Oct 21, 2011 | Change, Communication, Leadership
Creating a sense of commitment to an outcome is the job of anyone who seeks to lead.
Perhaps the most powerful way of achieving this is to build an understanding in an audience of what the current looks like, and articulating the shape of the future.
This should be far more than a presenter just asking themselves rhetorical questions, done well it creates a rhythm to a presentation, that can be compelling.
Probably the most compelling example, certainly the best known is Dr Kings speech in 1963, most immediately recognise the power of that articulation, relating to the couple of minutes at the end where he articulated his dream, having spent the first 12 minutes or so of the 16 minute speech laying out the present. This speech was so compelling it assembled the momentum for enormous change in the social fabric of the western world, consider what could be done in youir organisation with the use of that simple technique.
Trick is to ensure you live the dream, or it is just words.
Oct 18, 2011 | Change, Customers, Management
One of my clients is in a pretty difficult spot.
Having lost a major contract, simply on price from an offshore based competitive supplier to his supermarket customer, he finds himself in the position where his overheads will eat him alive quickly without very painful commercial surgery.
Over a period of time we have been discussing the Quality of his sales Vs the Quantity of sales, but assembling and allocating the resources to execute a change in the customer base has proven easy to say, very hard to do.
It is fine to obsess about the sales revenue line, but rather than just consider the quantity of sales, the quality is just as, if not more important. Had the volume he did with the supermarket been spread around 3 customers who were less likely to go offshore looking for a better price, even accepting the higher transaction costs, he would today be far better off.
Many businesses, particularly service businesses like insurance and Telcos factor in customer churn, and spend lots of marketing dollars to replace the customers they will lose through poor service, pricing, competitive deals and so on. Directing a small percentage of those dollars to better engaging with and servicing existing customers to reduce churn would be far better.
It is the quality of sales that should be measured, not just the quantity.
Oct 7, 2011 | Change, Lean, Management
A while ago I helped a mate move flats. He had only been there about 5 years after becoming a “bachelor” again after his family grew up, but the significant amount of clutter accumulated was unanticipated, and surprising. All sorts of proposals, manuals, brochures, old gear, and stuff that at some point passed the “might be useful one day” test had accumulated, and the clean out released lots of space, and a recognisable organisation for the remainder.
It occurred to me that businesses are the same, they accumulate all sorts of organisational and personal clutter that takes up valuable space and time, creating blockages and “work-arounds” in processes, effort that would be unnecessary in a cleaned, disciplined environment.
An aggressive clean-out of physical stuff, but more importantly redundant processes and rules from time to time would deliver significant productivity benefits, at very little cost.
Sep 30, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Management, Operations, Personal Rant, Small business
The news that Fosters will be sold to SA Miller Brewing represents almost the last Australian food and beverage business with a global brand has now disappeared. I say almost, as I can think of no other, but some may argue that a few sales in Fiji or NZ constitutes global. To my mind, it does not rate.
Why is it that we seem to be unable to build and sustain food businesses from this country?.
Australia is now a net importer of packaged food, according to the AFGC 2010 report, and yet we are an abundant producer, particularly of broadacre commodities, grain and meat. Most people when told we are a net importer go into a state of disbelief, and yet the march of imported food, and the decline of Australia’s manufacturing base has been happening slowly over a long period.
It’s pretty easy to blame the evolution of globalisation of supply chains, the domination of Woolworths and Coles, regulation imposing costs overseas competitors do not have, the geographic spread and relatively sparse population denying the economies of scale, but the reality is that it is a management failure. The failure is shared by boards and shareholders who have tolerated a complacent management, discouraged long term strategy in the chase for short term returns, and simply disengaged with the basic drivers of competitiveness over a long period.
The only hope left is that a few SME’s will emerge from the heavily culled pack that remains, but it seems to me that they have missed the boat, and the barriers that the businesses that existed 30 years ago, and should have breasted, are now simply too high for the small guys to tackle without the scale and capital resources necessary. Our one hope is that there is a processing breakthrough, technologies like the CSIRO High Pressure Processing technology offer some hope, but they are unlikely to be the savior by themselves.
Almost gone, down to the last gasp, what on earth will we do then? Or don’t we care?
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 13, 2011 | Change, Innovation, Social Media, Strategy
Coles & Woolies are starting out to reduce the gap between their marketing practices and those of the trendsetter, Tesco in the UK.
I guess this is not surprising given they are both watching Tesco very closely, and Coles management is now dominated by ex Tesco personnel, but I wonder if Australia has the depth of Innovation capability to not just copy what others have done, but to create genuine innovation in this exploding digital space.
We appear to have taken the edge off our capability, Universities and research facilities are starved of funds, hobbled by any current political agenda, and standards do not appear to be sufficiently rigorous to test and train the very best minds we produce. This is a long term challenge, way beyond any political cycle, but in my view should be high on our agenda if we are serious as a nation about the role we play into the future. It is not just about the carbon tax (look at what Iceland is doing) or what to do with a few desperate people arriving in leaky boats, it is about how we set up our nation for the long term.
Insead Business School and the Confederation of Indian Industry have produced a credible report that ranks our performance in the all important “Innovation Stakes” at 18, better than Thailand, but behind New Zealand. Australia’s profile is on page 79.
