281. A strategy is a “game plan” that enables a company to attract customers by distinguishing itself from competitors.
?282. A company can only succeed if it creates a reason for its target customers to choose it over a competitor.283. Apple would not seek to control its operations by selecting performance measures that focus solely on cost-cutting because those measures would conflict with its product leadership customer value proposition.284. Finally, it is unlikely that Rolex would decide to implement drastic price reductions for its watches even if a financial analysis indicated that establishing a lower price might boost short-run profits.285. Rolex would oppose this course of action because it would diminish the luxury brand that forms the foundation of the company’s product leadership customer value proposition.286. Enterprise risk management is a process used by a company to identify those risks and develop responses to them that enable it to be reasonably assured of meeting its goals.287. Although these types of controls cannot completely eliminate risks, they enable companies to proactively manage their risks rather than passively reacting to unfortunate events that have already occurred.288. In managerial accounting, companies use controls to reduce the risk that their plans will not be achieved.289. The value of the physical inventory on hand is compared to the accounting records so that any discrepancies can be identified and resolved.290. Performance reviews are a detective control performed by employees in supervisory positions to ensure that actual results are reasonable when compared to relevant benchmarks.291. It bears reemphasizing that these types of controls may help a company reduce its risks, but they cannot guarantee that a company will achieve its objectives.292. However, effective managers understand that business processes, more so than functional departments, serve the needs of a company’s most important stakeholders—its customers.293. The term value chain is often used to describe how an organization’s functional departments interact with one another to form business processes.294. Lean Production is a management approach that organizes resources such as people and machines around the flow of business processes and that only produces units in response to customer orders.295. Lean thinking differs from traditional manufacturing methods that organize work departmentally and that encourage departments to maximize their output even if it exceeds customer demand and bloats inventories.296. The lean approach also results in fewer defects, less wasted effort, and quicker customer response times than traditional production methods.297. To fulfill this responsibility, leaders need to understand how intrinsic motivation, extrinsic incentives, and cognitive bias influence human behavior.298. Similarly, an organization is more likely to prosper when its employees are intrinsically motivated to pursue its interests.299. As your career evolves, to be perceived as a credible leader you’ll need to possess three attributes—technical competence, personal integrity, and strong communication skills (including oral presentation skills and writing skills).300. To be perceived as a leader who is respectful of your co-workers’ value to the organization, you’ll need to possess three more attributes—strong mentoring skills (to help others realize their potential), strong listening skills, and personal humility (in terms of deferring recognition to all employees who contribute to the organization’s success). ?
