Strategy formulation: Five serious issues demanding your attention

Formulating business strategy is not the type of task for amateurs. As a business strategist you have to be serious about six issues before you ever undertake strategy formulation. These six issues are of “make or break” nature demanding serious attention from corporate management:

1. First of all you must be very clear about the internal dimension of the business you are in. Significantly the major part of this dimension is connected with human interaction. Whether you go for top down or bottom up approach you have to understand that, the personal dynamics of the organization is the key factor. Being friendly with staff, you must understand how they are motivated to work and how they are driven to achieve set goals.

2. Alertness is key for assessing strengths and weaknesses of staff members. You must be super intelligent to recognize the nuances of their speech, rhythm of body language, shades of opinion, nature of attitude and finally quality of efforts. This is where you waddle between skills and drive. For example, the most talented or articulate person in your business may not have similar level of dedication towards his job!

3. Getting into critical point quickly is the next issue meriting your attention. Time is always limited and you must be trained to find the “fruit covered by leaves”. Unless you can get a hang of what the staff are trying to convey and the finer points that they mention or allow you to draw without even uttering tem, you will continue to read the leaves and miss the fruit.

4. Thinking strategically is the issue most of us talk about but never get it right. You have to master strategic thinking by envisaging how the future course of action evolves and how beneficial it is to the business and its stakeholders, including the staff members. Smart thinking apart, you must be able to communicate with others how the future is going to be and  what resources and technology would be required along with the type of new skills the business must develop in order to cope up with future demands.

5. Creative solution to problem is an area where an accomplished business strategist excels. Here the strategist must follow a set of analytical tools available in the public domain as well as his own proprietary tools that he keeps to himself. Box type strategic tools promoted by consultancy firms are of limited use in this ever changing business environment. Incidentally, major breakthrough in product innovation has come into light not by using any of these box type tools but by innovative and imaginative thinking. Success of Starbucks coffee is a fitting example!

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

Seven virtues displayed by China in business negotiation

Chinese businesses are all over the world. The business invasion of China is so ubiquitous that western marketing machine has been put on back foot meekly defending the China Avalanche. What is the driving force behind this phenomenal success?

The answer can be found in Taoism, taught by Lao Tzu who lived somewhere in the fifth century B.C., in China. Taoism teaches the concept of “Flow” as the driving philosophy and charts the connection between nature and human society that helps Chinese businesses to do well in their deal making.

The Flow philosophy is anchored upon two prongs. One is connectivity and continuity between nature and humans. Two, is the rhythmic movement of “Flow” that is always in the state of flux, making everything to move, reverse and finally come to the position of normality. This Flow is festooned with number of virtues out of which seven are noteworthy. Every business strategist must know how these seven virtues are applied in business negotiation:

1. Compromising with business partners rather than reverting to force and foul play

2. Understanding the nature of business and go with it rather than giving weight to own dreams and desires

3. Being passive in response to provocation rather than be active and respond in kind

4. Suggesting indirect ways of taking business negotiation forward rather than directly giving a flat or blunt answer. For example, Yes by Chinese counterpart can mean anything including yes, no, yes but and no yet”

5. Promoting good spirit in dealing with business partners rather than demoting their culture or nuances of conducting business deals

6. Reacting to what the other party says and does in business deal making rather than pro acting with show-off and intimidation

7. Finally, using hidden persuasive techniques in clinching deals rather the making everything ostensible such as threats of walking away or busting business negotiation!

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

Why Chinese business succeeds while others fail?

The answer is very simple. It is Taoism that makes Chinese business do well, achieve big time success and gallop towards great heights whereas many competitors bite the dust especially in the western world. A business strategist must understand the most important principles of Taoism practised in China before he gets into his strategy drawing board:

Before venturing further, let me explain the fundamental duality of Taoism that suggests the interplay between “De” and “Wu Wei” The meaning of “De” is “Virtue” that reflects and embodies in every human activity including business undertakings. On the other hand “Wu Wei” means “Do nothing”. You might be startled to know why “Do not take any action”, because you are always nagged by the management to take some form of action while running a business. States Lao Tzu the founder of Taoism, “Do nothing and there is nothing that is not done”

Looks like an oxymoron. In fact what Taoism implies is not taking action that is non – purposive, non – productive and non – deliberate. The primary intent of business is to achieve a host of purposes. According to Laozi contentment must be the primary intent. In the case of business stakeholder value must be the primary intent. Following that there would be several other purposes such as achieving number one position in terms of competition, market share and revenue generation.  All these purposes must be attuned to the centrality that is stakeholder value.

Towards achieving purposes there is an absolute need to conform to ethics and standards which is called as “De” or virtue. All Chinese businesses work on the ethical principles of bringing equality and equanimity between the individual business and the larger society that provides raw materials, human resources and other inputs. Furthermore there is corporate responsibility towards protecting environment, human welfare and the wellbeing of the society at large.

While profit making is the key driver in every business, there is dichotomy between desire and limitation. A company can dream to be the one and only player in the market, just a wild desire, considering the limited amount of resources available under its command or the lack of near total market acceptance it can aspire for. Hence limitation factor overweighs upon desire. Chinese business ethics dictate setting of reasonable and achievable goals. Business strategist in China is compelled to make the right choice amongst alternative courses of actions. Truly, Chinese business dwells upon the dictum “means-ways–ends” critically yet with open mind. Interestingly Taoism teaches Chines business strategists basic principle of working out compromise or trade-off in order to bring a balance between desire and limitation as well as virtue and non-action.

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

America is not fighting Huawei, she is fighting Sun Tzu

Block Huawei, arm twist allies to do so, harass Huawei officials, embark on info war to stigmatize Huawei, make Huawei a punching bag for Americans and so on are tactics US is piling up to make Huawei feel the pain and lose the revenue. Huawei is not perturbed at all. It goes on with business as usual. Why because fighting Huawei indirectly means that US is indeed fighting grand master Sun Tzu.

Does US have a strategy that can quicken the fall of Huawei? None so far. Says Sun Tzu: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat”. My take is, US is going to be defeated and very badly defeated as more than half of the world has entrusted  Telco infrastructure upon Huawei. Ostensibly, US has no viable strategy and all these tactics are too haphazard and not connected to any strategy, if at all one is up there.

Sun Tzu mandates: “Rouse him (the opponent) and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots”. Huawei did that marvellously well. By selecting Cambridge in UK as their centre for research facility and getting the approval too, Huawei provoked US to take risky steps. One, US revealed her inability to fight Huawei in techno competition. Two, she is losing tremendous amount of revenue from own 5G if that is much ahead in terms of operational excellence. Three, US vulnerability is clear as blue sky where it cannot bring the entire EU on board.

Sun Tzu commands:  “Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight mot unless the position is critical”. The spat between Huawei and US spotlighted the following:

1. The move by US has been widely condemned by industry enthusiasts as 5G roll out in US and allied countries would be delayed for years as there is no worthy competitor found yet. Samsung, Nokia Ericsson consortium and few others are far behind as Huawei has majority of 5G patents registered and using any of these could lead to serious consequences.

2. US spent considerable amount of political capital in canvassing for the blocking of Huawei. Beyond her captive allies only India has jumped into the fray mainly due to historical hostility towards China

3. Situation in terms of Telco and mobile technology in US is not so critical in America to take on Huawei for a fight within US or elsewhere. Definitely it  is not going to “Make America Great Again’. Instead it has overnight transformed US as an Economic Bully!

Cheers!

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist