Advisory No 15 - Partner Smarter Grow Faster

A growing international business needs new staff and lots of them.  

It needs to have tried-and-tested suppliers to provide the products and services that it can’t deliver itself and it needs them fast.  

And it needs strategic partners to help extend its geographic reach and to build a network of customers that will deliver on the business plan.

What these three categories have in common is that every growing business is reliant on people and partners to deliver its strategic growth plans.
  

For start-ups and developing businesses, having the right team around us is critical to our growth success and it’s definitely not the time to cut corners.

As managers it is likely that we are busier than our peers of 10 or 20 years ago and the speed at which we are required to make important business decisions is accelerating. When we are working in start-ups, this pressure can be ten-fold.

It's time to call in the experts to support us.

However busy we are, we must appoint any new relationships with care, whether they are our staff, suppliers or strategic partners.  This is because our own success is ultimately reliant on the partners that we choose to represent us. 

Our partners success is our success and their failure is ours to own.

It’s tempting, but we should never make our decisions based solely on the candidate that we know best or is closest to hand.  In the rush to start-up and grow our businesses we often quickly grab our former colleagues and partners as a short cut to establishing a new team.  We have to be careful here.

We don't achieve something different for our business, simply by replicating an old model so it’s important that our partnership appointments are regularly given due-diligence and tested against alternatives in the market.

No decision is a valid decision until it can be compared against alternatives. A choice of one is not a choice at all.

It's always wise to properly review alternatives as the 'sanity test' to your preferred partnership choice and it's is time worth investing as it provides clarity, validates your decision and defends your position in the event of any conflict.  Most importantly, you develop a balanced approach as you are forced to consider the negatives as well as the positives of your preferred partnership choice.

When we take the time to fully review and make informed decisions on our business partners there’s every chance that growth will come stronger and faster than if we select solely from our inner circle.

Once established, it's also critical to review our partnership arrangements regularly to ensure that they remain effective.  

We regularly work with businesses who have set up partnerships to manage their interstate and international operations.  On closer review, we discover that they are not always delivering the maximum contribution to our client's business.  We recommend an annual review and health check for all partnership arrangements to ensure that they are performing to expectation.  There's always room for improvement.

The pressures of establishing, growing and maintaining your business are tremendous but be careful to take the time to establish the right partnership network as part of your business development strategy.

Be open minded to change. 

The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with business development and operational strategy, delivering outputs that are scalable to meet the challenges of technological change and International growth.

Post by James Douglas

www.theadvisorypartnership.com

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TAP Case Notes 1 – APAC Centre of Excellence

Client      Global Advertising Technology Business 

Service    International Strategic Development

Result     Creation of APAC Centre of Excellence  

Date          2014

Background

Our client was a technology business that supports the advertising industry with TV distribution and asset management services.  Following our strategic and operational review of their existing operations in APAC, the client accepted our recommendation to create a joint venture with an existing Asian partner to service the region. This business already had a long standing relationship with our client; it serviced their print advertising distribution and had an operational footprint in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. 

The project was firstly to relocate the client’s APAC operations from Hong Kong and secondly to form a regional ‘centre of excellence’ in Malaysia to allow for expansion throughout the region.

Challenge

Once the regional office was established, we were appointed to provide the framework for the client to roll out their service to 17 Asian markets generating USD $23M at 48% EBITDA within 3 years.  Our role was to ensure that the Asian operation was fit for purpose both as a regional head office and as a ‘centre of excellence’, able to lead the direction of the business in the region.  We were required to implement the best of the client’s international experience while ensuring each Asian market's unique processes were fully understood.  

At the same time each of the 17 markets were transitioning from analogue to digital TV services so, with an industry in flux, we were required to include strategies for change across a number of markets with diverse, cultures, languages and processes.

Approach

We had already proposed the client’s global and regional models and had completed the transition of the Hong Kong office from a regional to a satellite sales office so we understood the task. 

To build the centre of excellence, and to meet the growth challenge, we appointed a ‘SWAT Team’ sourced from the client’s most successful operators worldwide.  This team was important to help with the digital change required within the region and to quickly instill values consistent with the rest of the the client's business.  We then focused on hiring an experienced local leadership team to build credibility and deliver the skills to quickly deliver transactional revenue.  We ensured that the model we prepared was scaleable and easy to replicate on a market-by-market basis throughout Asia.

Results

The relocation of the regional office from Hong Kong to Malaysia created a strong regional centre through which the client could direct its regional growth.  Despite obvious disruption, no customer was lost in the transition of the operation from Hong Kong and within 6 months, the Pan-Asian operation was servicing markets in Vietnam, China, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.  

Asian business sourced from the client’s global client network could now be managed through Malaysia, and each of the client’s country operations can now sell Asian broadcast services to their local clients.  This was a significant win for the client who could add Asia to their many international proposals and tender requests a potential revenue lift of 20%.

Initial revenue was not however as budgeted. This was due to the TV product having limitations in dealing with local business issues specific to Asian markets.  However, we prepared a product review and business case for interface changes that is scheduled for completion in 2015.   Revenue is forecast to meet expectations by June 2015.

The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with operational strategy and structural change, delivering outputs that are scalable to meet the challenges of technological change and international growth.

Post by James Douglas

www.theadvisorypartnership.com

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Advisory No 13: Going "Glocal"

The Advisory Partnership reports on how to get the balance right when your global strategy meets local reality. http://bit.ly/TAP-APAC13

Glocalisation is the ugliest of buzzwords. It’s neither easy to say nor easy to implement but it’s an important concept to be aware of for any business that is planning geographic expansion. 

We understand globalization as a modern reality and we have affection for localisation as something personal, more intimate and somehow just a little more right.

Not surprisingly, the process of glocalisation is a hybrid of the two where a global product or service is transformed to meet the needs of local consumers. In simple terms, it’s where that international supermarket chain comfortably becomes our corner shop.

The trick in a successful implementation of a glocal strategy is the transformation process and how much attention is really paid to the 'local' part.

The glocal approach is often criticized for its long-term ineffectiveness. Bloomberg Business Week highlighted the weakness of a system that allows for the flow of innovation in only one direction; from the headquarters of multinational corporations out into the world. They said that whilst glocalisation suggests an understanding of local conditions, in reality, glocalised goods often have little local relevance and overlook the specialized behaviours and cultural specifics of local markets.  

They are right.

Research shows that whilst there may be an initial surge in sales for newly adapted products, in time, local markets lose interest due to poor adaptation and come to see it as just a cynical gesture towards the local market.

Glocalisation will always fail if it forgets the concept of local when rolling out a service that has worked well in a different region for a unique population. 

Glocalisation is however an economic reality and a necessary part of today's global expansion strategies. So, for us, it will only be successful when we take the best of both worlds: trading on our international success whilst truly understanding and respecting the uniqueness of local markets.

Rather than take a top down approach from multinational to local, we’re best to use our international skills and experience to fully understand the needs and requirements of the local markets first.

So be careful to focus on the end-user customer first and then restructure your product or service back till it meets the core. 

As a key part of your strategic plan, be sure to get out of your office headquarters and experience the local markets as fully as you can. This way you will achieve the best of both worlds: a global product enhanced with regional input and a local product reinforced with international experience.

Aligning our strategy this way, creates both sustainable reach for international products and services without the need for insensitive commercial colonisation.

 The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with business development strategy, delivering outputs that are scaleable to meet the challenges of technological change and International growth.

Post by James Douglas
www.theadvisorypartnership.com

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Advisory No 12 - The Traditional Office is an Endangered Species

You’ll notice a common theme if you stroll the central business districts of many of the world’s larger cities.  There are increasing numbers of premium office spaces being turned into luxury apartments.  

Of course there are practical considerations here, both technological change and the cultural change that favours renovated warehouses as workplaces can mean that many of our eighties-style office blocks are now redundant and are preferred for housing over business.

This change may however be the development of a major shift in business culture to us working remotely or "teleworking".  Indeed it’s entirely possible that the office of the future is not an office at all and is likely, for many of us, to be a place where we meet, exchange ideas and tasks, and then complete our working day at home.  

The end of the traditional office could well occur during the course of our careers and we have to be ready to adapt our operational systems and processes accordingly.

In the USA in 2012, 2.6% (3.3 Million people) considered "home" their primary place of work. (Source: Global Analytics.com).  This figure had grown by 80% from 2005 and continued growing even when the workforce declined in 2011-2012.

In 2013 the Australian Bureau of Statistics concluded that 24% of Australian workers spent at least part of their time working from home.

In that same year the Australian Public Service Commission Employee Survey found that 80% said working from home ‘increased work and life balance’ with 69% saying they were ‘more productive’.  

Interestingly, these Australian teleworkers had higher employee engagement, worked longer hours and had fewer sick leaves.  This is not at all surprising considering they get to give up the daily commute and put some extra quality hours back into their working day.  The Australian Government now has a target to double the formal teleworking workforce by 2020. (telework.gov.au)

So, teleworking should be embraced because what any manager wants is a fully engaged productive workforce who are happy and committed in their roles.

Technology has enabled this flexible work practice and the widespread availability of mobile and cloud technologies now has most of us connected to our workplace 24/7.  It's practical then that only way to make the 24/7 work culture sustainable for us personally and professionally is to have the tools to take some time back for ourselves while still operating in the reality of modern business.  Teleworking is part of the solution for this.

Teleworking is both empowering for the individual and productive for our businesses.  

As managers and business owners we have to be ready for this inevitable change in our operations and ensure that we have adapted our processes accordingly.  

We need a management structure that recognises our increasingly fluid teams and, at the same time, we need to ensure that there is increased formality and accountability around roles and responsibilities.  We need to keep our project management tight and our meetings formal, structured and action orientated. 

By recognising this change and working with it,  we win all of the benefits of an engaged motivated team and less of the risk around lack of accountability with a mobile workforce. 

The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with operational strategy, delivering outputs that are scaleable to meet the challenges of technological change and International growth.

Post by James Douglas
www.theadvisorypartnership.com

Advisory No 11 - Over Promise... Under Deliver

The Advisory Partnership reports on the dangers of over-promising our operational commitments when we're caught in the middle of a sales pitch 'high'.

We’ve all been there. It’s a good meeting. The rapport is strong. The client has the problem and we have the solution. We’re already mentally registering the sale and toasting our success.

Then comes the question:

Is it possible for you to include an additional feature, product or service?

And we say, "Sure! No problem".

It’s all too easy to be drunk on a sales pitch high and say yes to things we’ll regret the next day. 

We do this for two reasons; one is our eagerness to please our new client and the other, darker reason is the fear that we’ll lose the sale or the client’s respect if we don’t agree to everything immediately.

But all too often when we answer ‘no problem’ we’re really just taking an indirect route to a disappointed client and we simply reveal our own failure to adequately convert an opportunity into a profitable sale that is easily implemented.

Keep in mind that it is often a closing negotiation tactic of the client to get more of our product and service for either the same price or a faster turnaround. It is not at all accidental that the question comes towards the end of the negotiation when we may have begun to let down our guard.

Everyone wants a project that is well managed, cost effective and operationally efficient. So, here's how we deal with the situation.

We need to see the client's last minute question as a new brief and to be confident that, in the end, we’ll be respected for taking the time to consider the answer and to revise our offer if necessary.

This is where we must stop and think. We may have arrived at our meeting with a beautifully balanced business case for the project that we are about to sell but in one single word, we can turn that profit into pain.

The end result of making unrealistic promises is a place nobody wants to be.

So, before saying yes to what is an extended brief, we have to take the time to think through the effects on our team’s existing commitments. If we take on work than can’t be delivered effectively, then it's directly connected to our operational efficiency and therefore our business' bottom line.  It's impossible to do a profitability analysis on the spot so it's smart to leave the matter and respond promptly after the meeting.

Failure to do this, inevitably leads to project failure which can impact our reputation in the market and undermine the revenue growth we thought we had already achieved when we said ‘yes’ in the first place!

So in this situation, if you truly know the answer then of course you say it but if you’re at all unsure, agree to respond later.  When you respond with a new, carefully crafted proposal, you will ensure not only your profitability but also your own ability to deliver effectively.  Hopefully you'll also be building a long and trusted relationship with your client in the process.

The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with effectiveness reviews that remove barriers to growth and international business development.

www.theadvisorypartnership.com
Post by James Douglas

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Advisory No 8 – International Operations - Overcoming Information Overload (Pt 1)

The Advisory Partnership looks at some of the challenges faced by international project managers as they try to steer their way to success through an environment of unrelenting communication. http://bit.ly/1xkCrSD.

Like me you’ve probably become one of those people who can’t put down your phone or tablet? Do you find yourself checking work emails at night and on weekends when you only planned to surf the web to relax? Thought so.

Despite all the technology we have to make us more efficient, we find ourselves working longer every year.

It’s easy to understand why many of us feel overwhelmed by over-communication from our teams, our clients and our business partners, particularly when our international colleagues are working during our down-time.   Emails, SMS, Instant Messaging, Application alerts, often happening all at once, sometimes make us feel as if it’s just impossible to get on top of it all! 

The risk for us is that within this ‘communication soup’ we will struggle to focus on the most important decisions of the day and stay focused on the international development of our businesses.

Here’s how I learned to stay sane and effective as an International Project Manager in the 24/7 connectivity cycle.

You're the boss... You have to take control of your own availability and not let it be dictated by others. Most of us now have international colleagues and work across diverse timezones. The boundary between work and personal time is becoming increasingly difficult to enforce. 

Our international colleagues can forget that their morning meeting is our family time so it's our job to establish some boundaries. It will surprise you how many meetings disappear when you’re firm about your availability and how many move to suit you if your attendance is essential.

Don't mix business with...business...  If you have both an international and local role, they will require different processing skills. It’s easier to be informal and to quickly drive actions with your local colleagues.  International work however, moves more slowly and requires planned actions, increased formality and the need for clear communication to overcome language and cultural barriers. 

There’s really no such thing as an effective 'global' approach so you need to adjust your behaviour for different types of interaction with different locations.

It’s stressful to change pace many times during the day so try to separate your local and international responsibilities to different parts of the week. Alternatively, enlist the help of international project managers for your projects so that the bulk of the planning and implementation is done for you.

Be ruthless... Our international colleagues are not with us on a day to day basis so it’s possible they will swamp us with questions, ideas and problems that they believe require urgent solutions. Their priority might not be your business priority so be disciplined over where you commit your time. 

Take the advice of Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits; if it’s your area of control - act.  If it’s in your area of influence then act or delegate and if you neither control nor influence the issue, delay, ignore or delete.

Take some time back... When you work on international projects, you may be required to attend online meetings at 7am and again at 8pm.  It can be exhausting.

The trick to making sure that you don’t have to work a 13 hour day and a 6 day week is to take some time back for yourself and recharge. 

If you have a series of evening meetings take 2-3 hours off in the  middle of the day.  It’s easier said than done but if you can be disciplined, you’ll be surprised how much more energised and effective you’ll be for those late evening calls. At the very least, try to ensure that you keep late meetings to once or twice a week.

Stick to the Plan... Make sure you have an operational plan for the year that outlines the projects designed to meet and exceed your budget for growth.  This way you are clear of your priorities on a month to month basis.   If the issue in front of you is not in your plan then you have to seriously question if it’s worth your time. 

Don't be sidetracked on ‘pet projects’, however interesting, the clarity you gain from sticking to your plan is the difference between mental focus and mental clutter.

OK. When our colleagues are scattered around the world, it’s just not possible to have a tightly scheduled working life where everything falls neatly into place and we are able do one thing at a time every day.

Disruptions and interruptions are a natural part of working life  but it’s how you manage these interruptions that is the difference between the effective decision making that helps your business grow or a creeping ineffectiveness that leaves you overwhelmed and unable to action and implement business-changing initiatives.

The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with operational effectiveness reviews that removes barriers to growth and international business development.

Part Two of this article focuses on the local challenge and is available at www.advisorypartnership.blogspot.com

Post by James Douglas
www.theadvisorypartnership.com