The pandemic is forcing many companies to cut expenses. Many business crises require tightening the belt. But if you must cut costs, do so in the context of specific aims and criteria beyond helping the bottom line. Otherwise, you’ve reduced your future competitiveness. Case in point. Kraft. Kraft split itself into two businesses in 2012, one an international snack and confection foods company (Mondelēz International, Inc.) and the other (retaining the Kraft brand) the North American grocery item business, consisting of cheese, Oscar Mayer deli meats, etc. In 2015, Heinz acquired Kraft. Kraft Heinz’s share value has dropped by more than half since the merger. One would think that the synergies between the two grocery-channel based businesses would lead to rising value. What happened? The answer is simple. Kraft Heinz cut costs, then cut costs, then cut costs yet again in an attempt…
Getting the right thing right
My check—in at the Marriott (now Marriott Bonvoy) went quickly. The women at the desk were friendly and the lobby, as for all Marriott hotels, attractive. I had ten minutes to find the elevator, locate my room, change quickly, and meet my board colleague to discuss the management team’s proposed 2020 plan. Simple. Nevertheless, I was ten minutes late. Opening the door to my assigned room, I was surprised to see breath mints on the first cabinet top I encountered, my go—to place to keep my keys in any hotel. “Nice add, Marriott,” I thought at first. Then I saw a coat draped over a chair, an open suitcase on the floor, and a bathroom that looked, shall we say, used? The room’s guest (the appropriate one, not me with an identical key) was gone. Lucky for her, I am not a thief. Lucky…
You are shouting so loudly I cannot hear you
A general focuses on the battlefield and where the enemy is coming from, while the soldier in the foxhole keeps his sight within a 10-yard perimeter. In a similar vein, business leaders must understand the lay of a more expansive external environment while others define and execute day-to-day tactics. Leaders supply fresh strategic insights by connecting the dots between things they observe, read or hear about to identify patterns and themes. It’s called conceptual thinking. Let’s see how it works. Three articles caught my eye in one day’s news. In the first article, The Council of Public Relations Firms was reported to be reinventing itself and the PR profession as traditional PR strategies of media relations and placement backfire in an era of consumer-generated social media. The profession made sense when NBC could reach 1/3 of US TV viewers. Now there are thousands…