In the search for competitive advantage, workforce agility - a well-trained and flexible workforce that can adapt quickly and easily to new opportunities and market circumstances - could make the difference. Working within a structure that is continuously aligned with BS, companies can drive revenues up, keep costs down, and clearly differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
Unfortunately, large corporations are not effectively using their workforces, and they are losing revenue and market share potential as a result. Even though the U.S. Labor Department reports that the productivity of American workers rose at an annual rate of 2.9 percent last spring, a study by Convergys, Saratoga and the University of Michigan has found a whopping 84 percent of executives surveyed admitted they were unable to take advantage of their workforce's full potential.
The study called "Workforce Agility" outlines some common obstacles companies face in maximizing their return on human investment:
- poor alignment between workforce S. and BS,
- disability to mobilize workforce to meet B. demands with adequate speed, precision, and agility,
- lack of financial awareness at top HRM executives.
The full study can be obtained via Convergys Public Relations, Email: news@convergys.com
Boards spend 3 hours a month discussing S.
Top management spends less than three hours a month discussing S. issues (and that includes mergers and acquisitions) or making strategic decisions. Michael C. Mankins, managing partner of Marakon Associates, in the September 2004 HBR issue, once more measured what everybody already knows: typical company’s senior executives spend less than three days each month working together as a team, and in that time they devote less than three hours to strategic issues. Moreover, these three hours are seldom well spent. S. discussions tend to be diffuse and unstructured, only rarely designed to reach good decisions quickly.
One global firm spent more time each year selecting the company’s holiday card than debating its vital Africa S.
However at a number of Marakon clients — ABN AMRO, Alcan, Barclays, Boeing, Cadbury Schweppes, Cardinal Health, Gillette, Lloyds TSB, and Roche — executives have found ways to improve teamwork at the top. Leaders spend their time together addressing the issues that have the greatest impact on the company’s long-term value creation.
Based on the experiences at these companies, Mankins provides 7 techniques for exploiting valuable time of executive boards:
- Deal with operations separately from S.
- Focus on decisions, not on discussions
- Measure the real value of every item on the agenda
- Get issues off the agenda as quickly as possible
- Put real choices on the table
- Adopt common decision-making processes and standards
- Make decisions stick
Mankins' article ("Stop Wasting Valuable Time") fits well in the Value Based Management tradition of Marakon Associates. My time reading this article was certainly not a waste of time and I recommend reading it to any topmanager and MBA student.
BS for SMEs
In a new book 'The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of B. Ecosystems Mean for S., Innovation, and Sustainability' - Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien argue niche players should think of their B. environment as a series of ecosystems.
These ecosystems feature "keystone" companies such as Microsoft and WalMart, providing for the health of all who do B. with them.
Iansiti and Levien recommend small companies in such ecosystems should follow a specialization BS by taking explicit advantage of the opportunities provided by the ecosystem, while avoiding the traps that challenge firms in such environments.
Amongst the many tips the writers have for small companies in these ecosystems around leaders such as Microsoft or Walmart are:
These ecosystems feature "keystone" companies such as Microsoft and WalMart, providing for the health of all who do B. with them.
Iansiti and Levien recommend small companies in such ecosystems should follow a specialization BS by taking explicit advantage of the opportunities provided by the ecosystem, while avoiding the traps that challenge firms in such environments.
Amongst the many tips the writers have for small companies in these ecosystems around leaders such as Microsoft or Walmart are:
- Specialize in unique capabilities.
- Leverage other capabilities from keystones
- Sustain innovation
- Tight coupling: Manage risk and dependencies
- Loose coupling: Embrace mobility and flexibility
- Niche leverage: Power over keystones
Creating Customer Value
Much has been written about customer orientation, customer relationship management (CRM), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) metrics, Customer Centric organization models, customer retention, customer care…add any high sounding word with ‘customer’ preceding or succeeding that word and you have a new model, a new theory. Headline hitting books, celebrity author seminars and training till another theory comes along.
And we see the poor customer is still the most dissatisfied lot (that includes all of us specialists too, as customers).
What a manufacturer or service provider often thinks as a market or value proposition, customers respond in a diametrically different fashion. Why does this happen?
While business thinks in terms of products and derived values, customer is looking at satisfaction. The key question is whether all the strategy, product features, add-ons and value creation lead to ultimate customer satisfaction.
Continue
And we see the poor customer is still the most dissatisfied lot (that includes all of us specialists too, as customers).
What a manufacturer or service provider often thinks as a market or value proposition, customers respond in a diametrically different fashion. Why does this happen?
While business thinks in terms of products and derived values, customer is looking at satisfaction. The key question is whether all the strategy, product features, add-ons and value creation lead to ultimate customer satisfaction.
Continue
Services Industry facing Industrial Revolution
According to Uday Karmarkar in the HBR of June 2004, the services industry is facing a change process resembling the industrial revolution. The industrialization of services is here, and outsourcing and offshoring are only part of this revolution. Automation, customer self-service, and global competition have been added to the mix, presenting a threat and a significant opportunity for all service companies. The churn, restructuring, and transformation of services will continue—and even accelerate—for the foreseeable future. This will mean a different landscape for companies, managers, and workers. In the end, the survivors of the service revolution will be those who understand the opportunities and rework their strategies and reorganize their processes, and people for the challenge ahead. The alternative is disaster, as was proven by industrial companies not acting in a timely way upon the industrial revolution.
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