Feb 7, 2010 | Branding, Management, Marketing
During the brand development process, to the extend that is it deliberate, most conversations are about the activities that supposedly drive the objective measures of success, sales, margins, market share, household penetration, and so on.
However, during qualitative research, brands take on human qualities, they are described using personal pronouns, they are young, old, male, female, a farmer, or a merchant banker, funny, quirky, reliable, and so on, but these responses are usually pushed aside, and minimised in order to give the spreadsheets some air.
Sitting in on many market and brand development conversations over the years, it is surprising how often we forget the human dimension, and the difference it makes to our activities, and priorities when we actively set out to describe the brand in human terms, and give the humanity of the brand a central place in our considerations.
Feb 2, 2010 | Leadership, Management
Engaged in a recent discussion about the nature of leadership, I fell back on the old chestnut that managers manage things, but leaders decide what to manage, which got me through until a “smartie” asked “what about entrepreneurs”?
Took a while, and a bit of filling, but it came to me that entrepreneurs recognise, leverage and manage opportunity.
Apart from being an acceptable answer on the day, when I thought about it later, I still liked it.
Jan 28, 2010 | Change, Management, OE, Operations
Scientific method calls for experimentation where you vary one variable at a time, observe the effect, making further changes only after consideration of the cause and effect relationships in the first experiment are understood.
Unfortunately, this is the opposite approach unwittingly adopted by many improvement initiatives, where there is a brainstorming session to identify “improvement opportunities” which are listed, prioritised, and implemented.
In the event of any improvement happening, we cannot tell which of the changed variables drove it, indeed, you may have good ideas in the mix whose positive impact is masked by the poor ideas and their outcomes.
One at a time takes more time, but not only offers the certainty of a positive outcome, it also educates you on the reasons why improvement has occurred, which can only benefit the ongoing process.
Jan 18, 2010 | Leadership, Management, Marketing
Customers remember the best and the worst.
When you absolutely “nail” it, they remember, and when you absolutely “stuff” it, they also remember, but guess which one they remember when you do both.
The parable of the bungled baggage, and variations of it is a story often used to illustrate the point, a small or seemingly unrelated factor can undo all the good work that goes into a customer interaction, so watch for the small things, and focus manically on what Jan Carlzon calls on the “Moments of Truth” those times when there is a direct contact between your front line of customer service, and your customer, after all, without customers, there is not much else.
Jan 17, 2010 | Management, OE, Operations
Machine utilisation and machine efficiency are probably the most commonly used KPI’s used to measure the performance of factory management. Both serve a purpose, but they do not by any means describe the “whole”.
The factor that completes the picture is “flow”, the state where product “flows” uninterrupted from one process to another, at a rate dictated by demand from the market.
Most factory managers know instinctively, if not by data, that their factories run best when there is uninterrupted flow through the processes, but if they are measured on machine efficiency, (production units/time) as they often are, they will be pushed to maximise the efficiency of individual machine points, building up inventory elsewhere, and interrupting the flow, and compromising the productivity of the factory.
The measurement of efficiency of individual points of a production process is ingrained, it is a fundamental part of the cost accounting and investment disciplines we all take for granted, but badly needs to be re-thought and taught to emerging operations and general management.
Jan 10, 2010 | Management, Marketing, Small business
In a small business, every action has someone responsible for it, whereas in a large organisation , or worse, a public bureaucracy, nobody has responsibility for the dumb things they do, they just become an automatically imposed “rule” that carries the sanction of the organisation.
Taking responsibility is not just good policy, good for the employees, it is good marketing.
