Jun 23, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
When considering an important move, the range of possible reactions to the move by competitors often receives too little attention.
Predicting competitive response to a move is of critical importance, and clear analysis should be done prior to committing resources.
A simple test, often missed, is to put yourself in the position of your competitors, and allowing for the management style and culture of the competitor ask yourself a couple of questions :
- Will I see the move, and consider it relevant?
- What is my likely response?
When you have answered those questions to yourself, you are in a position to consider the wisdom of the initial move, and counter measures that may be required.
Jun 22, 2009 | Marketing, Strategy
Across the board cost cutting is an attractive option as times get tougher, just make sure you are not cutting the costs that create the value customers pay for.
The first thing that usually gets cut in a period of tight money is the so called discretionary spending that makes up the bulk of the marketing budget.
Fortunes are made by being different, not following the crowd, so why follow this one?
Use the downturn to market aggressively to your customers, communicate your value proposition, innovate across the board in every way you interact with your market, and reap the reward when the recovery starts.
Jun 21, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
Brands are often the greatest asset a business has, in the case of service businesses, brands make up most of the assets.
Why then are the brand sensitive decisions so often made by young, inexperienced so-called “marketers” whose agenda is driven by many things, but not usually the health of the brand beyond their expected short tenure.
It does not matter if the CEO is by training an accountant, or engineer, or anything else, it remains that his/her biggest job is to nurture the long term returns to shareholders, and to do they must become the Senior Brand Manager.
Jun 18, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
Re-reading Seth Godins little gem “Triibes” during the week, I again came across the term “sheepwalking” to describe the pervasive impact on most people of the status quo.
Last week I was chatting to a mate about a book he is writing offering some ideas on the commercialisation of scientific IP by Australia’s largely publicly funded research agencies, whose record in this regard leaves a lot to be desired.
As a scientist who “sold out” and ran companies, and then went back to the scientific world after 25 years, he is in a great position to bring insight to the table. His descriptions of the power of the status quo in these organisations, and the reaction of those who live in them are exemplars of Sheepwalking.
Australia is supposed to be the lucky country, and it has been, our track record in inventing stuff is great, commercialising it has been a bit of a problem, but unless we get our act together in the race to commercialise knowledge, organisations like CSIRO will become shepherds keeping a few nerds employed at public expense.
Jun 17, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Strategy
Nice thought.
Contracts are the usual form of defining an agreement, they are an enforceable substitute for trust that each party will keep his end of the bargain.
However, the web has made information so freely available, that the potential is for a substitute form to evolve, a form that calls for, and publishes performance data for all to see.
The ambient threat that non performance to an agreement will become public knowledge is going to become as powerful as a contract, as it will inform others that your business is not to be trusted. Similarly, the converse is true.
Will facebook replace a contact, perhaps not, but it may mitigate the current monopoly lawyers and the courts have on the process of agreement enforcement, becoming entirely more democratic and affordable in the process.
Jun 16, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Marketing, Strategy
There is a theme in the demand chain category of this blog. Wherever I go, I see the power of information transparency to improve performance, not just in commercial situations.
There is an ongoing battle in Australian education for school scorecards, anyone who seriously thinks about performance improvement of Australia’s education system comes to the conclusion that information on current performance is a pre-requisite for improvement, but the bureaucracy, and the teachers union together, but for their own reasons are making it difficult, all in the name of our childrens education.
Bullshit. It is in the name of retaining the very comfortable status quo.
Similarly, a scorecard of hospital performance has been shown in parts of the US to have a dramatic effect on surgical outcomes. Won’t happen here, even with the seeming catalysts for change that are evident in several hospitals, Bundaberg in QLD and Campelltown in NSW amongst others.
In the event we ever get real transparency, where results can be seen, and lessons learnt, the productivity of public dollars spent on health care would improve dramatically.
Businesses and value chains that have used transparency as a management tool routinely see productivity double over time, and there is no reason the results in Healthcare and Education would not repeat that performance.
