Saturday, 1 May 2021
Troilus and Cressida – Shakespeare 1996
Sunday, 25 April 2021
Strategy Montgomery and Porter (1979)
“Andrews and Christensen identified a pressing need for a holistic way of thinking about an enterprise. They articulated the concept of strategy as a tool to for doing so.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xii).
“The central concept in this early work was the notion of fit between the unique capabilities of a company and the competitive requirements of an industry that distinguished it from others. The challenge for management was to choose or create an environmental context where the company’s distinctive competence and resources could produce a relative competitive advantage.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xii). “Present research continues to affirm the important role industry conditions play in the performance of individual firms. (…) average industry profitability is, by far, the most significant predictor of firm performance. It is far more important than market share and much more important than the extent of a firm’s diversification.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xiv).
Functional strategy: “internal consistency – the extent to which a firm’s plan and policies reinforce each other and can be mutually achieved.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xvi ).
“Business strategists can use their imagination and ability to reason logically to accelerate the effects of competition and the rate of change.” (Henderson, 1979, p.4). “Can evolution be planned for business? That is what strategy is for.” (Henderson, 1979, p.5).
“Chasing market share is almost as productive as chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You can never get there. Even if you could, you would find nothing. If you are in business you already have 100% of your market. So do your competitors. Your real goal is to expand the size of your market. But you will always have 100% of your market, whether it grows or shrinks.” (Henderson, 1979, p.5). “Market share is a meaningless number unless a company defines the market in terms of the boundaries separating it from its rivals. These boundaries are the points at which the company and are equivalent in a potential customer’s eyes. (…) The competitor that truly has an advantage can give the potential customers more of their money and still have a larger margin between its cost and its selling price.” (Henderson, 1979, p.6).
“Strategic competition compresses time.” (Henderson, 1979, p.6).“Natural competition works by a process of low-risk, incremental trial and error. Small changes are tried and tested. (…) But unmanaged change takes thousands of generations. (…) By committing resources, strategy seeks to make sweeping changes in competitive relationships.” (Henderson, 1979, p.6).
“Cutting-edge Japanese companies today are capitalizing on time as a critical source of competitive advantage: managing time the way most companies manage cost, quality or inventory.” (Stalk, 1979, p.39). “For these leading companies time has become the overarching measurement of performance. By reducing the consumption of time in every aspect of the business, these companies also reduce cost, improve quality, and stay close to their customers.” (Stalk, 1979, p.49).
“Because when the focus of attention is on ways to beat the competition, it is inevitable that strategy gets defined primarily in terms of the competition.” (Ohmae, 1979, p.62). “Competitive realities are what you test possible strategies against; you define them in terms of customers. Tit-for-tat responses to what competitors do may be appropriate, but they are largely reactive.(…) It also takes shape in the determination to avoid competition whenever and wherever possible” (Ohmae, 1979, p.62). “Getting back to strategy means getting back to a deep understanding of what a product is about.” (Ohmae, 1979, p.70).
“If you ask people whether they want their coffee in ten minutes or seven, they will say seven of course. But it’s still the wrong question. And you end up back where you started, trying to beat the competition at its own game.” (Ohmae, 1979, p.71).
“Ultimately, the only way to sustain a competitive advantage is to upgrade it.” (Porter, 1979, p.138).“either they (these companies) would make their advantage obsolete, or a competitor would do it for them.” (Porter, 1979, p.138).“But change is an unnatural act, particularly in successful companies; powerful forces are at work to avoid and defeat it. Past approaches become institutionalized in standard operating procedures and management controls.” (Porter, 1979, p.138). “the existing strategy takes on an aura of invincibility and becomes rooted in the company culture. (…) Change is tempered by the fear that there is much to lose.” (Porter, 1979, p.139).
“the uncomfortable truth that innovation grows out of pressure and challenge.” (Porter, 1979, p.160). “A company should seek out pressure and challenge, not avoid them.” (Porter, 1979, p.161).“Early-warning signals translate into early-mover advantage.” (Porter, 1979, p.161).
“The whole project got off the wrong foot. It asked people what features they wanted in a washing machine rather than what they wanted out of life.” (Levitt, 1979, p.198).
“The purpose of business is to get an keep a customer. Or, to use Peter Drucker’s more refined construction, to create and keep a customer. A company must be wedded to the idea of innovation.” (Levitt, 1979, p.203).
“a portfolio of competencies versus a portfolio of businesses.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.280). “Core competencies are the collective learning in the organization.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.281). “core competence does not diminish with use. Unlike physical assets which do deteriorate over time competencies are enhanced as they are applied and shared.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.292).“How strange that SBU managers, who are perfectly willing to compete for cash in the capital budgeting process, are unwilling to compete for people.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.294).
“Strategies can form as well as be formulated. A realized strategy can emerge in response to an evolving situation, or it can be brought about deliberately.” (Mintzberg, 1979, p.407). “Actions simply converge into patterns. They may become deliberate, of course, if the pattern is recognized and then legitimated by senior management.” (Mintzberg, 1979, p.408).
“It embodies disciplined unity of purpose, a purpose which – to be powerful – must be clear and worthy of the commitment of energetic and intelligent people.” (Andrews, 1979, p.451). “Such strategy summons up imagination, innovation and a zest for risk.” (Andrews, 1979, p.451). “Nonetheless, imagination exists in all questing organizations and people.” (Andrews, 1979, p.459). “”What’s new?” is a question that should havean unending series of answers in the execution as well as formulation of strategy?” (Andrews, 1979, p.459).
Friday, 5 February 2021
The trusted Advisor – Maister et al. 2000
Sunday, 31 January 2021
Hamlet Prince of Denmark – Shakespeare 1996
Saturday, 30 January 2021
Twelfth night; Or, what you will – Shakespeare 1996
Sunday, 24 January 2021
As you like it – William Shakespeare
“Duke Senior:
… Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference; as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say
‘This is not flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’
Sweet are the uses of adversity;” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.617).
“Duke Senior:
Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy.
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
Jaques:
All the world’s a stage;
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven age. As, first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwilling to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then the soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world oo wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again into a childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.622).
“Celia:
O, that’s a brave man! He writes brave verses,
Speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and
Breaks them bravely, quite traverse.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.629).
“Phebe:
For I must tell you friendly in your ear, -
Sell when you can; you are not for all markets.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.630).
Servant Leadership - Robert K. Greenleaf 1977
“1) The essence of moral authority or conscience is sacrifice – the subordinating of one’s selfe or one’s ego to a higher purpose, cause or principle.” (Covey in Greenleaf, 1977, p.6). “In this sense, both leaders and followers are followers. Why? They follow truth. They follow natural law. They follow principles.” (Covey in Greenleaf, 1977, p.6).
“The deepest part of human nature is that which urges people – each one of us – to rise above our present circumstances and to transcend our common nature.” (Covey in Greenleaf, 1977, p.1).
The servant as leader.
“they will freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants.” (Covey in Greenleaf, 1977, p.11 ). “Why would anybody accept the leadership of another except that the other sees more clearly where it is best to go?” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.29).
“I am reminded of Greenleaf’s acid test of servant leadership. How do you tell a servant-leader is at work? – “Do the people around the person grow?”” (Senge in Greenleaf, 1977, p.357). “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely to themselves become servants?” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.27).
Institutions as servants
“This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.62).
“The first order of business is to build a group of people who, under the influence of the institution, grow taller and become healthier, stronger, more autonomous.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.53). “Some institutions achieve distinction for a short time by the intelligent use of people. (…) But these are not the means whereby an institution moves from people-using to people-building.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.55).
“What we have learned about caring for individual persons we must now learn to give to institutions. Have you ever noted how much less qualm of conscience some people have about cheating an institution than they have for cheating an individual person? We must change that.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.255).
Business as a serving institution
“The work exists for the person as much as the person exist for the work.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.155). “The business then becomes a serving institution – serving those who produce and those who use.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.155). “”What are you in business for?” the answer may be: “I am in business for growing people – people who are stronger, healthier, more autonomous, more self-reliant , more competent. Incidentally, we also make and sell at a profit things that people want to buy, so we can pay for all of this.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.159).
Leading
“Leadership – going out ahead to show the way – is available to everyone in the institution who has the competence, values, and temperament for it, from the chair to the least skilled individual.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.109). “Prexy, as I saw him, was a problem-centered man. Either problems came to him in the normal course of events or he created them by setting goals and making commitments.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.297).
Loss as the basis for growth
“to acknowledge that we do not want for pain to keep us awake, but to make a virtue of it – learn from it – and to see the darkest of it still ahead (as it is for most of us) and cut away the gloom.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.316). “Loss, every loss one’s mind can conceive of, creates a vacuum into which will come (if allowed) something new and fresh and beautiful, something unforeseen – and the greatest of these is love. The source of this attitude toward loss and being lost is faith.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.340). “each loss grants them the opportunity to be greater than before. Loss, by itself, is not tragic. What is tragic is the failure to grasp the opportunity which loss presents.” (Greenleaf, 1977, p.340).
“”In Here, Not Out There.” The real territory of change is always “in here.” Now, the consequences must be “out there” if we’re really interested in institutional change. But we can’t get there from just focusing “out there.” That is the paradox. That’s what it means to take a capacity-building approach.” (Senge in Greenleaf, 1977, p.348). “Every process of transformation begins with yourself. It has to start with personal change. The abstraction of corporate transformation – that’s a result, that’s not a metod.” (Senge in Greenleaf, 1977, p.356).
Growth through aspiration.
“There’s an old saw, that there are only two fundamental sources of change in human affairs: aspiration and desperation. (…) As far as I can see, the number one leadership strategy is quite simple to describe: Create a crisis. Or, if you’re really clever, create the fear that a crisis is abut to hit. That shows the extent to which we have allowed the diminishment of our capacity for aspiration.” (Senge in Greenleaf, 1977, p.348).
“Aspiration drives virtually all fundamental learning. (…) Or did we learn to walk because we wanted to? That’s aspiraton. Just imagine: What if nine out of ten change initiatives, in our organizations or in our societies were driven by excitement, by the idea that this would serve somebody in a different way, that this would give us a better way of living?” (Senge in Greenleaf, 1977, p.348).