Strategic Momentum

Our drawing looks like this:

We call your attention to the middle ring. It is here that you see the rhythm of art and science:

• Understand that you need a variety of skills to succeed
• Identify the mix of skills applicable to your situation
• Develop a balanced team that has varied strengths
• Make room in your management processes for both art and science

The Value of Market Research

“If you build it, they will come” - Field of Dreams

It is a great sentiment for a feel good baseball movie—not a good idea for a business, however. Recently, we helped two companies by conducting market research. For one, we canvassed a difficult market to determine the viability of a product on the drawing board before a lot of money was invested. For the other, we investigated six financial services sectors to identify new markets for a software product.

The first exercise pointed out that our client needed more capital and industry experience in the field before buyers would get on board. As a result, our client has gone back to the drawing board and come up with a less risky and more patient road to success. The second client is now developing a marketing and sales program to pursue those markets we identified more efficiently than if we had not done the research.

Do your homework before you enter a new market, you will save yourself money and be much more effective in delivering new sales.

Confronting Reality,
Doing What Matters to Get Things Right
By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

Bossidy and Charan followed up their hugely successful Execution with Confronting Reality. Bossidy and Charan focus on the business model as a framework for a company’s path to the future. Their business model calls for an in-depth look at the external realities for a company, its financial targets, and internal activities. By regularly repeating this exercise, you come up with tested, actionable models for the business.

Confronting Reality's examples include EMC, Cisco, Home Depot, and the Thomson Corporation. The authors describe how these businesses transformed themselves by recognizing threats and changes in their external markets, and altering their internal activities to reach new financial targets. Bossidy and Charan emphasize aggressive information gathering and vision of the industry’s direction—advice with which we heartily agree. A must read for CEOs and those advising them.

The Trek principals will be the featured speakers at an M&A breakfast organized by the Printing Industries of New England (PINE) on March 9, 2005. We will be focusing on “The Value Equation” to help PINE members identify ways to build realizable value in their own businesses.

Next month we’ll talk about working smarter, not harder.