Month: July 2012

What’s on for the weekend

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I thought I’d bring back this part of the blog because sometimes talking business can be a little boring and we all need to zone out of that for a moment!

So what’s on this weekend? I am going to the Mukanya’s show, it has been all of 20 years since I last seen the Mukanya live in concert. If you are in England I would recommend the show as well because judging by his

latest live in concert Youtube Videos it looks like it will be a good show.

Formula 1 is also on this weekned but if you are like me and you are support Lewis Hamilton the week promises to be a difficult one again. The last 3 races haven’t gone well at all and Lewis’ private life being in the papers for his alleged transgressions doesn’t help either but he’s led both practice sessions today so maybe it could be a good weekend after all.

New music wise check out Nas’ Life is Good album, Nas is back to illmatic goodness on this baby!!, my stand out tune of the album right now is Daughters. Rick Ross is also close to releasing a new album and the track doing the rounds from that piece is Three Kings with Dr Dre and Jay Z partaking in some chest beating for all their achievements in the rap game. I haven’t really taken to the song as some have but maybe if I put it on repeat this weeken it will grow on me!

Elsewhere, it’s Olympic season in London and if it wasn’t for piles of marking I might have gone down to soak up the atmosphere, it threatens to be a once in a life time event tonight around London. Speaking of the Olympics, I have a bad feeling about Usain Bolt, that dude might ruin his legacy this term coz it don’t seem like he is dialled in physically yet but you never know!.

Remember when Gadhaffi was caught and I wondered why he hadn’t ran away when they caught him. Al Assad needs to start making exit plans coz the tide is rising and when the people ain’t scared to die for a cause anymore then time is up. But I am sure he is still convincing himself that the Syrian people really want him and it’s only foreigners causing problems so he will stick around until we see some big ass soldier putting hands on him live on telly! And we will all ask, why didn’t he run away? They never learn, someone said dictators are power drunk so they can’t see trouble brewing.

May the sun keep shining and your cups keep over flowing, be safe and have fun!!

 

Spending to get out of trouble, where should the money go?

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It’s the making of a tug of war when organisations are struggling to survive and being faced with only two options, spending out of trouble or buttoning down the hatches and riding out the bad times. Managers and business leaders of today are dealing with the realities of going out of business more than any in previous times but whatever methods they are using, it is a case damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

For those who choose to invest out of trouble the question is where to invest? innovation, marketing, organisation restructuring (including redundancies because they cost money) or in operational effeciencies. Each area of business is plausible in their potential to move a business forward and create new opportunities. Innovation could help an organisation become more efficient, create more products and bring in new customers. All of which could be a source of additional earnings and growth out of the troubles but what about the risk? Risks lie in every opportunity that exists in investing further into innovation because there is no guarantee that customers will buy the new product or employees will work more efficiently. Consider the case of Microsoft’s venture into mobile phone handsets or VW’s $80000 luxury sedan the Phaeton, both plausible ideas with potential gaps to fill inthe market but total failures when they were put on the market! Risk is a real possiblity but should it be avoided at the cost of loosing a business?

The opposite of investing out of trouble is austerity. Possibly THE buzz word for 2011 and the David Cameron premiership, austerity has been touted to mean making cuts and finding savings from the operations then using those efficiencies to drive growth without any further investments. While this prudent approach to business sounds plausible, I feel the costs and implications of those costs to the future of the business or economy have been disregarded. A major aspect of the austerity is redundancies which removes people from their posts and with them goes all their knowledge on the organisations and on their jobs. Knowledge management has become increasingly important as organisations become of cognisant of the investment they put in training people to the levels required to work effectively and efficiently in the organisation. So knowing that organisation can easily write off this investment is astounding, maybe it is because they don’t have a monetary value of the investment because if they did, I am sure there would be a strategic rethink around redundancies. Honda and Toyota are good examples of avoiding redundancies when they went into reduced production and prolonged holidays to preserve employment for their staff during the aoutomotive industry down turn in 2008. Today, the strategy is vindicated because all staff are back working and applying their knowledge to help the organisations respond to increasing demand from the market.

I am sure other will find hole is my thinking but it is not hard to tell where my preferences lie!

Is it time to change the tune on ownership of strategic resources

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Not a week a passes without someone from Zimbabwe talking about the problems with services being delivered by the electricity company, water company, train operator or the bain of every Zimbabwean in the diaspora, the national airline!. Not since the middle of the 1990s has there been consitent supply of service from any of these government owned companies and some attribute the fall in quality and supply of these utilities to the economic restructuring programme, the referendum and sanctions levelled against the country for a variety of reasons. But, and this is a big but no one seems to label any blame on the government ownership of the these services, why?. Is it because Zimbabweans expect the government to produce and provide the service. It appears not many people have thought about how the government can afford to provide consistent supply of the services given all that has gone on since the mid 1990s.

While there are differing opinions on who should own strategic services such as water, electricity, trains and the national airline, I feel there is need for internal assessment and honesty in all parties that have a vested interest in the consistent supply of these resources, be they government, lay men, businesses or community services providers. There are examples within Zmbabwe that show private ownership of strategic resources can be a good thing, look no further than the health industry and the education industry. Private operators have consistently supplied these services through all the problems and the challenges experienced by the country in the last 16 years. In health and education the government and private enterprise are operating in the same sectors without much friction, while this is a simplistic view of the issues that lie within the daily operations and provision of those serives, I feel there is enugh evidence for me to think that it is time for the government to seriously consider liberalising the provision of water, electricity, trains and aviation.

There is enough wealth within the people of Zimbabwe at home or abroad to bring consistency back to the supply of electricity, water, trains and aviation through expertise and financial resources that seem to elude the government at present. The roadmap to recovery must give freedom to private enterprise, must strive to adopt clean and sustainable technology as well as being affordable to the common man on the street. Achieving affordability will require significant change in the mindset of Zimbabwean business thinkers which will entail adopting a long term view to profitability rather than the current short term gains driven mentality which has led to local milk being more expensive than imported milk. Effectiveness and efficiency should be the sources of profitability rather than supernormal mark ups of 65% on cost which is the norm in Zimbabwe at the moment. The long term approach to profitability will require government support in creating an economic environment that is consistent in decision making, authorisation of permission to operate in the strategic sectors and the transperancy as a business culture.

Change of tune is not only the responsibility of the government, Zimbabweans in general must also change and look amongst themselves to find the solutions to the supply of strategic resources, maybe we should start seeing ourselves as airline operators, train operators and energy suppliers. Impossible is nothing for a determined people