bizzXceleration: Performance, Value and Profit

Recently a lot of executives have been complaining though about the headwinds surrounding them and making it hard to do their jobs. Well as my old sailing instructor said, "you've got to sail where you can to get to where you want to go". Think about it - it's both eminently practical and more Zen than it first seems. Headwinds are part of the game, it's what you do with them that makes or breaks you. A point we've tried to capture in the chart above. Headwinds are the things going on in the world - the changes and trends in the Economy, how the markets effect that and so forth. But even more broadly how Technology impacts your company and how Social and Political changes and events define your environment. The ecology in which you must survive. You can be a predator or a rabbit - but you can't choose the ecology. You can choose just how fast, tough, mean and agile a rabbitt you are though. And be a lazy, mangy and decrepit predator not long for the world. What can't be done is NOT choose !

We mention all of this by way of introducing the following excerpts - the first of which is a survey of key strategic issues from Booz, Allen. While we don't necessarily agree with them all, especially their resolution, the point is that this is a checklist that's not bad to start with. Or if you like, how you play the chess game is up to you but the board and the rules are what you have to work with. And this begins to sketch them out. That big picture piece is complemented by two strategic pieces on things companies can manage - Product Quality and Innovation. Both of which are vital to survival, let alone prosperity. Yet both of which have been complainably badly done for a long time.

Somebody who's literally writing the book on how to do it right by balancing Strategy, Execution and  Leadership is Mark Hurd at HP. There's great interview excerpt below though in our 'umble opinions the writer missed the key points. Fortunately one of our favorite business blogs had a really good series of posts fleshing it all out. Finally there's a good example of $B are beginning to flow into Green Technology, beginning another major wave of product and industry innovation though it's a long ways off. Maybe by the time those guys are turning into big companies we'll have stopped burnng down the barn to catch the rats ? Any bets ? Ferris, Ferris, ...Ferris Buehler ?

General Business

Signals for the Coming Year Change may be certain, but for a business decision maker, some changes have more impact than others. Here are eight trends that will make the greatest difference in 2008. Decision makers are inundated these days with possibilities. There are myriad opportunities to seize, hundreds of competitive threats to avoid, and the constant awareness that any relevant trend — the price of oil, the popularity of a new interactive medium, the viability of an overseas market — may shift dramatically at any time. That’s why the first step of an effective strategy is separating signal from noise: recognizing the most telling indicators of the trends that will have real impact in the coming year. Fortunately, some signals have extra clarity and resonance right now, even amidst the cacophony. We think eight critical trends will be most important in the coming year that apply to every sector. They’re not sending the most obvious signals — indeed, they’re important precisely because many leaders are overlooking them. But we think they deserve attention.

Inconsistent Product Quality Can Really Hurt: Lessons from Other Industries  In general, RSR’s survey respondents are responsible for consumer goods management. Whether at the end of the retail ecosystem, or just a tick or two up the value chain, our audience’s products wind up in the hands of a consumer. But what about other industries? Do other industries have the same kinds of problems? A window into that question was opened on February 13, when the Wall Street Journal reported this news item: (…) Yikes. These respondents reported similar persistent problems: 95% reported inconsistent product quality as one of their top 3 business challenges, and 90% reported difficulty in achieving compliance to specifications. The solutions to these challenges were clear to our respondents: 98% reported post-production audits and 90% highlighted factory audits as key top-three ways to overcome these challenges. Technology enablers play a critical role in performing these audits and inspections: 95% of respondents highlighted the importance of Supplier Management technologies. In other words, this quality thing, it’s serious. We have chanted the mantra “people do what’s inspected, not what’s expected” for several years now. It remains true. Outsourced manufacture has enabled enterprises of ALL kinds to improve their bottom lines by reducing costs. But outsourced manufacturing clearly puts an onus on the outsourcer to check and re-check factories – regularly, irregularly, frequently and carefully.

Freeing Ideas from Their Silos The Army’s bureaucracy has taken hits over the years for impeding the ability to communicate essential knowledge quickly throughout the organization. To address that concern, the Army developed the CALL network in 2006, a surprisingly supple Web-based collaboration system through which new bottom-up concepts like the Fort Drum door hooks are disseminated instantly to those who can benefit from them. The Army’s success should serve as a lesson to the private sector. Most companies are awash in insights and ideas that emerge from specific situations but that could apply broadly across the organization to solve problems, promote efficiency, and even generate revenue. The trouble is that these valuable ideas get stuck in the silos of their origination and are never used to their full potential. As the Army discovered, however, implementing such a system must begin by addressing two challenges: identifying the right people and processes to serve as the foundation of the network, and, on a larger scale, working around deep-rooted behaviors and sensitivities while slowly changing the culture.

Give Me Your Black Sheep My Stanford colleague Hayagreeva "Huggy" Rao and I did a rollicking two-hour interview with Brad Bird over at Pixar headquarters last week.  Bird won an Academy Award for directing The Incredibles and is the odds-on favorite to win another one for directing Ratatouille.  I will talk more about this compelling interview in the future, but to give you taste, one of the most striking moments happened when Bird explained that he was brought to Pixar partly because senior management was worried that the company would become too complacent after three big hits: Toy Story, A Bugs Life, and Toy Story2.  To help fight against such complacency on The Incredibles, Bird wanted people to work with people who weren't satisfied with how things were done and so -- to staff the film-- he requested "Give me your black sheep."

Hewlett-Packard CEO: We can do even better It's just that the CEO who may be the best big-company operator in the country is all about making uncomfortable observations that so far have ended up being the right call for his company: Market share isn't the best goal to shoot for; even good businesses need to be examined carefully (especially their cost structures); and strategy and execution trump vision any day of the week. He boils down the CEO's responsibilities to three tasks: setting strategy (not offering a vision); aligning operations and modeling ways to execute on the strategy; get the best team to help the CEO. "There are a thousand distractions that keep you from doing that," he says. But that's where the focus needs to be.

• Mark Hurd’s 3-minute management clinic.

• “Change or Die”: Possibly my favorite business-magazine article ever.

• The power of naive questions.

• More on the checklist: the victory of common sense.

Billions of investment dollars flow to climate change, clean tech Institutional investors are committing billions of dollars to investments in climate change and are embarking on a bold new action plan to raise the profile of energy efficiency and clean technologies around the world. Nearly 50 leading U.S. and European investors representing more than $8 trillion of assets met on Feb. 14 at the United Nations to lay out a timetable for their commitments to global climate change and to call on governments and other investors to act with their money as well. The group says its investment commitments will boost energy efficiency and clean technologies as well as require tougher scrutiny of carbon-intensive investments that may pose long-term financial risk. That means investments in industries that are heavy carbon emitters are under threat. By raising the specter of divestments due to risk these investors are firing a warning shot.