Without execution leadership is meaningless

Peter Drucker is credited with having said:  Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. The emphasis on doing is from this blog post because for reasons unknown the world of organizations (whether for-profit,non-profit or government) seem to worship "leadership" and treat execution as mundane and "tactical." Somehow beneath the dignity of true "leaders."

In fact, check out the curriculum of most business schools and operations – the closest to execution  is not emphasized  and certainly cannot be learnt from a class. It's hard to publish academic articles on execution because there is no one grand theory behind execution of policy or strategy for managers and leaders. To quote Drucker again: Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.

Perhaps the term "Executive" is a better title for leaders and managers – so that the "execution" part is not relegated (or delegated?)  to the lowest possible echelons of organizations. Terminology  alone might not help and legendary manager Jack Welch emphasizes the execution piece in his 4E's and one P.

Marketing managers and supply managers sometimes complain about being held accountable for numbers – (we  are always chasing numbers)  – but it's really a great thing. For by focusing and talking about key performance indicators the organization's value chain is always in motion and that keeps the economy going .  So what are some typical metrics that marketing and supply managers should embrace ?

  • Marketing Managers: What are the  sales results of my advertising spend?  Today digital advertising helps you demonstrate  sales results on that segment of your ad spend.
  • Supply Managers: Did I meet my cost reduction target by supplier segment?  And innovation with suppliers help you do that apart from getting new products out of your organization's door.

So celebrate  execution for getting it done is a skill that the better  organizations value highly.

Contact StratoServe.

What bloggers,speakers and writers can learn from Andy Rooney

Any Rooney ( January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) on Christmas -StratoServe

Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes CBS passed away on Friday, Nov 4, 2011 at 92.

[ Note: This post is from November 6, 2011. It was updated on March 25, 2021 with a video to allow our dear readers to get a sense of the iconic broadcaster Andy Rooney. In case you never saw him on live television]

Affectionately called America’s “grouch-in-chief” and a “curmudgeon” Andy had a lot of contribution to the success of CBS 60 minutes over the years with his signature ending piece on “a few minutes with Andy Rooney”. He was able to put an interesting spin to almost anything from why you have cotton in medicine bottles to his famous essay on doors. Here is what bloggers,speakers and writers can learn from Andy Rooney:

  • Understand your audience – and where they are coming from. Andy understood, perhaps intuitively, where his audience was coming from.
  • What’s interesting in your topic to your target audience. This again is a huge skill and I guess you can improve this skill as you go along.
  • Start with what your audience is already thinking about the topic and then extend their thinking. 

It needs a huge amount of humility to be able to resonate with your audience for so many years as Andy Rooney. For unless Andy Rooney reflected on the audience and its changing nature there is absolutely no explanation how he could transition from the radio in 1940’s to television writing in the 1960’s, a TV broadcaster from 1978 holding his audience in the Internet and social media world of 2011.

Andy Rooney excelled in exactly understanding where his audience was coming from, found an interesting (to the audience) angle on a topic and presented it in his classic grouchy style but always adding some new thinking to his audience’s existing thinking. This is perhaps what is meant by connecting with your audience. RIP Andy Rooney.

About StratoServe.

Halloween snowstorm and the power outage

On Saturday night the north east USA was hit by a snow storm. Halloween was on Monday evening and there was no power, snow on the ground and a chill in every home and dark streets. Truly scary and towns advised that the festival which involves children going house to house to "trick or treat" be avoided given the rather unsafe conditions and this affected businesses who were hoping for some Halloween sales. We went out and found some Halloween candy at the local pharmacy chain Rite Aid where there was no power – two counter staff were trying to manually write down the bar codes and compute sales tax with a battery operated calculator and a flashlight. On the way the desolation around the McDonald's ,Staples and sundry other businesses in the strip malls were just unbelievably eerie.

Earlier on Sunday coffee shops like Dunkin' Donuts were open but were serving only cold coffee and a few hours later- they too just closed. It is almost a week now and in Connecticut there are still 300,000 homes without power. We were lucky and had no power for just two nights. The first night  on Sunday at 25 deg F was tolerable as the house was still warm but on Monday night although the outside was 35 deg F , it was bone chilling cold. Just the thought that about a million people are still facing this kind of situation is unthinkable.

Compared to Irene, there was no media build up the emergency nature of the snowstorm Alfred. Emergency because the trees still have leaves on them and any snow makes the trees heavy and they crash into overhead power lines. Power distribution in the US is through overhead lines and at this time snow laden leafy trees are disastrous. Crews of workers are cutting and removing trees and other crews are putting back the overhead wires. Such crews have come from as far as California on the west coast.

Given that this is the second time that power has gone off  for a week with first tropical storm Irene and now snowstorm Alfred, it is time to re-evaluate overhead power distribution lines and take them underground. Or have a much faster disaster recovery and response system. The latter can perhaps cut down a few days and at least reduce  the cold and misery of almost a million Americans still without power tonight.

B2B payment channel blockade may close Wikileaks – the importance of easy payment methods

There is probably no shortage of individuals worldwide who would be willing to donate to Wikileaks. But it is the B2B payment channel that has the Wikileaks organization in trouble. B2B payment channel organizations like Visa,Mastercard,PayPal, Western Union  and Bank of America have not been processing donations to Wikileaks since December 2010. The way on-line donations or any payment process works is:

Donor—>Payment Channel (Visa,Mastercard,PayPay,Western Union)—–> Wikileaks

And the  middle piece-the payment channel is not co-operating with Wikileaks.The Wikileaks website offers some alternative donation channels  but obviously they are lesser well-known and therefore raise the question of trust in online transactions for the donor.  Wikileaks founder Julian Asange claims that 95% donations are down.Obviously the alternative payment channels are not as effective as the standard credit card companies.

Sort of underlines the importance of  easy payment methods. An individual wants to donate to your cause or wants to buy your product or service and if making payments is difficult- well you have just lost the sale. Extending this logic is the rationale for financing large consumer purchases like homes and cars or business purchases like equipment and machinery. The more difficult financing becomes, i.e. credit is harder or more expensive – the customer has to back off and the sale does not occur. Hence the constant discussion world-wide on credit availability and interest rates. For easy payments are the last mile of the transaction. If the check is in the mail – for any reason– the supplier has still not made the sale !

Here are two questions to ask whether you are on the account payable side (buyer) or on the account receivable (seller) side:

  • What are our payment methods?
  • How popular is a payment method with the buyer/seller?

Today many US gas stations charge more for credit card payments and merchants recognize that many customers simply go elsewhere. If Wikileaks is unable to sort out its payment channel problems soon – its donors are likely to find other causes to support.

About StratoServe.

Occupy Wall Street goes global-tipping point for Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR)

The global spread of the occupy Wall Street movement is a tipping point for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) . Just check out the CBS News Video report from yesterday that  includes Pete from NYU who is planning to drop out of his Finance program to help manage the funds of the movement. "Economic justice" is an unifying message of the disparate bunch of people who are assembling worldwide from such hotbeds of enterprise and capitalism as New York  to Hong Kong.

And this is the very first time in history that a people's movement is gathering against the excesses of business. Why has this never happened before ?  Three possible reasons come to mind :

  • The  Internet and social media that allows sharing of information,particularly about the perceived excesses of business-worldwide at almost no extra cost.
  • The caving in by swathes of different world Governments via bailouts to irresponsible  banks that continue to cause immense pain to millions worldwide. This blog had posted about Karl Marx smiling.…
  •  The collapse of Marxism/Socialism  ideology worldwide has perhaps magnified  the worst of exploitative capitalism as Marx had so forcefully argued. Sort of you need the "evil" to see the "good"!

So instead of  eulogizing Wall Street leaders as John Galts they are being demonized  as  robber barons .

This loss of credibility for business is highly dangerous for the economy and company leaders must seriously re-look at their definitions and execution of CSR initiatives. For example, in this emerging scenario it is not good enough to sponsor a walk for a good cause but CSR must explicitly tie in specific public pain points like jobs created.

Today companies do not seem to be linking hiring to CSR  explicitly and its perhaps time to do so.

Google does not judge you : the “MahaMac Gandhi” query

The awesome power of Google and the other search engines in not merely in showing you some answer for whatever might be your question but the total "non-judgemental" nature of the Internet search experience. Ask anything, for  example, the"MahaMac Gandhi" query that attracted one creative searcher to this blog.

I guess this blog is fairly authoritative on the "MahaMac" having posted what is probably the first cash receipt for a "MahaMac".Also being a great fan of the Mahatma – this blog has featured Mahatma Gandhi on several occasions.

But combining the query "MahaMac Mahatma" would be sacrilegious to the Mahatma because he was a strict vegetarian and against consumerism and against all forms of blatant marketing. But when you think about it the Mahatma was the most brilliant marketer ever. He came up with non-violent protests that made the British imperialists defensive while resonating with the "ideals" of Hinduism, the majority religion in India.

If the Mahatma were to go through the swanky Terminal 4 of the New Delhi Airport today he would be appalled at the numerous Gandhi memorabilia like key chains etc that are premium priced at the duty free store and that seem to have huge demand.Incidentally,  sold next to duty free liquor – another affront to the Mahatma!

So don't be surprised if you hear of some new concept (what product?) called MahaMac Gandhi. The combination of two mega brands like MahaMac and Gandhi cannot hurt though McDonalds would surely complain about trademark infringement. Something fun to think about over the weekend.

Beware- your customers do their own research ! Of doctors, AT&T and Blackberry

Everyone of us has customers whether internal or external to the organization and the easy research on the Internet  is something we need to factor in to our customer service and  customer retention efforts. Let's think about doctors,AT&T wireless and Blackberry.

Talk to doctors and they tell you how frustrating it is to deal with the patient who has researched everything on the Internet. In fact, one patient I know carried a whole paper file of his research and was pretty upset when the doctor did not spend time  (given the insurance billing squeeze) going through all the meticulous details he had gathered for his non-life threatening condition. Since the patient was a medical researcher with a PhD he threw in some medical journal article re-prints for good measure.

AT&T wireless has an innocent looking number which is their voice-mail number in our area. For some reason this is the number where calls are forwarded when the phone is unanswered, or is busy and the number shows on some phones. If you Google this number – you get spooked as all sorts of mysterious reasons for this number appearing on your phone are mentioned . So now you call AT&T and AT&T must have  so far spent  (hundreds of?)  thousands of dollars in call center costs- explaining that your phone has not been hacked.

Finally there is the Blackberry outage and the tremendous publicity it has attracted. You can be sure that anyone looking to get a new smart phone will be exposed to the latest barrage of information on the Internet  and might not consider a Blackberry as the next phone given that Blackberry has dropped to 3rd place after Android and  iPhone and- and the information is out there for prospective Blackberry customers to look at.

Strangely, the Internet and the readiness of customers to search makes it even more more important to put yourself in the customers shoes   or rather search shoes ! Some retailers are doing this by allowing their floor computers access to the Internet so that customers and the salesperson can search the retailer website together. Explicitly considering what searches customers do  is good marketing strategy.Contact StratoServe.

Organizational routines are much maligned to hinder innovation but are critical for execution

Somehow organizational routines have got a bad rep (reputation) when it comes to innovation. "Not invented here" is that kind of view where "tradition" and "custom" takes precedence above trying to do something new or innovative. But guess what ?  "Customs" bring us closer to being a tribe which is amusingly one of our basic traits.

But if you think about it, routines is what makes us who we are !  Ideally getting up in the morning , brushing our teeth and so on….. At the family level the "dinner together" or at least "Thanksgiving dinner together" is again one of those routines or rituals that have huge meaning for those involved.

If you think of non-profits that you are involved in, including the church or place of worship – the ones that have reliable routines or rituals somehow make you feel better. Call it a sense of predictability and reliability in a fast changing world.

For organizational  leaders, the balance of having routines that are stable and predictable while capable of executing change and innovation is a huge challenge. As sociologists will tell you its never a great idea to remove routines or just stop supporting them without a clearly communicated implementation road-map for the new routines is well – not productive.So particularly in new leadership situations – try to understand the formal and informal routines in your organization and whatever you do – don't scrap the old before carefully putting in the new.

Information is power- or is it? move out of shuffling information as a knowledge worker

In the paper and pre-Internet age information was power and organizations had people who just had a piece of information and did not share it  with others mostly out of oversight and sometimes out of the intent of holding on the "power."

Today with Google,social media, wiki-leaks access to information is just too high and it's really not worthwhile for individuals or boundary functions of supply chain and marketing to be protective of information. Let me give you an example from the supply chain side of B2B.

Once a supplier registers on a company website there are still many hoops to cross primarily because the user-supply manager interface has a whole lot shuffling of information.  The user is not always able to post her/his requirements onto the system and registered suppliers are not able to instantly understand where they might be able to supply. Just putting out the user's requirements to the interested supplier base becomes an exhausting exercise for all involved from the user,supply manager to yes the seller organization.

So what is the advantage of easy sharing of information between the user and the supplier through a web portal? Who needs the supply manager now?  you might ask… Not so because by just freeing up the information flow through the supplier portal the supply management role becomes immediately upgraded. Folks are freed up from routine drudgery to focus on new projects for instance that enhance the organizations offerings.These folks include the internal users and suppliers apart from the supply manager.

Another more compelling example is in the world of teaching and learning. You really can find all sorts of book like information on the web- in any field. For example, if you are confused about a math/statistics  concept you can watch a free 9 minute video at the Khan Academy. If a school student cleared up a concept via the web before the class  then the school teacher's job would disappear-right? ….Not so because then the class would be about knowledge integration,application and extension. In other words preparing better for the knowledge economy. Contact StratoServe.

Steve Jobs quotes that inspire innovation

Steve Jobs February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011- StratoServe

This blog  has innovation as one of it’s main themes and feels  sad at the passing of Steve Jobs the Apple founder tonight (October 5, 2011) , (see a Steve Jobs post here ).  For Steve Jobs epitomised  “innovation” and its key drivers. Innovation enthusiasts will continue to be inspired by Steve Jobs and here are three of his quotes:\

“You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” This one is from a CNN story  and is about listening to your inner voice. Your inner voice is telling you where you can innovate- if you listen. 2. “If you haven’t found it yet (work that you love to do- for free) , keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on, ” is from an address to Stanford students in the same CNN piece.

Steve Jobs

And

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” ( Business Week 1998) quoted in Wired Magazine. Sort of overturns the “stage gate” approach to innovation!

Steve Jobs

Innovators worldwide will continue to be inspired by Steve Jobs.

About StratoServe.