CLP Beacon - Business Issues and Solutions

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

4 Strategic Tools for the StreetSavvy Business Executive


In my last blog we shared some power tools that StreetSavvy Business Executives can use to help find the path for profitable revenue growth. I used this information in a talk I gave at UCI Applied Innovation to 100 plus budding entrepreneurs and sitting executives.


Now, I want to provide 4 additional tools to help with the direction and management of strategic initiatives which will help StreetSavvy Business Executives find their true north and set the stage for executing their plans.

Scenario Planning and Visioning

Scenario planning and visioning is a tool that has less structure than some of the other tools in this compendium. Yet is a powerful tool to be used by executives, department heads, and teams to construct the vision of where that organization is heading and the outcomes to be achieved. I started using this tool in the 90s when I was heading marketing at a wireless company. Given the competition that was coming about due to changing regulations and changing technology and due to the increasing use of the internet, it was time to think about where we needed to be heading.

Our visioning exercise was used to determine not only where we wanted to go, but also to ensure there was alignment among the executives in carrying out the strategic and business plans.

To do this correctly, each executive or team member has to address different questions including some of the following questions. They do this by visualizing a future state as if they walked in the shoes of their customers, their board, or other constituents.

  1. What does the company look like in the next five or 10 years?
  2. What kind of products will it sell and how will they be sold?
  3. What will the customers look like?
  4. What competencies will you need to put in place?
  5. Who will the competition be?
  6. What messages would you want to get across to the board of directors, to an investment group and to your customers?

Scenario planning and visioning is a tool that has less structure than some of the other tools in this compendium. Yet is a powerful tool to be used by executives, department heads, and teams to construct the vision of where that organization is heading and the outcomes to be achieved. I started using this tool in the 90s when I was heading marketing at a wireless company. Given the competition that was coming about due to changing regulations and changing technology and due to the increasing use of the Internet, it was time to think about where we needed to be heading.

Our visioning exercise was used to determine not only where we wanted to go, but also to ensure there was alignment among the executives in carrying out the strategic and business plans.
To do this correctly, each executive or team member has to address different questions including some of the following questions. They do this by visualizing a future state as if they walked in the shoes of their customers, their board, or other constituents.
The best parts of this exercise are listening to the answers, debating the vision, and then coming to a singular purpose and vision.

Product Innovation Charter

A product innovation charter is a format used by companies to determine the company’s (or team’s) product management or development strategy. What risks and returns do they want to take? What type of innovation will they consider- a new-to-the-world product will have substantially more risk than a line extension. It is used for products, not processes and sets the charter, i.e. the conditions under which the company or team will operate in making decisions.
The format of the charter is straightforward and simple, yet the end result is very powerful.

                                              Product Innovation Charter

Background: What the reason for this charter? What problems are you trying to address?
Goals: What are the specific goals that can be met? SMART Goals: specific, measurable, actionable, responsible party, and time frame should be defined.
Objectives: What is the overall objective of the charter? Is it to increase dominance in one area or to play catchup? Is the goal to develop breakthrough products or provide a specified risk/return ratio?
Guidelines: How does this charter fit into the corporate strategy? How much money is funded by this charter? What are the decision making capabilities of the leaders of this charter?
Boundaries: What are the rules of implementing the charter? For example, is this an entirely internal team approach or should partners be considered? Are there certain companies that are off limits to partnerships? Is this for consumption in the US or the entire world?

Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard can be construed as a complete management system as originally conceived by Kaplan and Norton in the mid 1990’s.   The original structure of the balanced scorecard pointed to four elements as shown in the following diagram where each of the elements supported the vision and strategy of the company. 



Over time, the balanced scorecard has evolved and in our interpretation it provides a structure for companies to use and modify according to the priorities and needs of the company. In some companies, there is less “learning” and more growth oriented actions. In other companies, especially in the Internet world, the focus may be on replicable processes, or maintaining a specialized workforce, or even implementing strategic initiatives to maintain an edge in the market.

Such thinking doesn’t detract from the structure and use of the tool, yet the tool can to be modified to accommodate different companies.

Analytic Hierarchical Process

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was developed by Thomas Saaty, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1970s at which time, as a mathematician and engineer I fell in love with the methodology and have adapted it to fit my needs in corporate America and in our consulting practice.
It is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions such as funding different product development efforts, selecting a leader of a cross-functional team, or determining which investment or partnership makes the most sense. The “most sense” is based on a combination of mathematics and beliefs – some supported by data – of different people and teams evaluating several options. What I like about it is the fact that by expressing answers in mathematical terms, you almost take out the emotion of decisions and can better evaluate disparate options. For example, you can use it for the classic guns v. butter decisions.
The strength of the process is that it helps decision makers find solutions that best suit their goal and their understanding of the problem. It provides a rational framework for structuring a decision problem, for representing and quantifying its elements, for relating those elements to overall goals, and for evaluating alternative solutions.
The users of the AHP first decide on the elements upon which decisions are based and the comparative weights of those elements. That would be a one-tier hierarchy. But the power of the system extends when each of the primary elements has a subordinate structure. Let’s say financials was one criteria and that weight was 25% as shown below. A second level hierarchy could be developed based on cash flow, capital and margin.
To us, the important part of the exercise is to give the different team members or decision makers the opportunity to debate and determine the correct elements, the hierarchy and the weights. Then, once complete, each case can be analyzed and an ordinal ranking can be determined based on a score. It still enables flexibility by the team to make final adjustments. What it prevents, though, is one dominant player swaying the votes of the others. Sometimes, in organizations, that is easier said than done.
Here’s what a two level system looks like for a company that was analyzing different product development opportunities. It can be applied in any business or industry or functional area.

With these tools, the executive can determine the direction of the company, ensure the executive team is in alignment, determine priorities and execute the plan. Of course, we at C-Level Partners are glad to help. Call me at 949 4394503 or write to me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net to see if you qualify for a complementary one hour discussion of your business issues.


Tuesday, February 14, 2017

5 tools for the StreetSavvy Business Executive to Grow a Business.


I just read an article in CBInsights regarding a post mortem of more than 200 companies that failed.  It made me think if there is a way to prevent failure or provide insight into potential failures and errors that could be prevented and corrected a priori. 

To that end, we have developed a series of 20 tools that can be used by the StreetSavvy Business Executive that can help diagnose problems and provide data upon which better decisions can be made.   Over the next several weeks, I will share 5 tools per week for our readers’ use. 
Let me reiterate the definition of a StreetSavvy Business Executive.  It is a person in charge, normally in the executive suite, that has responsibility for a program or function or department, and who doesn’t follow the crowd.  Their goal is to find opportunities- call them blue ocean or impulse events- which prevent their business entity from regressing to the mean of mediocrity.  Following the crowd is not in their DNA.  They want to create their own path to success and by so doing, distance themselves from the crowd.


There are many tools, constructs, and paradigms we, at C-Level Partners, use to find solutions to complex problems.  We are glad to share those with our readers in our blogs, seminars and other media.  To that end, we put together this collection of tools and a brief description that we use to help companies.  Here are the first five tools. Feel free to provide comments and “like” them and share with whomever you believe can use them.  And feel free to contact me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net or call at 949 439-4503.

PRASE℠     

This is C-Level Partners basic way we analyze problems. It is like a super gap and it is a very disciplined approach to solving complex problems. This methodology is applicable in any situation where value creation is inhibited.


Problem definition (description of) the current state and why it is insufficient
Root cause identification (what is causing the problem or constraint to achieving the goal)
Analysis of the desired future state (what it will look like when a problem is fixed or constraint lifted)
Steps needed to develop specific prescriptions and priorities to get from “here” to “there” (people, process, technology and governance)
Engage in an action plan based on priorities, organization, delegation, and follow up to achieve your goal state)  

Side-by-Side Matrix. 

Market research comes in many forms, shapes and sizes.  There is one tool that can be utilized more in market research and that is the side by side matrix.  This enables the business executive to collect data on two or more dimensions to get a broader view of attributes important to a constituent.  Not all survey vehicles offer this type of system yet Survey Monkey to a degree and QuestionPro offer very good templates and tools for use in conducting this research.   When coupled with the Quad Maps (because they visually depict answers in two dimensions, the results can be very powerful.  From Question Pro (www.questionpro.com ) here’s the construct of the side-by-side matrix.



While these questions may be easy to frame, think about categorizing questions.  For example, we categorized questions as customer service and support, retail experience, web experience, product breadth, sales reps, and other categories.  Within each category we subdivided the questions to get some more granularity.  
Using this tool and plotting it on a “quad map” is ideal to visual what you can leverage and what strategic initiatives need to be put into place.
For one wireless company using this research, the company was able to realign its strategy and marketing budget.  The results showed the company what was important and for those activities that they performed well, the marketing plan was able to leverage those positive attributes.  For other activities that the customer deemed not important, the company reduced expenditures.  And for those activities that the customers said were important but where the company fell short, initiatives and corrective actions were put in place.   The system worked well and the implementation of the results helped put the company on a new path to growth and propel the company to market leader position. 

Quad Mapping

A quad map is a simple tool to determine what to leverage, where to focus, what to watch and what to ignore or spend fewer dollars on.  We normally couple the Quad Maps with information attained through the side-by-side market research.

Business executives can break down questions into functional areas such as customer service, product breadth, store design, pricing and other categories.  Customers, suppliers and even company employees can answer the questions of importance and performance using the side-by-side matrix mentioned above.  

Those areas that are important and for which performance is poor can be thought of as potential strategic imperatives that the company or entity needs to undertake to correct.  Those attributes that are important and for which the entity performs well should be leveraged and emphasized.  Those items that are not important for which companies perform well.



Spider Diagram

Another simple yet powerful tool for use in positioning and competitive analysis is called the Spider diagram, because when you look at the graphical plot it looks like a spider web.
Attributes are indicated on the spokes and the length of the spoke reflects the scale e.g. from 0-10 (highest)  
A critical assessment of your brand, in this case, vs. the competitive brands can provide information on where to focus because your brand is better and where you might need improvement.
It was interesting to see this system used in the 2016 NFL draft as positional players were compared by using spider diagrams.   

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a tool that can be used to help the business person make better strategic decisions and develop plans that will be effective against the competition.  It can be used as a complement to Spider Diagrams.

Normally Strengths and Weaknesses focus on internal attributes of the company e.g. competencies, resources, reputation, brand, customer service and similar items.  Opportunities and Threats normally focus on the external world although many companies can conceivably find both threats and opportunities internally.  Threats include competition, regulation, and social changes, changing workforces, governmental policies and similar items.  Opportunities are noted where the company can make inroads e.g. a new market, or where new competencies, alliances and technologies can be obtained to provide an advantage in the current markets, expand product lines or increase sales. 

Most SWOT analyses are broken down into a two-by-two matrix, with one box for each of the four components but can be extended to include a SWOT comparison for multiple competitors. 

Here are two templates that can be used.  This first one is for the company itself and the second one is for a company relative to its competition. 
Note that competition should be considered as existing competition i.e. direct competitors as well as indirect competitors and potential competitors.  




We hope these five tools are good additions to your toolkit and will help you get data upon which to make decisions and to make the complex problems a little easier to dissect and address.