Time for Growth not Bunkering Down by AICD

Companies must shift from a cost-cutting focus, to a growth focus. Reinforcing this view is a recent article published by the AICD: Time for Growth not Bunkering down.

Two negotiating elements: avoiding old China’s risks and seizing new China’s opportunities

Google

By Stephen Kozicki

We live in a world where the business environment changes rapidly. For example, fewer customers produce a larger share of profits. With fewer customers, losing a major customer is a larger loss of profits. So managing and negotiating with key accounts is now critical to sustaining profits. Not all customers value suppliers’ services the same way. Yet often we service all our customers the same way, missing an opportunity to improve profits by providing unique services. This means that to manage global accounts, you must be able to negotiate in different cultures and gain support for new initiatives, frequently when the world’s turbulence would suggest caution over courage. Customers have become more sophisticated in their buying strategies. Consequently, successful sales and management teams need to become more sophisticated in their key account management strategies. Rethinking and adapting approaches for each key account is imperative.

Click to read the complete article,
first published in Velocity, Vol. 13 Issue 2, 2011.

2011 Top 10 Stories from Harvard Business School

1. What CEOs Do, and How They Can Do it Better

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6665.html
Published: April 25, 2011

A CEO's schedule is especially important to a firm's financial success, which raises a few questions: What do they do all day? Can they be more efficient time managers? HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and colleagues set out to find some answers.

2. Being the Boss

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6573.html
Published: January 17, 2011

Striking the right balance between good management and good leadership is a daunting but necessary challenge for anyone endeavoring to be a good boss. In Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, Harvard Business School professor Linda A. Hill and former executive Kent Lineback discuss the steps to take and the roadblocks to avoid in order to meet that challenge.

3. Is Groupon Good for Retailers? 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6600.html
Published: January 10, 2011

For retailers offering deals through the wildly popular online start-up Groupon, does the one-day publicity compensate for the deep hit to profit margins? A new working paper, "To Groupon or Not to Groupon," sets out to help small businesses decide. Harvard Business School professor Benjamin G. Edelman discusses the paper's findings.

4.Teaching a 'Lean Startup' Strategy 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6659.html
Published: April 11, 2011

Most startups fail because they waste too much time and money building the wrong product before realizing too late what the right product should have been, says HBS entrepreneurial management professor Thomas R. Eisenmann. In his new MBA course, Launching Technology Ventures, Eisenmann introduces students to the idea of the lean startup—a methodology that has proven successful for many young high-tech companies.

5. Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6496.html
Published: February 14, 2011

About 95 percent of new products fail. The problem often is that their creators are using an ineffective market segmentation mechanism, according to HBS professor Clayton Christensen. It's time for companies to look at products the way customers do: as a way to get a job done.

6. Are You a Level-Six Leader? 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6752.html
Published: July 6, 2011

Asking the question, whom do you serve? is a powerful vector on which to build a useful typology of leadership. Visiting professor Modesto Maidique offers a six-level Purpose-Driven Model of Leadership ranging from Sociopath to Transcendent.

7. HBS Cases: Lady Gaga 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6812.html
Published: September 26, 2011

What goes into creating the world's largest pop star? Before her fame hit, Lady Gaga's manager faced decisions that could have derailed the performer's career. A new case by Associate Professor Anita Elberse examines the strategic marketing choices that instead created a global brand.

8. Why Leaders Lose Their Way 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6741.html
Published: June 6, 2011

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is just the latest in a string of high-profile leaders making the perp walk. What went wrong, and how can we learn from it? Professor Bill George discusses how powerful people lose their moral bearings. To stay grounded executives must prepare themselves to confront enormous complexities and pressures.

9. It's Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6629.html
Published: April 18, 2011

Managers who inundate their teams with the same messages, over and over, via multiple media, need not feel bad about their persistence. In fact, this redundant communication works to get projects completed quickly, according to new research by Harvard Business School professor Tsedal B. Neeley and Northwestern University's Paul M. Leonardi and Elizabeth M. Gerber.

10. The Most Powerful Workplace Motivator 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6792.html
Published: October 31, 2011

When evaluating compensation issues, economists often assume that both an employer and an employee make rational, albeit self-interested choices while working toward a goal. The problem, says Assistant Professor Ian Larkin, is that the most powerful workplace motivator is our natural tendency to measure our own performance against the performance of others.

Seize the Opportunity of Turbulence

Seize the Opportunity of Turbulence (334KB)

We are entering a new age: the Age of Turbulence. Caslione and Kotler, in their book, Chaotics: The business of managing and marketing in the Age of Turbulence, suggests that turbulence, risk and uncertainty are the more normal conditions of industries, markets and companies. This new normality is punctuated by periodic spurts of prosperity and downturn.

Dr John Caslione - Going Global

First Think and Behave Globally (84KB)

In today’s fast-growing world economy, even the most stubborn companies who refuse to accept globalization will eventually have to face competition from abroad. It is inevitable. Global competition is everywhere and will ultimately impact all companies - large and small - and in all countries.