JACK MIXNER STRATEGY

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We have learned in a past posting that Toyota looks externally for product innovation, specifically to design, green and safety for its lift truck business (Wood). Now lets look internally.

If we look to Toyota's internal focus we might look at characteristics of senior managers. They have:

• Willingness to listen and learn from others
• Enthusiasm for constantly making improvements
• Comfort with working in teams
• Ability to take action quickly to solve a problem
• Interest in coaching other employees
• Modesty (Takeuchi, 102).

How's this work? To grow a business, Toyota is willing to look outside for niche products and the effects of design, green initiatives and safety. To maintain a business, personal skills like listening and team work are important.

Many times, a company is technologically adept. That adeptness has to be matched with an outside focus - and an inside focus.

References

Takeuchi, Hirotaka, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu. The Contradictions That Drive Toyota's Success. Harvard Business Review. June 2008. 96.

Wood, Brett. Grand Strategy - Product Development: Toyota Fork-Lifts - A Case Study. Presentation to the Orange County Chapter of the Association for Strategic Planning. 22 January 2008.

Posted by jackmixner at 10:20 AM | Permalink

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Edward Jones, the investment company, says it's strategy is " ... convenient face-to-face financial advice to conservative individual investors who delegate their financial decisions ... (Collis, 90)."

That strategy has caused Jones to do some special things, especially for the financial services industry. They have lots and lots of individual offices. You've probably noticed them on Main Street in your town. You get to know your broker because he or she probably knocked on your door to get to know you in the first place. They focus on financial advice and make money only by selling investment products. They sell to conservative investors who buy what they need and hold on to it. And finally, Jones' investors let someone else decide what to invest in - they delegate what they do.

In ten words or so, Jones spells out what they do.

Can you do the same for your business? If you can, can your sales team? Are you sure?

Reference

Collis, David J. and Michael G. Rukstad. Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? Harvard Business Review. April 2008. 82.

Posted by jackmixner at 08:28 AM | Permalink

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Harry Truman didn't really have an easy row to hoe. Vice President to FDR, he was basically ignored for most of his term. On FDR's death things sped up - quickly. The war was ended on both fronts. The peace brought internal and external confrontations. Returning soldiers wanted normalcy. Europe needed re-building, as did Asia. Russia was expanding ominously. What to do wasn't always very obvious for Truman. Sometimes he didn't look like a very good leader.

One of the reasons Truman was Roosevelt's nominee for VP was his leadership in the Senate. When he needed to, Truman studied a subject until he was the expert on it. Truman began to impress the other Senators with his preparation and passion. His second big speech to Congress was on greed, attacking Wall Street with a New Deal slant. He had a position on civil rights before others were willing to recognize it as a problem (McCullough. 235-245). Other Senators proved their regard for Truman by appearing at fund raisers and campaign stops in a hard fought primary.

As President, Truman had his ups and downs. Finally, however, the downs were in complete control, what with the rail road strike on top of a coal strike. The union leaders weren't going to give, in fact didn't give, until Truman made up his mind to act.

Clark Clifford showed up at the White House as a speech writer (McCullough, 502), having never met Truman before or visited the White House at all. His job? Draft a speech to Congress announcing he would call out the Army and do whatever it took to break the strike. He would control the workers before he would allow them to control America. Truman had a speech all ready to go, a speech everyone said couldn't be presented. Truman was too angry. Clifford had to craft a deliverable speech that got the support of the Congress, and the workers back to work.

Ultimately, the speech was immaterial. Truman announced that the trains were going to run and coal was going to be mined. Period. The unions realized they had better get on board with the President or things would get really ugly. So they did. Everything was fine. (Full disclosure: the Senate finally decided not to support the federalization of the rail system. It was too late. The workers were back to work (McCullough, 506).)

Without Truman's willingness to be a confrontational leader, nothing would have happened. An interesting by-product of the process: Clark Clifford began a long careen in government, playing a large role early-on in the creation of the Marshall Plan (McCullough, 564).

And what are the attributes of a Truman-like leader? Listening abilities, greed averse, a knowledge of history, and, finally, the ability to conduct yourself according to your own high standards (Harvard Business Review, 48).

Reference

McCullough, David. Truman. Simon & Schuster. 1992.

Harvard Business Review. Timeless Leadership. The great leadership lessons don't change. A conversation with David McCullough. March 2008. 45.

Posted by jackmixner at 01:11 PM | Permalink

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Buchanan reminds us of Washington's first commandmant of U.S. foreign policy: "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible (Buchanan, 112).

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation (namely, the distance to Europe)? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toild of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour, or Caprice?" 

Washington knew his nation had the potential to be the greatest on earth. He also knew America needed generations of peace to grow to her natural size and strength. The father of his country deemed it essential that young America stay ourt of old Europe's wars."

Buchanan and I don't see eye-to-eye on many topics. This stance, is interesting, however, and worth remembering.

Reference

Buchanan, Patrick J. Day of Reckoning. How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart. Thomas Dunne Books. 2007.

Posted by jackmixner at 12:46 PM | Permalink

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Understand yourself better, innovate better. That's the premise (Rai-Dupree) for change, especially when you realize that you are:

1. set in your ways,
2. habits already formed, and that
3. innovation requires you to look at things differently than you normally do.

How to do it? We train ourselves to believe we can do anything. It's not really so. The simple solution is to do more of what you're good at, not just anything.

We're all used to stretch goals, those a bit beyond comfortable goals and less demanding than stress goals. Stress yourself a bit by learning things about what you are already good in order to increase your innovation results (Rae-Dupree). Kaizen - continuous improvement - is part of the solution. Continuallly improving a simple processes leads to incremental innovation and new solutions.

So, know yourself better, continuously improve, innovate better. Where to start? Markova sets out a process starting with understanding how you process information. She suggests that first you understand how you process information, then understand how your teammates do the same thing, and then try to increase communication - and innovation - by incrementally focusing on change and improvement on the projects you are working on.

The key point in all this was the realization that we all can not be the best at everything and that better results (change and innovation, as well) comes from leveraging what you are good at while playing of your skills and those of your team.

There is a best seller in this space right now that will help us in deciding what to focus on (Buckingham). His three myths (Buckingham. 69.) about strengths are useful:

1. As you grow, your personality changes. Nope: you become more of who you already are.
2. You will grow in your areas of greatest weakness. Nope: you grow in your areas of greatest strength.
3. A good team member does whatever it takes to help the team. Nope: a good team member volunteers for those task she is best at, not what the team needs.

The point? Know yourself. Know your team. Focus on strengths. Focus on incremental change. Innovate better.

Reference

Buckingham, Marcus. Go. Put Your Strengths to Work. 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance. Free Press. 2007. 

Markova, Dawna. The Open Mind. Exploring the 6 Patterns of Natural Intelligence. Conari Press. 1996.

Rae-Dupree, Janet. Unboxed:Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? New York Times. 4 May 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04unbox.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=janet+rae-dupree&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Posted by jackmixner at 11:34 AM | Permalink

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While no printer ever came out and said it to me directly, I always realized that when I bought printing services I could have any two out of the three deliverables of quality, delivery time or price. I'd plan ahead so the printer could gang my work with someone else's (while giving me a longer delivery time) in order to have the quality I wanted at the price I was willing to pay.

Gary Jaquess made the same point recently when he described the negotiations he had to go through with the Japanese parent of an American manufacturer in order to construct a new manufacturing facility on time, on budget - and with the quality the parent demanded. In Japan, their mass transit system is so good they don't need parking spaces around any of their facilities. They're mandated by law here, something that had to be carefully communicated to the home office, causing a delay. The Japanese think in "tsubo's" not square feet. A tsubo is a two dimensional measure based upon the size of a tatami mat in a typical Japanese home. It took a while for everyone to become conversant in just what a tsubo was, and how to quickly make the conversion to understand price per square foot.

Most interestingly, recognizing that lots of analysis is done by the parent organization before the final decision is made results in the ability to immediately begin implementation, a process that is different from the American method of making a decision and then modifying to to fit new discoveries found later.

It all still comes back to quality, delivery and price. If you want all three - and who doesn't - then you'd better design a process that takes all three topics into account. Over a series of projects constructing manufacturing facilities in the northwest, Jaquess perfected the ability to communicate in advance to ascertain real intent, decide just what quality was required, and, finally, plan together so things went smoothly during a long prcess of agreement, construction and manufacturing.

Reference

Jaquess, Garrison, W. Value Is In the Eyes of the Receiver. Productive Workplace Resources. 2004. [Handout for a presentation to the Orange County chapter of the Association for Strategic Planning.]

Posted by jackmixner at 10:37 AM | Permalink

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Family businesses have a group of central problems that will continue to play themselves out in the years ahead (Welch, 82):

1. Wealth preservation vs. accumulation
2. Succession
3. Passing control to unqualified progeny.

Protecting wealth is a whole lot different than accumulating wealth. To protect it, reduce risk. To accumulate it, increase risk. Your ability to accept risk - and your management team's - may effect your company for years to come.

Wait too long to hand off your company to your daughter and you may lose her entirely. You're still healthy? Not a good enough reason to hold on too long.

Only one reason might be good enough to hold off on passing on the company: your daughter isn't qualified to run things. Deciding who is qualified is a tricky question. Delay answering it at your peril.

Reference

Welch, Jack and Suzy. Red Flags for the Decade Ahead. On our list: family businesses under stress, dearth of managers, and corruption. BusinessWeek. 19 May 2008. 82. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_20/b4084082575201.htm?chan=search

Posted by jackmixner at 01:00 PM | Permalink

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In the end, the ride the astronauts took to the moon was designed to reduce costs. How to do that? Reduce weight.

Reducing weight meant designing the orbital path around both the earth and the moon in such a way that a big booster wasn't required to land on - and leave - the moon. Light weight required a rendezvous above the moon with the orbiting command and service module, something that wasn't assured initially.

Somehow having a space craft that you could put your foot through if, by chance, you stumbled seems a bit Rube Goldberg. That was the case. The lunar module descent stage was wrapped in Mylar wrapping. During construction, a dropped screwdriver went right through the floor (Hardesty, 217). It was lightweight, that's for sure.

Why bother? We probably wouldn't have gotten there at all unless everyone teamed up to reduce costs.

I like the team aspects of the process. I like the reduce costs part, as well, not only as a taxpayer, but aesthetically, as well. Simple seems always to be better. Designing the orbits took almost all the computing power we could marshall, so the analytical steps weren't ignored. The emphasis was on getting the job done, safely and successfully, nothing more.

Reference

Hardesty, Von and Gene Eisman. Epic Rivalry. The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race. National Geographic. 2007.

Posted by jackmixner at 10:37 AM | Permalink

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If you are like me you will find this methodology of presenting intricate information interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/03/business/20080403_SPENDING_GRAPHIC.html

The process is available here, from a sub-set of IBM: 

http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home

Harvard Business Review says there are ways to experiment (looks like they will work with you to present your information) with the technology here:

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?_requestid=91130&ml_subscriber=true&ml_action=get-article&ml_issueid=BR0805&articleID=F0805K&pageNumber=1

Might want to check it out.

Posted by jackmixner at 08:54 AM | Permalink

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Us planners like to plunge right in. Values goes first, then Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and, finally, tactics.

Yes - and, no. That's a pretty good scheme for planning. But it doesn't go first. Collins (41) makes the best case. Pick your team - very carefully - before you embark on growing your company, or beginning your planning process. You have some duds. Cull them. You have some stars. Make sure they are team players. If they are, nurture them. What if you need new team members?

First point: it takes longer than you think. Wells Fargo began building a team in the early 70s. The growth occurred starting in 1983 (Collins, 42). They hired the best they were able and kept them around long enough to see if they were keepers.

Lots of HR managers claim that employee screening is the key. Use some sort of test like the Meyers Briggs, and you are able to predict behavior. Some people swear by it. I'm still looking for the perfect bullet.

Lewis writes about a professional baseball team. The whole book is about how to get the right folks on board. His key? It's all in the statistics. Everybody says it is batting percentage that is the best predictor. Lewis says nuts to that. It's on-base percentage and slugging percentage he watches. And, oh, yes, college players are better to draft than high school players because you have more statistics on them (Lewis, 101).

There's only one flaw to his work. It takes statistics to know how your team members are going to perform. If you don't have performance statistics - and who has performance statistics for new hires - you don't really know how things are going to work out.

The message? Start keeping statistics. All the tactical statistics make sense. Cold calls. Closed calls. Proposals delivered. You name it. Probably only one or two of the statistics make sense to your organization. Start keeping lots of different statistics, whittle them down to the crucial few and track the results. It works in sales. It works in operations. It works at the C-level as well.

One last comment. Bill Belichick got the right people on the field at the right time, yes. He also trained them far in advance of the need. For him, training included strength and endurance training, team work training, and strategizing for each opponent. Try it out.

Reference

Collins, Jim. Good to Great. Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't. Harper Business. 2001.

Halberstam, David. The Education of a Coach. Wheeler Publishing. 2005.

Lewis, Michael. Moneyball. The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. W. W. Norton & Company. 2003.

Posted by jackmixner at 07:52 PM | Permalink

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Machiavelli said there are three ways to hold a state that previously had lived under its own laws (Machiavelli, 46):

• Allow them to live under their own laws and force them to pay tribute.
• Go there and live there in person.
• Despoil it totally.

King George tried to apply Machiavelli's principals to America.

First he tried to allow the colonists to live under their own laws and pay tribute. Taxes might be a better word. That didn't work very well, especially when he enacted taxes without including the colonists in the discussions.

He never considered living in America, but he did, of course, have a government in residence. It wasn't very effective.

Then, tribute failing and unwilling to live in America, he tried to despoil the colonies to bring them back under his control. That didn't work very well, initially, as his troops were bested in Boston.

After retreating from Boston, and landing in New York, Admiral Lord Howe sent captured American General Sullivan to address Congress in order to entice them to negotiate. John Adams accused Howe of "Machiavellian maneuvers" (McCullough, 156), namely, attempting to entice the nation back to subserviency with peace discussions when war had already been declared. None-the-less Adams, with Franklin and Rutledge, were elected to sit with Howe to listen to what he had to say. Howe's words forced Adams to realize that there was no pardon waiting him, and no freedom awaiting the colonies, if the revolutionaries lost. He - and they - would hang. After that realization, it was obvious that no negotiation was going to work and that Howe would have to despoil America to re-take control. While the British had some succeses, ultimately they had to surrender.

George failed, ultimately, as we all know. Distance, both physical and personal, caused him to fail - on all three strategies.

Modern day companies try to do better. Google might be a good case in point. The best recent quote says it all, "Usually, people want to be acquired by Google. It's always very friendly. Because they have choices, and they choose us ( BusinessWeek, 56)."

If only King George had tried a little bit harder. We might all still be British. And Google? Let's see how long their run lasts.

References

How Google Fuels Its Idea Factory. BusinessWeek. 12 May 2008. 54.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. New American Library. 1952.

McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster. 2001.

Posted by jackmixner at 12:38 PM | Permalink