andrewnicol.net - blog

The ugly one wants to grow up...

It has been said many times that the best defence is a good offence, and interestingly enough I think that this may well answer a comment to my last post.

So how does a company that sits in the small (guerrillas) section move from there to the ultimate goal of being 'big' without passing through the medium size? ...

Firstly, I think that it is important that the market that you are small or ugly in, is not fully matured. If it is you need to create or enter a new market. Secondly you must continue to grow, and by grow I mean primarily organic and then acquired. The most effective way and decisive way to grow big is to seize, maintain and exploit the initiative in a market that is either not fully matured or is a speciality.

A current example in the NZ news at the moment is Pumpkin Patch's result. They started as a small business and have grown to be a big business by NZ standards. They now have branches in Aust, UK and have launched into the US. Their strategy is to continually grow and add stores (similar in principal it seems to Michael Hill). They are continually on the offensive pausing only when entering new countries to get the delivery and marketing right. Once they nail that they rapidly grow again.

So to answer specific questions drawn from the comment …

• Medium sized - You need to pass through ugly to get to big, but I think you can actually get to big in one market and then realise you are small in another and expand again.
• Too long - Too long is measured by growth. If you don’t have growth into new markets and products and regions you will become irrelevant. This, in my opinion needs to happen at least every 6 months, if not 3 months.
• Risk – yip. Once you get to a crtical mass that Big brings the risk reduces significantly
• Acquisition – I think organic when small primarily with the aid of acquired.

By being on the offensive causes the competitors to react, by being defensive it causes you to stop growing. If that happens you are destined to be ugly (the never never land) or a guerrilla.

Some interesting lessons in this line of thinking for me and my role over the last couple of days.

The big, the small and the UGLY

The leader must take up a strong position, inspire others to follow him, discover where the enemy is weak and attack there. – The precepts of Ssu Ma Jang Chu – 400BC

In general, the marketplace looks like this;

The Super Powers (Big)
They own the territory, set the rules, and, like the 400kg gorilla, sleep anywhere they want. The big dogs get the biggest pieces of meat. The superpowers are in the production business – they are as concerned with protecting their position on the high ground as they are with gaining new ground.

The Secondary Powers (Ugly)
Their job is to get bigger so that they do not get smaller. They often achieve this by knocking off a lot of small companies rather than attacking the major powers. It’s easier to eliminate the weak than to attach the strong.

These secondary powers are in a vulnerable middle ground. They are facing attacks from both the big buys and the guerrillas. As an industry moves to maturity, the marketing action polarises to the big at one extreme and the small specialists at the other. The never-never land where you never want to be is a medium-sized company in a mature industry.

The Business Guerrillas (Small)
In third place is everyone with a small market share, specialists in a big market. These firms biggest threat is the 800kg gorilla.

What interests me from this quote of “Sun Tzu – Strategies for Marketing” is the never never land. In New Zealand I think it is fair to say that some markets have either fully matured or are very close. This leaves very little room for The Secondary Powers.

Take the shakedown in retail, there are very few medium sized businesses. They are either stores that are a part of one big group, or small boutiques that specialise. Recruitment world wide is a mature market, huge multi-nationals or smaller specialists.  In NZ at present there are a few Secondary Powers, but I am not sure that is a great place to be.

Within transport and logistics, I believe that the Courier Market has neared maturity, Freightways, Express Couriers and the rest. 3PL/warehousing continues to mature and make entry very difficult without being specialists.

Interestingly enough, the Transport industry is only over the last few years starting to show signs of maturing. There are more acquisitions, mergers and off-shore investment. There still remains a significant number of Secondary Powers. The challenge for them in the next few years either become big, or settle for being specialist, staying in the middle ground is never where you want to be!

Home Invasion

BOOM! The door flew open, they burst into the house and within seconds seemed to occupy every space. The noise told of chaos and energy blended into one. Immediately the tranquillity was replaced with a racket that would rival a sonic boom over Canterbury. Then I realised they were searching for me, I knew I didn't have long till they found me. After an extended period of silence I knew my time was up. My family just got home.

Was that 1 1/2 hours I ask myself? Where did that time go? I was planning to make it productive time, nailing a few things before my week began but instead I had surfed the net randomly and enjoyed for the most part, the silence. On this occasion my thoughts were not clearer as I lacked the disciplined thought that should accompany silence to make it productive. It was relaxing nonetheless.

I am reminded that I function better when I have times of silence and solitude. I seem to live with audio cluttering much of my life through radios, tv, mp3 and people. I love music and audio and conversation but there are times when I need to mute them and have space to focus my thoughts.

When I have times of quiet I usually manage to assimilate my small thoughts and ideas that I continually have and make them into a coherent and better thought-out plan. Without times of silence, solitude and disciplined thought, I don't see the big picture, the related priorities and I become driven by the small things. Yesterday during my time of silence I just relaxed. Today, as I head to Wellington, I will make some thinking time happen and see what happens...

Driving through changing landscapes

The expectation of change is gone, the heavy machinery that once littered the road side has moved on, the surprise changes in road layout are no longer. Finally after spending enough money to feed a small third world nation for a year, and after 10 years we have a 4 lane road from Long Swamp (just north of Huntly) connecting to the 4 lanes at Mercer, then snaking all the way into Auckland and beyond.

An element of excitement and anticipation made the drive interesting and revealing the first few of times I trundled up to the city of sails and homeward on the new road. Now that excitement is replaced by familiarity, the unknown layout and speed limits changes are replaced with the undemanding and effortless click of cruise control. For years I was excited by the prospect of speed and ease and time-saving which are all rewards that the new road has brought, yet now it feels like something is lacking. It feels like Auckland just grew, stretched its arm deeper into the Waikato and took the liveliness out of the roads, replacing it with repetitiveness and simplicity.

I miss the ever shifting landscape that construction brings and how it often provided a welcome divergence in my thinking to questions and opinions about their efforts and floundering.

The new road is fantastic but without the interest and excitement that continual change brings, it is now is just one more piece of road.

Even when driving it would seem I need change, adore change and miss change.

What is initiative?

It's an interesting question isn't! What is initiative? Can you train people to have initiative? Can a person be held accountable for not displaying initiative? Does the culture of your company breed initiative?

An old philosopher Albert Hubbard says this "THE WORLD BESTOWS ITS BIG PRIZES, both in money and honors, for but one thing. And that is Initiative. What is Initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told"

Hubbard tells the story Andrew Rowan said to the President,

"There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia-are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?"

Garica wasn't told how to act, or where to look, who to contact, he just took the letter set out and made the right thing happen. Read the whole story if you have time.

Seth Godin calls it being a torchbearer and says this

Now, I'm not talking about working hard, or being dedicated, or putting your mission first. Being a torchbearer has nothing to do with how late you work at night, or whether you give your cell-phone number to your boss. No, I'm talking about the people with that rare skill, the ability to dig deep when the need arises -- to get past the short-term pain and to pull off an act that few would have believed possible. In the new economy, people are doing things that have never been done before. Faced with the unprecedented, in an environment that's unstable, many people say, "It can't be done." The torchbearer is the one who does it.

I love Hubbard's quote. I think initiative is doing the right thing without being told. I think training helps, culture is important, accountability is paramount and these things can help people fell comfortable with taking initiative. I also think some people have been trained their whole lives to lack initiative and they must now retrain. Eventually it comes back to a readiness and ability to initiate action, the right action. Ultimately it comes back to the individuals deep resolve to do the right thing every single time. If that desire is not there they will never carry the torch across the finish line nor find Garica.

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

THREE RULES OF WORK

"Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"

Quote from Albert Einstein

Well meaning people

There very few normal work days that I can recall like I do the 12th September five years ago. I had recently been given a job which meant I made the sluggish journey to Auckland three or four times a week. Typically I travelled before sunrise, but this day was not a normal day. As I steered the bulky green station-wagon north there was an endless chatter about only one topic on the radio. In the shadow of the Sky Tower I get out of my car to a radiant blue sky and hear some jet engines whine in the distance which immediately connected my thoughts to the sky in New York just hours earlier. What if?

Five years on and the anniversary of 911 brings with it repeat after repeat of the planes flying into the building or the towers collapsing. How hard it must be for the families of the dead to see those images again and again and again. Time after time the media replay the murder of their loved ones on TV. Oddly however, year after year we are drawn to the images, to the viewpoints, to the speculation of what is next. The world is not the same place it was when around 2800 people died in the US that day, merely ask the citizens of the now "liberated" and "democratic" state of Iraq, who have lost over 40,000 civilian family members in this war on terror.

The world is not the same, nevertheless it is exactly as it has been for thousands of years. Well meaning people and governments and religions are doing things that they think will make the world a better place, while all the time forcing their rules for living on the rest of the world. We see it in Christianity all of the time, people go around telling people how to live, or more to the point tell them what not to do, and forget that perhaps God made us for relationships. I heard this pastor friend of mine talking about the bible over the weekend and what it tells us about loving our neighbours. He sort of said that we have to be deeply compassionate for the needs of people around us, and how the question is not who is my neighbour, but who can I be a neighbour to?

All this got me thinking about creation and I wondered if most well meaning Christian people have missed the point. What if Christianity could be summed up like this? Love God and love People with everything you have. What if this whole Christianity thing is about relationships, deep, authentic, caring relationships? Imagine if people with nothing to offer could actually have a relationship like that with God, then He taught them how to truly live and to have deep, authentic relationships with people.

You know what, I think that would be the kind of Christianity I would want to be a part of...

The grand strategy

"It is the translation of the grand strategy down into what people do every day, and be caring about what they do that is the single biggest challenge that faces every company." And I suggest every leader. It is certainly one of the biggest challenges that I face on an ongoing basis. I find this quote from a CEO who took part in the Covey 4 Disciplines course stimulates me often to assess how I am going as a leader. Frequently accepted wisdom would say just set the big goal, go for it, let the people do the work. Often however this doesn't cut it.

Last week while discussing a project it became apparent that we had not yet thought through a key part of the new project. There was an inherent risk that we get to project completion and then find we had missed some key thinking for the process. It is not the first time, nor the first project that this has happened with. Being more than a little deflated that such a critical component had been looked over, I head into this week with a hankering to nail off my part in leading and delivering great projects, and this brings me back to the quote.

It has three parts, "grand strategy", you need to have one prior to doing anything else; "translation of the strategy into what people do each day", this is about breaking our goals down to a level that people understand exactly what to do; "caring about what they do", this means really caring and caring can only really be shown by spending time with them. Three parts, and as I critically review myself, I am doing decidedly averagely at all three! I have therefore planned a focus day to clear the head and determine again what is wildly important.

I am encouraged that 'translation' and 'caring' are the single biggest issue facing every company and leader. I am not the only person to struggle with this dimension of leadership. We have all worked for leaders, even stunning leaders that fail to continually set clear goals, help you break them down and care about how you are going as precisely as they should.

To conclude, a friend txt me a quote from Churchill in the weekend. "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm" - Hitting failure after failure enthusiastically - hmm.

AGOGE MEANS BEING

It means more than just saying something, or telling others to do something, it means 'being what you say and teach'. I want to be true to the word Agoge, and true to the way I live my life. True to the company and people that make up Agoge.

Quote from Andrew

I'm a little fire engine 'Flick' is my name...

Imagine being an Airport firefighter in Alaska, on Tuesday I meet a guy who had done that job. In fact imagine being an airport firefighter anywhere. Generally it would be monotonous existence, clean the fire truck, drive down the runway to get for foreign objects (these are not people who stowaway...), do the odd plane crash drill, but then generally you sit around waiting for a plane to crash, nice! The job almost contrasts that of a domestic firefighter who fights fires, attends motor vehicle crashes, cleans up floods and nails roofs down. In their spare time they educate kindergarten kids, check buildings and hydrants, and play table tennis.

For the record if I had to choose I would be an airport firefighter, after all I would get to see heaps of planes and that perk compensates significantly for the boredom. To be candid, I feel like a domestic firefighter at the moment, bouncing from one fire to another, attending to accidents, cleaning up issues and nailing things down. In my spare time I try to educate some people, work on the building and have some fun. I feel like I 'flick' from one thing to another.

My dilemma is this; it is not my agreed function to be a domestic firefighter and being one comes at the expense of strategy and leadership development. When I don't develop leaders and give strong leadership, my team are ill equipped to lead their teams, when this happens we all seem to get more involved in fighting fires.

Anyway back to another day at the fire station...

NEWSFLASH - Just heard that Noamz had her baby! How cool is that!

PS - If you want to check out the pre-launch developments for the logistics opinions page go to my.agoge.net\logistics