About Me: a Brief Introduction
My basic feeling is that the work on this blog will hopefully be speaking for itself but there have
been the occasional requests for a traditional about me. As it happens my toolkit doesn't support a seperate area of the sidebar; or more correctly I haven't quite figured it out.
Our goal here is to explore business performance. That is, what makes a business achieve sustainable profitabililty in whatever environment it finds itself. It reflects 25+ years of business experience in a wide variety of fields and continuous development of both a broad-based exposure to the general characteristics of good business as well as extensive involvement in key functions. What that experience has shown includes several things. Among them two are key, which we go into more below but: 1) functional excellence must be balanced with the whole enterprise perspective. And 2) strategy must be balanced with operational execution.
That this is very difficult should be obvious by the number of blue-chip companies who struggle with finding the right path that balances all of these factors. Yet at the end of the day it is also clearly possible as shown by the number of excellent companies, some of whom we've talked about here, which manage to establish and sustain high-performance enterprises.
But the next question is why should you pay attention or even care ? In other words what in my background, aside from the merits of the arguments [ :) ], supports the notion that a certain level of expertise is being brought to bare (that's deliberate btw). Well keep reading but we'll note that my YHOO avatar picture is what I'd like to look like. Not having many real pictures available a real one is hidden below.
Goals and Approach
- First, there must be a balance between a whole enterprise perspective and functional excellence. An enterprise is its' own ecology and all the parts should work together to make a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts.
- Second there must also be a balance between a longer-term strategic perspective and on-going operational execution and excellence.
Our other goals include using this blog as a sandbox to testfly and/or make public some of my experiences, findings and analysis about evaluating business performance. Another major goal is to provide enough background to give our readers a shot at going beneath the headlines and developing their own perspectives on what makes a business work.
Finally, as a friend put it one time which we'll immodestly steal, too much of what you read from the press, pundits or consultants is conceptual candy without sufficient grounding to be workable or executable. And on the other hand a lot of other business writing is too technical and detailed to be able to see the big picture. We try to strike a balance there as well.
Background
As mentioned my experience stretches over 25+ years, including decade long stints at IBM and Fedex. At the latter my start was in corporate planning with initial responsiblity for designing and building an enterprise-wide flexible budgeting system. After that I migrated over to Sales where my focus was on deveoping Fedex's entry into 3rd Party logistics, in which I am a plank owner. After joining IBM my focus was on applying and developing technology solutions to logistics and business problems and turning them into businesses. One of the highlights was being involved as part of the core team responsible for developing IBM's intial forays into e-Business. Perhaps that's another plank ? And in developing middleware for application integration as an offshot, including publishing the first B2B Extraprise Architecture in '91. Gad it's terrible to be old :)
After leaving IBM during the height of the Internet boom I joined a startup (Viewlocity) and was responsible for leading their Supply Chain solutions design, development and product management. And eventualy having total responsiblity for the entire range of products from these to the legacy integration broker to new e-business solutions. From there my next step was running new solutions for a divsion of Avaya focused on creating new communications solutions. These days that's now known as Unified Communications and VoIP.
Skills and Experiences
As you can see my basic disciplines are logistics and technology along with management systems and general business management. But because these touch all the other functions of any enterprise and many different types of enterprise my work led me to long involvements with manufacturers, distributors, transportation companies and retailers as well as a bit with healthcare.
And because that work was always centerred on either starting up new businesses or changing old ones it also involved a soup-to-nuts exposure at increasingly larger scales with all of the functions that an enterprise needed from Market Analysis to Business Strategy to Product Design and Development to Marketing, Sales, Service and Support. And across all sizes of business or business unit from small privately held companies selling wallpaper or greeting cards to the world's largest manufacturers (Ford, Boeing) or retailing (PG, et.al.).
Other Background
And it should probably be mentioned that my early religious training was in Economics at the weigh to many hours graduate level. Great background and training. Put it all together and you have the mantra we've found out the hard way is true: Economy/Industry/Company/Job. Which you've seen more than once.
Pardon me if this is more information than you need or want but the idea was to answer the mail and maybe add a touch more credability to the stuff you read on here. So far we've tried to stay within the bounds of things we know something about, though the day is young ! :)
Just on a personal note when I talke about "Cowboying Up" it's not really kidding since that's my origin thought I never was a cowboy. But those Western states "Marlboro Man" attitudes and values stick with you if it's not already obvious. And the picture above is the real me...a few years ago but not much has changed except for the disapperance (fortunately) of a few pounds. And while we're on True Confessions here let me also admit to having attended one of the orignal, and few accredited experimental colleges in the country, as well as being fond of sailing, decent food, good wine, excellent Single Malt (Lagavulin will do nicely if no Caol Isla is available) and good cigars.
If you'd like something a tad more formal here's my LinkedIn profile and the web site of my consulting practice, Llinlithgow Associates. A name which is purportedly the original Gaelic for my family name. Which is how I make my modest living these days.
My name is Dave Livingston, I'm glad you stopped by and hope you get something out of it. Feel free to let me know.