Meaningless Corporate Values

The desire to go through a long-winded process to develop corporate values that are meaningless to everyone except those involved in their creation is a classic symptom. Incredibly, common in large corporations, it is not only a waste of time but can actually be damaging. This type of badge engineering puts a gloss over deep-rooted problems and causes employees to become not only ineffective but also disenchanted.

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.

Business Goals

Business goals or objectives convert the organization’s mission into tangible actions and results that are to be achieved, often within a specific time frame. Goals or objectives divide into three major categories: production, financial, and marketing. Production goals or objectives apply to the use of manufacturing and service capacity and to product and service quality. Financial goals or objectives focus on return on investment, return on sales, profit, cash flow, and shareholder wealth. Marketing goals or objectives emphasize marketing share, marketing productivity, sales volume, profit, customer satisfaction, and customer value creation. When production, financial, and marketing goals or objectives are combined, they represent a  composite picture of organizational purpose within a specific time frame, accordingly, they must complement one another.

Goal and objective setting should be problem-centered and future-oriented. Because goals or objectives represent statements of what the organizations wishes to achieve in a specific time frame, they implicitly rise from an understanding of the current situation. Therefore, managers need an appraisal of operations or a situation analysis to determine reasons for the gap between what was or is expected and what has happened or will happen. If performance has met expectations, the question arises as to future directions. If performance has not met expectations, managers must diagnose the reasons for this difference and enact a remedial program.

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.

When Marketing doesn’t Work

Marketing has not measured up to expectations in many companies because management has concentrated on the trappings rather than the substance. When most executives talk about what their companies have done to become more marketing oriented, they usually point to such actions as:

• Declarations of support from top management in the form of speeches, annual reports, or talks to the investment community.
• Creation of a marketing organization, including appointment of a marketing head and product or market managers, transfer to marketing of the product development and service functions, establishment of a market research function, salespeople reassigned around markets, advertising function strengthened.
• Adoption of new administrative mechanisms, such as formal marketing planning approaches, more and better sales information, and revised information systems structured around markets rather than products.
• Increased marketing expenditures for staffing, training and development, advertising, marketing, research.

The point is not that these actions are useless, but that by themselves they are no guarantee of marketing success. Effective marketing requires a fundamental shift in attitude and values throughout the company so that everyone in every functional area places paramount importance on being responsive to market needs. The steps taken in most companies are not useful because they fail to accomplish this crucial shift in attitude. And without this shift in attitude, the most highly developed marketing operation cannot produce any real results.

Why have so few companies gone beyond the trappings to achieve the change in attitude that ensures substantive marketing? Frequently, one or more of these situations exist:

• In a surprising number of cases, management does not fully understand the marketing concept as it applies in its situation.
• In many other cases, management understands the implications of the marketing concept but has not committed itself to the actions and decisions needed to reinforce it.
• In almost every case, management has failed to install the administrative mechanisms necessary for effective implementation of the concept, especially into the non-marketing function.

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.

 

Collaboration: Key Messages

i.            The foundation of a profitable business culture is characterized by a robust spirit of collaboration between:

1. Employees and management,
2. Internal departments or divisions, and
3. The organization, its customers and its suppliers.

ii.            A collaborative environment best enables staff to align their professional goals with the objectives of the organization and to implement strategies and tactics to realize these objectives.

iii.            In order for a knowledge management strategy to be successful, it must include a strategy for collaboration.

iv.            The Internet and the World Wide Web provide a powerful paradigm of collaboration for any organization.

v.            There are cognitive, emotional and motivational dimensions to collaboration.

vi.            There are a number of tools and processes that help develop a culture and psychological environment of collaboration.

vii.            A unique assessment instrument, the Collaboration Quotient, measures the readiness of individuals and their organization to collaborate. This tool is also used to monitor the organization’s progress in developing collaboration.

viii.      An Internet-based knowledge network dramatically facilitates knowledge sharing and co-creation.

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.

 

A Socially Responsive Company

Executive leaders of largest corporations have been confronted with an unprecedented increase in the social issues impinging upon their business policies and practices. Not only have a variety of social regulations have been developed that apply universally to all industries, but each industry has also experienced to varying degrees a proliferation of industry-specific challenges for the corporate social environment.

In response to the pressures, businesses have increased their efforts to manage for corporate social environment. The social environment encompasses business activities influenced by various community and government groups. Many chief executives spend more time on the external affairs of the business than any other activity. Most executives allocate significant personnel, time, and budget to the creation of elaborate staff groups to help them understand and manage this environment and its challenges.

Some firms may be more vulnerable to social group pressure and social regulation than others. A number of factors have been identified as contributing to this vulnerability. A firm may be more vulnerable to social forces if the firm is:

• A large-sized or well-known company thus presenting a big target.
• Located in an urban area and under increased scrutiny by the media and social groups.
• Producing a consumer-oriented product viewed as a necessity by the public.
• Providing a product or service that may cause harm or injury to the user.
• Part of a heavily regulated industry that is expected to meet high public expectations.

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.

 

Internet and Knowledge Management

The Internet and knowledge management function as catalysts or stimuli for each other. The Internet provides a physical medium of the organization’s sharing and co-creation of knowledge. It also acts as a catalyst for the cultural shift in attitudes, which encourages cooperation and collaboration among all of the players in the activities of an organization including co-workers (by co-workers mean all employees regardless of their status), suppliers, customers, business partners and in some cases even among competing firms. Knowledge management, on the other hand, requires a medium like the Internet for the distribution, facilitation and promotion of knowledge transactions. The Internet is reshaping collaboration and we ought to know how this is taking place and how we can take advantage of it.

Not only has the Internet functioned as an excellent medium for the practice of knowledge management by speeding up the pace of innovation and the force for bringing knowledge to the fore as today’s principal source of wealth. In the age before computing and the Internet, when change was not so rapid as it is today, all players had more or less the same opportunity to acquire the knowledge to conduct business. In today’s rapidly changing environment the ability to access and create knowledge is absolutely essential to success and , hence, the emergence of knowledge management.

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.

Macromarketing

Macromarketing creates time and place utility for the buyer. Utility is general measure of the extent to which a product or service satisfies customers’ needs. It is created when the characteristics of a product match the needs of the buyer. Time utility, therefore, is a measure of the degree to which a product is available when buyers want it. Place utility is a measure of the degree to which a product is available where buyers want it. All purchases are attempts by buyers to maximize time and place utility.

Time and place utility are created by marketing. The creation of time and place utility is responsible for about one half of the cost of consumer products.

The cost of marketing products and services can be reduced through gains in efficiency. There are four major ways that marketing makes the sale of goods and services more efficient. They are the functions of information, inventory, exchange, and the routine of how goods and services are distributed from buyers to sellers. Macromarketing concerns the economy as a whole.

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.

Common Advertising Techniques

It’s a good idea to be aware of certain common advertising techniques. There is nothing illegal or even misleading about a food advertisement that tempts you because it is photographed in a warm, cozy setting that reminds you of dinners at your grandmother’s house. But you should be aware that you may be buying the product because of the romanticized advertisement. Frequently used advertising techniques include:

• Use of glamorous figure to endorse a product;
• Use of sentimental pictures to awaken feelings of longing and nostalgia that the ad suggests may be fulfilled by using the product;
• Use of “can be,” “up to,” or other “weasel words” that enable the advertiser to avoid making firm promises;
• Implications that only the most up-to-date people use a certain product;
• Gimmicks that make you feel you are getting a bonus, such as a free hairbrush attached to a bottle of shampoo;
• Creation of market through convincing you that a new product will revolutionize your life.

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.

Intellectual Property

The most valuable resource in the modern economy is the human mind. The ideas, concepts, and other symbolic creations of the human mind are referred to as intellectual property. Intellectual property is protected through a number of special laws and public policies including copyright, patent, and trademark laws. These laws rest on two essential premises:

• The creator, be it a person or an organization, of an idea or invention should be entitled to the benefits that flow from that original creation if it can be proved that the creation came from that person or organization.
• The right to get special economic advantage from such inventions should not exist forever. At some point, ideas enter the public domain and can be used by others.

In today’s global economy, many temptations can arise for businesses and individuals to use other people’s ideas without permission. Patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property are sometimes infringed, or wrongfully used, by those who see an opportunity for quick profit, a practice known as commercial piracy.

A great deal of pirating occurs in industries such as computer software and hardware, industrial machinery, printing and publishing, and designer clothing. Because some governments do not curb such practices, businesses that create ideas are injured.

In coming decades, many new ideas will be developed and commercially exploited in such fields as bioengineering, computer software, fiber optics, and medicine, to name a few. In a global economy, these forms of intellectual property are economically valuable. A society that is scientifically and artistically creative has a big stake in laws that protect the companies that create new ideas. The employees who work for those companies have an important stake in the fair use of intellectual property, as do customers who license the technology or buy the products. A growing challenge for public policy and international trade negotiations is how to coordinate national laws protecting intellectual property rights.

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.

The Enterprise Unit

Business rearrangements are moving toward the creation of a more horizontally oriented company, one that works faster across its structure than up and down. This form is the next stage in the evolution of the “strategic business unit” concept. This may be called the enterprise unit.

The enterprise unit performs only the activities most vital to its competitiveness, primarily those representing critical and cutting-edge capabilities. Other needed capabilities are purchased in the marketplace or shared with other enterprise units. The enterprise unit relies more on reinforced jobs and composite teams to get things done.

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, www.youtube.com/asifjmir, Line of Sight