As usual, I am broke. And as usual, I am reading. Hmmm… actually the broke part is really hard to imagine, considering the amount of work I have been doing these past months. But then again, business is all about cashflow. And when u take into the account that some customers are taking up to a year to pay me…. maybe it is not too hard to understand after all. Now I start worrying about bad debts…. (no lah… just kidding… those customers I know should not be defaulting… not in this economic climate….)
Remember the cufflink idea I was telling you about? Well, after buying a bit of sample, we kind of give it up. Honestly, I think it is still do-able. Just that it is not easy… and frankly… all my money is stuck in invoice. I honestly dun see how I can pay for the idea unless i suddenly stop all my sales and fire all my guys and just wait for my invoice to mature… which is really unthinkable… after all… my small business has finally been proven viable….
Anyway, forget about such mundane money problems, and lets talk about a little bit more on what I read…..
Frankly, the book went way above my expectations. I tried looking at it through Amazon and it seems to have only 1 person reviewing. He gave it a 4 star, but you know how deceiving statistics are on small numbers? Anyway, after flipping through a few pages, it went pretty all right. Did i read something really analytical, something out of the blue, something totally revolutionary? Nah…. the book feels more like an ounce of common sense. It writes about things you already know… but it was something definitely worth reading again. I mean… we all need reminders… some nagging just to get our ideas straight from time to time.
The book claims that you have to take 5 steps to LeapFrog your competition. For one thing, the contents of the book says it all:
Giant Step 1: Cataput Your Strategy over Conventional Wisdom
- Be First, Be Exceptional
- Make Yourself Obsolete Before Someone Else Does
- Go Beyond Traditional Competitive Weapons
- View the World Through Bifocal Lenses
Comments: The typical Blue Ocean Strategy kind of thing. Only thing is… Blue Ocean Strategy really goes into details on the profitability of Being First, Being Exceptional. It has graphs, charts, etc…
Giant Step 2: Flood Your Organization with Knowledge
- Obliterate Barriers to the Flow of Ideas
- Don’t Empower Your Employees – Liberate Them
Comments: Something quite new to me. Finally understand why my X CEO keep showing all of us the balance sheet and profitability of the company…. even though the figures were honeslty depressing. I guess it puts us all in the correct perspective on the siutation of the company.
Giant Step 3: Wrap Your Organization Around Each Customer
- Obsess About Customers, Not Profits
- Focus on Market Units of One
Comments: Hmmm… now this gets depressing. I am definitely not doing this… but then again… I am beginning to feel that this might be the right way. The problem is… I am trying to mass market a service like web design… but honestly, it seems that most of my money is made from the bigger clients….. not true also… ‘cos my most profitable clients are still those touch and go customers where I do not need to even meet them… Those clients are immensely profitable as I at most spend half a day talking cock to them. I mean.. how long can it get over the phone when you are not travelling to meet them? I just realised… travelling time is a major time killer for sales people. Cut down on that.. and u save heck of a lot of time.
Giant Step 4: Transform Your Organization into a Web of Relationships
- Get Real About What It Takes to Build a Web Team
- Invite Your Competition In – Don’t Fence Them Out
- Bless Thy Complaining Customer
Comments: Cool! Must get my future clients to believe in this. Honestly, IT should be this way… especially if we are going for ERP systems to try to make the company operate smoothly and efficiently…. Who else can better advise the customers other than their IT vendor?
Giant Step 5: Eat Change for Breakfast – Serve It Up for Every Meal
- Get Honest – Walk the Talk
- Don’t Get Snookered by Fads du Jour
- Sponge Up Daily Doses of Reality
- Beware the Danger of Success
Comments: Hehe… when it comes to this stage.. I can only close a blind eye. I not successful yet lei… and i dun know.. but I do embrace change. In fact, our company is constantly improving in its core services. Yah.. i am constantly investing in technology to fine-tune our operations… so that we can do less and earn more…
I particularly like Giant Step 4. It explains the powerful rationale in Outsourcing… and yes, I believe Outsourcing is good. We should all just concentrate on what we are good in. It claims:
94 percent of surveyed firms currently outsource at least one major business activity. The fastest-growing candidates for outsourcing are traditional in-house functions such as accounting and finance (where outsourcing has doubled over the past three years), information systems (up 40 percent), and marketing (up 35 percent)!
Hmmm.. i wonder when they will start outsourcing even sales. So imagine. I run an IT company and outsource development, marketing and sales. Effectively, I can just sit around with an empty company name and start earning money. Hehe… of course that is just bullshit. Just as HP does outsources the manufacturing while retaining the high value design work, I think every company must have people doing their most valued work. But that is the point! Staff should only be doing the most valued work. All other works of lower value should be outsourced…..
An excerpt about Rolls-Royce and EDS:
The two companies have gradually developed a Step IV collaborative web in which the parties physically intermingle with each other at work and hold ongoing, open discussions on planning, design, and execution. Rolls-Royce gains with the inflow of exceptional expertise that it doesn’t have to “buy and own.” EDS gains significantly greater “share of customer” business on a long-term basis and a wealth of new unanticipated expertise from its customer that it can market to other clients.
I like the part of: doesn’t need to “buy and own”. Recently, I heard a saying amongst divorced old men about “not needing to buy a cow if you only want to drink milk”. Hmmm…. you think they are talking about the same things?
A gaze in the crystal ball of the future:
We imagine a world in which there are many, many firms with only one person, and many others with fewer than fifteen people. These firms would come together in temporary combinations for various projects. Work is already organized like htis for producing moveis, organizing conventions, and construcing large buildings.
Yes… i believe the above is true too. I believe that projects will be handled by a motley group of independent contractors. Only called upon when their service is required. I mean… how can a company remain competitive if he needs to pay staff to hang around with no good work or purpose for him?
But imagine a company that only utilises staff to do work which has a 100% value add to the organization. Now that is powerful… if the company needs to push a product through a series of marketing campaigns, an ad-hoc team can be put together to drive it. This team can be disbanded immediately upon project completion, thus shaving off unnecessary costs. The economy is also better served as these resources are now released back into the human resource pool to service other corporations. I think… that is the future too… hmmm… wanna start creating project management software? Dun be stupid… how to compete with all the msn and google platforms? 
Hehe… and that is why i so happy about a recent collaboration I have – Musician Online. It is basically a new revolutionary musician booking service which I am confident is the future. It will probably just take some time to pick up. But as the saying goes: Be first. Be Exceptional. This will be my Blue Ocean. Man.. it better be. It is draining whatever shit I can salvage out of the bloody waters of our IT industry to finance it.
But the again, talking about being first and exceptional, I just can’t stop thinking about Ryan’s Wall Stickers. Honestly, when he first told me the idea, I just thought it was pretty cool. But now having bought a set and pasted it all over my room, I must say… it is a great product, and it will succeed. Honestly, it is hard to visualise its effects… until you see it in your own room. I just think it is fantastic. It livens up my room, makes me more productive and ya… adds value. Definitely well worth the 60 bucks! (yah.. i hear some of you scream… 60 bucks for some stickers! But trust me. It is cool. If u can spend thousands on renovation, why not another 60 bucks to get a new refreshing look in your house?)
Okay… enough of advertising (not paid)….
Last thing after reading the book, really quite happy that I do not have enough cash to finance the cufflink project.
It talked about how Novell, at a particular stage of its life, tried to foray into Microsoft’s arena of word processing and spreadsheets before getting beaten and crushed by Microsoft. Only when it refocussed its efforts on its core competency, i.e. networking, did it start to get back to profitability.
Honeslty, I think that if I were to enter the cufflink business right now, i will die quite tragically. In the bloody red ocean, web solutions business I am in, capital and cash-flow is really important. Also, there are a thousand and one profitable things to do in IT. Why should I throw good money after bad ones by venturing into a retail industry which I have utterly no experience at all?