My clients face many different challenges, but let me share the top three with you and how I may recommend you resolve them.

The first challenge is that they don’t implement their strategies effectively. This seems to be a constant problem as great strategies are developed but never implemented successfully. In order to implement these strategies successfully you need to involve employees in the strategy development process. Create internal champions who will help everyone see how they fit into the bigger picture. You need to provide clear accountabilities and measurements so people know what success will look like and how they can help get there.

The second challenge my clients face is that they don’t collaborate enough with their customers and suppliers on improving performance. You must engage employees, customers, and suppliers more often in identifying new performance improvements. Look at your best customer relationships and determine why that is. Look at how your suppliers are working with their best customers. What can you learn and build into your own organization?

The third challenge my clients face is that they move too slowly. Organizations often spend a lot of time on activities that are not adding any value to the organization. You need to assess your operations and stop performing activities that don’t increase profit, improve attraction and retention of top people, improve customer service or improve the sustainability of the organization. I help my clients focus on value added activities and if you ask yourself those four questions and you can’t answer yes to any of them you need to stop doing the activity.

Research In Motion (RIM) is a classic example of a company that moved too slowly and now they are struggling for survival in the cut-throat cell phone and tablet markets. They developed some very good products but became complacent and they are now losing market share rapidly to companies like Apple and Samsung.

Speed is a key component to the success of any company. What are your biggest challenges and how are you tackling them?

Miller's Monday Morning Message
presented by ACM Consulting Inc.

Andrew Miller on strategy, operations, life balance and everything in between

Toronto - June 27, 2011 – There has been a lot of talk recently about how RIM may become the next Nortel. A Canadian giant who is losing ground to global competitors. But all is not lost for RIM. They are still known to have the best data security in the smart phone and tablet market, and they need to exploit that advantage. But the bigger question people want answered is "Why does this keep happening?" Let's eliminate the argument that this is happening because RIM is Canadian. This has nothing to do with RIM being Canadian. This has to do with a very successful company enjoying their success a little too much while the competition innovated and created products that the mainstream consumer wanted. While RIM was riding high on the preference that corporations had for their products, Apple and Google and others, were building smart phones and tablets that everybody wanted to use. RIM is not the first company to get complacent once they became successful (see General Motors, Toyota, etc.). We want to play the Canada card and blame our size or lack of competitiveness, but the reality was that RIM has fallen into a trap that many successful companies find themselves in, the motivation to continue to innovate and improve while being on top of the world. There are only two ways this can play out, RIM works it's way out of the trap and continues to be successful, or one of their competitors makes an aggressive play to acquire their assets. Either way, it will be an interesting story to follow.
 
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Many recent articles have identified issues that Research in Motion may have in growing its' user base in countries like India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Why might growth be limited in these (and presumably some other) countries? Because RIM's network is too secure. The governments of these countries want RIM to relax some of their network security so that they can read private emails. One of the most appealing features of RIM products (at least for North American and European clients) IS the secure network for governments and corporations. Unfortunately, we are spending too much time talking about whether or not RIM will relax some of its network security for these countries. What we should be asking is 'why do they want to read the private emails of their citizens and employees?' To me, that is the much bigger question that warrants discussion. These countries are overtly saying that they want access to private emails and some might consider that an infringement of human rights. So far, RIM has steadfastly denied making any changes for these countries and I hope they hold that line, because if they relax security for these countries, it goes against their core strength and competitive advantage. It will be interesting to see if anyone else brings up the right to privacy issue that is screaming for attention.

It looks like RIM may have come up with a solution for Saudi Arabia and they have curbed some of the threats that have been floating around, will the same solution work for some of the other countries? Be careful what you wish for vis-a-vis global expansion. Some customers may be more effort than they are worth.