Weapons for Success

One type of weapon is seldom enough to win a war. The same is true in our bodies. The successful conquest of the stresses we now face at work requires that we understand the strengths and limitations of each level of defense and use them in concert to encourage victory, prevent disaster, and cultivate excellence at work.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Micro-Macro Dilemma

Producers and consumers making free choices can cause conflicts and difficulties. This is called the micro-macro dilemma: what is good for some producers and consumers may not be good for society as a whole.

Each year thousands of people are killed with handguns. Yet there are producers who make and sell handguns at a profit. And there are many consumers who feel strongly about their right to own guns. But others argue that handguns are a threat to society. They want handgun sales banned sale of all weapons limited. Should gun producers be allowed to sell guns to consumers who want them?

Such decisions don’t have to involve a matter of life and death to be important. People want the convenience of disposable products and products in easy-to-use, small-serving packages. But these same “convenient” products and packages often lead to pollution of the environment and inefficient use of natural resources. Should future generations be left to pay the consequences of pollution that is the result of “free choice” by today’s consumers?

Questions like these are not easy to answer. The basic reason is  that many different people may “have a stake” in the outcomes—and social consequences—of the choices made by individual managers and consumers in a market-directed system.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Adding Frosting to the Cake

Smart people in all fields add some frosting to the cake they sell. Putting frosting on the cake means giving people more than they expect to receive, and it begins with simple things. A smart business manager never places negative people in upfront jobs, such as telephone operator, receptionist, check-out stand cashier, and ticket seller the customers and clients a business serves rarely, if ever,  see the firm president or a key manager. They judge the business rightly or wrongly by the way they are treated by the ‘unimportant’ people.

Experienced travelers stay at hotels where the reservations are polite and positive; people choose restaurants based on the attitudes of people who seat them, serve them, and take their money. How good the food tastes is always less important than the service in building repeat patronage. And the companies that deliver packages know courteous, friendly service is their best competitive weapon in beating the Postal Service where, generally, counter-personnel are negative in attitude.

Words and phrases as ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘you look good today’ are free frosting that make sales and build businesses. Call your business or office. If you don’t hear a wonderful, “I am really glad you called” voice, train or replace the person. Have a friend stop in at your business. If he doesn’t get great service, take corrective action.

Success-oriented people ask, “How can I give others more than they expect? What kind of frosting can I put on the cake I’m selling?”

A cake—the product or service you offer—is just baked dough. But when you put some frosting on it and give it a little post-sale service, you’ve made the dough delicious. Try it, and enjoy the rewards.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Objectives of Advertising

There are at least three different viewpoints taken in attempts to evaluate the contribution of advertising to the economic health of the firm. The generalist viewpoint is primarily concerned with sales, profits, returns on investment, and so forth. At the other extreme, the specialist viewpoint is represented by advertising experts who are primarily concerned with measuring the effects of specific ads or campaigns. A middle view, one that might  be classified as more of a marketing management approach, understands and appreciates the other two viewpoints but, in addition sees advertising as a competitive weapon. Emphasis in this approach is given to the strategic aspects of the advertising function.

Building on objectives for advertising can be assigned that focus on creating awareness, aiding comprehension, developing conviction, and encouraging ordering. Within each category, more specific objectives can be developed that take into account time and degree of success desired. Obviously compared to the large number of people advertising makes aware of the product or service, the number actually motivated to purchase is usually quite small.

In the long run and often in the short run, advertising is justified on the basis of the revenue it produces. Revenue in this case may refer either to sales or profits. Economic theory assumes that firms are profit maximizers, and the advertising outlays should be increased in every market and medium up to the point where the additional cost of gaining more business equals the incremental profits. Since most business firms do not have the data required to use the marginal analysis approach, they usually employ less sophisticated decision-making models. There is also evidence to show that many managers advertise to maximize sales on the assumption that higher sales mean more profits (which may or may not be true).

The point to be made here is that the ultimate objective of the business advertiser is to make sales and profits. To achieve this objective, the actions taken by customers must encompass purchase and continued repurchases of the advertised product. Toward this end, an approach to advertising is  is needed that provides for intelligent decision making. This approach must recognize the need for measuring the results of advertising, and these measurements must be as valid and reliable as possible. Marketing managers must also be aware that advertising not only complements other forms of communication but is subject to the law of diminishing returns. This means that for any advertised product, it can be assumed a point is eventually reached at which additional advertising produces little or no additional sales.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

Training: The Competitive Edge

In leading-edge companies that contend with international or domestic competition, training for new technology has moved from the periphery toward the center of managerial concern. Four reasons account for this change:

1. Constant accretion of new technology-based products and processes is an essential weapon in the competitive struggle.
2. New technology cannot be successfully acquired and implemented without training.
3. The value added by proper training and the losses incurred by inadequate training are too high to be ignored.
4. The next value of training for new technology increases with wider dissemination throughout an organization.

Strategic management of training for new technology, even in leading companies, is a new and difficult art.

A competition intensifies and spreads, companies in all sorts of industries will find that they have to behave like high-tech companies because the onrushing changes in technology and products in almost every industry have combined with increased competition to bring about shorter product lives, more products, more competitive products, more products being introduced, more products phasing out, exponentially increasing management, and operations complexity in manufacturing.

Many manufacturing industries not yet directly exposed to international competition are suppliers to industries that are so exposed, and will have to respond to their customers’ pressures. Industries outside the manufacturing sector have been insulated from international competition, but their time is approaching. Since their productivity growth in these areas has lagged far behind that of the reinvigorated manufacturing sector, the blow, when it comes, will send many of them reeling.

The skills and knowledge come from well-directed investments in research, development, new technology, and training. High-tech companies make these investments not because something peculiar to computers, lasers, or high-strength plastic requires it, but because they will succumb to the competition if they don’t.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla mrketing is the type of all-out marketing necessary for entrepreneurial success. It is virtually unknown to the large corporations. And thank heavens it is. After all, the large corporations have the benefit of big bucks. You don’t. so you’ve got to rely on guerrilla marketing.

 Your size is an ally when it comes to marketing. If you are a small company, a new venture, or a single individual, you can utilize the tactics of guerrilla marketing to their fullest. You’ve got the ability to be fast on your feet, to employ a vast array of marketing tools, to gain access to the biggest marketing brains and get them at bargain-basement prices. Now you may not need to use every weapon in your potential marketing arsenal, but you’re sure going to need some of them. So you’d best know how to use tham all.

 It may be that you will require no advertising at all. But you will require marketing. It may be that word of mouth is so favorable, and spreads so rapidly, that your venture can reap a fortune just because of it. If so, you can be sure that the word of mouth was motivated by effective marketing in the first place.

 In fact, a strong word of mouth campaign is part of marketing, and so are business cards, stationery, matchbooks, the clothes you wear. And certainly your location is important in marketing. Every component that helps you sell what you are selling is part of the marketing process. No detail is insignificant to be included. The more you realize that the better your marketing will be. Its not about sales, its about profits—the dear old bottom line.

 That’s the good news. Here’s the bad: One of these days, you’re going to be an entrepreneur no longer. If you successfully put into practice the principles of guerrila marketing, you’ll become fat and rich and famous and will no longer have the lean, hungry mentality of the entrepreneur.

 Once you’re reached that stage, you wll have to resort to the textbook forms of marketing, for you’ll be too encumbered with employees, traditions, paperwork, management levels, and necessary bureaucracy to be flexible enough for gurella marketing.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Corporate Structure in the Global Economy

Corporate structures will be increasingly expected to deal with tension-producing forces, as well as compressive ones. Among them is the tendency for companies to become increasingly spread thin as they respond to an expanding multitude of masters. And it is likely that both employees and their governments will take their turn demanding greater attention to their particular needs and requirements. On top of these whiplash-inducing pressures will be the ongoing operational tensions arising from the continuing use of speed as a competitive weapon.

 

As if these ongoing pushes and pulls will not be enough of a challenge, most businesses will also face the requirement to be more flexible than ever in deploying and redeploying resources to mact the moving targets provided by customers’ requirements and competitors’ advances. The globalizing marketplace tends to be unforgiving when corporate inertia or bureaucracy limits flexibility. This degree of organizational elasticity—stretching to accommodate special situations, then returning to the original shape to meet regular demands—is already a necessity in many industries. Soon it will be mandatory in most.

 

A measure of plasticity will be needed, as well. The ability to change an organization’s shape, to adapt to new markets or to reconfigure around emerging capabilities, will be another dynamic quality in the repertoire of the new corporation. This attribute—the ability to reorganize completely every several years without succumbing to terminal brittleness—is a rarity in most companies today. But it will be common among those that thrive into this 21^st Century.

 

Just as architects have never found a single, always appropriate building block for every structure, organization designers are also unlikely to find one. But the old building blocks of narrowly defined jobs used in tandem with traditional supervision are not working. Perhaps the lead of the architect can be followed, and companies can learn to select organizational building blocks that can be adjusted to cope with the forces they face at a particular time. In keeping with what has worked for the architect, organization planners can:

• Reinforce jobs to ensure they have the strength to resist the tensions and compressions they must increasingly cope with.
• Use the organizational equivalent of composites—teams—when job reinforcement alone is insufficient to provide the company with an appropriate degree of flexibility.
• Make sure that the company’s managers are in load-bearing roles—ones vital to the organization’s structural integrity—and act as drivers of the business’s ongoing adaptability, rather than mere definers of unneeded internal walls.

 Reinforced jobs, composite teams, and load-bearing managers—these may well be the most useful raw materials from which the structure of the corporation is shaped.

 

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight