Customers drive chains
Integrated value chains are nothing new. IBM had one before it started "outsourcing" what turned out to be the future to Microsoft and Intel, Ford had one at centered around the Dearborn factory, from where the company controlled by owning everything from growing the...
What is the problem, and how do we fix it?
Working my way through a book on the implementation of "Lean" called "Manage to learn" an interesting book that further evolves the textbook as a story genre started by Eliyahu Goldratt's best selling book "The Goal" originally published back in the early eighties, I...
Effectiveness, not just amount, of spending
All you hear about currently is the Australian "health debate" a debate the pollies have decided to have as a political exercise, are discussions about who gets to spend the money i.e. exercise the power, it has little to do with the health outcomes of Australians,...
Transparency effect
Can you imagine the changes that would have occurred in the behavior of the tobacco industry in the 70's and 80's had there been the "net-enabled" communication tools available then, when the big tobacco companies were conducting a rear guard action against those who...
What is different now?
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn...
Visions & Values
These are sometimes used interchangeably, and they should not be, as whilst they go together, they are very different. Visions may change, values should not, and increasingly, as we are in a world of commodity offerings, and I suspect the long term is going to belong...
Knowledge is a pre-requisite, not a guarantor.
Deep knowledge is pretty common these days, the facilities to accrue it are readily and freely available, and it is no longer a key differentiator. However, what is still not common is what has always separated the run of the mill to the standout, organisations with...
Project collaboration paradox
Getting collaboration when you really need it, when the interaction can add value is usually at the beginning of a project. The closer you get to the completion of the project, the more the parameters tend to be set, it is the detail that changes, a much more...
Great strategy = concurrent mutually exclusive ideas.
Great marketing strategy is hard to develop, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. The difficulty lies in the need to hold several often opposing ideas in the brain at the same time, very hard for most. First, where to compete. This may be geography, channel,...
Forecasting and demand planning.
Developing a forecast of what you need to make to sell is a different proposition to doing a demand forecast, it is much more than a semantic difference. A forecast is usually an extrapolation, sometimes very sophisticated, but an extrapolation nonetheless, of the...