detail of painting, copyright 2006 by Benice Horowitz, Stamford, Connecticut. All rights reserved.

Articles, Case Studies, News, Events

To give you additional perspective on how we think, what we're doing, and how we work with our clients, we've included a variety of articles, case studies, news, and events in this section. Here, you'll find articles from academic journals and business periodicals as well as white papers, case studies, and presentations covering a range of topics, as well as move information about workshops and events. We welcome your input or questions, so please feel free to contact us.


What's New

Defining Your Competitive Edge

Case material and research on gender psychology illustrate how women compete, take risks, and are often motivated by different factors than men. This interactive workshop provides you with an opportunity to step back and think about how you navigate through a high-visibility leadership role. It also allows you to weigh your ambitions and expectations—both those placed on you and those you have set for yourself—against what might inspire you as a woman in a competitive environment.

Women and Power:  How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Enjoy It

Sharon Horowitz will be participating in a series on career issues for women at The Harvard Club of New York City. The series will focus on mid- and late-career issues for women—particularly navigating the political and interpersonal issues that become more important than task proficiency as careers advance. Series topics will include:
—Women, Competition and Family Dynamics
—Women and Risk ( as in trading and portfolio management) 
—Women and Culture ... in America and elsewhere
—Women, Caring and Courage

“Coach Us Like Men, Treat Us Like Women”*

Women are motivated differently than men. What information, skills and attributes do the women on your team need from you in order to reach their own potential as leaders? This interactive presentation outlines the often unspoken and hidden aspects of women’s leadership and gives you insight into what happens—within, between and among women—that either enables them to compete and advance to the next level or hinders their ability to navigate through the political crosscurrents of organizational life and keeps them stuck or opting out.

* (TITLE from the book The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and How It Changed the World by Jere Longman.)

The Journey from CIO to CEO: A Five_Step Framework

As part of Gartner’s Executive Insights on-line program, Sharon Horowitz provided an overview of role transition theory and the steps CIOs need to take to position themselves to be seen as viable candidates for the CEO role. CEOs who were former CIOs were also interviewed for the series. The principals of CenterNorth, have developed a “success matrix” program for CIO’s and senior leaders in IT, focused on their career advancement and a step by step process on how to identify and maximize new opportunities on the business side.  If you are interested in learning more about our program, please contact us and we will be happy to send you a program outline. 

Found in Translation: a guide for enhancing Indian and Western business relationships

Sharon Horowitz and Patricia Kantor presented their research findings and conducted additional research on the cultural differences between Indian and Western models of leadership and communication and the implications for business development, specifically for outsourced services. Presentation topics included: “Respecting Respect”, “When Yes means Maybe”, and “Found in Translation, Bridging the Cultural Divide”.

 

Succession Planning Resources

Framework for Family Business Succession Planning

Succession Planning is a psychologically complex and multi-layered process and typically requires two to five years to put into place as well as continual revision and renewal.
Framework for Family Business Succession Planning (PDF)

Succession Role Profile Template

A template designed to guide you through the issues involved in planning for the succession of the president or CEO.
Succession Role Profile Template (PDF)

 

Case Studies

Extending a US finance function to Mumbai

The goal was to reduce processing costs within a year by outsourcing 50% reduction application processes to Mumbai while building a platform to efficiently handle the processes. The results were even better than expected.

Introducing Western Organizational Cultural Norms to a Developing Country Organization (India)

A US company realized nearly half a million dollars in savings after improving communication between the US staff and their overseas contractors and training the overseas staff in process excellence methods.

Introducing Western Organizational Cultural Norms to a Developing Country Organization (China)

The Bank of China needed to implement Western human resources policies in order to remain competitive. The Bank was able to implement changes in areas not subject to government policies—and HR is engaging its new role as business partner rather than administrator.

Leading Across Borders and Cultures

After a series of acquisitions, the CEO of a global engineering firm effectively melded new team members, from different geographic locations, into an aligned senior management team.

 

Operational Excellence

Pitfalls of Globalization

Spreading Shared Services Beyond National Borders

Patricia Tyre wrote, “Although shared services originated in the United States, it is within the global marketplace that it has grown in sophistication. American companies with overseas manufacturing or service operations are now in direct competition with Europe and Pacific Rim companies in the drive to migrate their organizations to an effective shared services model.”

 

Executive Coaching

A Contextualised Approach to Coaching

The remarkable growth in the popularity of coaching can be explained in part by the dramatic changes in organizations in all sectors of the economy, according to Claire Huffington. For example, there has been extreme turbulence created by the revolution in information technologies and the transmission of knowledge, globalisation of markets and hence competitive pressures, and increasing levels of risk created by these changes—among other factors.

Emotions in Organisations: disturbance or intelligence?

Using case material from a senior exective in information technology, David Armstrong advances the view that a great deal can be learned about the organization from the individuals’ emotional responses to working within the organization. This is a conceptual shift from focusing on emotions as a source of disturbance in organizational functioning to regarding emotional experience as a rich source of information about the organization.

Reflexive questions in a coaching psychology context

Clare Huffington and Carola Hieker co-authored this article for International Coaching Psychology Review discussing how reflexive questions can be used by coaching psychologists and executive coaches who want to enhance their skills in asking effective questions.

 

Leadership

Base Camp Four: Leadership Near the Summit

Below is a brief case summary that illustrates the thesis of our next research study. The focus of the study, to be conducted by Clare Huffington and Sharon Horowitz, will be on the dilemmas and challenges of leading a team of talented and highly technical people.

 

Organizational Effectiveness

Names, Thoughts & Lies: The Relevance of Bion’s Later Writing for Understanding Experience in Groups

David Armstrong co-authored Group Relations: An Introduction. In this chapter from the book, Armstrong traces in Bion’s lines of thought in his later body of work which complement, modify and extend the ideas presented in Experiences in Groups, and how the relative neglect of these lines of thought by practitioners in “group relations” contributes to the sense of a self-inflicted theoretical and methodological atrophy which sometimes seems to surround those who work in this field.

The Discovery & Loss of a “Compelling Space”: a case study in adapting to a new organizational order

In a case study of a CIO in an investment bank, Sharon Horowitz helps capture a number of shifting paradigms within organizational life and describes how these shifts may inhibit creative and innovative thinking.

 

Partnerships

Partnerships: the danger signals

Nina Kaufman asks Sharon Horowitz about partnership danger signals in an interview posted on her blog as Of Icebergs and Elephants

What’s discussed:

There are usually warning signs.
We can get locked into childhood roles.
The conflict may be symptomatic of other issues.

Read the entire interview here.

It Takes Two to Tango

In “The Perils & Possibilities of Entrepreneurial Partnerships,” Sharon Horowitz summarizes CENTERNORTH’s research about and experience with entrepreneurial partnerships. She encourages your feedback and is interested in your ideas for additional research.

 

Training

Champions Wanted

Moira Katz argues that complex action plan projects need a manager to wear two hats: champion and administrator. The administrator hat is relatively easy to define. But what is a champion? What makes a champion effective? Moira’s insights are outlined in this article.

Do We REALLY Train?

Moira Katz takes a look at why management continuously complains that personal growth in their managers is abysmally slow.