Dilemma of Generating Alternatives for Issue Tree Analysis

Assignments! Assignments! I’m now at the stage of “generating alternatives” section of the Business Strategic Leadership assignment…….

The idea was simple, which was to generate alternatives of a chosen strategic issue. The tips are:

1. Make sure the alternatives are completely different.
2. Make sure the alternatives are not fine-tuning a solution.
3. Exhaust all known alternatives.
4. Use lateral thinking techniques (whatever that is!)

Okay, sound easy? If it is so easy, how come I’m stuck here for days?

My chosen strategic Issue was “how to influence retail Merchants to rollout our payment terminals?”

That sounds easy (at first glance). I could do it:

Alternative 1 : Offer signup incentives to retail merchants such as subsidized terminal rental.

Alternative 2 : Offer attractive MDR to retail merchants.

Wait a minute! Offering attractive MDR was also a form of signup incentive, not so “different” from the idea in Alternative 1. In fact, I could do Alternative 1 together with Alternative 2.

Okay. So I merged the two ideas and it became:

Alternative 1 (revised): Offer signup incentives to retail merchants such as subsidized terminal rental and competitive MDR.

Then, the dilemma came in as well:

Alternative 2 (revised): ????????

I could not think of other different alternatives!

As easy as it might sound, it was definitely not easy when you actually practicing it. That’s why I was stuck for few days.

Experience of Using Strategic Tools At Work

Not too long ago, I was assigned to work out a feasibility study of product in my company. Since I have attended the Business Strategic Leadership course, I’ve decided to use some of the tools learned to flavor up my analysis.

I used the “Battlefield” analysis to take a look at the business at bird’s eye view. The “Battlefield” analysis defined the market place with its competitors (either direct or indirect), substitutes, complements and influencers. The “Battlefield” diagram also showed the simple value chain of the business.

From the bird’s eye view of the “Battlefield”, it easily led me to prepare other notes/slides which would help to justify my case. Based on the same “Battlefield”, other ideas blossomed to support my feasibility study, like SWOT analysis, financial cost vs benefit, and market share chart.

My analysis was concrete and I shared my findings with the MD and management team. All agreed with the findings and they made a decision to keep the product, with unanimous vote!

At least something worked well for me a result from Business Strategic Leadership training, which doesn’t always happen!

Can Every Company Find Its Blue Ocean? (Part 2)

What companies are in Blue Ocean, really? It once said that our country’s very own budget airline AirAsia is in Blue Ocean. It was first to introduce the terminology “Now Everyone Can Fly”. We were all very excited when AirAsia offered affordable air tickets to regional countries. Business were brisk, and thousands of holiday deprived folks (like myself) made bookings 12 months ahead just to get FREE flight tickets (not including fuel surcharge, baggage fee, airport taxes and other fine line charges which can be very substantial!).

Now, every country tries to jump on the bandwagon of ‘budget airlines’. We have Tiger Airways from Singapore, JetStar from Australia, Cebu Pacific in Philippines and Lion Air from Indonesia. Even Malaysian Airlines (not really belonging to the budget airlines category) is offering cheap seats to compete with AirAsia! Now, the thing is, everyone’s swimming into the Blue Ocean, making it not so blue anymore…….

Once a company is successful in its Blue Ocean, others tend to follow. When the Blue Ocean becomes a competitive arena, it loses its edge and become Red Ocean. Sometimes, the Blue Ocean Strategy is not sustainable unless the company is constantly creating a new ocean to swim.

Can Every Company Find Its Blue Ocean? (Part 1)

The Blue Ocean Strategy is a tool to find a profitable business territory which void of any competition. One of the key objectives of Blue Ocean Strategy is not to compete with other in the so-called Red Ocean.

Is there a Blue Ocean for every company, waiting for the company to dive and swim into? If every company is able to find its Blue Ocean, then its ocean will be very small, cause total market size it not infinite…… a funny thing to ponder isn’t it?

Now, I am not 100% skeptical of the Blue Ocean strategy, I’m just not convinced that every company can find its own Blue Ocean.
Take a company that deals with commodity – a sugar refinery company. Sugar is sugar, no matter how you brand it, package it or promote it. How can you find a Blue Ocean Strategy for a sugar producing company?

Is My Company Strategy-Led or Vision-Led? (Part 2)

With ambiguous vision statement, I am, quite convinced that my company is not Vision-Led. But is it Strategy-Led? I definitely hope so……

If a company is neither Vision-Led nor Strategy-Led, it is in BIG trouble!
What is a Strategy-Led company? What is the definition of a Strategy-Led company?
In the course notes, a Strategy-Led company looks at where they are today. Then from there, the Strategy-Led company defines a strategy of where they can go and where they want to go is their vision. On the other hand, a Vision-Led company defines the vision first, then creating the strategy later.

I think my company is Strategy-Led. It has good moving forward strategies but have yet to define its vision.

Is My Company Strategy-Led or Vision-Led? (Part 1)

Is my company -Led or Vision-Led?
Before we probe further, let’s talk about the vision of my company. My company’s vision is:
“To Be the Leading Electronic Payment Operator in Malaysia”
To me, every company wants to be the leading company in its own industry. I find the vision statement a cliché and overused by most companies. To be leading in what way? Leading customer service? Leading technology? It is too vague for my understanding and I really don’t see the value in the vision statement.
To me, a vision statement has to be emotional where everybody can grasp passionately. The vision statement should describe how you will feel when the outcome is realized. The emotional payoff of the vision should be compelling, inspiring, and energizing.
Walt Disney’s Vision is to “Dream, Believe and Dare”.
The Vision is simple yet compelling, and it has a lot of emotional elements. It is easy to grasp the values implied in the vision statement. Walt Disney’s vision has an inspiring purpose.
Just food for thought, I think my company needs to fine tune its vision statement.

11 April

Last week, our company sent me for a training program “The 4 Disciplines of Execution – by Franklin Covey”. Since “Execution” is one of the 5 values of Leadership adopted by UEM, let’s talk about it.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution are:

1. Focus on Wildly Important Goals
2. Act On Lead Measures
3. Keep Track of Results using A Compelling Scoreboard
4. Build Cadence of Accountability

Sometimes I wonder our company has many Wildly Important Goals to focus on?