Aug 23, 2010 | Leadership, Management
Leadership is a subject that has filled libraries, kept researchers in businesses, and academics interested for decades. However, anyone who has been around organisations for a while probably sees it a bit more simply if they have given it any real thought.
To me, a leader needs to be able to communicate simply, and intimately (irrespective of the size of any group) a range of pretty basic things with those he/she is supposed to be leading:
This is why we are here
This is where we are going
This is why we are going there
This is how we are going to get there
This is what you can expect of me
This is what I expect of you
This is how, individually and collectively will take responsibility
This is what will happen if we fail at any of the above.
In the event that a leader “lives” all the above, others will follow, but there is little room for saying one thing, and doing another.
So much for the libraries!!
Aug 10, 2010 | Communication, Management, Small business
Sitting around many board and advisory tables over the years, I have observed that those that are successful follow what I have started to call the rule of thirds. Actually, there are four rules, but the first is generic to all meetings: have an agenda, follow it, take minutes, allocate a specific time to end, and follow up. The other three relate to the manner of organization of the agenda and are:
1/3 review the financials, the past period, and coming periods, with particular emphasis on cash generation.
1/3 Consider the immediate issues, gain agreement on actions, outcomes and timetables,
1/3 Consider the longer term issues, all those things that will not impact on the immediate performance of the business, but are in the medium to long term critical for survival.
Most board meetings tend to spend considerable time on the first, a bit on the second, and little on the third, but organizing the time allocated, and being disciplined about the manner in which the time is spent will pay dividends.
Aug 8, 2010 | Management, Marketing
Watching the current federal election campaign from both major parties, it seems they both should go back to marketing 101, and consider what it takes to engage with those to whom you want to sell something. Both to my mind are failing badly to create a brand that has a proposition that is attractive to those who take the time to consider their “purchase” rather than just buying the same one they bought last time.
From a different perspective, I had the pleasure of meeting with a couple of NSW shadow ministers with a group of business people last week. Their problem is that although the current NSW Labor government is so on the nose that is seems inconceivable that they will be reelected, very few in the electorate know anything about the alternative, and they have great difficulty gaining any media traction, so unlike their Federal counterparts, their problem is awareness, and how do they generate it, not that the product appears to be in tatters.
Aug 1, 2010 | Alliance management, Leadership, Management, Social Media, Strategy
Knowledge Management is all about collaboration, making the 3 + 3 equal > 6, but the challenge has always been how do you codify the knowledge for dissemination and re-use, implying the existence of both strategy, and a management mechanism for the knowledge.
By comparison, social networking is largely uncontrolled, and lacks a strategy beyond “to connect”, but it nevertheless has become a source of knowledge management.
Social networking brings to the table two factors not usually prominent in KM systems:
- Humanity, people connecting and interacting for the personal value, not monetary value, it reminds of the notion of “commons” where groups assemble because they can leverage off the social, intellectual and commercial base of the “common”
- Social networking offers the opportunity not just to form horizontal connections as happens in managed KM systems, but for the vertical, and oblique connections that offer the opportunity for insights and capabilities in an organic manner, rather like the organic metaphor for innovation.
It appears to me that an application for social networking techniques that will evolve quite rapidly will be as a new and powerful tool that will enable the rich and varied collaboration so crucial for the innovation process.
Jul 29, 2010 | Alliance management, Communication, Leadership
Contracts are the point of last resort, they define the exit, should it become necessary.
Believing a written contract that details how the dynamics of an evolving relationship will be managed is as dumb as believing the lady in the tent can tell the future with any accuracy.
Relationships are about leadership, collaboration, honesty, and a mutual respect, and a reversion to the clauses in a contract are a clear pointer to the failure of the relationship and the leadership.
A while ago, a business I have had intermittent contact with over a long period set about outsourcing their IT function. It is only a modest business, short of resources, and took the view that the IT people were the experts, and that they should know all there was to know about how to approach their problems, and that the resources freed up could be better used elsewhere. Problem was, they had not adequately defined their processes and expectations, and the vendor saw it as a small sale, perhaps not worth their best efforts.
There were some tough lessons in the exercise, and at their most basic broke down to the simple fact that nobody could know their business as well as they did, and a generic set of solutions sold to a modest business were never going to be successful.
The vendor failed in their duty to meet their needs, once the sales contract was signed, they “moved on” and the company failed badly in the implementation, and the whole exercise ended very badly.
The simple fact is that the “solution” could have, and should have worked, the company’s logic was sound, and the solution had all the fundamentals to deliver a great service, but the relationship failed. Rather than leveraging the skills and experience of both parties to arrive at a successful outcome, they took the easy way out and just fought over who would carry the can. Really dumb!
Jul 27, 2010 | Customers, Management, Sales
Independent produce retailers appear to be resurgent, based on the quality of their offer to consumers.
For years anybody who has been involved with FMCG has known about the challenge of the “last 10 yards“, the distance between a supermarkets back dock and the selling face. Retailers talk about out of stocks, and lost sales, suppliers struggle with short lead times, demanding delivery schedules and the lack of accurate and collaborative forecasting.
Added to these are these challenges presented by fresh food, perishability, appearance, consumers determination to handle and “cherry-pick” the produce, and the nightly put-away. The major supermarkets would appear to be losing share to resurgent independents, as they have responded to the supply chain challenges with greener fruit, more resistant to damage, and offering a longer period to maximise the opportunities for sale. Downside is that green fruit is not much good to eat.
Produce is a difficult category where training and product knowledge is more important than in any dry grocery category by a mile. Why then are there casuals in produce? Last week I saw, not for the first time, a seventeen year old tipping a box of tomatoes onto a display like they were Lego bricks, surely some training would be useful? In this case, it was the last 10 inches that stuffed the tomato.
No wonder specialists who know their business, and can manage the challenges particular to a category are doing a better job than generalists, and consumers are responding.
