Thoughts to Ponder...

21st Century Auto Management

The Harvard Business Blog offers 6 key rules for 21st Century auto industry survival:

Choose good. In the 21^st century, every moral imperative is also a strategic imperative: doing good - for customers, employees, suppliers, or society - is a radical strategic choice that unlocks new pathways to innovation and growth. The opportunity cost of defending evil for Detroit was never learning how to choose good - and that's a crucial mistake other auto players didn't make. Tata chose to make a car that was accessible to the world's poor. Porsche and BMW chose to invest in talent, people, and imagination. Honda and Toyota chose to invest in renewables and partnerships with the public sector. All opened new avenues to growth for an industry at the brink of extinction.

Purpose is self-interest. The 21^st century demands a more enlightened self-interest: one factoring in a longer timescale, fuller contingencies, and an honest and broad consideration of hidden and unintended consequences to people, society and the environment. When we understand all that, have begun to develop a purpose - a way in which we will change the world radically for the better. By confusing selfishness with self-interest, Detroit vaporized it's own purpose - and will stay trapped in a wilderness of economic meaninglessess until it rediscovers it.

Get constructive. True 21^st century businesses can be judged in the blink of an eye: how intensely do they put the "co" in constructive? Can they let demand spark and fuel co-creation, can they co-produce from a pool of shared resources, are they capable of letting value activities be co-managed, are they tuned to cooperate? Detroit can't get constructive because it's spent the better part of a century playing the games of destructive strategy.

Seek difference. Ultimately, the problem is simple: differentiation is about perception. Difference is about reality. People in the 21^st century aren't the zombified, braindead consumers of the 20^th century. And so the 21^st century demands not mere differentiation - a bean counters' eye view of the world if ever there was one - but true difference. True difference is built by making different choices from the ground up - different in the very essence of the value activities that make the wheels of production and consumption spin. Porsche and BMW strove for difference - not mere differentiation - and it is that choice that is at the heart of their global leadership of the automotive sector.v

Seek crisis. By insulating themselves from real-world economic pressures, boardrooms also dilute and sap incentives for innovation and renewal. Detroit wasn't innovating because the opportunity cost of strategy as gamesmanship was, ultimately, foregoing innovation itself. In the 21^st century, gamesmanship - and its attendant dilution of incentives - is a sure path to near terminal strategy decay. Forget Detroit - just ask big music, big pharma, or big food.

Advantage happens for. Competitive advantage against bears a striking resemblance to simply bullying. Bullying is easy: just as in the sandbox, any boardroom with market power can jack up margins by forcing others - buyers, suppliers, consumers, society - to bear costs. But if every corporation across the economy is playing that game, the economy's just a game of musical chairs.

The World Just Changed!

Fantastic blog post from Robert Scoble who is touring factories in China...

The business world you think you know just changed drastically... it doesn't work the way you were taught is works... wholesalers, retailers, etc.



Here's how products actually get to consumers today... in Scoble's words...


"

Today? A product goes from factory directly to your front door via FedEx through Liam’s supply chain. How long does that take? Four to five days. All trackable via FedEx and other methods.
What’s different today? The Chinese are now cutting out Amazon and are building Websites that you can buy products from directly and they’ll ship right to your door.
Next? We used Twitter to discuss a new product with people around the world, get feedback on what they want, and the designers, who no longer will be in Europe or America, can work with the customers to build something highly customized and that serves their needs exactly. Then a factory gets fired up and the product gets shipped out — all within days of the Twitter storm.

...showed me a new gadget that will get on blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo, Obsessable, GearLive, Gdgt, CrunchGear. It is mind blowing. The engineering is done all in China. The factories are all in China. The website will be hosted in China, or maybe over on one of the new clouds that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Rackspace are now opening up. The brand name will be done in China, via Twitter and FriendFeed. The PR is done in China via Twitter and FriendFeed, or maybe via a blogger tour in San Francisco and New York because that’s where most of the gadget bloggers live (last night CNN’s Rick Sanchez Twittered me, which demonstrates that Twitter has a powerful reach now into mainstream media).
This is total ownership of everything. Total disruption of everyone who used to make money along the supply chain. Retailers? Disrupted. Traders and middlemen and distributors? Disrupted. Web designers and developers? Disrupted.
Are you scared yet?
You should be if you are being disrupted.

Where are the high value bits in this whole process?
Not the manufacturing.
The real value and profit is in two places: R&D and coming up with new businesses and new ideas.

Other jobs that’ll open up? Anything involved in building brands. Marketing, PR, blogging/Twittering/FriendFeeding, building web experiences, videos, going to conferences to show off new products to audiences, etc.

That’s it. That’s where our new economy is going to be. And this process will happen to EVERYTHING. The American car industry? Well, they figured out how to sell Buick’s and Chevy’s to the Chinese, so if I were working at GM right now I’d be trying to figure out how to take advantage of this new manufacturing capability and ability to ship custom cars right to your house.

Americans are being fed only the negative stories about China and that is lulling them into complacency. The largest book store in the world is in Shenzhen. The largest city hall I’ve ever seen is here. The largest library I’ve ever been in is here. This is an increasingly educated workforce that’s just starting to get going. Americans need to come to China and see what’s going on because it is absolutely stunning in its scale."

Are YOU really ready for all this???

A CEO "That Gets It"

I'm not particularly impressed with many CEOs that govern our most prestigious corporations.

But every once in a while, I come across one that seems to "get it".

Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase is one of those rare CEOs that seems to run his large organization in a responsible manner... and we can learn a lot from following his example.

What makes this story interesting is that Dimon uses plain common sense. The wonder of it all is that so many of his peers lack this essential quality. Sorta makes you wonder why others don't emulate him, doesn't it?

Learn more about the "Dimon Way" by reading a trio of articles that have appeared at various times in Fortune Magazine here, here, and especially here.

He's not perfect, perhaps, but he certainly is very, very good!

Time Management for Creative People

I've just come across a small but very helpful e-book called "Time Management for Creative People", by Mark McGuinness.

It's a short book, which is befitting, about doing much more in far less time... and who doesn't face THAT challenge?

Key chapters include:

1. Why you need to be organised to be creative
2. Prioritise work that is ‘important but not urgent’
3. Ring-fence your most creative time
4. Avoid the ‘Sisyphus effect’ of endless to-do lists
5. Get things done by putting them off till tomorrow
6. Get things off your mind
7. Review your commitments
8. Resources to help you get things done

If you're a fan of Stephen Covey, as I am, then you'll definitely want to pick up a copy!

You can get your own copy here!

I think you'll be delighted that you did!

I know that I was...