Tài liệu Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan Chapter 6-7 docx

The Six Driving Forces That

Affect Your Business Plan—

And How to Focus on the Best

One for Your Company’s

Needs

This chapter describes one of the most important elements of

your business plan. It is the element that provides alignment

between and among the functions of your business. Without this

element you cannot move toward coordinated goal accomplish￾ment.

149

CHAPTER

6

Typically planning teams spend time discussing the current

state of their business situation. Equal time is spent discussing the

future. Almost no time is spent discussing how to get from one

state—as is—to the other state—to be. Goals will not do the job. To

get to the future requires more than letting the organization run

unchecked toward goals. The management team must drive the

organization. I’m not using the term drive as in driving a reluctant

mule toward the barn. It means instead taking an active rather than

passive approach. It includes steering a course with all employees

speaking the same business language, aiming toward the same

goals, and moving with the same level of enthusiasm.

Employees reach a level of alignment throughout the organi￾zation when you clarify this element. Goal alignment of individu￾als with the organization’s needs has long been a target of manage￾ment theorists. Usually the wants and needs of the individual are

compared to the wants and needs of the organization. That takes

you nowhere. Too often the wants and needs of the organization

and the employee are not compatible. What I’m suggesting is to

align the business behaviors of all the people within the system.

Alignment is achieved by using a single operational focus.

To move from mission to vision you have a number of business

drivers that provide energy, power, and force to your story and cre￾ate this operational alignment. Over the years I identified and

refined six specific fields of energy that drive your goal accom￾plishment. I’ve also come to the conclusion that you cannot be all

things to all people. This dissipates your efforts and weakens the

results. You must have a single focus. The body of evidence found

by Treacy and Wiersema concludes that companies that hold mar￾ket dominance have a single focus. The authors describe with con￾vincing arguments the three points of focus from which the single

focus is selected. The three are operational excellence, product, and

customer intimacy.1

The original work on the concept of business focus must be

attributed to Robert Keidel, who compares businesses to sports

teams. He explains how different organizations resemble baseball

150 Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan

teams, basketball teams, or football teams. This comparison pro￾vides some fascinating answers to some tough questions about how

and why organizations behave in certain ways.2 What is attractive

about the concept is not the sports metaphors, but the idea that dif￾ferent organizations have different points of focus.

Keidel approached organizational effectiveness from a team￾work perspective. He states, “In a nutshell, baseball requires situa￾tional teamwork; football, scripted teamwork; and basketball,

spontaneous teamwork.” That’s not what caught my attention. He

went on to describe how an organization rewards various types of

behaviors based on the way they are designed. Keidel’s work fired

my curiosity. I was always puzzled why his metaphors and models

didn’t catch the business world’s attention. His examples clearly

had a message to me, so I took the challenge to push the key con￾cepts further. I became intrigued by what specifically drives a busi￾ness, what transparent forces seem to be at work within any sys￾tem. Keidel found three while Treacy and Wiersema also name

three. I found others. My work leads me to believe that six, not

three, drivers actually exist. These seem to be found in all my

client systems. Over a ten-year period I tested and retested the con￾cept with a number of participants in management seminars and

with clients in my consulting practice. My conclusion is that your

story or plan will have a serious defect if you don’t understand the

business drivers. Furthermore, I believe that you must pick one

from the list to create a single focus for organizational alignment.

I labeled the six drivers as:

1. Players

2. Plans

3. Processes

4. Products

5. Properties

6. Payoffs

The Six Driving Forces That Affect Your Business Plan 151

THE PLAYER-DRIVEN ORGANIZATION: PUTTING

EMPLOYEE OR CUSTOMER FIRST

A player-driven organization requires the complete identification of

all the people involved within and connected to the organization

in any fashion. It includes all who touch the processes of the busi￾ness. Often these people are labeled as stakeholders, which is at best

a vague term. I have not heard the term used where someone in the

audience didn’t ask for clarification.

I keep the definition of player simpler. Listening to everyone

who has a vested interest in the success of your company is impor￾tant but not critical to this exercise. It is not relevant to the major

parts of my model.

The two common groups of players I identified are the employ￾ees and the customers. Both are significant as dominant forces in

your organization. You may choose one or the other but not both

as your focus.

Hal Rosenbluth chose to focus on the employees as the central

driver of his business. His rationale was that the customer comes

second.3 His belief was that a company that takes care of its employ￾ees doesn’t have problems with customers. Putting employees first

means taking care of your people, eliminating the common gripes

and complaints that stand in the way of them doing a first-class job

for the customer. This model must have worked because

Rosenbluth Travel became a huge success.

Taking care of the employee first certainly has merit. We have

all experienced walking up to a counter to be served or pay for our

selections, only to be ignored. Doesn’t it drive you just a little bit

crazy when two salespeople, who are busy chatting about some

internal store problem, ignore you? I want to shout, “Hey, look at

me. Yes, me the guy with money in my hand. Me, the customer

who wants to be served. Remember me, I’m the guy who con￾tributes to your paycheck every Friday. I even put a little bonus

money in your pocket each year. I’ve probably contributed enough

152 Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan

to your 401(k) for you to retire. You may as well retire, since you are

not serving me.” I may make that speech someday.

A second player-driven type organization is one that focuses on

customers. This organization does more than focus; it becomes very

customer-centric. In Treacy and Wiersema’s language they are

called a customer-intimate organization. This organization’s energy

is spent solving the customer’s problem. This core process of help￾ing the customer with everything from finding the right size shoes

to checking on the faucet installation is what creates the long-term

relationships between the business and the customer. Customer￾intimate organizations are clever. They know their market is the

high-income category or people with money who want to be pam￾pered. They don’t cater to the handout crowd or people looking for

a bargain. Don’t go to Nordstrom looking for a blue-light special.

You will never hear “Attention Nordstrom shoppers. Our blue-light

special on aisle twelve for the next twenty minutes is mink coats,

with matching accessories on aisle eleven.” Sustaining a high cus￾tomer–sales staff ratio to provide intimate service costs a great deal

of money. Somebody has to pick up the tab. Guess who?

A customer-intimate organization understands that solving a

customer’s problems must be in real time. The answers or solutions

must be immediate. In a customer-intimate organization the

employee must be able to make decisions on the spot to solve a cus￾tomer’s special requirements. The required organizational structure

is decentralized with a high degree of empowerment. Employees in

a customer-intimate organization are rewarded for finding specific

solutions to customers’ problems.

Contrast that with my experience, and maybe yours also, while

buying a car. At some point the salesperson has to check with the

sales manager. Your offer is so low the company is giving the car

away or the salesperson will be fired for making such a poor deal.

Actually the salesperson is on break in the employee lounge drink￾ing coffee while you anxiously await the news confirming your

cunning ability to negotiate a deal. I caught that game early. Now

the first question I ask a salesperson is, “Can you sell me a car?” The

The Six Driving Forces That Affect Your Business Plan 153

answer is always a startled affirmative. I then go on to say, “No,

what I mean is can you sell me a car without having to go to the

sales manager? If you can’t, then I don’t want to waste your time,

so let me work directly with the sales manager. Otherwise I’m out

of here.” A Toyota salesperson in Baton Rouge must have thought I

was kidding. When he returned he discovered I wasn’t.

Customer-intimate organizations give employees a lot of room

to make deals, work with the customer, and demonstrate value in

the relationship. In my car dealership story, the salesperson had

been told the rules up-front, yet he wasted my time and tried to

play games with my mind. Don’t do that to your customers, espe￾cially when they are sending signals that such amateurish behavior

will not be tolerated.

A number of outstanding companies choose to use the cus￾tomer-intimate model. Nordstrom, Cott Corporation, and Airborne

Express are three examples I reference because they are in business￾es with radically different goods and services. Don’t be caught off

base thinking that customer-intimate means assigning a personal

shopper to your customer. Customer-intimate means solving the

customer’s problems, no matter what type business problem is pre￾sented. Each of these companies believes that time spent up-front

with the customer in a one-on-one relationship pays great divi￾dends in the long term. People and businesses pay premium prices

to have their needs legitimized, their concerns heard, and their

unique business problems solved.

Doug Christie, a sales representative for Bayer’s agriculture

division in Crossfield, Alberta, understands the concept of being

close to the customer and customer intimacy. He is always on the

job with no order too small or situation too minor for his attention.

His clients know when they unexpectedly run short of vaccines or

they need technical information, Doug is instantly available. His

office has a twenty-four–hour phone contact number. Doug works

the phone constantly, staying in touch with his clients. I jokingly

said to him, “You must have that phone permanently attached to

your ear.” He just grinned, reached back, pulled out his wallet, and

154 Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan