strategy-execution-blog

Value Driven Transformation

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:24:03 +0100

A new type of 21st century company is emerging that is transforming how business is conducted. These are values-driven companies that define a core set of values and rely on these values in making all strategic decisions. Such companies are transforming themselves, their industries, and the world.

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Are your friends making you fat

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:16:03 +0100

For most of us, within three degrees we are connected to more than 1,000 people — all of whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter and happier just by our contagious example. “If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,” Fowler said, “it changes your way of seeing the world.” Visit the NY Times Article

Kraft Food Transformation

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:44:51 +0100

One of the intersting challenge of transformation was to move from a centralized decision making process to a decntralized structure where you placed the right man at the righ job and then got out of the way.

One of the big challenges of this transformation was to ensure that the decentralized units collaborated and to reinforce that ethic throughout the organization. Read the strategy+business article

The Neuro Science Approach to Managing Performance

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:51:16 +0100

An interesting article in strategy + business discusses the fact that the employee experiences workplace first & foremost as a social system. The brain equates the social needs of the employee, equal to the survival needs (unlike the Maslow's hierarchy). Social and physical pain produce similar pain responses.

Neuroscience has proved that the response to threat is far more lang lasting /potent , than is the response to reward. And threats bring down the productivity dramatically.

The other significant discovery is that the human mind is completely plastic and you can of course teach the old dog new tricks.

Five qualities emphasized to enable an employee to minimize the threat response and trigger the reward response are status, certainity, automonous, relatedness and fairness.

Worth a read. Please visit the link

Competency Mapping, Assessment & Mapping with a Few Tools

Sun, 03 May 2009 18:59:40 +0100

Competency Management With Few Tools

View more presentations from Sarvajeet Chandra.

Tourism - Characteristics of a Place Product & Segmentation on Basis of Place Product

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:27:49 +0100

Tourism is an important component of the big business of leisure that sells a destination or a place product. The characteristics of a place product are:

· Spatial scale: a place is inevitably one component in the hierarchy of spatial scale, a characteristic unique to the place product. The potential holidaymaker buying Goa may be simultaneously purchasing other levels of hierarchy - the hotel, India, east etc. A different structured hierarchy may create a different product.

· Multi sold: The same destination, the same facilities etc. can be sold to different groups of consumers for different purposes.

· The place may be viewed differently in tourist origin area and tourist destinations inclusive of travel in the former and exclusive in the latter.

A place product is distinguished by variety of businesses and experiences obtainable at that place. Each individual consumes a unique selection of these products. As a consequence, place product is marketed by destination agencies without a clear idea of nature of product being consumed.

A Tourism Product = Place Product + Travel

Segmentation On The Basis Of the Place Product

The segmentation can be product focused and can therefore be done on the basis of types of destinations. Destinations can be segmented in broadly three segments:

1. Locations
a) real
b) man made( cities , theme parks )
2. Travel as the destination - cruise liners, trains (toy trains).
3. The stay as the destination - resorts, hotel cum palace etc.

1. Locations

The real locations will always continue to lure people. It will be difficult to replicate the experience of visiting the real thing. However, the most inventive solution is to shed history and natural environment and create destinations from a scratch. These artificial locations can be purpose built and can be altered to suit the requirements of changing times.

One of the important examples of an artificial location is the city of Las Vegas. It started from a single industry-gambling-destination. The secret of success of Las Vegas did not lie in gambling but its ability to help people escape to a different world. However, the secret of continued success of Las Vegas lies in its continuous innovation. Today, it has become one of the top convention cities in America.

Another important area in this field has been the concept of theme park pioneered by Disneyland. They have started the process of creating look-alike of the existing destinations, or new attractions. The advantage of creating such destinations is that they can be bigger, more reliable than the existing destinations. Besides, they can be renovated, scrapped and modified.

Disneyland theme parks are the biggest tourist draws. Disney researches the audience's needs and then creates it. The company's biggest works are simulation of real things, not inventions. At Disneyland in Anaheim, for example, the company is building California Adventure, a microcosm of the state, which will allow the tourist to visit the state in one day.

America has 600 theme parks and half of the Americans have visited at least one of them.

2. Travel as a destination

Increasingly the ship, the railway etc. are not just a means of travel: they are the destination. With increasing popularity of cruise liners, cross-country trains, travel has emerged as an exciting destination. Besides comfortable stay and reasonable prices, these options provide a unique environment. They provide the opportunity of seeing popular locations, often without passport or visa hassles.

For the operators it is very profitable deal .The occupancy of cruise liners is higher as compared to hotels. In addition, cruise passengers, unlike hotel guests have to take meals in the ship itself, generating additional revenue.

Modern cruise ships are floating artificial destinations offering a full resort worth of entertainment. Like the tourism business, at large, these cruise liners are divided into two categories: big liners for a wholesome entertainment and small cruise liners for niche segments - nature watch, historical sites etc.

In India, the Palace on Wheels has become an ideal example in which the tourists travel in a train in a style reminiscent of the maharajas; where travel is the destination.

3. The stay as the destination:

With the increasing numbers of palaces converted into hotels, hotels trying to recreate natural environments and resorts the stay has become a destination. The success of Sun City, with massive promotion through beauty pageants has made people look as hotels not merely as a place to stay but a destination. This concept is also represented in the palace cum hotels and heritage hotels in India. The hotels themselves have become 'the show'.

Sarvajeet's Booklet on Why We Travel: Search of the Authentic Other

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:07:02 +0100

Tourism is the ‘ism’ that drives the largest industry of the modern world. It forms an integral component of the fast growing business of leisure. Accounting for roughly 11% of global GDP, tourism is a major ‘movement’ impacting the world.

The Search for the Authentic Other

A very substantial part of tourism, as we know today, is the individual’s search for authenticity; of people travelling away from their home societies to an authentic (often primitive) other; drawn by myths embedded in folklore, heritage, religion, literature.

It is this search for the authentic other that has brought tourism closer to religion, blurring boundaries between a pilgrim and a tourist. The tourist of the west, searching for the authentic other, is a pilgrim of the modern secular world. His religion is the individualistic religion of the modern society, as different from the collective and organised notion of civil religion. The tourist, fed up of the western secular materialism, locates his elective centre ‘out there’ away from his home society. The counterpart of the western tourist is the pilgrim of the east who locates his elective centre in the holy places of worship.

Thus, there is a great degree of similarity in the sacred pursuit of authenticity for a western tourist and an eastern pilgrim. This search for authenticity, in both cases, is thwarted by the tourism industry and the religious establishments respectively by setting up of staged authenticities - fake representations that are perceived as real by the pilgrim and the tourist.

Tourism for Recreation

The rest of the tourism movement is driven by recreation; of people whose centres are firmly rooted in their own societies, who travel to indulge in ‘play’ - a characteristic feature of post-modernistic society.

These people are lured by the myths created by the tourism industry; indulge in pleasures - becoming paupers, kings, visiting miniature ancient Egypt etc.

The most striking example of this kind of tourism is the concept of theme park, notable Disneyland. The theme parks ‘recreate reality’ and creates myths about peoples, countries, concepts, civilisations etc. The tourist plays with these, often deriving a vicarious pleasure.

Thus a useful way of looking at tourism is to look at two major motivations propelling modern tourism

· The search for the authentic other (driving many tourists of the west and pilgrims of the East).

· The recreation and the concept of ‘play’

Why People Travel: The Search For The Authentic Other

View more documents from Sarvajeet Chandra.

Blue Ocean Business Model by Rod King

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:59:31 +0100

An interesting aside to the Blue Ocean strategy is the Blue Ocean Business Model developed by Rod King. Interesting to look at/explore

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY vs. BLUE OCEAN-BUSINESS MODELS: Instantly Learn and Apply Best Practice Tools for Exponential Business Growth

View more presentations from Rod King.

Incentives could improve performance or could go horribly wrong

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:47:12 +0100

Incentives matter. Incentives includes all sorts of benefits economic and non-economic (some of which are often more powerful). One of the most powerful incentives, for instance, is social status.

If incentives are altered, then choices and subsequent behaviour of individuals change. It means that one way of driving change or creating desired outcomes for a new strategy is either to modify the incentives directly or else to alter the subjective evaluation of the payoffs and hence the choices made.

Having said that, it is easier said than done. Thinking about incentives, require us to understand the organizational/societal context. It requires robust analysis to make sense of areas that at first impression have nothing to do with economics as it is generally understood.

Tropicana, used this insight to start a smart campaign in the US. If you brought a Tropicana juice carton and keyed in the carton number on the company website, the company will preserve a hundred square feet of rainforest on your behalf!

A hundred square feet seems like a lot of area for a person living New York, Singapore or Mumbai. It is a size of the dining room in a city apartment, or a bedroom for family in a Mumbai slum. In congested cities a hundred square feet land comes at a significant cost (cost of say $300 in a distant Mumbai suburb). Even after a great degree of discounting, the urban Tropicana customer could estimate the forest land price at around 10-20 dollars.

For a ‘green’ customer, who values conservation saving a dining room worth of rain forest looks like a big deal! It is far more powerful incentive than giving a 10% price-off or any other boring monetary promotion.

In India, however, this incentive may not work as most customers are not really ‘green’. While saving a bedroom worth of rain forest will evoke interest, it is not really something that will fire anybody’s imagination (in India’s defence let me say that ‘green’ issues have started getting some attention, esp. from our youth).

Designing incentives to motivate an organization to adopt a new system or implement a new strategy is necessary. However a deep understanding of how the incentives will be perceived by different functions, divisions and teams is critical to making it work. The Tropicana example compels us to look beyond monetary benefits and latch onto more compelling social/moral benefits.

Pitfalls of Ruthless & Thoughtless Goal Setting OR the flip side of setting Stretch Goals

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:24:15 +0100

For decades, goal setting has been promoted as a halcyon pill for improving employee motivation and performance in organizations. Advocates of goal setting argue that for goals to be successful, they should be specific and challenging, and countless studies find that specific, challenging goals motivate performance far better than "do your best" exhortations. The authors of this article, however, argue that it is often these same characteristics of goals that cause them to "go wild." Key concepts include:

The harmful side effects of goal setting are far more serious and systematic than prior work has acknowledged.
Goal setting harms organizations in systematic and predictable ways.
The use of goal setting can degrade employee performance, shift focus away from important but non-specified goals, harm interpersonal relationships, corrode organizational culture, and motivate risky and unethical behaviors.
In many situations, the damaging effects of goal setting outweigh its benefits.
Managers should ask specific questions to ascertain whether the harmful effects of goal setting outweigh the potential benefits.

Download the Harvard Working Paper