Jul 16, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
The notion of an organized, planned, tidy strategy development and implementation process, whether it be for a multinational, or a small local business is profoundly flawed by the simple fact that it requires forecasting accurately a number of things, including many beyond the control and understanding of any business, and the only thing we know for sure about forecasts is that they will be wrong.
Strategy development and implementation is an organic process, filled with false starts, blind alleys, and pain, all of which add to the evolutionary “learning” process, which sometimes delivers commercial sustainability.
To be useful strategy implementation must have the capacity to “learn” , to see the impact of its actions, and adjust to accommodate changes, misunderstandings, and opportunities.
Most SME’s do not think much about strategy, they are usually tactical in outlook, and that is a failing. Strategy is as important to a small business selling through “alternative” channels, as it is to the multinationals selling through established channels.
Only with hindsight is strategy implementation an orderly process, when all the speed humps can be ignored or explained away
Jul 9, 2009 | Management, Operations, Sales, Strategy
Selling is a tough job, and getting tougher, as the number of ways a potential customer can purchase expand with the web, and consumer confidence is fragile, despite the stunning Australian figures a couple of days ago.
No longer can sales people fulfill their budgets by being accurate and sympathetic purveyors of information, and doing a lot of calls, they now need to be able to add value in ways that competitors and no other channels can duplicate at the price.
How do you do this?
- Have only skilled sales people, ones who without thinking, empathize with customers and their problems. Make sure they know your products intimately, and the business of the customers as intimately so they can identify unique ways your products can add value to the customer.
- Have in place the sales support mechanisms so that every opportunity identified is optimized. Sales people make sales talking to customers, not chasing late orders through your systems.
- Have a “sales culture” where the whole organisation recognises that customers are the reason they are in business, and it is everyone’s job to sell, not just those with a bag.
The bad news for sales professionals is that there will be less of you as time goes on, the good news for those left is that they will be paid a lot more than they are now as their value is recognized.
Jul 9, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Operations, Strategy
Yesterday, some astonishing figures reflecting consumer confidence were published by the Melbourne Institute and Westpac, with the attendant clichés about the success of the governments actions coming from all parts of the government,applauding the “cash-splash” in alleviating the impact of the WFC.
What a load of old cobblers.
Over a long period we have allowed, indeed, encouraged the reduction of our productive capacity in favor of the “production” of services, accepting the line that all economies move from agricultural to industrial to services in a linear fashion as they develop, and it was our turn to move to services.
Apart from the lucky ability of Australia to dig stuff up, and sell it, once, we produce less and less.
I do not accept that the future of Australia is in providing intangibles, when we dig up stuff, export it, and re-import the manufactured product that we should be manufacturing ourselves. Where is it a given that this should be so? I am not suggesting a return to protectionism, quite the contrary, we need to be globally competitive and resilient value adders and exporters of our own resources.
Our future should be in using the productive capacity of our educated, market aware, globally tuned workforce to manufacture stuff and then to export it. There is a radical idea for you.
But where are the engineers, and scientists, the technical skills to do this? The technical and scientific skill base of the economy has been eroded in favor of other “soft” skills that do not produce “stuff.” All you have to do is look at the technical brain drain overthe last 20 years as scientists look for remuneration and facilities to match their capabilities, or the disparity in remuneration between a financial derivatives salesman and a Phd in applied mathematics for your evidence.
We need to take a long view, and start to wind back the clock, because in that long term it will not be the puffery of consumer confidence that keeps this country great, but the skill to conceive, design, manufacture and export tangible assets that have at their core the leveraging of the intellectual capital of the country.
Jul 7, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Operations, Strategy
Much has been written about the value of giving people as much information as possible about the organisation, including any unwelcome news. In the absence of certaint, rumor will fill the gap, and it is usually worse than the actual.
I was reminded of this recently having a yarn over a meal with a bunch or people I worked with some time ago, who were facing the reorgansation of the business subsequent to a takeover, and the probable redundancy of many of them.
As GM of a division of this business, I had closed a number of operational sites to increase the returns of the business. In the first, I followed the corporate policy exactly, turned up on the morning with a letter for each employee, a redundancy calculation, and the HR manager and security. Suffice to say it was not pleasant, and there were repercussions.
Some time later, I had to close a second plant, same reason, it simply was underperforming drastically, and had become surplus to the need. This time, I called a meeting, and told the personnel of the decision 6 months in advance of the planned closure, explained the reasons, and the steps that would be taken to ensure they all had as much of an opportunity as possible to move to other sites, or find other jobs. To my surprise, they were pleased that finally they knew their fate rather than being forced to speculate on it, and the timetable. In the following 6 months as operations wound down, productivity went up, attendance went up, product losses went down, and the financials improved markedly.
The lesson, once people know what will happen, and when, why, and how it will impact them with some certainty, they were able to get on with the job without the corrosive impact of uncertainty.
Jul 6, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Strategy
Newton is one of the real genius’s of history, he promulgated a series of laws that form a key part of the foundation of following scientific success.
However, he did not get it all right.
“To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” he said. Any experienced negotiator will tell you this is nonsense in the context of a negotiation, where the reactions to a proposition are rarely opposite or equal to the proposition suggested.
A negotiation is a complex series of interactions that depend on the creation of perceived value, and the reflection of that value in some way, often in monetary terms, but not always.
My sister (in Trinidad) has just swapped a beautiful, highly equipped, 32 foot sloop with some finishing work to do, for a 45 foot steel hulled sloop with little gear, apart from a full suit of sails, but which can cross the Atlantic at will. No money changed hands, but value was created for both parties, because the other had what they each needed at the time, so a deal was done, and it had nothing to do with money. It was however, a complex negotiation about relative value, with the emphasis on what each could bring to the other, and still win.
Isaac did not consider the complications of game theory in his deliberations, but if he had, he may have put some caveats on his laws.
Jul 2, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Operations
Supply or Value chains are essentially sequential, one activity logically follows the completion of the one prior, and in streamlining the timing and handover parts of a process, you can build great efficiency.
However, great leaps in performance will not come from incremental improvement in a sequential process, but from finding ways to complete activities in parallel, but this will require a whole different set of collaboration tools, to ensure that each parallel activity is working towards the same end point, using information that is consistent and complementary.
The exchange of information through the chain becomes absolutely essential as you move to reduce the cycle time and costs of activity sets in a chain by re-engineering the chain to progressively adopt parallel activities. Without essential information being far more freely available that is necessary in a sequential chain situation the whole exercise will be a disaster.
Simple first steps taken to “parallel process” can offer great improvement, but more importantly, they can be an indicator of what is possible, and a precursor of the sorts of information sharing capabilities that will be necessary to capture the promised performance improvements.
