Shipley Asia Pacific

I think culture is more important than strategy. 

Kan Favaro puts a nice, balanced argument for being, well, balanced about strategy Vs culture being strategy AND culture being important.

However, my experience is that the majority of executives I've met and worked with, especially those with a strong analytic or financial background are too 'heavy' in strategy being the answer to everything, typically at the expense of culture. 

And that this is a heightened imbalance during a recession or difficult times for a company.

In citing the importance of strategy being necessary to start a company Favaro for me, misses the point that it is the culture of the company that shapes the strategy at start-up (unless the bankers have taken over very early) - including the ability of the culture to initiate and support aware and adaptive strategy.

And if we look at the most common scenarios for executives these days, sustaining predictable growth and/or coping with disruptive change, can anyone show me where strategy has helped (Vs culture)?

For example, the lazy way to growth is to have a Mergers & Acquisitions 'strategy' - which most analysis says fails because of failures to understand and integrate the different cultures of the acquired companies.

Or that no amount of brainstorming (and massive consulting fees) on strategy by/for a company with culture of of self-absorption and poor market/customer focus will create innovation and adaption.

The more I think about is, without the right culture, there can be no good strategy.

And without the right culture, even a grafted on strategy will fail.

All makes me wish I understood more about culture in the context of company.

Which I why I've just started reading "Working Below The Surface" by David Armstrong and the team at the Tavistock Clinic in the UK. http://j.mp/1nSqp1p

Investors! How ethical are the companies you invest in? Own banking shares but deplore their behaviour?

Executives - how would you and your company score for Triple Bottom Line accountability?

To what extent do you agree with David Carney, Bank of England Governor?

And to what extent have his views been in part formed by "...his 13 bonus-filled years as an insider at Goldman Sachs – which critics regard as the shrewdest but most toxic brand in global finance" (Spectator 2013)

Either way he is now contributing to a public debate on business morality that is never going to go away

Success does not, in fact, always breed more success, sometimes it breeds failure. Greg Satell, Digital Tonto  

A great piece on (ironically) using historical examples to remind us that relying on history can be dangerous. 

I had the extraordinary opportunity to be one of several people at IBM hearing dot.com pitches during our e-Business days.

Most were interesting adaptions or extensions of technology. An amazing few instead broke the business models of the time (using technology).

These were harder to sell, because unlike the tech-gimicks, new business models actually threatened the orthodoxy, and required people to think, and act differently.

The secret, I believe, is to stay open. I know it's old-school, but think value chains. What do Air BnB & Uber have in common? Not technology. But disruption to supply chains or value chains.

Business models mostly rely on information asymmetry e.g. one party knows something the other does not. What technology allows is smashing that basis for a business model. 

Look at your business. Consider the flows of information and value in and around your model. Can you think of ways to improve, disrupt, hijack, replace the current flows in your own model?

Good. Know ask yourself if you are prepared to do this to your model yourself, or wait until someone else does it to you anyway, on their terms and timing?

Your call. Just know it will happen. With or without you.

Indulge me, spoil yourself - invest 9 minutes in this article.

Nicely written by Fran Smith for the Stanford Almni, and a great introduction to Edward Tufte - the grandfather of visual communication excellence.

If your storytelling involve the complex, the crucial, and a high need for clarity - with integrity, you need Tufte !

Better still, do the 1 x day course, as over 160,000 others have http://j.mp/1if6al5

Some of my best friends are accountants. Nice people. And, I will always want a good money tracker on my side.

And many people have learned and applied well, ideas from studying an MBA.

But. Who thought it was a good idea to start swapping out subject matter experts for senior managers and leaders who are expert in nothing but management theories or counting up accurately?

We are seeing it in medicine, government, technology (except start-ups) - and in the failures around revenue process everywhere.

Cutting back on 'lean-process' around marketing & sales is just dangerous.

Yes much sales training is formulaic and not reinforced - and a waste of money.

And, famously 'half the money serpent on advertising (and marketing) is wasted, just no-one knows which half".

But that says better problem definition with smarter process design & implementation is needed, not to cut back totally on revenue process investments.

Maybe the answer is to get better collaboration and performance measurement & management into the curriculums of accountants & MBAs?

Sometimes, in negotiations around really, really big deals, you have to forget the "Process' Helicopter, and jump into a Process Spaceship - so great is the distance you need to understand why some things happens the way they do.

Running procurement for a major government infrastructure deal without great internal engineering makes it hard to be an 'intelligent customer'.

Working in BD or as a designing engineer for an infrastructure services company is hard when your potential client is struggling to be an 'intelligent customer'. 

Cutting back too far on government engineering skills is poor value, creating information asymmetry - which no amount of hired gun consulting can bridge.

"Digital leadership vacuum"? Get over it Gartner!

Quick quiz. What influence & persuasion techniques have Gartner used in this self-penned release? What story telling approach has been used?

Starts with a fact-base. Research in one geography compared to another. Conclusions are drawn.  Really?

Call me cynical, but the any difference, in real terms ? - Because a few percent here and there is not a real difference - iso what that there's a lag of a few percent in adopting the role of chief digital officer, a dubious (Gartner contrived?) role unlikely to survive Asian scepticism.

As for 43% into SaaS vs 72% elsewhere - maybe that's actually because the business case (ability to define & prove) is the issue, NOT the technology.

And the cost effectiveness and risk management of systems integration is different in a smaller, yet in some ways more sophisticated environment.

Digital leadership vacuum? Or consulting revenues down and need a study to stir the pot?  

Think of this as the digital equivalent of climate change. Head in the sand is not a strategy for either. Read this and THINK.

Fantastic research. Andrew, thank you for joining the dots on the business value of 'digitising' your business. 

And remember, your world, your industry, is digitising, even if you are not. You will be left behind if you do not act. I've been banging this drum since being an IBM 'e_Business' spokesperson over a decade ago, and it is not going away. What Andrew has helped us all with is the arguments for your CFO, board and investors about the financial reasons to begin or accelerate acting now.

But beware, the digitisation of your industry, and organisation is NOT a job for marketing (although they might be gatekeepers of some minor aspects) - this is the single most critical strategic issue for the investors, board and CEO.  Fail this test and lose the business.

I love this guy. Why change? Because it's all that's left!

I've spent a lot of time helping people refresh business process around revenue - and that's scary for how wedded to the past people are.

But as an ex-product manager, watching the rate of change in staying at the leading edge of any market is now so far beyond what 20 year old back-end models can cope with (and I include old-school management styles in that) it is a bit frightening. 

But mostly exciting as hell!  It's like marketing meets marxism indeed... 

I tell my kids there are only 5 x jobs left.

1. create

2. produce

3. sell

4. count (& protect)

The great entrepreneurs start at the front and go as far as they can pulling in help from 4 coming forward.

(Oh, No. 5?  dishwasher - don't set your self up for this one kids)

Who likes reading an article with some controversy?  

Most do - and this modest piece of research is controversial only in that it downplays recent attempts at 'branded' storytelling or content Vs other forms of stories and content about products. 

Not surprisingly,  experts beat advertisers - who'da thought?

As a B2B guy, I suspect the same is true in our world.

I'm writing a book on "The Hierachy of Trust' which attempts to explain this phenomena

Another factor is what I understand to be the convoluted, committee like decision process between advertisers and their agencies that seem to always drive the juice out of a story - whereas an expert can just write what they think.  

Most nervous marketing execs and their agency counterparts would rather die than say what they think to the market.