Jul 29, 2010 | Alliance management, Communication, Leadership
Contracts are the point of last resort, they define the exit, should it become necessary.
Believing a written contract that details how the dynamics of an evolving relationship will be managed is as dumb as believing the lady in the tent can tell the future with any accuracy.
Relationships are about leadership, collaboration, honesty, and a mutual respect, and a reversion to the clauses in a contract are a clear pointer to the failure of the relationship and the leadership.
A while ago, a business I have had intermittent contact with over a long period set about outsourcing their IT function. It is only a modest business, short of resources, and took the view that the IT people were the experts, and that they should know all there was to know about how to approach their problems, and that the resources freed up could be better used elsewhere. Problem was, they had not adequately defined their processes and expectations, and the vendor saw it as a small sale, perhaps not worth their best efforts.
There were some tough lessons in the exercise, and at their most basic broke down to the simple fact that nobody could know their business as well as they did, and a generic set of solutions sold to a modest business were never going to be successful.
The vendor failed in their duty to meet their needs, once the sales contract was signed, they “moved on” and the company failed badly in the implementation, and the whole exercise ended very badly.
The simple fact is that the “solution” could have, and should have worked, the company’s logic was sound, and the solution had all the fundamentals to deliver a great service, but the relationship failed. Rather than leveraging the skills and experience of both parties to arrive at a successful outcome, they took the easy way out and just fought over who would carry the can. Really dumb!
Jul 28, 2010 | Leadership, Small business
The measure of effectiveness is the extent to which you get things done, and how well they turn out, not how well you theorise, discuss, and promise to “move forward”.
There are lots of highly qualaified, smooth young operators out there who do a great job at the talking bit, but who actually do little, and there are lots of older, (mostly) blokes with years of experience, and innate common sense born of that experience, who may have less in the way of academic qualifications, but who are able to apply their experience and get stuff done.
The great shame is that we appear to value the former, over the latter, and as a result have lots of youngsters with multiple degrees who cannot tie their shoelaces in senior positions, and their older former mentors in many cases out to premature pasture.
Which would you rather have running things for you, an older bloke who has made his mistakes, and is unlikely to repeat them, or a youngster, full of vim, vigor, and testosterone, who will spend your money getting his experience?
Jul 27, 2010 | Customers, Management, Sales
Independent produce retailers appear to be resurgent, based on the quality of their offer to consumers.
For years anybody who has been involved with FMCG has known about the challenge of the “last 10 yards“, the distance between a supermarkets back dock and the selling face. Retailers talk about out of stocks, and lost sales, suppliers struggle with short lead times, demanding delivery schedules and the lack of accurate and collaborative forecasting.
Added to these are these challenges presented by fresh food, perishability, appearance, consumers determination to handle and “cherry-pick” the produce, and the nightly put-away. The major supermarkets would appear to be losing share to resurgent independents, as they have responded to the supply chain challenges with greener fruit, more resistant to damage, and offering a longer period to maximise the opportunities for sale. Downside is that green fruit is not much good to eat.
Produce is a difficult category where training and product knowledge is more important than in any dry grocery category by a mile. Why then are there casuals in produce? Last week I saw, not for the first time, a seventeen year old tipping a box of tomatoes onto a display like they were Lego bricks, surely some training would be useful? In this case, it was the last 10 inches that stuffed the tomato.
No wonder specialists who know their business, and can manage the challenges particular to a category are doing a better job than generalists, and consumers are responding.
Jul 27, 2010 | Social Media, Uncategorized
I wonder why, when no army since Alexander has managed to retain control over what is now Afghanistan, that the US and it “Allies” including Australia think they can.
The leaks over the weekend on Wikileaks, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?_r=1 puts a lot of “texture” in relation to the effort into the public domain, and I wonder why we are there.
I know the “nip terrorism in the bud” argument, and it has validity, but I cannot understand why we do not simply napalm every poppy field in the joint. When police aeroplanes in NSW can pick up a few “pot” plants g rowing in State forests, it would be simple to remove the Taliban’s source of money. If they are forced to conduct the war by throwing stones, it would cut down the death toll of soldiers sent to the place, and would have to make the process of bringing some sort of order such that average people could lead their lives in relative security easier.
Jul 26, 2010 | Communication, Leadership, Strategy
Obviously not, but you would be surprised at how often the obvious is ignored.
A carefully crafted vision statement is agreed at an annual senior executive retreat, and out away until the review next year. Nonsense.
You need to live it, create alignment, and ensure the activites that occur spring from a set of core values that dictate the way you, and those around you, behave, and all contribute to the journey articulated.
