The trap in cost cutting
Across the board cost cutting is an attractive option as times get tougher, just make sure you are not cutting the costs that create the value customers pay for. The first thing that usually gets cut in a period of tight money is the so called discretionary spending...
The CEO as Senior Brand Manager
Brands are often the greatest asset a business has, in the case of service businesses, brands make up most of the assets. Why then are the brand sensitive decisions so often made by young, inexperienced so-called "marketers" whose agenda is driven by many things,...
Sheepwalking.
Re-reading Seth Godins little gem "Triibes" during the week, I again came across the term "sheepwalking" to describe the pervasive impact on most people of the status quo. Last week I was chatting to a mate about a book he is writing offering some ideas on the...
Can Facebook or Linked-in replace your lawyer?
Nice thought. Contracts are the usual form of defining an agreement, they are an enforceable substitute for trust that each party will keep his end of the bargain. However, the web has made information so freely available, that the potential is for a substitute form...
Transparency as a manager of performance
There is a theme in the demand chain category of this blog. Wherever I go, I see the power of information transparency to improve performance, not just in commercial situations. There is an ongoing battle in Australian education for school scorecards, anyone who...
Treat the cause
"We do not have time for that long term stuff, we have to …..(fill in your own)… or we will not survive to worry about it". This is true, particularly in small business, but if you do not put aside time and energy to consider the origins of the symptoms, and treat...
Demand = orders + lost opportunities.
Most supply chains are driven by orders, someone reacts when an order is received. The niggling question is always about demand, as most recognise it drives orders, inventories, innovation, competitive pressure, and so on, but is rarely measured. Orders are at the end...
Conformance and change
Most efforts to improve Operational Efficiency (OE) have at their core the elimination of variation in a process. It starts by setting standards, measuring the variations, and then progressively eliminating the causes of the variations, until you have a repeatable...
Efficiency and Agility.
Further to the earlier post, "An agile demand chain" that drew the distinction between agility and flexibility, consider the differences between efficiency and agility. In many plants, efficiency has been built at the expense of agility, as long runs of product...
Free stuff sells
Yesterday I went to a free concert in Darling Harbour in Sydney, and saw Jeff Lang who plays "my music" the blues, and must be one of the best lap slide players in the world. Point is, it was free, and he rocked the place, and judging by the reaction, he engaged with...