"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC
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Here is a poll we have being running with clients and prospects. The questions are about the value of business intelligence. You may like to ponder them too and cast an anonymous vote.
If you want to know more about BI please visit us at Shernox Group, business performance and business intelligence specialists.
As the downturns kicked in last year for a while it seemed the music may stop. But then someone said ” Play it again, Sam?”. In our company this has seen some rapid growth in e-demand for our services. This is especially so in support area as customers had deferred investments in favor of making things work a bit longer while things were tough.
As one who literally works daily in 3 continents and in as many languages, I am a fan of the idea that I can collaborative simply with pervasive communicational tools. These days we can also all use then at an easily affordable cost.
For me and my colleagues was are able to do this using our versions of Beam Me Up Scotty communicator to keep in touch on a far wider surface than the conventional quarter 
mile of traditional business. Hence as the demand has changed we are always in touch and contactable with this capability we now continue to service long standing customers often without the need to even leave home.
For 15 years and more we have been able to connect in some way like this. Both informally and formally alliances and colleagues do business this way and more recently we also do it directly with customers.
Even as they move around when I turn on our computers each morning I have maintained a strong presence that has kept me in touch personally with key contacts and customers on a daily basis. Daily habits are also subliminal as people come and go online with an in touch awareness that keeps us connected. And once trust is established we are generally all happy to be available to each other at any old time.
But of course the face to face activity will never be totally replaced. For example selling is a contact process that requires continual reinforcement of trust, and capability. These credibility assurances are vital to maintain ongoing connections. The ability to listen and anticipate needs is the real key that provides the quality in the dynamics of business. This cannot be done without physical presence so salesman and supply chain players must continue waking around. And without that best laid plans for automated process supply will also fail as competitors exploit any gaps that appear and move in on your patch.
That is why, even though systems give us great contact presence online now, we must never forget to call in on our suppliers and customers from time to time.
In my work I recently presented some ideas on the maturing state of business intelligence and performance management applications for business.
But choosing the right software to add value is only part of the game. For such change it also needs a plan and commitment.
Making sure your project is well defined, well resourced and well sponsored is the art a PM project success.
The bottom line for making a change to add value to a business is to make sure everyone with a stake in the outcome is involved, is accountable and can win.
In this presentation I was able to share some ideas and from our real life experiences. In the detail I have included some boiler plate steps for success in managing projects.
Here are the slides to look through or download.
The recorded sound on the day was not good. I will redo it and update the slides for you when I have some spare time. Please let me know if you want me to make that a priority?
Can you imagine the now indispensable fridge magnet that is so much a part of our lives, with your notes, kids pictures, shopping lists and other important odd and ends. being relegated to the rubbish to be replaced by a screen?
Well, that is what the giant European supermarket chain, Tesco, have in mind for us with their Extending Ecommerce strategy.
The idea that digital photo frames, with integrated magnets would be attached to your fridge, not long ago seemed farfetched. But now the internet will be there soon too so your shopping choices can be made right at the fridge as you look to see what’s missing.
Nick Lansley, is Head of R&D at Tesco In this video he talks how about this and how Tesco recently released their API to the developer market.
Like the IPhone where developers develop smart phone applications for the phone users, having access to Tesco’s backend product information will allow markets to develop demand based applications for households and more. Providing on tap such things as product diet options availability and cost with such access to influence buyers choices in their home as it further extend to enhance the consumer buying experience.
With this type of wide reach, real time access to core business information means we will soon see the evolving value of business intelligence extended directly to the end consumer for practical use in their daily lives .
On December 1 2009. tough new internet disclosure compliance was mandated by the new US Fair Trade regulations that came law there.
Earlier this week I had posted a you-tube video to talk about the implications. While I was researching others opinions on this I found most informative seminar circulating the web, entitled Easy FTC Compliance Seminar – What You Need to Do, Step-by-Step. It is lead by Robert Skrob.
Sanitizing testimonials and endorsements is no longer a moral obligation. The bottom line is there is now no option, when it comes to disclosing of interests.
If you think this only applies to the US think again. Counties around the world are watching closely as the largest economy takes on these far reaching consumer protection laws aimed squarely at internet marketers.
Precedents will quickly kick in very everywhere else as US litigation explodes punitively against defaulters who hold out to be third party endorsers. With the new laws taking root and being tested in the commercial world, your sales practices may need to change to ensure you comply.
Suddenly all this more important than ever. Some of the areas to look at include:
Countries like Australia and across Europe have similar discloser laws in place or in the making. And in places like Asia they are not far behind. Asia is also largely a self regulated market so we will will quickly see consumer protection repose kick in as they move to compete.
At the practical level as buyers get more savvy to hoodwinking lawbreakers, or even ignorant ones who actually believe their own unqualified sales bull,, they will be mistrusted more and more. And anyone who makes unqualified outcome statements or does to not have their interests stated up front will get a nastily surprise. Like avoiding taxes it is just not an option.
With Internet based trends to leverage affiliate programs and endorsements to entice buyers. the US Lead will be significant for everyone across the globe. If you make money via blogs and social media such as twitter face book and so on you must be aware of the rules.
To quote from a Peter Hoppenfeld one of the layers participating in Easy FTC Compliance Seminar – What You Need to Do, Step-by-Step lead by Robert Skrob.
It reminds me of the expression “Do you want to pay now or pay later?”
Robert Skrob is a business blogger who’s stated his mission is “Help More People, Earn More Money”. He leads his recorded a seminar to alert marketers about theses new of US Fair Trade Commission rules, He discusses them with his guests, Peter Hoppenfeld and Michael E. Young who are both experienced lawyers in internet marketing and related fields.
Practical discussion on rules that now apply to disclosure by affiliates and other third party endorsement are of great value not only for buyers but also as an extremely informative call for experienced marketers You can listen to his seminar by visiting his site. It is free to download so I added it here too:
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His site is also an excellent resource that I also recommend you subscribe to:
Robert Skrob
“Help More People, Earn More Money”
Disclaimer
In making this recommendation I may now be obliged to make a disclaimer such as:
Views expressed in this post are my personal opinion and should not be relied on without corroboration with an authoritative source. I am in no away associated with Robert Skrob or not do I get any financial or other compensation by endorsing or recommending his website, his views, services or his credentials or those of any of his associates. I further disclaim any obligation or responsibility or benefit of an action people may take from any advice they get from this or any related post referred to here.
Being able to contact people within real time and get responses back from all different locations no matter where, is truly priceless
In 1998 I was in New York and used the hotel phone to make some calls back to my home base in Australia. I also used a dial up account to get my emails. That used what seemed like a short time but I got a bill of over US$400 for the service. Ouch!! And believe me that hurt!!
After the first day after I checked my bill, I then went on the net and found a free service at AOL that I could use with my Yahoo account to make voice calls. At that stage we had already learned about VOIP with emerginng internet phone carriers, albeit you did have to take pot luck on the quality. It was mostly social net work tools like Yahoo and AOL we used them, but it worked.
Then with only a $US30 internet charge each day (still steep) at the Marriott, my calls cost me next to nothing and I was happy to relax and do my business.
In 2000 I was in Kuala Lumpur. In my Hotel again I just plugged into the phone for what I thought would be 30 seconds to get my mail. I was wise to the hotel charges but also prepared on this occasion to pay $US20 for a minimum 3 minute call, as it was convenient. In was soon to discover after I returned from my shower that the machine was still downloading a picture someone had decided to send.
From that moment I decided to investigate alternatives like phone cards and so on and we extended the use of Microsoft Net meeting and so on for conferencing
It was not until 2003 when in Singapore one of my team sent me a link to Skype. That was moment we truly went global as we were instantly connected in real time with a service that ranged free to cheap.
Since then we have added Skype accounts for all staff and often have web cam lines open all day between offices in different countries so we can see and be in touch with each other.
The big benefit I get out of Skype is the Video. It brings a lot of the people that I work with closer into my office and we are able to get a lot of things more effectively done that way.”
Now we can not only do calls, conferences, chat and video calls we can also send files an show lives screens to the other parties. In addition we can also record it all as a useful record of our working sessions. Now days we even have SIP enablement so the familiar phone can do its job again only better and cheaper plus it releases us from the computer.
One of the great benefits we are now finding is a recent feature added to the Skype stable is the show my screen feature. Combined with the camera provides exactness and clarity when studying an issue or resolving a problem on one side of the conversation. It one step it also removes the need for complex tools such as VNC Remote etc to do this. Brilliant!!!
Here is an interesting video case study Skype have on their site:
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/business/case-studies/maxim/
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When Kate Wood was retuning
from her summer season buying trip in India for her business “The Dancing Feather“. I met her en-route in Bangkok. Having agreed to be interviewed by me, there was no better time than as we travelled together to Melbourne together .
I was especially interested to hear how she is able to stay tuned in to the fundamentals of her business. She has many common sense ideas on what many see as complex issues, especially on buying and dealing with multiple suppliers in Asia.
My interest in Kate was not just paternal. The youthful enterprising approach she and her peers take is always refreshing and interesting to hear about. On this occasion i was also keen especially keen to hear about her approach in her business to financial management.
As one who has made her name in her own right, my Kate wanted to cut right to the chase and dispense with any preliminary questions, such as why and how she began.
So here is the text of our conversation that began with.
Well when I think about it, the fashion business is no different to any other business I guess; You have to understand the product, the customers and your ability to match them to meet their needs and make a reasonable return on you investment.
Actually in any business where customers come to you, first needs a well sourced product that is in demand. With this needs an ability to package it with service value and then position competitively.
One thing I believe that may be special about fashion is an industry of risk at all levels as it deals at the high end of the retail consumer intangibles. So you need to understand what is changing and how to constantly re-think and re-model it. Only then you can you have at least some assurance that you can be on track to get a return on your investment. “
Well in this business there is a saying, “The day you buy is the day you sell” So basically it all starts at that point. And if you get it wrong there is nothing you can do about it.
But once you have a good product landed you must also have a good place to consolidate and sell from. It is all then matter of scale. Customers build up habit and loyalty and want a familiar place to do that with easy access. Be it the internet or a physical location it is all the same. It can be anywhere as long as it is well located and consistently on view and promoted.
In the end people buy on two bases, being need or impulse and fashion is more the latter. So being a niche player with personally imported quality product that is different from the way the mass market works. Then as I said it is just matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Of course. It is a business so you need all the pieces to work. One of the most critical pieces, not only in selling but in the whole business supply chain, is good people who empathize with the business philosophy and its culture to deliver the product and service well, They are the ones who make customers experience such that keeps them coming back.” That also takes some leadership, which can be very hard especially when it is your money at risk.
she smiled as she responded with. “I made all the classic mistakes but somehow have managed to survived so far. But I do know now that to set up in business needs conservative thinking when it comes to money.
One ting is for sure, you always overestimate income and underestimate costs.
Well I thought I was unique of course because I could do it all it alone and just get some friends to help when I needed it. But I learned that lesson the hard way. You of all people as a consultant know that is a huge mistake.
For a starter ideas have no place to go an test them and be held accountable.
Someone told me once that if you are working hard it is probably because you are not delegating. Being a hero and not delegating naturally limits you doing the more valuable work that cannot be done by others.
I also needed to find a mentor for my business ideas. And despite a coming from a business family, I needed some independent way to get a financial advice without paying an arm and a leg for it.
As for friends, well as they say there are no friends in business. But I don’t believe that My truth is I make my customers my friends by never letting them down Everyone else is basically a supplier, partner or an employee. You’d be surprised how many partners and employee are also my customers so i do get a lot of help from my friends.
As for personal friends a good rule is to keep that that way and don’t be tempted to help them out or get them to help you on any substantial basis. Like borrowing or lending them money it is a sure ay to lose them. For Family of course the rules are quite different again.
Ok, that a bit of a tough one. But to start with unless you have a kindred spirit and good timing together partners are just not there for a start up so most times you have to get out there and just do it yourself and learn before you can get a following.
And the only funding you are likely to get is cashing in some perfectly good investment or by getting a loan from your family if they are wiling. That will get you started with upfront establishment costs and fund working capital items such as stock, advertising, premises staff costs and so on.
The bank for sure will not lend to any old startup or of they do not without seeing a business plan that shows how the loan can be repaid . I found also found this includes projections on ability to grow and refinance internally things like increased more stock from profits and surplus.”
“Well when you start it all seems so simple. Just start and magically it will all happen. The notion it is easy to just go buy something and then with people will just buy would mean I would be very rich with a great life. Well Isn’t that so far from the truth? In reality you must have least some idea of what you want it all to look like even in two or three years out. And how it will works on a day to day basis to at least get your money back, Then grand plans to acquire Louis Vitton can then take their place as can the holidays in the south of France”
“Well to start withy forget the venture capital person who underwrites niche startups with potential to grow rapidly. Unless you dream there are such fairy godmothers and I don’t, they are not likely to invest in fashion.
But for a newbie there are choices. One is to buy small business already established so you have some cash flow and a base to build on. There are people out there with life style businesses that have a good following. Getting one may bring immediate experience and goodwill to allow you to go to the next level.
Another approach and take a domino approach to building a brand in small steps until you have enough impetus to push into the next level. Even then you have someone support you like a partner with a regular job. But no matter who helps you with cash support, you must always account for it properly and do the ROI sums.
I was lucky my family helps by making me made me go though the rigor to justify to my self my financial plan was sound and I could meet my repayment obligations. Not passing muster on a that means you must always re-think. Don’t take a short cut and ignore this step as many do. And don’t let pride keep you going when even blind Freddie can see it does not stack up .“
Oh that is a real can of worms for sure, especially stock. Things like timing, packages getting lost, stealing, damages, obsolescence quality control returns all combine to destroy the margin. And picking the market right and making sure it is there on time can mean life and death for a season.
On the money side find I must must always have enough funds to carry me through until you get to the breakeven point. In retail with imports the norm, buying and selling has quite long lead times as you need to pay up front for season shipments that sell many months later. Very few traders will extend credit to a new business, so it is unlikely trade credit is an option. Once you get going it can change and then you have some leverage.
The problem is in any business growth is a drain on cash. Contrary to the pipe dream theory. One rule I have is the money I need for working capital must be generated by the business. In other words aside form the initial investment, to grow I use only the cash from profit to buy more stock
Also don’t try to pay the initial investment back in one season unless you are very lucky with windfalls on high margin stuff. It does not make sense as you cannot generate the same cash twice to both pay back a loan then fund the second season without borrowing part least of it again.
If it is possible that piece should be funded from you own equity so it does not have to go back.
The other rule is dump any stock that is not moving and quick. That is where you cash is and if tied up it will kill you quicker than a speeding bullet
I found very quickly that before you start getting any money back from sales it is a one way flow. You must be very stoic and monitor the plan well to maintain your confidence. So above all don’t panic or an buy something silly that is not in your plan. And buying something outside that guideline will leave you poor for sure.
Woe, I am not sure about Murphy but in India yes it is the norm for things to go wrong with great regularity, especially when you are not watching. It is so easy just to count the cash and think you are doing well. But as with any business with time lag, be rest assured the devil lurks in the detail. Calling the ostrich to help is bad. A head in the sand style of financial management may feel like a good approach, but believe me it rarely leaves you in good shape”.
“That for sure is one thing I did not understand well that I need need a good transactions system to satisfy tax and regulatory needs and a good reporting system to measure results, Then you can could control things like sales and gross profit, expenses and cash and see how they ate doing against their plan.
Fatherly advice or not as you well know the XY generation do not listen and we are selfish. Which means we learn by stealth and watching and doing what others do. That is often not so good and we have to learn the hard way but you learn not to make the same mistakes twice and when you find something that works and is proven you stick to it. In my case being a complete individual who goes where angels fear to go, some dumb luck and some naive politeness has seen me through so far .
There is one rule of thumb I have that one of my friends told me. He said you can only spend the profit and then not all of it. Otherwise you have nothing to buy more stock and grow.
So what I do is draw a reasonable regular salary that I must justify in my plan for the business and I never break that rule even when we have a load of cash.”
Well at first I did all my planning in a book at high level. You know ideas with a few sums. But even in the first season when I bought up a lot as I found re planning and modeling the outcomes at category level was vital. I found the category level is the best way keeps it going under control so I moved it into a more detail spreadsheet to track the sales and line items. It actually make my life eerier too. But when I realized I needed to copy and model my buying it was not enough to manage things that change. I have now moved it all into a database system with more analytical reporting tools. I find now I can model understand and control product and margins so much better.and my buying is much more focused on what works
I can also do much more clever stuff like work out who is buying what for a range of over the categories with nearly 3000 items that we sell through several channels including markets and wholesale.
As I have also begun to move into accessories and joint ventures on things like jewelry. So a good process for category planning and monitoring is vital to see impacts on things like bundling and so on .It also helps me a great deal on confidence as I see the numbers come in.
Well I having such advisory skill in the family meant I was lucky to save me the agony of learning what I needed. But I have to that the cost of the software and a computer to run it is nothing compared to the investment I had to make to get my business properly organized so it can work.
And frankly not even with all your help and advice it did not help me with what I had to myself. And that was to go through the pain and rigor to understand and properly define the processes and controls for my own business.
One ting I know for sure is without it I would not talking to you this way now.
Yes mine too as you quite rightly state and I wanted independence to design. Then I realized the thrill and challenge of growing the business itself. Once on I was on the sharp end, even though success does not come easily, the alternative choice was obvious not for me.
I now see that an owner’s perspective must be, lifestyle must be seen not as the purpose but a benefit. And that only comes from the results of business success, So to that end I am still committed. That is my get out of jail recipe so I can have my cake and eat it too.
Yes for sure and I need to be careful on the mix. Working in the business is not the same as working on the business and I also know being in business is for one reason only and that is to take care of customers to make money. To think any other way means we should go and work for someone else.
But let’s face it, working for customers directly is still one of the best jobs on the planet. So I combine them both by making quality and good design the base of my products. Be-it mine or someone else’s I figure why not do my customers a favor and run my business well so i can be there for them in long term too.
I had that discussion with Kate’s some time ago and her advice continues to resonate with me as I also consider her ideas for customers of our advisory business. As one who likes to quickly deal with the fundamentals of vision and mission and the various venture execution models I can use this well to cut to the chase. Her experience gives me great confidence do do that.
Kate despite getting started during the recession and being new at your business it is doing just fine. It would seem your labels are doing well and The Dancing feather distribution outlet is doing fine too.
My final question to Kate was
With your success now, given all that you have learned and have been through to get there , is there anything you would have done differently if could start over again?
“That is an easy one, I would never have started”
http://thedancingfeather.com.au/lookbook.php
For wholesale enquiries
please view our online Look Book and contact
kate@thedancingfeather.com.au
For all other enquires contact
info@thedancingfeather.com.au
Short video on some things organizations find when trying to make some sense of their data.
In the world of best practice it is not being best that matters!
Did you know sliced bread, which was invented by Otto Rohwedder around 1910, was a complete failure as no-one bought or used.
It was not until 15 years later when "Wonder" came along and saw a way to spread the idea. The rest of course is history giving rise to the now famous throw away line.
Ideas that spread win is a theme that Seth Godin discusses frequently This master marketing guru asserts that being very good is average and does not sell. He says what is needed is to be “Remarkable”. Or put another way to be “Remarked On”.
His 2007 talk, a favorites of many entertains and educate on ways that work now how to make ideas go viral.
If you want to achieve but think you can’t, then take a look at this man who can.
Nick Vujicic has no limbs but is able to do more in a day than most people can do in a lifetime.
Craig Schiff, this week in his blog has an excellent piece that goes to the heart of the value of busi8ness performance management (BPM).
The significant value important in the way BPM is implemented comes with the focus it brings to make changes for a culture of greater shared thinking.
Skunk projects using free software are just not the way to do that. For it to work it must have buy in at the grass roots. This starts with the step of internal selling and going thru the organizational pain of doing proper evaluations. IT or Finance should not take short cuts if they want to champion such initiatives.
In the end the technology and choice of software is the least of the issues. As Craig expands on, what is more important is the scope of business change to use BPM and understanding what needs to be measured and who it is deployed to and so on.
I agree too that offers of free tools and services must be questioned. Alternatively there is value in offering to review to have fixed some of the very poor implementations that have come from ill founded scuttle approaches that result from freebies. This exploitation phase in such expedient cases is so often never done.
In the end the value extending the use of a BPM system brings with it the greater value to justify investment in more licenses. That makes for better reference sites for vendors and everyone wins, especially the customer.
A first shot has been fired in battle that is sure to be interesting to see customers get real benefit of the competition for the massive communication and self organized collaboration services market that drive business.
As broad based bandwidth speed has evolved, communications have also developed to a high level of acceptance of the quality of Voice Over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) services now being be used widely to conduct business. People like Microsoft Yahoo AOL and others have had this technology long before Skype came along. Microsoft who I believe made a tactical error in 2003 when they began to charge for their net-meeting conferencing tool that were previously embedded in messenger, They were quickly overtaken as Skype timed its unbundled move to popularized their free alternative phone service that also did free video conferencing too.
Microsoft however have continued to invest massively in their VoIP stack they aim at the enterprise level Evidence of the value of their perseverance came with the released of it Unified Communications (UC) server suite. Now in its third market year It is now paying off well making a large dents in traditional PSTN and IP commutation carrier domains.
I recently had a chance to join a Kickoff meeting of a very interesting BI project.
Normally stakeholders and key players are invited to join such meetings as they share an interest in the outcome of the project.
Stakeholders also bring a unique value to the project, especially in the beginning, aligning together to support it to get off to a good start.
I was privileged to be a speaker at Victoria University Logistics and Supply Chain Conference in Melbourne on Aug 25th 2009.
Matthews Steer Chartered Accountants and leading business advisory firm, were the gold sponsors of the event entitled “Logistics Insights – Strategic Information for Strategic Decisions.
Having been a transport man for many years, I was happy to engage with many transport & logistics providers and others present. Participants were mainly from the Small to Medium Business (SMB) community. The session, was entitled Financial Management for Logistics and Supply Chains Post the Global Financial Crisis. In the backdrop of the economic climate it was a discussion around solutions to issues that come up when the question is asked, “Have you got a handle on your numbers?”
According to an interview with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz by Suttichai Yoon of National Multimedia, Asia itself has a huge domestic potential by having a large population base with savings and a wide demand for investment.
This is extremely true especially when your business is a service base and revenues are generated from services. Services business more or less focuses more on domestic economy compared to international trade like US or Europe.
In an article “THE CFO’S ROLE IN THE DOWNTURN”written by Colin Walter from PWC. He mentioned
Cash is king: Companies that came out of the last recession on top had an average net debt-to-equity ratio before the downturn of half that of the companies that were not successful. They also had more cash on hand.
and Taking out the wrong costs can be worse than taking out no costs at all.
I’ve meet business owners that focuses on cutting cost no matter what, the question is “where in the company should we start focusing?” Confidence on these questions comes from a reliable management information as cited by Colin that;
Reliable Management Information: The more volatile the market, the more you need to be able to trust your information.
Curiously, most companies stick with their same old reporting templates and key performance indicators (KPIs) because "this is how we’ve always done it". Forecasting and scenario modeling are critical in volatile markets.
Service companies are now likely starting to invest in building their data warehouse and investing in Business Intelligent to support their business needs in volatile markets.
Those already served or underway will benefit especially now as the economy is showing signs of up turn.. Those who don’t begin to address this and get this capability will surely have difficulty to sustain
Morphing a single idea into a multinational organization is not new. The concept of using affiliates and alliances to do this has also been with us since we had people on the planet.
Big or small, building a brand is the key and this in turns is about getting trust loyalty and buying habits of consumer communities established the higher this is the higher the value to grow. To be successful Brands therefore need to be a intuitive metaphor of of value, quality and service that customers accept without question.
For big business the recipe for growth is getting partners and affiliates also joining the game. It is also equally key to do this well to make the supply chain robust and impregnable. In combination it builds up a barrier to competitor entry and an ability to be able to add to the mix as product life cycles revolve in and out. Read more…
Last year with my team, we did a series of tailored seminars in Singapore Melbourne and Thailand. Each had a different local country theme. In Singapore for example we looked at future directions, in Australian we looked at maturity holding models for business and in Thailand we looked at the dichotomies of the internal and regional economic situation. That was a year ago at the time when world economies were facing big downturn issues and before the recession took its deep rooted hold. It is now interesting to look back on what we were thinking as we are now starting to see signs of recovery.
Here is the Thailand version we recorded at Bangkok at the Sukathai Convention Center event. It looked at the economic position from a Thai perspective. We used this to make generic points about performance management and how to use it as a methodology in business everywhere.
This session was sponsored by Infor, vendors of leader performance management software, We used this software to support our discussion.
It’s the time of the year again when many organisations are preparing plans and budget assumptions for year 2010. It may be good to time to dust off the steps we looked at in earlier articles budget assumptions, allocation and management of the budget.
In a context of understanding the next generation of performance management thinking, to overcome behavioral change barriers using social networks, a recent Wikinomics debate on relationship limits got my interest.
This debate asks the question:
If its true our neocortex has a finite limit to have only approximately 150 meaningful relationships, then what is social networking achieving? Read more…
Poor decisions are most often caused by lack of understanding, not lack of data. But another challenge is unquestioned acceptance of the business processes being measured. At times many appear very logical, but are often obscured by the very data itself.
I notice when managers look at unacceptable results, they often do one of two things. Me too!! They either pick up the phone to call someone to ask for more information on why. Or they pick up the mouse to dig deeper for the reason. Once the answer comes, corrective decisions are made. This tram line management style is a norm and the bias of most Performance Management systems. It works well to make sure the process, the “tram”, stays on the tracks. But many fail to follow the learning rule that to improve you need to look around at things nearby that may be obvious.
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