It’s a fal…

11.28.12  Nadim Matta

Schaffer Insights - Special Edition

Nadim Matta selected as a Top Global Thinker by Foreign Policy We are delighted to share the news that Schaffer Consulting's Senior Partner, Nadim Matta, was selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of its 100 Top Global Thinkers for 2012.The award will be presen…

05.22.12  Ron Ashkenas

Don't Dismiss Stretch Goals

Let's not dismiss stretch goals as demotivating or dangerous. If you tackle them by carving out short-term challenges, and learn as you go, they can be a powerful way to accelerate progress. Over the past several decades, my colleagues and I have seen the power of …

09.07.11 

Syracuse school superintendent's challenge: 100 days to fix a problem in a school

Sharon Contreras, Syracuse School Superintendent, has been making great strides. With help from Say Yes to Education and Schaffer Consulting, she introduced the Rapid Results Approach to one school in the 2008-09 school year with great success and has now expanded …

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