Nov 16, 2011 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Woolworths and Coles price and promotion strategies are often shaped by what happens in the UK, as there is a history of successful imitation in Australia. The resurgence of Coles has taken the initiative from Woolworths, and the short term outcome has been price reductions to consumers, the flip side of course, and there is always a flip side, is a further hollowing of the production sector in Australia.
I am pretty sure that if you asked consumers which they would prefer, a price reduction today, or production security into the future, they would take the former, without understanding the probable consequences.
The Federal Court found last week in favor of Metcash in their effort to sell Franklins, saying in part that the competitive power of Woolworths and Coles served to keep prices to consumers down, solidifying the power of the status quo.
Nov 15, 2011 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
Most acknowledge that the future will be different from the past, so why is it that we seem determined to manage our way to the future by repeating the recipes of success from the past.
Future success relies on doing things differently, and this is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unnerving, so avoided by most.
Kodak missed the development of the digital camera, despite inventing it, Nokia missed the development of the “smartphone” while a runaway market leader, all the large PC companies missed the development of the direct sales model until Dell had tied it up, Detroit missed the consumers cry for smaller, fuel efficient cars that were reliable until bankruptcy loomed, and Apple continues to clean up by reinventing categories, and everyone else just follows them into the mobile consumer markets that they pioneer.
It is the equivalent of driving along a bush track by looking through the rear vision mirror, eventually you will crash. Only by looking ahead, and navigating a path less well marked can you take a leadership position, and that requires some “Unlearning”.
Nov 14, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Small business
The conduct of meetings, whether they be the AGM of a major company, or the committee of the local raffle group should run by the same basic set of rules, worked out over a long period to ensure that a meeting comes to a conclusion at the end of a comprehensive “due process”.
Whilst the AGM of a public company should be far more formal than the local tennis group, nevertheless, some rules should never be broken, significantly the one that states: “No-one can speak twice on a topic until all who wish to speak on the topic have done so”.
This simple rule ensures that the local opinionated motor-mouth who seems to pop up on most small committees is controlled.
It is up to the chairman to keep the discipline, but many a local meeting I have attended has failed because the basics of conducting a meeting are not enforced.
Nov 10, 2011 | Management, Operations
Writing a business plan is usually a priority in business, some do it well, some do it poorly, but what most do not do is write a business plan that evolves.
Effective business planning considers the long term context in which the business operates, and how the resources are to be allocated against the priorities, but shorter term, most tend to be fixated on a period, and the plan becomes a “set in stone” folder articulating financial outcomes that are as often as not wishful thinking, and in which all but the short term tactical stuff is dismissed as “too busy right now” to do.
Really effective planning engages with the reality of the environment right now, considers how the longer term direction will be impacted, makes judgments about emerging trends, and marshals resources and capabilities .
So, in summary to be effective:
Revisit the plan often
Reevaluate the risk assessments
Experiment and evolve.
Nov 9, 2011 | Customers, Innovation, Marketing
Every product manager I have ever seen sees his/her pack change, flavor extension, or new size as an innovation, and every marketing manager who lets this mediocre stuff take up valuable time, the only resource that is really irreplaceable, is culpable.
Sometimes, just sometimes, a genuine innovation emerges, and the common feature is that they almost always emerge from a culture that values their own resources, and that of their customers to the exclusion of all the usual puffery. What is left is the genuine hyping of something new, that needs at least some explanation, as it does not fit into any existing, neat categories.
Apple, Ideo, Cisco, Toyota, and a few others do it, others try and copy, change the look, but the value proposition is a copy. There is a new calculus of innovation easy enough to see if you know what to look for, really hard to do.
