Tag: business strategy

The Premium on Corporate Coherence

March 6, 2011 • Blog, Business and Management • no comments

I was listening to HBR’s Ideacast recently and came across an interesting idea by Booz & Company’s Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi urging companies to “have the discipline to focus intensely on what they do best”. Titled the “Coherence Premium”, the central thesis of Leinwand and Mainardi is that “sustainable, superior returns accrue to companies that focus on what they do best”.

Gaining the Coherence Premium can be done if a company aligns and interlocks internal capabilities (or core competencies ala Hamel and Prahalad) with the right external market position. This can be graphically represented as follows:

Image source

The Strategic Value of Nuancing

February 24, 2011 • Content Marketing • no comments

The world of art, like Pierre Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, are full of subtle nuances

We’ve all been there before.

You spend weeks working hard on a purportedly kick-ass strategy or a revolutionary new product launch.

Head or Heart? Dilemmas in Management

November 5, 2010 • Blog • no comments

Source

One of the most difficult and perplexing challenge facing leaders and managers today is the trade-off between using one’s head and one’s heart. Should decisions be made purely on a bottom-line basis, or should they be done in the interests of all stakeholders?

As you would have guessed, there are no easy solutions to this, considering the dynamics of the modern organisation and its multiple demands.

The First Rule in Strategic Planning

September 26, 2010 • Blog • 3 comments

Source

What is the most important point in conceiving any strategic plan?

Is it being clear on your long-term strategic objectives (ie vision, mission and values)? Well, that’s certainly important as you must know where your destination is.

Nothing Beats Sheer Hard Work

September 11, 2010 • Personal Branding • no comments

Thomas Edison worked endlessly to become the world’s greatest inventor, with a record 1,097 patents to his name (picture source)

There are no secret potion you can quaff for instant riches. Nor will that two day workshop bring you instant fame and glory.

Our world is full of shamans, witch-doctors, snake-oil salesmen and ‘gurus’ encouraging people to take short cuts to success. We are relentlessly bombarded with pitches to instant riches, fame and glory.

Who Should We Compare Ourselves With?

July 4, 2010 • Blog • no comments

Don’t just benchmark Google for its technology – it also has one of the best corporate cultures in the world. (source)

Yesterday morning, I had an interesting conversation with my wife (an organisational excellence whiz) on the question of benchmarking and best practices.

First, we spoke about how global liveability indicators like this (from Mercer), this (from the Economist), this (from Monocle), and this latest one (conceived in Singapore), are used as top-line outcome measures in the Balanced Score Card – a universally accepted system for strategic management. Such measures provide objective assessments of a city’s efforts to position itself as a beacon of success.

Digging Deeper To Find Gold

June 14, 2010 • Blog • no comments

Finding treasure requires a lot of investigating and digging. Just ask Indiana Jones! (source)

In any successful marketing endeavour, one must be willing to think, live and breathe like one’s potential customer. This also means that preconceived notions and prejudices must be tested and thrown out the window if they are proven untrue.

What are some of these common misconceptions and myths? Let me offer some examples.

How The World’s Top Companies Create Movements

April 22, 2010 • Content Marketing • 1 comment

Courtesy of Stock Snap

If you want to succeed beyond your wildest dream as an entrepreneur (or an intrapreneur), don’t just create products or services.

Instead, start a movement. Or better yet, create a cult of brand believers.

Understanding What Productivity Means

February 8, 2010 • Blog • 1 comment

Courtesy of The Right Time Is Now

Productivity, the old panacea of economic goodwill, is making a comeback yet again. Several of our leaders have cited its importance, and the latest budget to be unveiled on 22 Feb will announce measures to boost productivity. I am certainly excited about this outcome as it may be the only way forward in a natural resource constrained economy like ours.

In order to understand what productivity is about, let us look at its basic ingredients, which is Value Added. According to Wikipedia,

The Art of the (internal) Start-up

February 6, 2010 • Blog • 3 comments

Courtesy of A Fresh Start (up)

As some of you may know, I am in the midst of switching portfolios in my organisation and heading to the National Art Gallery, Singapore to lead the corporate services function. Unlike my previous role at the National Heritage Board, this one covers a broader spectrum of responsibilities – from HR, Finance, Admin, Strategic Planning, Policy, Marketing & Communications, to IT. You can say that it stretches from conceptualisation, development, funding, and staffing to communication, reporting and implementation.

Due to the start-up nature of the institution (which just celebrated its first birthday), many things need to be put in place. It has certainly been an exhilarating couple of weeks thus far, and I look forward to more excitement ahead.