Issue 39, Sunday 6 May, 2001
Made in New Zealand - twice winners of the America's Cup
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"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
~ Will Rogers
"It doesn't TAKE all kinds, we just HAVE all kinds."
~ Shibumi Bubba
“The trouble with most folks ain't what they don't know. It's what they know that ain't so.”
~ Josh Billings, US folk philosopher
Award is a free fortnightly email magazine featuring the tools, techniques and best-practices that deliver high performance in the new economy
In this issue
WarmUp – Tom Peters and me ... we're THIS close!
Ten Minute MasterClass® – Assess Your Competition
SignPost® – What's Wrong with Call Centres?
ToolBox – Ethics: Downsizing? Loyalty Is a Two-Way Street
NetWORK –
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WarmUp® – Tom Peters and me ... we're THIS close!
So we were gilding the lilly a little, last issue (yes, it was a whole month ago ... ) when we claimed to be ahead of the curve on the Balanced Scorecard/Baldrige story.
OK. What we said was that the establishment (well ... the HBR) has finally caught up. Your editor has been making a case to clients and others for some time that the Baldrige criteria (or any of the derivatives, parallels or knock-offs) ARE a balanced scorecard.
Like, who needs Kaplan and Norton? Quite right, K&N (sort of) say. Score one for us, even if we're not counting.
But maybe we better start counting. Here's another win. On-line buddy Rick Sidorowicz emailed a few days ago to say:
"Malcolm my friend - you are famous. I was tracking through search site results for The CEO Refresher and found your article featured by Tom Peters. It's here:
http://www.tompeters.com/content/weblogs/wow/archives/2000_09_03_index.html
Nice one, eh?
Check out Rick's site at www.refresher.com/ceolinks.html
It's worth the effort - another gold mine of information you can't be without
Ten Minute MasterClass® – Assess Your Competition
From an original article by Diane Garrod, workz.com
http://www.workz.com/content/default.asp?oc=INCC
Assessing your online competition is like going on a treasure hunt.
With the Internet, you can gather a tremendous amount of competitive intelligence information in just a few hours.
Here's a map for finding the information you need about your competitors.
First, understand your business's internal strengths and weaknesses. Second, decide on a strategy you'll use to protect yourself. Here are three: Hold steady.Your company is stable, so your course of action will be to continue to do what you do best, only better. Use an offense. The goal is to attack your competitor's soft spots with aggressive, offensive moves: price changes, new products or expanded advertising and promotion.
Example. XYZ Manufacturing Co. discovers a competitor's weakness: delays in filling customer orders in the Northwest. Based on this information, XYZ creates an ad campaign stressing its on-time delivery record, and the company modifies all its sales presentations. The aim is to increase market share in the Northwest. Get defensive. The goal is to defend your soft spots from the competitor by protecting your market share, covering operation weaknesses, or keeping pace with the competitor.
Example. XYZ Manufacturing Co. discovers another competitor's strength: new telemarketing programs that increase sales at minimum cost. The defensive move is to rapidly create a telemarketing program. The aim is to prevent this stronger competitor from gaining market share at XYZ's expense.
Online business life cycles are measured in months, not years. Keeping your eye on your competitors is a game you need to know how to play. Here are four plays to level the playing field: Planning and Direction
Clearly understand your business needs, including time constraints. How will the intelligence be used? Why is it needed? Which people or departments will use it? Competitive intelligence is used for strategic planning, research and development, entry strategies, acquisitions, market timing and technology assessment. Establish a plan for information collection and analysis. What is the time frame? Your staff must understand that quickly executing a strategy is key to successful competitive analysis.
Information Collection
Collection involves obtaining raw information and turning it into usable intelligence. It is the hardest part of the process. First, determine whether the competitor is publicly held, privately owned or a subsidiary of a publicly held company. This will help you know where to direct your research. It will also indicate how easy the research will be. Publicly held companies are required by law to provide earnings reports to their shareholders. So it's easier to investigate public companies than privately held companies, which aren't required to reveal information.
Next, decide whether you will use intelligence software. Some you might try are C4U Scout (www.c4u.com/home.html) and KCC's Competitive Intelligence Spider (www.knowledgecc.com).
There's a long list of (US) sites at: http://www.inc.com/articles/details/0,,CID22395_REG47,00.html
Analysis
Preparing a profile for each competitor will help catalog your data. List: competitor's name, product or service, market share, estimated sales volume, current priorities, known objectives, strengths, weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages in relation to you, cash position, cost position, profit picture, short-term strategy, long-term strategy and suggested counterstrategy.
Analyzing the market itself must be an on-going effort that focuses on where the market is positioned today, what the market trends are for the future, and what strategic positions can be developed and exploited. Dissemination
Dissemination is the ability to get the necessary information to the decision-maker in time to make a difference. Dissemination marks the moment of truth. Will your data reveal the treasure intended or will you have uncovered nothing? This is when you'll find out.
And, finally, remember that your competitors like to uncover treasures of their own. Look out for counterintelligence.
SignPost® – What's Wrong with Call Centres?
New Measures for a New Era—the Vital Link between Measurement and Culture in Call Centres
That's the title, and below is the intro, of an article by Alan Meekings on performance in call centres that everyone, but everyone, with an interest in business excellence, measuring performance and workplace culture should read.
"Call centres employ a large and rising proportion of the working population in developed countries, but have become known as “the sweatshops of the 1990s”—with good reason. They can be extremely debilitating and dehumanising places in which to work. One factor distinguishing call centres from most other activities is the extent to which almost everything is measurable, directly and even daily. As a result, what gets measured, how the measures are used, and the management philosophy underlying the use of measurement drive the culture in call centres more than anything else. Drop a pebble in the measurement pond, and the ripples will spread to every aspect of the operation—for good or ill."
Alan Meekings is a Vice President with Gemini Consulting. He has extensive experience in the implementation and use of measurement in both the public and private sectors.
We badly want to bring you the whole 6,200 words of this article (and the illustrations), but have lost the link and forgotten the source ... if any Award subbies know where this came from please get in touch. As soon as we clear that hurdle we'll put the whole article up (or point you to it) so you-all can read it too. It's VERY important.
ToolBOX – Ethics
In a Downsizing, Loyalty Is a Two-Way Street
From an original story in the April 15th NY Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/business/15ETHI.html by our favourite pop ethicist, Jeffrey L. Seglin
As the economy has cooled and downsizing has heated up, the ethics of layoffs have once again come into sharp focus, not only for the managers making the cuts, but also for the remaining employees. The number of people laid off in the first three months of this year - 406,806 [in the US] - was nearly triple the total for the same period of 2000.
Payroll is often the first place companies look when trying to save a
bundle. But growing evidence suggests that such a response can be myopic.
A survey by Mercer Management Consulting of businesses that used
cost-cutting as their primary strategy in the first half of the 1990's - a
period that included a recession - showed that 71% failed to
achieve profitable growth in the strong second half of the decade.
When employees recognize that layoffs may be more of a knee-jerk reaction
than a smart business solution there's a trust cost.
Consider, too, that the highest number of layoffs during the last decade
came in 1998. It is
no wonder that employees question how much they owe to their companies.
"If the 1990's have taught employees anything, it's that no matter how
much they give to these corporations, they will give them nothing back in
return," said Jill Andresky Fraser, author of "White-Collar Sweatshop". "Companies relied on aggressive cutbacks throughout the
prosperous 1990's to give one more short-term boost to the bottom line.
They looked at their employees as yet another disposable commodity that
could be squeezed dry and then thrown out the door."
What ethical responsibility do employers
and employees have to each other? If a layoff is imminent, do those
employees who know that they are safe owe any loyalty to the company? And
do employers owe loyalty to employees who have hunkered down in tough
times and helped the business survive?
Even when they do stay, employees may feel betrayed by a company that
demands more work of them and gives back little in return.
When considering layoffs, a company certainly has an ethical duty to make
sure its decision will be a responsible one for the business. It also has
a duty to treat laid-off workers fairly, by providing outplacement
services and reasonable severance pay, and to ensure that those who remain
have the tools and support to do their jobs.
When an employee decides to stay with a company - even amid fear of
layoffs - he has an ethical responsibility to continue doing the good work
he has always done. If he truly believes he cannot do so, he should resign. After all, his
responsibilities to his company do not change even if his perceptions of
his employer have.
NetWORK
George Ritchie loved the "5 Whys" (last issue): "When you have a 3 yr old you realise how powerful it can be when you are required to explain how something works (without making it up!) for the 5th "why?" - you have to really think about it and sometimes find yourself asking "how does that work?", "why do we do it that way?", "why do we throw things in the rubbish?", "where does it go?" . and after all that, like the universe itself there is still ... "but why, Dad?"
Pat Townsend responded to last issue's comments about the differences between Americans and Europeans with "A quick thought (to, perhaps, develop into a full idea)". This is what Pat suggested:
"The Japanese - by stereotype - are more regimented than most cultures . . .
a natural result of having to fit so many people on so little land for so
many years. They've had to learn to pretty much stay in step as a group in
order for life to proceed as comfortably as possible. So the Deming, with
its strict rules and regimented approach works for them.
"The Americans have always been more free-wheeling, more willing to go off
and do things a different way, to follow guidelines but to push the limits
of those guidelines and look for new ways to do things. So the Baldrige -
with its allowance for new adaptations of old principles - works for them.
"The Europeans have long had to worry about getting things across borders so
they've had to worry about the "fit" between one country and another -
physically and, to a lesser degree, procedurally. So ISO 9000, with its
emphasis on specifying the correct standards at hand-off points, works for
them.
"Confusion begins when one area tries to apply a system that is culturally
correct for another area. It is also why, I suspect that the Baldrige fits
well in New Zealand and Australia .
Just a thought ...".
Not an advertisement
We'd like, as always, to remind you about EDGE FIRST, our companion eZine dedicated to leaders and leadership - a fortnightly serving of provocative thinking about what it means to be a leader, and the tools, techniques and best-practices that drive leadership improvement. If you haven't seen it, click here for a complimentary issue.
In recent issues
Competing for the future - Hamel is THE MAN, embrace innovation!
Women and leadership - for real progress ... give men the nappies
Quick case study/Jennifer White - on picking winning teams
tompeters! - new economy DNA. Flaky? Irresistable! The survival kit
Snapshots of the new economy - from Seybold to Subramanian
eStrategy - best, first, fastest, lastest ... just watch out for Wal-Mart
A better way - but don't try this at home
Gen II - who wants to be a CEO
>> Next issue May 20, 2001
>> Copyright © 2001, Macpherson Publishing
>> All rights reserved. But if you found this eZine useful we strongly encourage you to email it intact to associates, friends or acquaintances
>> Award and EDGE FIRST are trademarks of Macpherson Publishing
>> Contact us at macalex1@xtra.co.nz
>> Visit our web site at www.baldrigeplus.com
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