Sep 28, 2011 | Lean, Management
Years ago as a senior manager in a large organisation, part of the monthly routine was to write an APP report: Achievements, Problems, Plans, kept to an A4 page, used as a scene setter for the more detailed monthly report.
At the time it was a pain in the posterior, generally done at the last minute, with the objective of getting it done, rather than communicating the context of the rest of the report.
In short, a squandered opportunity.
How much better it would have been to use the APP as a summary of the context and detail of the functional responsibility I carried, something that had performance measures built in, and that was useful. In time it may have evolved into an A3 type report that I have more recently been using as the core tool of project planning, but the attitude that it was just a pain eliminated the opportunity to be creative and constructive with it.
How many good ideas are being squandered in your environment?
Sep 27, 2011 | Change, Marketing, Personal Rant
Am I the only one, or are others getting as sick as I am of the shallow, cliché ridden utterances of both sides of this “debate”?
The government is pushing their carbon tax, which will become law on July 1 next year, making the fundamental mistake of calling it a “Tax”, thereby ensuring they have a marketing problem, while the Opposition is opposing, anything, everything, while quietly using a nonsense 5% reduction in emissions to be derived from “Direct Action” whatever that is.
Irrespective of the position you choose to take on the question of what we should do about global warming, if anything, it would be nice to have some facts as a basis for the debate.
It is pretty clear that the planet is warming, the facts show that over the last years, whether you want that definition to cover 20, 50, or a 100 years, the globe is warming.
Now we have a fact to use as the basis of the debate, lets be a bit sensible about how much emotionalism we employ to push any particular barrow, and straying from the facts should be greeted with howls of outrage by the taxpayers who will ultimately bear the costs of the implementation.
Oh, and this condemnation of the quality of the political debate, not just in this country, but in many countries is much wider than the question of climate change, just look at how effectively our elected leaders are grappling with the economic meltdown of the US and Europe. As Charles De Gaulle is reported to have said, ” I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians”.
Sep 25, 2011 | Collaboration, Strategy
Thinking about they way organisations work, the “industrial” model of hierarchical functional management, expertise and knowledge hoarded, and little transparency of effort and outcomes is way past its use buy date.
We are social animals, who evolved in a village, usually not more than 150 people, where all the individuals made their contributions by way of what they were best at, and the group benefitted.
The age of the net 2.0 is bringing back the notion of the collaborative potential of the village as distinct from the hierarchical structure of the corporation.
This is a different way of organising ourselves. We need to be more adaptive and collaborative, the outcome of the whole system is the objective, not just the benefit that may accrue to an individual.
Sep 23, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Innovation, Small business, Social Media
Ask a SME manager in packaged goods, “would you like a phone call from Woolworths ordering stock of your new product for every store in the country?” and you will most likely get a tear with the nodded head.
Enter the “Orabrush” story, they got the call from Walmart without any of the usual begging.
There are many hurdles for SME’s in the packaged goods industry to jump before distribution in the major retailers can be obtained, and then the problems really start, because SME’s lack the resources to move the product off shelf before the trial period runs out.
Social media has helped over the past couple of years, you now have the opportunity to reach highly targeted groups of consumers, and deliver them a message, but generally it has not helped much to get the product on shelf in the first place.
Orabrush really broke the mass market model with a product I still find odd, but great creativity and lateral thinking combined with social media has turned the product into a hit, and can now be found in Walmart stores around the world
Have a look at the Youtube ads in the link, gems.
Sep 22, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Operations, Small business
One of my clients, a modest sized business inhabiting a narrowing but quite deep niche of manufacturing, has over a period of time put considerable resources into training their essenial technical people to be expert in the fields vital to their success.
A topic of discussion and concern has always been, “how do I get my investment back when I train them, and they leave?”
Perhaps the better question to ask is “what happens if we do not train them, and they stay?”
