Responding to catastrophe
We have all seen the tragic consequences of the earthquake in Haiti. The people there are suffering. My question is: how should multi-nationals (MNOs) respond to such events?
Certainly, if the catastrophe takes place in the home country of the organization, one expects that they will do something – allow employees to go and help, offer resources, money, etc. But what if it is not the home country? What should those businesses that make money in Haiti or through operations in Haiti do?
Of course, the managers of MNOs with operations in Haiti should be asking themselves if they are paying the people there a living wage. But in any case, they should be sending as much help as possible. It’s all part of Corporate Social Responsibility.
On a related note, I wonder if the bankers who are pocketing huge bonuses are going to contribute to the relief efforts instead of buying themselves a new Ferrari…
Organizational Change and Football
Football is a business, but different from other businesses in that the heart can play more of a role than the head. Mike Ashley, the chairman of Newcastle United is a successful businessman. But he made many mistakes when he bought the club.
Ashley would never have expanded his Sports Direct empire without exerting due diligence on a takeover, yet he bought Newcastle without properly studying it, only to be shocked by the masses of debt. He would never have installed executives that were incompatible, but this is what he did by employing an old-fashioned manager and then grafting on a continental technical structure, with third parties in charge of development and scouting.
The result? Relegation last season.
What we can learn form this is that when there is a takeover, the resulting organizational change must be carefully and thoughtfully planned.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-10
- H&M cutting up unsold garments instead of giving them to the homeless – interesting to see how they respond http://tinyurl.com/yejrxsy #
- just completed an interesting job at a Berlin start-up in the medical field – communication training and mentoring #
- probably a change of goverment in the UK – what will this mean if you work or do business there? #
- do drivers need internet access as they drive? I say No, but companies are putting profit first says NYTimes http://tinyurl.com/y9eqv27 #
- very poor communcation by German banks about their debit card problems http://tinyurl.com/y88clfp #
- good point made here: is #Apple's lack of openness going to be a misake in the face of Goggles new phone? http://tinyurl.com/ydq7knx #
- #ryanair is anything but transparent in the way it deals with customers but is still successful Why? #FT http://tinyurl.com/yeen8ux #
- #walmart is aiming to change some of its purchasing models, but at what cost? #FT. http://tinyurl.com/y9n35mr #
- more change in the phama industry. #novartis buys another company http://tinyurl.com/y8kv4l5 #
Ford and social networking
There’s an interesting article – How Ford Got Social Marketing Right - on the Harvard Business Review blog, by Grant McCracken. In it, he talks about Ford have used social networking in an innovative and successful way to market the Fiesta model.
Ford did not approach early adopters to generate interest, but what he calls culture creators – people who create content on sites like YouTube. One hundred of them were given a car and encouraged to create content by being set challenges which they could then document.
How successful was this?
Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car — virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign.
McCracken outlines a three-step process for success:
- Engage culturally creative consumers to create content.
- Encourage them to distribute this content on social networks and digital markets in the form of a digital currency.
- Craft this is a way that it rebounds to the credit of the brand, turning digital currency (and narrative meaning) into a value for the brand.
Overall, a very good article, well worth a read.
Detroit and its problems
One of the basic points about managing organization change is that organizations must change before it becomes too late to change. A good example of how not to manage change is provided by the car companies of Detroit. They made the wrong products in the wrong way.
This video from the Economist looks at Detroit today – what people are doing for themselves…
Change in an uncertain world
I recently did a search of the online journals of the academic publishers Taylor and Francis. This revealed that the phrase “unprecedented change” has been used in reference to many, many topics, including life in rural communities, Italian politics, healthcare, libraries, information technology and education.
It is not surprising, then, that implicit in many management texts, articles on business in newspapers and magazines, and management training courses is the view that the world is changing more quickly than ever. This point is made explicitly equally often. To give but three examples:
- “We are living at a time when the competitive environment has a steep and rapid learning curve. It’s also a time of unprecedented change.”
- “Today, however, companies are in a process of retooling and developing new strategies which will assist them to be competitive at a time of unprecedented change in product and labour markets and technology.”
- “All parts of organizations are going through unprecedented change as a result of the volatile business environment, including such well-known items as exploding technology, globalization, and new work processes.”
In the terms we use at Turris Consulting, this means that the outer context is not stable. This in turn means…. organizational change! So how should managers deal with this instability?
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-03
- using a company's history can be very worthwhile. #FT http://tinyurl.com/ygkflr6 #
- I like the #FinancialTimes, but to have the head of Goldman Sachs as Person of the Year is just wrong http://tinyurl.com/yayx9d8 #
