September 26th 2008
If strategy is the long view of a negotiation, then tactics are its here-and-now. They are about the nitty-gritty of negotiation;they are about the actions that we take and the reactions that we have. For that reason, many of them are negotiation-specific. That is to say that they relate to the circumstances and rhythms of a particular negotiation — rather than to all negotiations. Continue Reading »
September 9th 2008
Make sure that the outcomes you define for your people are in line with your company’s current strategy. Again, this sounds like motherhood and apple pie. But with the dizzying pace of change in today’s business world, it is sometimes hard for managers to keep track.
The key distinction here is between “mission” and “strategy.” A Company’s mission should remain constant, providing meaning and focus for generations of employees. A company’s strategy is simply the most effective way to execute that mission. It should change according to the demands of the contemporary business climate. Continue Reading »
August 22nd 2008
Leadership first, perception second. To try to reverse this sequence is almost impossible.
What if you do everything right? What if you are the first in a new category and subsequently go on to dominate that category domestically? Then you should try to expand the market in the U.S. at the same time that you take your brand to the global market.
Coca-Cola did all of these things. But what’s next? Are there no second acts in branding history? Continue Reading »
July 16th 2008
A contact plan describes in specific detail how you will contact prospects and customers over a period of time to meet your specific goals. Each contact plan should contain the following sections:
Your contact strategy spells out your goals and describes how ongoing customer communication will be used to meet those goals. When thinking about your contact strategy, be sure to consider the online service imperative. What are you going to offer your existing and prospective customers in exchange for giving you permission to contact them? When Wegmans Food Markets developed its contact strategy, it focused on extending the service and customer-oriented approach that you’ll find in its retail stores to email communication. It has developed a contact strategy that is focused more on delivering relevant content and information than on selling. Its goal is to ensure that it provides its customers with notification of special produce, recipes, health tips, and more in order to simplify their grocery shopping and food preparation tasks. Continue Reading »
February 24th 2008
Every Company is driven by an underlying philosophy and logic. These may never have been articulated by the founders, either verbally or in writing. But they are there, whether the owners and employees realize it. The philosophy and logic may be expressed in your efforts to decentralize decision making in the company. They may be expressed in your decision to finance the company entirely from earnings rather than seek outside money. The section on the company is where you spell out your company’s philosophy and logic—its reason for being, its identity. This section of the business plan should cover four principal issues:
February 23rd 2008
As I’ve noted, a company’s strategy is a statement of its overall approach to doing business, its goals, and how it plans to achieve those goals. In the context of the business plan, the strategy can usually be summarized in a few sentences that articulate the company’s expectations for growth in coming years and the steps that will be required to make it happen.
Software Publishing Corp. stated its strategy this way: “Software Publishing Corp. is positioning itself as the leading independent software supplier for personal computers by producing products aimed at the fastest-growing segment of the personal computer market: Business/Professional applications. SPC’s unique strength in this segment is its ability to produce software that turns the personal computer into a versatile problem-solving tool that individuals can use to describe and solve a problem in their own unique way without programming.” Continue Reading »
February 7th 2008
The third delegation strategy involves more than the second. What we have been talking about so far is the deep delegation strategy, that is, off-loading a specific process or activity onto someone that specializes in that task. There is also a broad strategy, in which a customer contracts out entire business operations. As in the previous approach, the suppliers’ expertise and scale advantages motivate clients to delegate. What distinguishes this strategy is that it places a high premium on the supplier’s orchestration skills. The broader the scope and the more critical the nature of the work, the more customers have to trust that the supplier excels in coordinating and juxtaposing various pieces of the puzzle to form a solution and keep it running smoothly.
Responding to this demand, General Electric Power Systems, which builds turnkey power plants for thousands of customers around the world, will even run its customers‘ plants for them. For the company in need of a power plant, GEPS will take care of everything. In this case, all the delegators have to do is determine the spread between what they plan to charge and what they are willing to pay. Continue Reading »
February 4th 2008
Once a strategy has been chosen, the next step is to ensure that implementation takes place as smoothly as possible. A number of key questions need to be addressed:
February 3rd 2008
For ‘clicks and mortar’ companies, one of the key debates about Internet strategy concerns the implications for organizational structure. The question is whether it should be ‘a detailed strategy that is part of the broader strategic marketing planning process . . . or a separate strategy for a company for which the Internet is a significant communications or sales channel’ . Continue Reading »
January 14th 2008
Since the pioneering work of Burns and Stalker (1961), it has been accepted that unpredictable market and technological environments may require ‘organic‘ organizational structures rather than the more traditional ‘mechanistic’ forms best suited to more stable conditions.
The assumption is that organic structures can generate a high degree of ‘fit’ between the external environment and the internal organizational form. However, the scenario of organic structures enabling ‘matching’ to take place with changing external conditions is increasingly problematic for several reasons:
