Jun 4, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Management, Marketing
On a flight from a regional town last week, the attendant went through the nonsense of the “safety speech”. Instructions on how to do up the seat belt as if nobody knows is pretty dumb, but of total irrelevance is the instructions on how to use the life-jacket. I remain unconvinced that a little whistle and light will do much good if the engine stops at 20,000 feet, and the only water within 100km is in farmer Browns property dam. What about a parachute?
However, it is all taken so seriously, passenger jokes are not appreciated at all. Surely an example of a mould that needs busting.
Another mould more likely to be busted by the avalanche of mobile and electronic payments innovation is the banks credit card and cheque business model.
I have observed the missed opportunity by banks before, and the pace of change is accelerating rapidly picking up as Apple, Google, Paypal, and a host of startups like “Levelup” “Square” see the opportunity in disruption, and are chasing hard, often using technology that evolved in an ecosystem with nothing to do with banking.
These changes pose a huge problem for banks, one that their legacy structures and business models are apparently having big problems addressing. The role and performance of banks around the world over the last decade, and in the current European mess has removed any residual loyalty consumers may have had, and opened them up to non bank competition that will change the nature of banking in the coming decade. Opportunities abound to bust the current mould.
May 29, 2012 | Lean, Management, Operations
Return on Investment is the basic calculation made to assess any investment, but too often gets complicated by all sorts of assumptions and forecasts.
In these days of rapid prototyping, access to A/B testing tools using the web, and the logic of many small bets in the innovation process rather than a few large ones, the calculation becomes less important if you follow the simple rule:
“Keep the “I’s” small, and nobody will bother you too much about the “R”
May 25, 2012 | Change, Management, Marketing, Operations, Personal Rant
Last week speaking to a gathering, I told the group that Australia was now a net importer of food with a $2.7 billion deficit in 2010-2011, according to the AFGC State of the Nation report . Utter disbelief was the primary reaction, “how could that be” being a typical response.
The Australian food industry is dying at a rapid rate, the pressures on local suppliers are heavy, and increasing all through the supply chain. Retail oligopoly, high $A, regulatory impositions that make no sense, costs of supporting local government social initiatives, and all the rest of the stuff that clogs up the wheels of competitiveness and productivity.
Heinz moved to NZ last year, SP exports, Australia’s largest tomato grower in liquidation, a second major grower hitting the wall in April, and this week, fresh tomatoes hit $10/kg in supermarkets. A sign of things to come in many categories.
We are watching the death by a thousand cuts of an industry, small businesses that garner little exposure are hitting the wall all over the place, Golden Circle gone, Goodman Fielder on the skids, growers are going broke across the board, dairy processing almost all owned overseas, about all that is left is meat, because we are amongst the biggest producers, and horticulture, because most fresh produce does not travel well.
Now, if we continue to go the way it seems we are destined to go, housebrand NPD will eventually overtake proprietary NPD as it has now done in the UK, and you need to ask where that NPD will occur. Certainly not here, because not only have we seen off the manufacturing businesses, we have substantially depreciated the technical capabilities necessary for innovation. Even the CSIRO is a shadow of its former self in the food industry, having removed much of the intellectual infrastructure as its masters re-aligned the priorities to other areas, and progressively trimmed the resources.
The recent drop in the $A will help, just a pity there are few businesses left to take up the slack.
May 8, 2012 | Change, Leadership, Management
With apologies to my economist friends, the notion of demand elasticity can be applied to the status quo in an organisation.
Embedding change in an organisation is remarkably hard, the status quo is capable of absorbing lots of punishment, and when the belting is over, it re-asserts its dominance, simply be being the “way things are done around here”.
It seems that when all the mumbo jumbo is culled, there are only two tools available that ensure you can make changes stick.
- Change processes such that there is no going back. This can mean all sorts of things, but essentially, the option of reverting to the old way must be removed. Weather you do it in an afternoon, or incrementally is just a question of management tactics, so long as doing it incrementally is not a cop-out.
- Change the people. Pretty nasty this, and has all sorts of implications, legal, moral, and the impact on survivors, but it remains that people make organisations work, and if it is not working, some stern action is required.
Apr 12, 2012 | Management
We all do stuff in business every day, and largely assume that it needs to be done because it is in the budget. In other words, we are making investment decisions at a micro level simply because there is an institutional requirement to consume the resource.
Rather than just proceeding as the plan says we should, we should be asking ourselves every day if the investment at any level we are about to make is strategically the right thing to be doing, will it enhance the longevity of the enterprise, and the manner in which it contributes to all stakeholders.
It seems to me that often activities of planning and delivering are almost mutually exclusive. A senior bunch does the planning, then hands the completed plan on to others to deliver.
All the analysis in the world will not substitute for getting on and doing things, analysis is too often an excuse for procrastination, and the fear of being wrong. Then when the competition gets in first, the too frequent reaction is to be second, at a discount in the hope of gaining the share squandered by indecision.
Apr 10, 2012 | Management, Personal Rant, Uncategorized
I kept a diary of how I spent my time recently, and noted a number of things I suspected, but did not have the “data” such as it was.
- Being “connected” had reduced my productivity significantly. My concentration was broken when emails came in, seemingly demanding just a look, people ringing, texting, just wanting an immediate response/decision irrespective of my current load, and capacity to appropriately consider the response.
- The discipline of the “to do” list had been destroyed. As a young bloke, I did a list for the next day, last thing every night. That list offered a priority guide, time allocation, a memory prompt, and a record of activity each day. Whilst like most plans it was a point from which to depart, it still gave structure to my day, week, and priorities. That discipline has effectively gone in the welter of competing tasks surfaced by connectivity.
- My “head-time” had been destroyed. In the dim, dark, unconnected past, I had time to consider options, seek considered input, and just allow a situation to stew in my brain over a period, which often led to options not consciously in the mix at the outset. This happened as I walked at lunch-time, sat in traffic, over the weekend, and just having a casual chat with colleagues whose council may have added a perspective. All that valuable head-time is gone, driven away by the access and immediacy of the devices in my pocket, and the expectation of others that an immediate response is mandatory.
Years ago, a mentor urged me to distinguish between the urgent but not important, and the important but not urgent, and act accordingly. Being connected has given the urgent a huge increase in leverage at the expense of the important, and it is taking a real effort to redress the imbalance.
I have reverted to a to do list that structures my day, turn off all devices in the middle of the day and take a hobble around the block and talk to myself or a colleague, and set out to do the most important thing on my list first thing in the day. This added discipline is proving to be much harder than I thought, but useful. My personal productivity seems to have lifted, as has my satisfaction with the tasks completed every day.
