Tag Archives: Strategic management

June 11, 2012 · 10:26 am

What Boxing And Your Business Have In Common

You might be a fan of the sweet science or you might think it’s barbaric.  In either case, there’s something to be learned from the big fight that took place over the weekend.  I mean the Manny Pacquiao – Timothy Bradley bout that ended with Bradley winning in a split decision.  From the minute the result was announced there have been calls for an investigation.  There is an excellent article summarizing the issues in USA Today which also looks at 9 other bouts that had controversial decisions rendered by the judges.  Of course, the issue isn’t really with the judgement – it’s with the entire system of a judged sport.

Gymnastics, diving, figure skating, freestyle skiing – there’s a pretty long list of sports in which winners are decided not by a clock or a scoreboard but by a human being’s impression.  Boxing is a hybrid – in theory a knockout or other stoppage negates the need for judges at all (although we could argue the referee’s judgement about when someone is incapable of defending themselves plays a role too).  What does any of that have to do with your business?

Think about how often we insert our own judgement in decision-making when we don’t have to.  Which version of an ad is more effective?  Which page design is better?  What packaging will attract more customers?  What types of content increase engagement?  Often we look to the HiPPO involved – the highest paid person’s opinion – when it’s very possible to conduct simple A/B tests or spend a few hours looking at existing data.  We ignore the scoreboard and go to the judges. We’re generally not making art – we’re conducting commerce.  Because of that, what I happen to like is less important than which customer-facing experience yield the best return.

In the digital world, its pretty easy to test, adjust, and re-test ad infinitum.  In the non-digital world, product tests, packing tests, etc. are the norm (I’m often disappointed to find that some great product I’ve found is just a test and disappears).  We all need to abandon our egos and learn to love our data a bit more.  Otherwise, we might end up like Manny – on the wrong end of a bad decision.

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May 25, 2012 · 9:54 am

Wooden Spoons And Your Business

For our Foodie Friday Fun today I want to share an article about wooden spoons from Fine Cooking magazine.

English: wooden spoon collection in a stonewar...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Really edgy, I know, but since we discussed a simple kitchen implement that can kill you yesterday I thought today we’d lighten up.  The article reviews why a lot of chefs prefer wooden spoons in their kitchens and it got me thinking about business at the same time.

These are the main reasons chefs like them:

  • It’s strong – it can stir thick things without breaking
  • It’s soft – it’s not going to scratch the finish of your cookware;
  • It’s insulated
  • It has a high heat tolerance
  • It’s wood –  it looks nice, and also that it feels nice in the hand

I’d add it’s a natural material although obviously it’s pretty old – probably among the first materials used to make cooking tools.  Which is the business point.

There’s a tendency to throw away older tools and technologies just because they’re old (let’s include tossing some older people in that thinking too).  Often overlooked is that these older solutions might have some significant advantages over newer inventions.  Plastic spoons break or melt even though they’re easier to clean and might release chemicals into your food.  Metal spoons can scratch your pans and need a lot of insulation – leave one in a pot sometime and then pick it up – ouch.

Many businesses get caught up in the rush to the latest shiny object – social media, mobile apps – without thinking about their business goals or the ability of the new thing to do the job without causing other problems.  They toss away the perfectly good wooden spoons they’ve been using only to find that their cooking – branding, marketing – suffers.

We’ve got a lot of wooden spoons along here in the kitchen along with metal, plastic, and silicone.  We also have a dozen different types of knife and various sizes and shapes of pots and pans.  Some are pretty old and some we’ve bought in the last year.  We try to use the one that’s best suited for the task.  That’s how I approach business too – figure out the business objective and work with the tools best suited to accomplish that goal.

Make sense?

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May 17, 2012 · 8:03 am

Outrunning The Bear

I expect most of you have heard the old joke about the campers and their encounter with a bear.

Haley the polar bear at the Memphis Zoo.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, on the off-chance you haven’t, the gist of it is that two campers cross paths with a bear.  As the angry bear begins charging out of the woods towards them, the first camper starts putting his sneakers on. The other camper screams, “It’s no use, we’ll never be able to outrun the bear!”  The first camper yells back, “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!”

A number of folks use that as a business analogy to say that in most business categories, we need only to beat our competition to survive.  I disagree.  By  thinking about surviving or “outlasting” the competition, the focus is on the short-term (we need to run only as fast as the other guys) rather than building for the long-term.  Focusing on the other guys as the standard might just mean you’re being dragged down rather than creating enough of a gap so as to make them non-entities.  After all, what is that bear protecting and what kind of opportunity does it present?

The auto industry is a great example.  For years, the US car companies built cars that were responses to what the other guy had to offer.  The standards of production in terms of fit and finish were OK.  It was pretty much a race to stay slightly ahead of one another.  Then the Japanese auto invasion hit and suddenly there was a different standard in terms of quality and innovation.  It was much higher as measured by independent firms such as J.D. Power.  The domestic manufacturers’ share of business dropped quite a bit – imports offered better quality and more car for the money.  Because they were focused on outrunning one another rather than the foreign bear, they almost got killed.  Had they been focused on an altogether different standard – the one that asks “how can we build something that’s great” who knows what might have been.

Let’s assume (hopefully correctly) that you or your company is really passionate about what you do.  You are delivering a great product or service and you have a path to profitability (or maybe you’re even well down that road).  What piece of that equation involves a standard set by others?
Stop trying to outrun the other guys and figure out why you’re running in the first place.  Maybe outrunning the bear isn’t the best strategy or the highest standard.  What do you think?
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