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[I]ndia has not yet had a crisis deriving from the inconsistent monetary policy regime. Monetary and fiscal reform is required to achieve a consistent speculation -proof policy framework, to smooth the process of India's integration into the world economy. The ideal scenario for the 2007-2010 period involves are that puts a sound macroeconomic framework into place before such a crisis comes about.
...this coupled with activities such as drama and sport at the school level, groomed him for management
I like the word "strategy". Sounds good, no! Whenever I'm doing nothing at office and want to feel smart, I start "strategising on my options to leverage the resources at hand". Roughly translated it means, "I'm taking a nap".
Jokes apart, this is what I read in dailies:
I often wonder at the strategy behind the decisions.
"Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management", authored by Anand Sanwal, is a useful book whose main premise is that where an organization allocates its resources is what truly drives it strategy and financial returns. So while company leaders issue strategy in presentations or in speeches, this is really not what creates strategy - it is where money gets spent that determines this.
Anand explains, "Let's take a very simple example of a company which has $100 to invest and whose leadership says that their main strategy is to focus on customer loyalty. However, when you look at where they invest their money, you see that $75 is spent on customer acquisition and $25 is spent on initiatives focused on customer loyalty. So even though the stated strategy is customer loyalty, the true strategy is one of acquiring new customers if you look at the resource allocation."
The book offers a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization. The book is targeted at any organization struggling to figure out how to better allocate resources - this is every company and any sub-organization within a company, e.g., Information Technology (IT), marketing, R&D, sales, operations, product groups, etc who manage discretionary resources.
The book can be used to help general managers decide which product they should invest in or which country/region deserves more investment versus another. It advocates treating all investments as part of a portfolio whose risk and reward must be balanced - similar to the way a person tries to manage their money as a portfolio of investments.
The book also features case studies of successful companies deploying this discipline including AmEx, Cisco, HP, TransUnion and the State of Oregon. The case studies demonstrate that the CPM discipline can be used across organization of all types, across industries and also across for profit and not for profit (government) organizations.
I enjoyed reading the book and learnt a lot from it despite the agonising title (for a novice like me) !
Techniques of production management are employed in service as well as in manufacturing industries. It is a similar functional responsibility in level and scope to other specialties such as marketing or human resource and financial management. Any questions?
The best presentations have a story telling style behind it. And if you want to become an entrepreneur you have to write the story of your business. Popularly known as a Business Plan.
The Business Plan tells you and your investors whether the business makes any sense. It also tells the audience about your thoughts and abilities and whether you can make it all happen.
We know about the various elements of the Business Plan which are:
There could be plans with slightly different headings but essentially they talk about as above. We might just focus on each of them separately but I'll start off where I most usually harp on: Finances
In this section of the plan you will try to explain how to set off your expenses with your revenues over a period of time. To me, this is very important. If you are not able to articulate that, it's time to rethink and maybe move away from the present idea to another one. Till you are able to build a model where you generate profits and build a sustainable enterprise.
One aspect of the Finances is deciding the right pricing. Head on to this article from Bnet for some insights. Determining the right pricing for your product/service
Difficult questions? Maybe yes, but if you are not prepared to answer them or face them, the startup may remain just a pipe dream.
If success was easy it would no longer be success. Admittedly, though finding the answers is not like rocket science, it looks entirely geeky to many of us.
There are no ready made answers. It follows after you are able to define your business, review your competitive environment and do a SWOT analysis for yourself.
And tools? Start with a pen and a paper, quickly graduate to Excel sheet or any other spreadsheet and you are on your way!! Getting started is all you need to worry about!! haven't we heard Goethe's couplet: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
B. Qualitative measures:
I often wonder at the strategy behind the decisions. Unfortunately, I don't learn much from the media. Maybe because they are much more focussed on the strategy to cover the Aishwarya Abhishek marriage to the max detail rather than covering such mundane topics.
I start from the basics. What is strategy? Wiki says, A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, most often "winning". Isn't this simply means what is good for me on the long run should be my strategy. Only handicap is we don't know what's good for us!! For example, we may try to maximise sales without looking at the profitability of sales and thereby hurt the bottomline of our Company.
Let's take a look at an overview of the Strategic management process. The process of Strategic Management exercise starts with the Company's Mission statement where the business of the company is identified. Defining the business would mean figuring out the product/service, the segment of customers and also the delivery channel.
After we identify where we want to reach, we should also be able to assess our situation and decide whether we are capable of reaching our goals and that our goals are not just wishful thinking. In management parlance, you need to do a SWOT analysis or do the Company Profiling. As part of the profiling, we should also try to figure out the PESTs ( Political, Economics, Social, Technological environment), also known as External Environment.
Once you are done with the above three ( Mission, Company profiling and External environment), you may be feeling that you are through. But it gets murkier when the Management Gurus shout over each other selling you there ready made Dosa mixes, err,.. their matrices. Three popular matrices that comes to our help with strategic analysis and choice are:
