Nov 18, 2013 | Change, Governance, Leadership, Management, Operations
Perhaps unfortunately I was on the receiving end of a rant about design thinking last week. It was a passionate, articulate, and informed rant, but a rant nevertheless.
There is no doubt in my mind that design thinking is a competitively crucial capability. In this homogeneous and connected world, recognising the value that design can deliver, that it is an integral part of not just the physical products, but of enterprise culture and processes, is essential to commercial longevity.
However, design thinking has a fundamental flaw, a flaw clearly demonstrated by the “rantor” last week. As my old Dad used to say, “Son, you get 1/10 for thinking about it, the other 9 are for doing it”
My rantor was a thinker, but do not ask him to do anything creative. It is hard, dangerous (to a career) work to be contentious, advocate stuff outside the status quo, to be the questioner who backs up the questions with action, and most shy away.
We do need more design thinking, but we also need way, way more design doing, so stop hyping, and start doing.
Nov 12, 2013 | Category, Change, Governance, Leadership, Strategy
Years ago there was a line in the film “Breaker Morant” where the breaker, played by Bryan Brown said of a young ladies virtue “another slice off a cut loaf will not be missed” .
I never forgot the line, and have used it often, usually to make the point that a collection of small, and in themselves insignificant changes all added up eventually make a big difference. Just like a loaf, one slice may not be missed, but lose some more, and soon enough you have no loaf left.
The treasurer approved the takeover of Warnambool Cheese and Butter (WCB) earlier today by the Canadian group Saputo, should the current take-over squabble turn out in their favour
The original Saputo offer of $7.00/share has now been upped to a current $8.00 with current share price well north, there is anticipation of further action by Bega Murray Golbourn, or Fonterra.
It is now inevitable that WCB will cease to be an independent dairy processor, it just remains to be determined if it will be owned domestically or by an international entity.
The WCB directors have done a pretty good job by their shareholders, their shares are now trading at 8.50, after being stuck around $4 for a considerable period up till July, after some pretty crap results. This is despite being a strategic supplier in an industry with demand growing strongly, particularly in Asia.
There is a bit to go, but WCB is as good as no more. Now to the offer of ADM for Graincorp, a decision slated for December 17, and feted as the more important of the two decisions due to the competitive stranglehold Graincorp has on grain handling infrastructure in the eastern states. If nothing else, the pathetic blustering of Warren Truss , and acerbic one-liners from Barnaby Joyce will be worth waiting for.
The real concern however, is the long term impact of having major food producing industries controlled overseas. Without being in the least bit xenophobic, and recognising that Australia simply does not generate enough capital to fund all the demand for capital in the economy, it cannot be healthy for the prospects of our grandchildren to be so beholden to the overseas boardrooms who control the food supply chains.
Stop the presses:
Murray Goulburn has made a further offer for WCB on Thursday 14th of $9/share, a substantial premium over the current Saputo $8/share offer, and over the closing price of $8.50 on the exchange. This is pretty heady stuff for a business that has consistently failed to deliver adequate returns to shareholders for some years, and it is hard to see how Saputo can go much further without the rationalisation benefits that MG would have.
Stop the presses, again!
It is Sunday 17th, not a day of rest in the dairy industry. Murray Goulburn has indicated that they will beat the latest Saputo offer, price to be announced, but they have the hurdle of competition policy to jump, stupid as that is in these circumstances. So, the deliriously happy WCB shareholders have the choice of taking the unconditional Saputo offer now, or waiting a bit to see what MG has in store. Meanwhile, Bega have upped their bid, but it is below the Saputo bid, so is essentially irrelevant. However, what is not irrelevant is the Bega shareholding in WCB, which along with that of MG and Fonterra add up to around 40% of WCB.
Whatever happens to WCB this coming week, Bega will come into play as soon as the dust has settled, perhaps sooner, as it is one of the very few Australian dairy assets left bigger than a paddock with a few cows and a bathtub.
Nov 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
So much of life is boring, the same, dull, unemotional, repetitive, unimaginative, and missable crap….please miss me!!.
About the most boring, pointless and annoying “presentations” I have ever seen, are the safety announcements on planes before take-off.
Bbllllaaahhhhhh. Who does not know how to operate a seatbelt?
However, not only is it mandatory, I guess in an emergency, it just could be useful, if we took note, but how many of us do that, particularly if you travel a bit.
Same with any presentation, boring is forgettable, irrespective of how valuable the message may be.
So, take a leaf out of these books. TED presentations are often masterpieces of presentation technique, and always interesting, so the most viewed ones would have both something important to say, as well as saying it memorably. The Virgin America safety talk goes a few steps beyond the boring by rote “nothing” I see on Qantas all the time. I think there is a lesson in both.
An opportunity to present, to have peoples attention , to be offered up as an expert, tell a story, and have something useful to impart is gold in this world of never-ending noise, and distraction. Seems to me that when such opportunities emerge, it would be almost criminal to stuff them up by being boring, even at the risk of ruffling a few complacent feathers.
Nov 6, 2013 | Alliance management, Branding, Marketing, retail, Small business
The agricultural supply chain that has dominated the way we get our food has evolved as a fragmented, opaque series of transactions that occur to fill the gap between the producer and the consumer. Many of these transactions add no value to the consumer, rather, they serve to capture value for some link in the supply chain.
As they add no value, it is fair to ask “are they necessary”, and in many cases the answer will be “No”, in others it will be that whilst it may add no value, it is a necessary cost, like transport.
Were we to set out to re-engineer the supply chain with consumer value as the driving force, what would we change?
Well, a fair bit, much of it as a result of the communication and data transfer capabilities that have exploded in the last decade. There is now absolutely no reason a grower cannot see where his product goes, each transformational stage, every point at which it is moved, and the costs and margins involved.
Whilst there are sensitive commercial implications in all this, the technical capability is there, and using those capabilities to eliminate costs and margins that do not serve the consumer will increasingly become the focus of competitive activity and innovation.
Wool is the archetypal Australian commodity, and it is also representative of the worst of commodity “marketing” where each link in a very complicated operational chain is a set of strand-alone transactions. However, even in this conservative, institutionalised chain, there are rays of light, enterprises like WoolConnect that have evolved over a considerable period, to deliver a transparent, collaborative chain that has eliminated much of the cost that adds no consumer value, becoming far more productive in the process.
I am working with a small group of horticulture growers and specialist retailers in Sydney on a pilot, a transparent, demand driven chain that responds to consumers, not what growers have on the floor, or what wholesalers think they can squeeze a good margin out of, but real demand. It is a fascinating exercise, one that is hopefully successful and commercially scalable.
This will deliver tree ripened fruit to consumers the day after it has been picked, and similarly, veggies harvested this morning, on your plate tomorrow.
“Sydney Harvest” brand, get used to seeing it in your greengrocer.
Innovation in a horticulture supply chain, who would have thought??
Nov 4, 2013 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
cartoon courtesy Mark Anderson
Automation of the marketing and sales “funnel” has many productivity advantages, so long as the implementation of the software works, which is always harder than the smiling assurances of the automation salespeople would indicate.
However, there is one benefit that is largely ignored that can have a significant impact, irrespective of the software implementation: the classification of leads into categories that reflect the leads individual behavior and the expected sales strategy to be implemented.
The usual process to date, encouraged by the “Sales Funnel” has assumed that all prospects travel progressively down the funnel in a consistent homogeneous manner. Clearly, nothing could be further from the truth, every situation is different.
Following is a list of the categories I have used in the past to classify prospects. They can be managed simply in a spreadsheet, or elsewhere on a continuum that ends with extreme software intervention, but irrespective of the tool, the nail still looks the same.
- Newly identified prospects, with little information.
- Leads that have been “qualified” by marketing, but sales has rejected, or failed to move ahead.
- Leads that sales has qualified as “hot” and therefore become a priority, at least in the eyes of some sales people.
- Leads that are really just contacts not ready to progress towards a sale, but with whom you need to just maintain contact.
- Contacts that need some marketing input to turn into qualified leads
- Contacts that are really just “tyre-kickers”
- Leads you have lost contact with, but who may be “restarted”
- Finally, and perhaps most importantly, those who have for some reason or another dropped out of the funnel at some point, and who can be recycled back into the system.
Each of these is different, although there are grey areas between them, and each requires a tailored approach based on the history of the prospect, their role, purchase decision making power, and many other factors.
Before automation, there was little consideration of the real behavior of prospects, now, irrespective of automation, you need to be considering the sales funnel from the perspective of the “Funnellee”
