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All in Business Strategy
I’m an accountant, so I am not supposed to love marketing, am I?
When I started in industry, marketing budget were cut, how can you justify the ROI on that spend. So much time was spent understanding the return on money spent, some easier than others to explain.
However, when cash needed to be saved it was the easiest spot. It didn’t impact the bottom line, that you can really measure easy compared with other costs.
Are you one of those people that asks a lot of questions – why are we doing this? What is this all about? And How are we going to deliver this? Simple words and questions but critical in all aspects of business. I have to admit it does annoy me when people ask too many questions, but it really is good engagement. It means they are engaged, they are listening and they want to understand the background.
One piece of advice my dad gave me, was to remember that life is a journey. It’s hard when you are 20 years old to really know what this means?
As I get older, a ripe old age of 42 I really consider this concept of journey. It’s an interesting one, very personal and something that evolves.
The plan is built, you have the budget, why can’t you deliver?
It’s the issue that is widely known, the easy part is building the plan and getting the money (well sometimes) but being able to deliver the plan is the hard thing. When the plan is unclear or money hard to get it’s a good excuse, when that’s done there are no excuses you need to be able to Execute.
At Whiteark this is where we see our clients need help and this is our sweet spot, being able to help deliver a program of work. There are 4 key steps that need to be taken to ensure the plan is successfully executed.
If it’s not part of your KPIs it’s probably not worth measuring.
Most of us have heard the phrase ‘what measures gets done’. Sounds simple right? But when it comes to measuring what matters, it gets a bit tricker
It’s a great opportunity to reflect. What have I achieved this year. What am I most proud of. What is my biggest learning. Who has supported me this year – make sure you say thank-you. I always encourage my teams to update their CV every year – what have they learnt, where have they developed it’s a good way to remember all your achievements as well.
THE GUIDE | The key building blocks to guide the process of strategy to execution. Answering strategic questions will form the basis of the key components to the Company Strategy building block. Constantly monitoring the industry, market and economic trends is critical for setting and achieving your strategic objectives.
Mark Easdown writes about complexity. In the mid 1980s, a school of thought emerged around “Complexity” and “Complex Adaptive Systems” with the formation of the Sante Fe Institute, formed in part by former members of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The institute drew from multi-disciplinary domains and insights of : economics, neural networks, physics, artificial intelligence, chaos theory, cybernetics, biology, ecology and archaeology. Theories on Complexity and Complex Adaptive systems sought to develop common frameworks and understandings of physical and social systems that was an alternate to more linear and reductionist modes of thinking.
Are you ready to take on a bold sales and service model transformation? Now is the time to reinvent your model and integrate the value your business provides into the “new” societal landscape post the global disruption of Covid-19. In today’s environment, your successful sales and service transformation will be enabled by strong leadership, facts driven from data and analytical insights, and new approaches to technology.
Jo Hands is talking all about data. Every organisation has it in abundance, but not many companies have it organised and streamlined to drive meaningful outcomes. It's a shame. Data is powerful - data that has been analysed with other variables is powerful. And data can tell you the why - data can tell you why or get you to understand the trend.
Mark Easdown writes about forecasting. The prediction process starts with propositions, then verified, quantified and made actionable. A robust peer review occurs and 95% of predictions are modified along the way. Plummer routinely scrutinises predictions with actual events and these results are highlighted at conferences – championing the successes and sharing insights across those that were wrong. “Nobody here is hired because they’re psychic; there hired to generate insights that are useful – even if they turn out wrong. It’s useful to get you thinking”.
In today’s business environment, transformation can take many forms but no matter the type it revolves around the need to generate new value - unlock new opportunities, drive new growth, deliver new efficiencies. It is critical that the transformation project aligns to the company’s strategy – strategy is fundamental in guiding/aligning decisions and actions to ensure they support the achievement of the company’s strategic goals.
Here at Whiteark, we love data, it’s at the centre of everything we do, it gives us that facts, and in order to interpret what the data is telling us, and communicating our findings with key stakeholders, data visualisation plays a fundamental role.
Mark Easdown writes about resilience. Individual, Enterprise & Ecosystem Strategy & Planning & Ways of working. Let’s explore some scenarios across individual resilience, ethical resilience & the resilience dividend. At the individual level, the global pandemic, economic downturns, recessions and increase in uncertainty and anxiety highlight the need for resilience. As Diane L Coutu “How Resilience Works”, (HBR May 2002) observes, resilient people have certain defining characteristics…
Mark Easdown writes about Prospective Hindsight and the Pre-Mortem. Given the importance and value of improving the decision-making process, researchers, social scientists and psychologists set about leveraging the findings of prospective hindsight studies and try to identify a framework upfront to identify your decisions that might lead to poor outcomes and create a safe environment for dissent in views.
Mark Easdown writes about practical wisdom: making sense of the eco-system. Leadership should not wait for a crisis, for revenues and budgets to go off-track to engage the wider views. Pandemic of 2020, has been a great example of leadership teams who have been forced to stop, listen and reach out across their ecosystem (customers, employees, suppliers, relationships with banks and government) and to re-invent and re-imagine themselves.
Matthew Webber writes about the challenge has been laid to develop a Supply Chain Strategy that supports Australia’s renewed obsession with lifestyle. The way that we buy, move and sell Is shifting in seismic proportions. We have had all the indicators within our radar for some – the uptake of ecommerce as a legitimate and safe platform for retail shopping, geo political trade wars playing out between large, industrialised nations and emerging nations along with increase consumer insistence on visibility and ethical sourcing practices.
Jo Hands explains a fun game to play with your team to solve problems using De Bonos Six Thinking Hats. The Six Thinking Hat technique is used in companies around the world to facilitate decision making and getting people to have good brainstorming conversations.
Matthew Webber writes about Supply Chain Transformation leadership in action. One of the key attributes for any prosperous supply chain of the modern era is to have the ability to adapt and respond. We can design our supply chains structurally, and technically, to deliver on this outcome, however we do have to move our supply chains from where they are today, to where they need to be in the future. We need to do that through leading our people, our partners and our communities in which we operate.
Jo Hands writes about DeBonos 6 thinking hats, explaining the meaning behind each hat in a little more detail. What hat do you naturally wear, and what hat is outside your comfort zone? Explore the six hats in a bit more detail...
