Author: Jorge Walter
Happy Halloween 2019

End of Fall 2019 Soccer Season
SMS 39th Annual Conference in Minneapolis

Spent the long weekend in Minneapolis, MN, for this year’s Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society, which was my final conference as Chair of the Strategy Process Interest Group.
JOM Editors’ Meeting in Norfolk, VA

Thanks to Journal of Management‘s Editor-in-Chief David Allen for hosting the JOM editorial board at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Southern Management Association in Norfolk, VA!
New York Weekend

Spent Labor Day weekend with the family in New York, and it was great to both share memories of our old stomping ground with the kids and experience new locations and sights together
AOM Best Symposium Award

Happy to share that our symposium “The Role of Memory and Cognition (vs. Activity and Behavior) in Social Networks” co-organized and co-chaired by Daniel Z. Levin (Rutgers) and myself was selected as a “Showcase Symposium” and the Winner of the Organizational Behavior Division Best Symposium Award!
2019 Academy of Management Annual Meeting

This year’s Academy of Management Annual Meeting is happening in Boston, MA. My co-authors and I are represented on the program with two presentations:
- Levin, D. Z. & Walter, J. (2019). Is tie maintenance really necessary?
- Ross, J. R., Mehra, A., Levin, D. Z., Walter, J. (2019). Dormant ties: A review and agenda for research.
Both presentations are part of a symposium Daniel and I organized:
- “The Role of Memory and Cognition (vs. Activity and Behavior) in Social Networks.” Presenters: Jiyin Cao (Stony Brook), Edward Bishop Smith (Northwestern), You-Ta Chuang (York), Fu-Sheng Tsai (Cheng Shiu), Wenpin Tsai (Pennsylvania State), Martin J. Kilduff (University College London), Tiziana Casciaro (Toronto), Jason Rekus Ross (Kentucky), & Ajay Mehra (Kentucky). Discussant: Ronald S. Burt (Chicago).
I was also honored by receiving an “Outstanding Reviewer Award” by the Strategy Division.
Athens

Visiting the birthplace of our civilization and political system on our day trip to Athens…
Zakynthos
Incredible vacation on Zakynthos, a tiny Greek island in the Ionian Sea! The most dramatic cliffs, hundreds-of-years-old olive trees, and the bluest water I’ve ever seen…
The Coddling of the American Mind (2018)

By Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press)
In this scathing indictment of recent trends in parenting, education, politics, and the media, a First Amendment expert and a social psychologist take on three “great untruths”–what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people–that contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and that result in a culture of safetyism which interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development.
This excellent analysis of how “good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure” is a must-read for young parents, educators, and anyone else interested in the future of our democracy.
Here’s the Atlantic article that formed the basis of this book.
End of Summer Swim 2019

Another successful summer swim season with the South Riding Stingrays has just ended–with Sophia making Divisionals and Max becoming a Colonial Swim League All Star for the first time!
Big Brother Is Watching You ;-)

SMS Planning Meeting in Frankfurt

Thanks to the Strategic Management Society (SMS) for hosting another successful planning meeting in Frankfurt, Germany–this time for the SMS conference in Minneapolis in the Fall! It was a pleasure working with you for the last time as Chair of the Strategy Process IG!
End of Spring Soccer Season

Just finished co-coaching Sophia’s Spring soccer season with the Jaguars–thanks to my head coach Eric and to Loudoun Soccer for another great season!
DC United vs. Chicago Fire

Great game last night in Washington DC’s Audi Field with DC United coming back in the second half for a 3-3 tie against Chicago Fire.
Facebook Envy
From today’s Wall Street Journal…

Cracked it!: How to Solve Big Problems and Sell Solutions Like Top Strategy Consultants (2018)
By Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps, & Olivier Sibony (Palgrave Macmillan)
Just used this book for the first time in my undergraduate strategy capstone course with very positive student reactions…

Solving complex problems and selling their solutions is critical for personal and organizational success. For most of us, however, it doesn’t come naturally and we haven’t been taught how to do it well. Research shows a host of pitfalls trips us up when we try: We’re quick to believe we understand a situation and jump to a flawed solution. We seek to confirm our hypotheses and ignore conflicting evidence. We view challenges incompletely through the frameworks we know instead of with a fresh pair of eyes. And when we communicate our recommendations, we forget our reasoning isn’t obvious to our audience.
How can we do it better?
In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help readers tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide readers through each step in the process: from how to state, structure and then solve problems to how to sell the solutions.
Written in an engaging style by a trio of experts with decades of experience researching, teaching and consulting on complex business problems, this book will be an indispensable manual for anyone interested in creating value by helping their organizations crack the problems that matter most.
–Book cover description
Ave Tucker Fellowship
Happy to share that I have been awarded a one-year Ave Tucker Fellowship at George Washington University’s School of Business.
Named after George Washington University’s Board of Trustee member Avram S. Tucker, this fellowship recognizes faculty members who “displayed good teaching performance, as well as recent scholarly productivity, prospects for continued publications in top outlets, and records of research leadership and mentoring of junior scholars.”
The Dropout: New Podcast on the Downfall of Theranos

My wife Erin got me hooked onto this fascinating Podcast detailing the downfall of Theranos and its charismatic founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
Now I’m seriously considering to make this my first ever Podcast case study for my strategy capstone course (replacing my usual class discussion of the WorldCom case study…)
Spring Break in Dominican Republic

Another great Spring Break trip for the Walter family in Punta Cana (including the mandatory 6am beach walks with Max)
WorkLife Podcast (with Adam Grant)

Just started listening to Adam Grants’ latest podcast series called WorkLife. Excellent and highly entertaining insights on how to, in Adam’s own words, make work not suck.
Meet the Newest Member of the Walter Family

After years of nagging and emotional blackmail by my kids, I finally agreed to get a puppy: A Havanese the kids named Fitzgerald (Fitz). And guess who’s doing the 5am walks with Fitz before work…
Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds (2018)
By Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, & Sven Smit (Wiley)

Several times a year, top management teams enter the strategy room with lofty goals and the best of intentions: they hope to assess their situation and prospects honestly, and mount a decisive, coordinated response toward a common ambition. Then reality intrudes. By the time they get to the strategy room, they find it is already crowded with egos and competing agendas. Jobs—even careers—are on the line, so caution reigns. The budget process intervenes, too. You may be discussing a five-year strategy, but everyone knows that what really matters is the first-year budget. So, many managers try to secure resources for the coming year while deferring other tough choices as far as possible into the future.
Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick explores in depth the social dynamics that undermine strategic dialogue and breed incrementalism. It also underscores the real, and very challenging, odds of crafting strategies that will lead to dramatic performance improvement.
–From the Publisher
Skiing in Snowshoe, WV

Enjoyed a great time skiing with the guys (Jorge Rivera & Mark Clark) in Snowshoe, WV