A few days ago I did participate in a discussion concerning the transfer of existing print mail campaigns to new e-mail-campaigns. An issue within this discussion was, whether and to what extent content and structure should be changed.

The basic answer can be summarized as follows: E-Mail campaigns are quite different in comparison to print mail campaigns. Different reading habits when reading “online” require different structures and concepts for e-mail campaigns. Due to research results we know the following reading habits:

• An e-mail text is more browsed than read in detail.
• The attention to read the entire text needs to be attracted with anchor words or even buzz words.
• Only the first 10 rows will be absorbed in total.
• The reading rates online is lower than offline.
• Customers expect that the sender gets to the point as soon as possible.
• Customers will not follow all arguments to the bottom line.

Taking these reading and abortion styles into considering the following rules and recommendations can be derived:

• Write to your readers what is most important right at the beginning.
• The entire text of your mail should not excess the half of the letters text.
• The line of arguments should have a maximum of three layers.
• Your e-mail should be clearly arranged. Hence your mail needs more paragraphs compared to a letter.
• Each paragraph should contain only one core message.
• Avoid nested sentences.
• The salutatory address should include the sir name.

Continue reading ‘Basic rules for e-mail campaigns’

There is a saying that nothing is as old as yesterday’s news.

This week I read a newspaper article about much older news. As it seems, these can be quite interesting again. Most people, including me, did not even notice it: one of Germany’s most popular TV news formats – Tagesschau - has been broadcasting its own issues from exactly twenty years ago since 1993. So today you can see the news from May 31st 1989. These newscasts are exactly as they were broadcasted originally, including slips of the tongue and weather forecast. Unfortunately, the time of the broadcast is 3 a.m. in the morning and thus, not very convenient for me.

What has all this to do with strategy? I think a lot. A 20 years old news format is not only entertaining. It is more than a recall of fashion trends, dreadful haircuts and log forgotten events. At the original broadcasting date, all this was brand new information, often still incomplete. Commentators were speculating about potential future effects of latest events. Nobody knew were all this would end. Nobody knew if a particular event would even have any relevant consequence or not. Continue reading ‘20 years old news’

…and how to manage them. When company managers discuss their personal experiences in terms of external consultants you can find a broad range of opinions and beliefs. Point of views may vary between very positive experiences when hiring external knowledge and very bad experiences; the later ones are sometimes expressed in jokes about “flippy” PowerPoint presentations or even statements that those experts only summarize knowledge that was available in the organization all the time.

The truth is that most of those experiences can be proofed; furthermore there is a very high probability that you going to meet both types of consultants (the good ones and the bad ones) after several years in business. One typical kind of problem: Presented results look good on PowerPoint, but not in corporate practice. Process time is assumed to short; certain - in most cases hidden processes - have not been considered and hence do not appear in new flow charts. Essential details and former best practice will not be transferred to new solutions. (From my personal point of view in most cases those “details” and hidden processes make or break large projects, e.g. success of acquisitions, outsourcing). Another frequent problem can be observed in terms of knowledge that leaves the organization. Hiring external expertise for a certain period of time may solve your problems today (e.g. to implement a new IT system), but in some cases the organization will end up with a very expensive black box.

Similar problems can be observed when hiring interim managers for small period of time. The reason: Both groups (consultant, interim manager) are paid to deliver certain project results, but not to live the conditions and organizational surroundings they create. Hence the question is whether there is any chance that you can protect your organization and your team from those consulting dilemma (you need the external experience or the external capacities to fix your problems).

Continue reading ‘Risks of external consultants and interim managers…’

Last week I was asked about my opinion about Porters Generic Strategies during the current financial crisis. My first spontaneous thought was: Why ask that question? Is it less important to have a distinctive strategy during a crisis than it is during a boom? I think the contrary is true.
However, my discussion partner expected a more detailed answer.

As a reminder – Porters model of Generic Strategies basically says that you should follow one of these generic strategies:

• Price leader / cost leader – Sell your product for the lowest price in the market. Don’t add bells and whistles; your customers are price sensitive. Examples are the cloths you can buy at Wal Mart.
• Differentiation – Have a unique product and sell it for a premium price. This is often equivalent to quality leadership (but not necessarily so). Examples are Gucci stores.
• Focus – I prefer the term niche strategy since it is more self-explaining. Have a product with a fair price that fulfils the needs of a customer segment that is not larger than a market niche. Examples are the cloths specially designed for carrying babies in a wrap or a sling, e.g. extra-wide coats or fleece covers for the baby

If you don’t follow one of these strategies you are ‘stuck in the middle’. There you will have a problem since there always is somebody with a product that has either a lower price or more attractive features than yours.

Of course, this is a model. Like all models it is a simplified description of reality. Doubtless, there are other strategies that can lead a business to success. You may, for instance, stick in Porters ‘middle’ but have a brilliant customer lock-in. Thus your customers stay with you despite lower prices or higher quality products around. On the other hand, I think it is not a bad strategic position to

• be well known for very competitive prices or
• to have the ‘must-have’ product everybody wants to get for whatever reason or
• to have a reputation as an excellent supplier in a particular market niche.

Coming back to where I started – why should these strategies be less viable during the current financial crisis? Continue reading ‘Porters Generic Strategies During the Current Financial Crisis’

Despite the poor economic situation many finance departments seem to be afraid that their key players could switch to a competitor. More than half of HR managers and finance department heads in the world see the risk to lose their best people. Also in Germany companies are afraid of losing finance specialists. That is one outcome of a new study.

ROBERT HALF INTERNATIONAL (RHI) is a global organization that is specialized in consulting and staffing services; its network includes more than 400 locations worldwide. It announced its new “Global Financial Employment Monitor 2008 – 2009″ that informs about current trends in hiring finance specialists. The report summarizes three major findings:

• Talent shortage: 56% of participants reported problems finding skilled staff, unchanged from the 2007 report.
• Staff retention: 58 % of participants are concerned or are very concerned about retaining top performers. In 2007 only 43 % were concerned.
• Flexible staffing: 31 % of participants “currently employing interim professionals reported increasing their use in the last three years.”

The research summary can be found as pdf-file on this site.

From time to time I receive mails from MBA-students asking me some more or less specific questions that are related to management and strategy. Normally, I reply to such mails with only a few sentences since I am not going to help them out with significant parts of their MBA assignments. However, the last one was lucky enough to ask me some questions that make a nice blog post. So here are some thoughts about business plans:

The first question is easy enough to answer – What makes a good business plan? I wrote an article with exactly that titlesome years ago.

Than he asks: How do you develop a business plan when change in the industry is imminent? How does innovation fit into a business plan? I firmly believe that a good business plan should describe a good strategy. This in turn should be developed on the basis of a thorough internal and external analysis.
Such an analysis would reveal, for instance, if change in the industry is imminent. If this is the case, the business plan has to consider that. It should at least describe the expected change and suggest some course of action for this scenario (scenarios). Depending on how certain or uncertain the expected change is, the business plan has to be more or less flexible. If the outcome of the industry change is unclear, scenarios are a good tool. The strategy and business plan can than take the form of a decision tree – if the industry takes a particular development, the strategy will be adapted to a respective direction too. Continue reading ‘What makes a good business plan?’

No, I don’t want to post a blog about the change which is related to the presidency of Mr. Obama. I guess that there are articles enough available in the media which discuss this issue. In the case that you would like to employ the “we can change” in order to improve your organization this post could offer some interesting content to you.

Change is easy? Well, the basic answer is yes, if…. According to various research results change is not an easy business, hence you have to be sure of the following three issues before implementing change.

1. Change is really necessary. You and/or your organization should identify the strategic story that is establishing the need for change, e.g. the need to protect the competitive advantage. But you have to keep in mind that there can be situations where “doing nothing” can be an approach to protect (or to maintain) the competitive advantage (e.g. an traditional restaurant which is appreciated by its customers because it has remained unchanged for long periods of time and the cook did not change his or her famous recipe).
2. The need for change is understood. Your organization at all including yourself (!) should understand the drivers that create the need for change. It should also be clear what the negative effects (without change) and the hot issues that will damage your competitive advantage. Furthermore you should be able to make a distinction between the real problem and its symptoms.
3. The right solution has been developed. There are many advocates that will promote the right the solution from their own point of view – but in most cases not all are able to see full facts and attributes of the case. Your organization has to design the solution which is the correct answer to the problem that has been identified before. I have to mention that correct answer does not mean the “perfect” solution. In many cases “85 percent”- solutions with the right timing have been proofed their ability to fix the problem. The correct answer includes the right solution in technical terms + the right organizational solution. The latter one requires that your solution addresses cultural issues within your organization, too.

You can summarize the last issue a little bit: You should manage every change project as an organizational change project. In many cases technical issues represent only the facilitator of change, but cultural / organizational change is the main driver to overcome possible resistances to change.

Naseem Javed is a regular contributer of interesting articles for our Management Portal. His latest piece of thought covers nine opportunites that - as he thinks - will be hot for businesses in 2009.
I think these are very interesting ideas. If you think about your business strategy for 2009, it is well worth to have a look at Naseem’s points. Some of them might be relevant for your business

Here is Naseem’s article:

The Nine New Mega Opportunities of 2009

The daily cinema living
The hunger for moving pictures, like a global conspiracy or an underground movement, has almost killed the flat and still imagery. Every marketing or propaganda message now has to move in dimensions or it will be considered boring or dead. This change has already made a very positive impact on screen-based mediums, from hand held devices, wall size TVs to building size electronic billboards. The streets and shopping malls will eventually look like the insides of cinemas. As long as these new mediums can project and show things live and in color the world will keep on moving. The entire interiors, walls, corridors, hallways floors and ceilings would be nothing but screens with projected moving images. The dramatic reductions of the cost of projection, availability of dynamic animated contents will keep customers enticed and ring the cash registers. The more available surface the better, tackle the new shape and style of imagery, create new business models and watch the show.
Continue reading ‘Guest Article - Nine New Mega Opportunities of 2009′

A couple of days ago I was involved in a discussion concerning the sense of strategy in the times of financial crisis. I think that is a very interesting question, whether organizations should “think strategically” in a situation with a very dynamic and unstable environment (e.g. like the current financial crisis and global economic recession). If you cannot predict the future (what nobody can basically, even not in dynamic times), is it really appropriate to spend resources on strategic thinking?

First of all I would like to reconsider the basic principles of strategy. A situation (e.g. the financial crisis) when the corporate environment can be described as very unstable, is not that new. During the so called “New economy” (do you remember?) the concepts and ideas of strategy it its broadest sense including strategic planning were treated as less important. There seem to be no time for strategic thinking; “business operations were started with an experimental approach in order to adapt them later on market conditions”. Another reason was that experience for such a situation of technological changes did not exist and therefore organizations did not know how to consider them. At first sight there seems to be some kind of conflict between strategic thinking and dynamic environments (?). But: The learning effects were that the future is still unpredictable - but a “try and error approach” did not fulfil the expectations as well. The loss of significance of experience in times of large changes does not mean that strategy is less important – indeed strategy has to be considered more seriously. Hence an analyzing walkthrough and long term planning are still worth to be considered.

Hence we have to understand the basic ideas of strategy. Since there is a number of definitions available, I selected one for the purpose of this post. There is a famous statement – some would argue it is one of the oldest statements in terms of strategy:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” (chapter 3, axiom 18 (c. 490 B.C.). Sun Tzu (ca. 6th century BCE) Chinese general)

Continue reading ‘Strategy in dynamic times’

Well, we do not have been published posts for a while. There is a very good reason.

Also the headline might be confusing. Enterprises, people, and governments have to manage the results of a large financial crisis that started as a crisis related to US subprime loans in 2007. A great year? A couple of days ago I discussed this issue with some friends and colleagues: “We” had to learn a lot: “to big to fail” – we do disbelieve in this statement in 2009. Zero-interest rates in Nippon only? – The Western civilization can have them (or try to use their hopefully stimulating effects), too. Negative growth rates in gross domestic products – not only an issue in text books.

In economic terms it was a very dramatic year.

But what did touch us really? In personal terms it was a very, very beautiful year – thanks to our “sweet sunshine” Stella Christin, who was born in 2008.

An ancient saying (I am not sure whether its origin is German) argues: A farmer who always looks back (on the groove behind him) when tilling his field is not able to keep straight on. In order to find the right path and to make straight grooves he needs to look forward.

In this spirit we wish our readers all the best for 2009, luck and success (both in private and professional life) and the courage, not to look back. May the New Year bring you and your loved ones joy and happiness.

Best wishes

Dagmar and Oliver