Kallokain

Christopher Lochhead, the retired chief marketing officer at Scient and Mercury guest blogged in Dan Farber's blog about Tips for surviving the market meltdown . Here is a quote: Downturns are the best time to take market share. Most companies overreact. They get too conservative. They also forget that they are not the victims of the market. I agree, especially with the last part. You are not victims! Be creative! Find out what options are available, then do it!

Justin Roff-Marsh, a well known TOC expert, sent me the following tip: Eliminate performance pay. Performance pay (commissions and bonuses) encourages the pursuit of local optima (which leads to waste and conflict) and signals that desirable behaviour is optional. Sounds very good to me. The critique against performance pay is well substantiated by research.

The following article is an excerpt from a post i recently made to the cmsig mailing list. Here is one thing I learned from studying military strategy: Strategy is a game of interaction and isolation: Strengthen the interactions on your own side, so you can move in a coordinated fashion with a common goal. This enables you to focus power, and to make bundles of rapid, coordinated attacks. *Isolate enemy units from each other, morally, mentally and physically, so that you can pick each unit off easily. Total strength matters much less than the ability to maneuver and coordinate. Most business managers have got it back asswards. They isolate units in their own organization in a multitude of inventive ways, then antagonize customers so they present a united front against the company. For example: Cost Accounting and Functional Organization isolate ones own forces. Management by setting goals force employees to game the system in order to reach goals that are outside the capabilities of th...