Article written for www.annarborbusinessmagazine.com

The housing market appears to be on the mend. Sales are up, foreclosures are down, inventory has shrunk, interest rates are lower, and buyers are out looking for purchases.

While this is good news, some concerns still persist, particularly with hesitant home sellers and tighter loan qualifications for prospective home buyers. Sellers are tepid, not sure if now is the right time to sell. And a number of buyers are finding it difficult to get a loan, due to higher loan thresholds and increased attention to the process of verifying the supporting financial documents. Read more…

It all starts with the customer. Few industries are as competitive as the banking industry. All banks work with the “commodity” of currency and, therefore, must compete on other value offers. This Boston Consulting Group article by Andy Maguire, Ian Wachters, Ian Walsh, and Nicole Mönter explore three key questions: What exactly is customer-centricity and why should retail banks care? What do retail-banking customers really want? And are any patterns of customer-centric banking emerging?

Customer strategy is useless, of course, if it’s not well executed. Turning ideas and plans into actions and reality is the gritty stuff of solid execution. Booz & Company authors Ilona Steffen, Niko Canner, and Gary Neilson have this thought-provoking piece on how to execute strategy in a new world. Their approach seeks to help you “how to uncover serious obstacles preventing your company from meeting its goals, how to change decision rights, and how to improve the flow of information to effectively implement your strategy.”

Author Walter Kiechel takes a look at the early roots of the “strategy revolution” that defines business strategy as we know it today. He does this by profiling several strategy thinkers who developed this field, with a particular emphasis on Bruce Henderson, founder of the Boston Consulting Group, but also discusses Bill Bain (Bain & Company), Fred Gluck (McKinsey & Company), Michael Porter (Harvard Business School), and others. “What companies didn’t have before the strategy revolution,” explains Kiechel, “was a way of systematically putting together all the elements that determined their corporate fate.” This book will broaden your thoughts about strategy while learning a little more about some key thinkers in the field.