Aug 12, 2010 | Change, Leadership, Strategy
There is lots of hand-wringing going on again about gender equality in the executive suite the boardroom, and particularly the political arena.
All thinking people recognise the value of ensuring half our population has the opportunity to maximise the return to themselves and the community from their education, skill, determination, and ideas. The flip side, the one we are not allowed to talk about without being labeled sexist, is the social and financial cost of ensuring that equality, who should bear it, and under what circumstances sanctions should apply.
The initiative by the Australian Institute of Company Directors to mentor “board ready” women is terrific, and should be widely supported, but the regular discussion in regulatory circles of proscribing numbers is badly misplaced if the objective is the performance of our boards, rather than just some objective to achieve numerical equality.
Aug 11, 2010 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
“Banksters”, an emotive term coined by Father Charles Coughlin, a commentator in the early thirties as the practices of bankers and financiers during the boom in the lead up to the Wall Street crash in late 1929.
It seems that the Banksters are back in 2010 as the financial position of much of the developed world stutters, banks are making heaps by creating a mountain of debt.
Greece is effectively bankrupt, the UK and US have public debt at a level just below their GDP, the overhang of retail housing debt in the US is huge, and at some point the Germans will get sick of having their economy effectively underwriting the value of the Euro, but the bankers are back from the brink, especially in the US, making lots of money for themselves while the financial systems remain broken.
In Australia, small businesses are starving for capital, Governments appear generally incapable of responsibly running public finance in the face of the temptation to pork barrel regularly due to the election cycle, but we have a bogus debate about the evils of public debt at around 6% of GDP, when it is dwarfed by private debt built to fund the banksters lifestyles, at around 150% of GDP. The clincher, yesterday the Commonwealth bank announced a profit of 6.1 Billion dollars. I have no problem with profits, even large ones, but this one is in the context of a government guarantee of deposits for the major banks during the crunch, which led to a flight of capital from those who could provide competition to the big 4 banks, reducing competitive pressure, and fattening the remaining banks margins as a result .
The real question is “will we wake up in time?”
Aug 9, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Perhaps I am dreaming, but there appears to be a “nudge” (not yet a trend) amongst the manufacturing firms I talk to towards a review of the cost/benefit of overseas sourcing of manufactured products.
At the end of the spectrum where ownership of IP, and innovation are important, firms appear to be reconsidering the value of “off-shoring” recognising that keeping the processes that create value closer to home, where they can be developed, and leveraged with a more sensitive hand over the long term is better than taking a short term cost benefit.
This is not to say that there is any real future for commodity manufacturing in a high cost environment like Australia, apart from the very few areas where we should have a natural advantage, wool processing for instance, but there is a rich future for the development of sophisticated, market sensitive, innovation led manufacturing, so long as we are able to grasp the drivers of that success.
Aug 5, 2010 | Communication, Social Media, Strategy
Access to information before anyone else has it is Gold, access at the same time as everybody else is just staying in the game, essential, but it will never be a winning edge.
A small advantage at some point, can be built into a substantial advantage quickly as the value of the unique information enables leveraging before it becomes common, and the access/leverage equation scales up with use.
Information is only of value when it is used, pretty obvious, but often missed, and the more it is used, the greater the value, unlike physical assets that depreciate with use.
Aug 5, 2010 | Branding, Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Many businesses are sorely tempted to drastically reduce marketing expenditure during a downturn, it is often the most visible, and usually the least understood item in the P&L.
The evidence indicates that you should be keeping spending up.
Time and time again we see businesses that keep their marketing expenditure going during a downturn are in a much better position when the cycle moves up again. A dollar spent in a tough environment (assuming it is intelligently spent) is of far more long term value than the same dollar spent in the flush.
Now we appear to be in the recovery stage of the cycle, although anecdotally all bar mining appears to be pretty flat, opportunities will emerge to leverage the better circumstances, but discipline is needed to retain the focus that usually is heightened during a downturn. Below are three of rules of thumb:
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- Have a “Sku spring-clean”. Now things are improving, it is tempting to keep that small volume Sku, the “homeless” small brand, the small subsidiary acquired by accident, better to manage out of them to free working capital and enable management focus, and now times are a bit better, the cost of exit will be reduced.
- Don’t just push growth for growths sake, because it seems possible to get some, use the freed up resources to strengthen existing business before you chase growth for the sake of it.
- Don’t take the pressure off the cost cutting initiatives, the next downturn is somewhere just ahead, and your competitors will keep reducing their costs.
The cycles of economic activity appear to be getting much quicker, and competitive activity more aggressive and reactionary, so it is becoming even more important to have a firm view of the long term positioning. Define the brand development program, set long term performance measures, and stick to them as it will now take several economic cycles to get any meaningful result. Rather than being able to invest and make the return in the one cycle as has been the case in the past, it will now take several cycles to generate any long term depth .
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.
