Sep 18, 2013 | Customers, Lean, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Courtesy Michael Taylor
“5 why’s” is a tool that started life in the Lean Thinking toolbox, but in reality is simply common sense. In effect, make sure you understand the real cause of the problem facing you before you start deploying solutions, otherwise you risk treating the symptoms, not the cause.
It is a tool applicable to any problem or challenge, even the reluctance to engage with social media that I see so often with SME’s.
Following is an edited version of a of a recent conversation I had with a bloke running a successful small business, as he confronted his social media demons.
Bill: I have to get off my arse and start using Social media.
Me: Why?
Bill: Because all my competitors are using it.
Me: Are you losing any business to them, are you generating business you expect, or are you just lonely?
Bill: Don’t know, but I think it is expected
Me: Expected by whom?
Bill: Customers?
Me: Which customers, and what do they expect?
Bill: Not sure?
Me: wouldn’t it be wise to be clear about what you wanted to communicate, and to whom, which might offer some clues about how to best achieve the outcome?
Bill: Probably.
That conversation led into a useful session better defining his value proposition, then considering the tactics to be deployed to reach his best prospects, which included some “toe-tipping” into social media.
Social Media is not a panacea, and it is not a description of one thing any more than a label of “Cars” is a description of all the cars available. You still need to decide what you want to do with it, how much you will spend, and how you will measure satisfaction before you make the shortlist, and eventual choice. It is just pretty clear that in a modern world, just like cars, it is hard to avoid Social Media, it is everywhere.
Sep 16, 2013 | Change, Collaboration, Demand chains, Operations, Strategy
Most of the really great innovation that happens has as a core component, a re-definition of what the future should look like.
From Orville and Wilbur Wright, to Henry Ford, Martin Luther King and Steve Jobs, the words they used explained why they were doing something, and how they believed it would change the future.
They defined what the future would should look like, and the similarity to the present was only by exception. Then they got on with delivering.
On a more mundane level, lets consider the future of agriculture as a component of our modern lives. We have cities now that were unthinkable a generation ago, Tokyo’s urban area contains 37 million people, Jakarta 27 million, Seoul 23 million, and so on down the list.
Mans evolution seems to be grounded at the points where he first domesticated some animals to serve as hunters, food, and companions, then domesticated wild grains, and settled down to grow them rather than moving and harvesting as they went. A similarly monumental change is happening around us now, as we leave the land and cram into cities. Initially we fed ourselves with factory farming monocultures replacing natural environments, and we are only just starting to realise the ecological impact of this social change as a few experiments in “rewilding” progress.
This increasing disconnection from our roots I believe is being felt at a subconscious level, and we are reacting, demonstrated by the sudden popularity of cooking and gardening shows in the media, the growth of farmers markets, “pick your own” trails run by local farmers, the resurgence of specialist retailers who provide product provenance, and the nascent groundswell of interest in urban agriculture.
Degraded urban areas are being re-greened, and the thinkers amongst us are slowly recognising the extent and power of the changes, and reporting the changes, as with the” Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change” report.
So what next?
Technology will play a huge role in enabling “vertical” agriculture, a capital and technology intensive idea, but the bridging stage is to retain agriculture as an integral part of our urban landscape rather than removing it under the short term pressure for housing and industrial development.
The exciting part of all this is not just the revolutionary agricultural practices that will emerge, but the opportunities for the ancillary industries and services to evolve, providing jobs, education, and some reconnection with our evolutionary ancestors, whose DNA is hard-wired in us, but recently ignored to our social cost.
Sep 11, 2013 | Branding, Change, Marketing, retail, Strategy
As our cities continue to suck people off the land, and grow bigger, swallowing adjacent farm land, we face the challenge of how we feed ourselves into the future.
It may not be a problem now, or in 5 years, but it will be a problem. China’s urban middle class is currently around 400 million out of a 1.5 billion population. 20 years ago, there was little if any middle class, so the move has been dramatic, and is not slowing.
China is an extreme case, but one we need to consider in Sydney as we look to the future of our children. Marrying agriculture with urban living, figuring out how we can feed ourselves without destroying the landscape should be on the planners radar, so for those thinking about the challenges, here is my “two penneth” worth.
- Personalised. We are in a world of “i” one in which consumers expect to be addressed and marketed to on a personal level for clothing, cars, even shoes, so why should it be any different for the food we consume? Indeed, the food we consume is arguably more relevant to us than almost anything else. As I observe the strategies of the major supermarket chains, they are hell bent on removing consumer choice as a cost reduction strategy. This is working currently, but the rise of farmers markets, resurgence of specialist retail, and new net based business models may indicate a stirring at the edges that will at least partially disrupt this “efficiency over choice” business model in time. The opportunity for intelligent values based branding of food products has never been greater.
- Localised. As a kid in the late 50’s and early 60’s (yes, I am that old) there were a number of southern Mediterranean migrants living in the local area. Every single one of them had a back yard garden producing an array of vegetables and fruit for the table. I came to realise it was not a matter of cost, but availability, freshness, and a cultural imperative that drove them to grow in their backyard. Their children, the ones I grew up with, did not follow their parents, sacrificing the back yard garden for the convenience of the supermarket, but the pendulum has swung back, and our children, the grandchildren of the migrants, are returning to the notions of freshness, combined with low food miles, minimum chemical use, and product provenance that their grandparents had. The reasons may be a bit different, and more considered, but the preference for local product, with the inherent freshness and provenance is the same.
- Efficiency. The world has moved from being a place of plenty to increasingly a place of scarcity. Water, energy, labour, and available land are all becoming scarcer, and the increasing price of these resources is reflecting that scarcity. For many, the efficiency of their use of resources is often the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. The side benefit is that efficient use of natural resources also makes ecological sense.
- Intensity. We are seeing increasing intensity on every operational parameter you care to measure. Capital, IT, production, labour, all are far more intensely utilised than just a few years ago. In addition to the operational end, consumers are increasingly scrutinising the product they buy, looking for confirmation of the explicit and implicit claims made, and are unforgiving in the event that they smell a rat. This intense consumer scrutiny and selectivity that is emerging I have called elsewhere the ‘Masterchef effect”
There is considerable overlap between these four factors, and they are mutually supporting, but it seems to me that they reflect the foundation challenges faced by successful urban agriculture.
Sep 6, 2013 | Governance, Management
How often have you been in a position of trying to get something done in the face of an illogical or bureaucratic impediment ?
It is enormously frustrating, Authority being exercised.
On the other hand when faced with complexity, ambiguity, or technology beyond our knowledge and understanding, sensible people seek advice from an authority, someone who knows more than us, and can clarify and explain.
This person often has no authority, but is an authority.
So often these two things get tangled up. Someone “in authority” exercises that authority as would “an authority”, and the outcome is usually rubbish.
As management of our institutions has become flatter, more collaborative and individually accountable, this distinction has become more important as those with the authority are less and less likely to also be an authority on any given topic.
Failure to recognise the distinction is a huge burden on productivity.
Sep 5, 2013 | Customers, Demand chains, Marketing
Creating a demand chain out of an environment forged by a competitive and opaque supply chain mentality is no small task.
This change is particularly challenging in agriculture where there is considerable regulatory and interest group oversight and thousands of years of trading DNA pre-digital.
However, why should the agricultural supply chain be immune to the collaborative revolution spawned by the availability of digital data sweeping every other industry. Clearly, agriculture should not, so those who can conceive the future will have the opportunity to own it.
The characteristics of successful collaborative ventures appear to be similar irrespective of the market they operate in. Accommodation to car hire to books, where there is a market that can benefit from information, a logistic chain that is suboptimal, and a supplier base that opens up to change, the characteristics of a successful demand chain are similar.
- They are Transparent. End to end, the availability, costs, and value add is clear to all who can benefit from the knowledge.
- They are collaborative. Each component of the chain recognizes that their individual best interests are best served by serving the best interests of the chain.
- They are consumer centric. Delivering to consumers is at the core of the drivers of the chain. Sometimes this requires re-engineering of an existing chain, in effect innovating the delivery of an existing product or service, but increasingly emerging are value propositions made possible by new technology, driving development of demand chains that would not have been possible just a few years ago, like airbnb, Lyft, and Zappos.
Each of these characteristics adds to the capacity of the chain to reflect demand back through the chain, igniting the activity required to fill the demand.
