Articles for Business Publications

We have helped clients publish six guest commentary articles in the Leadership section of Forbes.com, a site that has 30 million monthly online viewers and is a great outlet for thought leaders.

One of the articles was a December 2009 op-ed by Josh Leibner and Gershon Mader of consultancy Quantum Performance Inc. Titled "Move Fast Now to Keep Your Best Employees From Bolting," the article discusses what senior executives must do to retain their best people as the economy recovers.  Their message: Understand the signs of uncommitted employees, and let them shape the turnaround strategy. You can read the article here.

The second article, by Kurt Salmon consultants John Karonis and Madison Riley, ran in May 2009.  Titled "Why Retailing Will Never Be The Same Again," it argued that large retail chains that couldn't compete on price or location had to bring a more unique offering and store experience.  Karonis and Riley's op-ed was based on a major research study on vertical retailing. The article can be found here.

We have also helped Robert Sher of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm that works with leaders of mid-market firms, publish four guest contributor articles in Forbes.com in 2012. One was titled "Why Half of All M&A Deals Fail, and What You Can Do About It." The second was "Loyalty to Your Underlings Can Be a Terrible Thing." The third was "Will Instagram Be a Billion-Dollar Loss for Facebook?" And the fourth was "Google Can Survive Too Much Innovation. You Can't."

Read our Q&A with the editor of Forbes.com's Leadership section, Fred Allen, to learn about what he looks for in article submissions.

In 2009, we helped strategy consultancy The Parthenon Group in the writing, editing and placement of an article in The Journal of Private Equity, the leading publication in the private equity industry.  The article was published in the Fall 2009 issue of JOPE.

The article, "Why PE Firms are Restructuring (and Not Just Their Portfolio Companies)," was authored by Parthenon consultants Greg Pappas, Isabella Allen and Anneli Schalock.  Their article was based on Parthenon research on the organizational structures of about 70 middle-market PE firms.  Click here to read the article. 

The Bloom Group has helped Boston-based Parthenon publish articles since 2003. 

In February 2009, we assisted two Kurt Salmon Associates consultants, Cari Bunch and Madison Riley, in publishing an op-ed in the "Guest Commentaries" section of Chain Store Age magazine's online edition.  Their article, "The real retail winners and losers in the recession," discussed the results of KSA's study on vertical retailers -- i.e.,  chains that design and develop their own products. You can read the article here.  (Note: It may require registration, which is free.)

In July 2009, we helped two other KSA consultants, Peter Brown and Amy Klaris, publish another KSA op-ed in Chain Store Age, an article that was also based on KSA's research on vertical retailing.  Their article, "Elevating your private-label strategy to a whole new level," can be found here. 

Chain Store Age is a leading publication in the retailing industry.

We helped Gershon Mader and Josh Leibner of Quantum Performance develop, write and place three opinion articles in Workforce Management magazine, one of the top publications in the human resource management field.

In an op-ed titled "How Great Leadership Traits Can Squelch Employee Commitment," the authors explain how three leadership capabilities—strategic vision, supreme confidence and great communication skills—if taken to an excess can actually erode employees' commitment to their leader's strategy.  Click here to read the article.

In the second op-ed ("Why 'Commitment Coach' Must be in Every HR Manager's Job Description"), the authors discuss why committed employees are a necessity and not a luxury today.

In their third Workforce Management op-ed, "Are Your Executives Sabotaging Your Strategy?" Mader and Leibner explain why some of the biggest resisters to a CEO's plan can be his direct reports.  That article can be found here.

Note: All articles may require you to register (free).

The Financial Times is the best-read business newspaper in Europe, and thus its opinion pages are highly influential.  In October 2003, we helped our client Synectics, a consulting firm focused on corporate creativity and innovation, publish an op-ed in the FT.

The article ("Five ways to kill a concept") by David Walker, then a partner at the firm, explained how many companies can unintentionally derail promising new product, business and process ideas.

As part of our work in helping Unisys develop a point of view on the topic of the keys to providing effective technology support in large companies, we ghostwrote and placed five articles, including this one in CIO magazine.

In this 2007 article, Joe Hogan of Unisys wrote about how the business of IT technical support has become so much more complex in recent years and how old approaches are no longer adequate. In particular, he cites Unisys research that showed how leading companies were prioritizing IT support levels based on users’ criticality to the business—not on their rank in the company.

You can read the article here.

Based on research we conducted for Unisys on the way large companies provided internal technology support to their employees, we helped the IT services firm develop and place an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, a prestigious journal.  

The article, authored by Unisys Vice President Joe Hogan, was titled "Why VIPs Shouldn't Get the Best Tech Support." Using the study that we designed and conducted for Unisys, Hogan explained why the companies with the best tech support provided higher levels of support to employees who "touched" revenue every day and needed real-time information to do their work: sales, customer service, finance, and field service people. 

The article can be purchased from the journal's website here.

We helped Unisys carve out another opinion article from the research we conducted for them on large-company practices in internal technology support, this one for Industry Week magazine, a key publication for manufacturers around the world. 

The article, by Joe Hogan and Vincent Wells of Unisys, used data from the manufacturers that participated in the study.  The authors explained why sales, customer service and field technicians in manufacturing companies deserved much better technology support than most other functions.  They also described how manufacturers could tier their IT support.

The article, "Fix My Computer Now Or I'll Lose This Sale!" was published in August 2007.  It can be found here.