May 31, 2011 | Change
Just imagine Rip going to sleep in 1991.
His world was made up of pyramid shaped organisations organised geographically, and most likely he worked for one person in the same location. Rip got his news in the paper the next day, so long as he paid for it, and the proprietor/editor considered the item to be “news” worthy of printing, almost everything was sent by post, although the Fax had just burst onto the scene. When on holidays he took a few photos, then dropped the film into the local chemist for processing, getting the photos back in a week or so, the telephone was the big black thing in the corner with a rotary dial, 1 per household, and the computer at work took up an air-conditioned room, and involved the incantations of serious geeks to get them to work on Wednesdays, petrol is .20c a litre, and the hole in the Ozone layer has just been discovered.
Imagine his surprise to wake up in 2011, less than a generation later. Newspapers are virtually redundant, and news is free, businesses are global and the pyramid structure has been replaced by groups and matrices, the internet has replaced the post and encyclopedias, phones are devices that go anywhere, do anything, and photos are immediate, cheap, and transmittable on these funny phones, the environment is the great moral issue of our time (sic) and petrol in 1.48 a litre, with a Woolworths discount, and you have never actually met most of your friends.
Scary to think how disoriented he would be if he had slept for another 20 years, and woke up in 2031. You are awake, how ready are you for the changes coming in the next 20 years, as they will be greater than those of the last 20.
May 30, 2011 | Strategy
Strategy is all about making choices about where available resources will be allocated, considering both the benefits and risks of alternatives in the context of opportunity cost.
In this country we have reserves of natural gas tied up in seams below some of our richest agricultural land, the Hunter Valley and Darling Downs being just two.
To liberate this gas, which has the potential to offer us an alternative to coal fired power for many years, we run the huge risk of destroying the agricultural land above it.
At some point, the community needs to acknowledge this choice, and make it recognising the consequences, and there are severe consequences whichever path we tread.
My concerns is that we make the choice unwittingly, by stealth as state governments and power utilities and exporters nibble away at the deposits, bit by bit, until we wake up one day the deed is done.
In this link to Business Spectator is a link to a documentary “Gasland” which documents what is happening in the US. OK, it presents one side of an argument, but that one side is truly scary. We need the debate in this country to be wider than just the local communities that will be affected, it needs to be the whole Australian community.
This strategic choice is perhaps the major one we face in the environmental debate, but is one that appears to me to have little in the way of oxygen in the community.
May 29, 2011 | Branding, Personal Rant
Why does the government set out to create conflict? Is it to distract attention? The current “debate” on cigarette packaging is a silly nonsense, a politically inspired furphy.
Obviously it is in the community’s interest to reduce smoking rates, smoking kills, and obviously the cigarette companies will protect their investment in a legal product, immoral as that may seem to some.
Philosophically, I am alarmed at the proposal to retrospectively trash the investment in brands made over a long time by sellers of the noxious weed, it has been legal to promote their products by any means allowed by the moving legislative goalposts , just very difficult for the last few years. Why is it different to the announcement by the NSW Premier that retrospectively he will reduce the feed in rate for solar panels? Both are an injustice, no matter how ill advised the original circumstances.
In the event that this legislation passes, we deserve to pay huge amounts of damages to the fag companies as compensation for their trashed brand equity. In an environment where business needs a rule of law as a basis for long term decision making, retrospectivity, no matter how superficially attractive, should be a no-no.
Why don’t they just double excise, and announce that in 12 months, it will be doubled again. That would do more to reduce smoking rates than plain packs, not open the IP compensation box, and it would be easy. It would also drag in a bit of short term revenue to pay the hospital bills of those few smokers left.
Perhaps it is because they do not want to be nasty to all those smoking voters, they would rather open the community to huge compensation payouts. Silly, silly people.
May 26, 2011 | Governance, Leadership
Culture is most often defined by repeating Michael Porters assertion that “culture is the way we do things round here”. However, this leaves the question of what drives the way things are done. From my observations over many years, there are a number of elements:
- The way the boss acts, what he/she does, and the way it is done. People watch and listen, take their cues from the boss, and any inconsistency will be noted. When a boss says that employees are our most important asset, then fires a bunch of people simply because the numbers are down, that will have an impact on how much weight those left put in the “people are….” statement.
- What are the prevalent behaviour patterns in the place? Is it “blokey”, is being at the desk 9-5 important or is it the work done that counts, what are the accepted norms of dress, and so on.
- How is performance measured? Is it formal, 2 way, do performance reviews drive improvement strategies or result in condemnation, is it individual performance, group performance, or both, and so on. The old saying, “you get what you measure” is most often right.
- What “actions” (for lack of a better term) are encouraged? Is initiative rewarded for its own sake, or is conformity demanded, how does the place react to news, (good or bad), does it welcome change, and so on.
These four drivers of culture are an expression of the “values” of the enterprise. They describe the sorts of things that define the character of the enterprise, and create the foundations for getting things done in a commercially sustainable manner that is consistent with the expectations all stakeholders.
May 25, 2011 | Change, Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Retailers have spent 50 years offering a wide range of options to scratch any shopping itch. They have trained consumers to expect, indeed demand, a wide range, but given their walls are not elastic, is it any wonder that that when the elastic walls of the e-tailer comes along, we do what they have trained us to do, check out all the options and buy the one that best meets our needs.
Another perspective is that retailers to date have had all the power, what got stocked had a chance of sale, so retailers charged suppliers to have their product on shelf, and charged more for the best sales positions, in effect mixing the picking of winners with extraction of cash from suppliers. Now, suppliers have another option, one where the usurious practices of bricks and mortar retailers is mitigated, and a product has the opportunity for sale on its merits, not just on the pocket size of the supplier.
Is it any wonder the shift to net shopping is gaining momentum, the retailers have only themselves to blame that they did not see the shift happening, or just wished it would go away, and failed to use their capital and position to carve out a position for themselves.
