Ed Zander, CEO of Motorola, and one of the people I admire, says that there are certain things that he just does not like in an organization. He promoted his philosophy at Sun and is now trying to do his best at Motorola. So what are these things that he does not like:
1. No well-defined strategy. You know what happens when you see a company being kicked around by its competitors. You just wonder what is going on in the heads of the executives.
2. Slow-moving. It always has been true and still is. If you are slow, you will be dead pretty soon. I have read that Meg Whitman of Ebay actually evaluates strategy as frequently as needed (several times a day in some cases). Now that is strategy.
3. Bureaucracy. No more comments.
4. Complexity of business models. I have always been a big advocate of simple and neat business models.
5. Silos within the organizations. I have worked with companies where two executives in the same department sitting next to each other wouldn't know what they were up to. Very often they were both reinventing the wheel while there were a couple of wheels lying around down the hall.
6. High cost structure. If your cost structure is even 1% more than where you can be, you are destroying value.
7. Not customer-centric. Your business must revolve around your key customers; otherwise, customers will flee as soon as they get a chance.
1. No well-defined strategy. You know what happens when you see a company being kicked around by its competitors. You just wonder what is going on in the heads of the executives.
2. Slow-moving. It always has been true and still is. If you are slow, you will be dead pretty soon. I have read that Meg Whitman of Ebay actually evaluates strategy as frequently as needed (several times a day in some cases). Now that is strategy.
3. Bureaucracy. No more comments.
4. Complexity of business models. I have always been a big advocate of simple and neat business models.
5. Silos within the organizations. I have worked with companies where two executives in the same department sitting next to each other wouldn't know what they were up to. Very often they were both reinventing the wheel while there were a couple of wheels lying around down the hall.
6. High cost structure. If your cost structure is even 1% more than where you can be, you are destroying value.
7. Not customer-centric. Your business must revolve around your key customers; otherwise, customers will flee as soon as they get a chance.