7 Mental models for business planning
Business planning, when you think about it is a bit of an oxymoron. The only thing you know for sure about your plan is that it will be wrong. George Patton said ‘Without a plan, you are just a tourist’ and even that great social philosopher Mike Tyson...
Optimising does not always deliver results: Re-frame.
Lean thinking, and the lean toolkit have changed the manufacturing landscape around the world. The elimination of waste in processes is now standard practice in every successful business, and the tools of Lean, 5 why, 5S, and all the rest play a key role,...
Red flags to business failure.
The November 2017 issue of the magazine of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) contains a very insightful and useful article by Phil Ruthven dealing with the industry cycles that IBIS research has been cataloguing for 40 years. Ruthven...
Indifference is the killer of businesses.
Successful small and medium sized businesses are always on the lookout for opportunities, which can be a problem. All businesses, and especially small ones do not have the operational and management 'bandwidth' to take on too many opportunities,...
The strategic wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld
Strategy is all about making choices, often difficult ones in situations where you are setting out to assemble the resources and capabilities to deal with the future. In days past, those who claimed to be able to tell the future were burned at the stake,...
The evolving Push & Pull of the supermarket business model.
Established supermarkets around the world work from a pretty similar, well-honed playbook. The current business model of supermarket retailers is all about scale and leverage applied to their supply chains, and offer of range and price to consumers. While...
Amazons Australian warehouse is finally open: so what?
So, Amazon opened its first fulfilment warehouse in Australia last Thursday, to the sounds of the incumbent retailers either telling us that they will have no effect, or just not acknowledging the appearance of a giant shadow on the landscape. Back...
What is the most common question in marketing?
How do we build this brand? This question leads to all sorts of strategies and tactics that are all aimed at engaging consumers in some way, to get them to prefer the brand and sometimes even buy and recommend to their friends. Marketers cannot decide...
5 questions that might save Australian manufacturing
The news that Murray Goulburn would be acquired by Canadian dairy giant Saputo, taking out the largest of the few remaining Australian owned FMCG manufacturing businesses is not welcome, while probably an inevitable result of the failure of...
How do you make change when nobody really wants it?
Making change is about the hardest thing any leader has to do. I specify leader, as in my experience, managers cannot effect change, the best they can do is optimise the status quo. Regularly, I am faced with situations where change simply has to be made,...