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.
May 24, 2011 | Collaboration, Lean, Operations
The lean tool, 5s, is often a starting point for lean implementation. It makes sense, as on the surface, it is relatively easy, “straighten, sweep, set, standardise, and sustain”, but it is this last bit that catches people out.
A clean, tidy workplace with everything in its marked place is great, a good start, but in itself, it is a bit like having your 15 year old son clean his room, looks nice, but doesn’t necessarily convert him from computer games to his poetry homework.
A lean implementation is hard, detailed, collaborative work requiring time, commitment and leadership, if it is to make an impact on work flow, changeover times, preventive maintanence programs, inventory management, safety, and all the other things that go to make up a lean workplace. Unfortunately, it cannot be sufficiently simplified to make any PowerPoint presentation any more than a superficial representation, an awareness builder.
So next time someone pulls out a slick presentation designed to part you from your money, consider the real work that needs to be done, and dismiss the hyperbole for what it is, hyperbole. You need to be prepared to knuckle down to some hard work to get anything useful and sustainable done, or just leave it all alone, save yourself some money and sweat, and just continue to bumble along.
May 23, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Management
It is a bit ironic to think that in the midst of the information revolution that is surrounding us, that we are in some ways reverting to the ways of pre-agricultural humans.
Bit of a stretch? Just think, pre-agricultural humans lived by what they knew, where the water was, how to track an animal, then kill, dress, and cook it, which plants were edible, and so on. There were no personal possessions, everything was shared, and the group succeeded or failed by group effort and their relative position in their environment.
We moved away from this collaborative model as we started to grow things and gain possessions, but in the information revolution we are going through now, perhaps we are going back to some of the foundations of what made hunter-gathers sufficiently successful to evolve into us.
If this is the case, maybe we should be looking at the social and organisational behaviours that made hunter gatherers so successful. Forget the strategists, bring in the anthropologists.
