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Your Supply Chain: Six Proactive Steps to Take Now
By Tom Cramer
One of the realities of running a small to mid-sized enterprise is learning that one of your primary challenges is learning to respond to change. It is the nature of experience that our outlooks are shaped by those changes and how we react to them. We quickly learn that the current “crisis” is not an interruption of normal that will be resolved and go back to the way things were. Rather, gaining the skills of managing and thriving through successive crises is what often separates successful ventures from failures …
Understanding Your Supply Chain: Why it Matters
By: Tom Cramer It was only less than a couple of years ago when almost no one had heard the term “social distancing” in the pre-covid world. Likewise, only a small fraction of owners of SMEs had heard the term Supply Chain other than in a passing reference to other issues. This description of global logistics was reserved for specialists in most cases. No Longer an Abstract Concept Professional military planners have long focused on supply and logistics as keys to their success in battle. However, most business people in small to mid-sized businesses in the …
Incorporating the Porter Five Model in Your Business Planning
By: Tom Cramer
For our third discussion on the topic of competition, we will turn to a relatively modern construct. The Porter Five Forces Framework was first published by Michael Porter in the Harvard Business Review in 1979. It has since gained the position of one of the most respected methods for evaluating the operating and competitive environment for many companies at the industry level. While it has its later detractors and amplifiers, as with any business concept, it is most useful for what Porter calls the line-of-business level of operations. …
Developing Your Product-Service Matrix
By Tom Cramer
In our first discussion of competition, we focused on understanding that competition is a reality that comes in many forms. It is vital that you take the time to understand where your company is most vulnerable to those threats to your success. Our third item in this topic, Incorporating the Porter Five Model in Your Business Planning, provides a more strategic review of those many sources of competitive forces. We drill down here on the more traditional issue of competition. That involves looking at who is …
Who Is Your Competition?
By Tom Cramer
Ask any experienced investor or any venture capitalist. The fastest way for a founder to lose their interest – and their investment – is to state they have no competition. In fact, anyone foolish enough to have such an attitude does not deserve their interest. Competition is a fact of life, and arrogance does not eliminate it. It simply makes it more deadly. Thus, this month’s focus is on your efforts to understand your own competitive environment. In our accompanying articles we first look at the process of …
Eliminating Disruptive Influences
By: Tom Cramer
It can often seem that your role as a CEO involves a continuous stream of daily battles. As you develop and grow your business, the last thing you need is difficult people lobbing grenades into your operations. Yet, as we see in our article Understanding the Challenges of Difficult People, those individuals are often a part of the realities with which you must deal. Time: Your Most Precious Resource Capital is often considered the most critical element for entrepreneurial success. You can address the …
Dealing with Difficult People
By: Tom Cramer
In an earlier discussion, we touched on the fact that, as a CEO, you will be faced with many tests of your leadership skills. One of those is Understanding the Challenges of Difficult People. Unfortunately, grasping the reality of difficult people being a fact of life is only the first part of that test. Choosing Your Course of Action Once you have objectively identified and evaluated the existence of a difficult individual in your business ecosystem, you face an additional assessment. It is generally …
Understanding The Challenges of Difficult People
By Tom Cramer
You are the CEO. It is only when you carry that title that you can understand the almost overwhelming expectations and challenges that come with the role of Chief Executive Officer. From dealing with competitors to balancing financial metrics to seeking the crystal ball for market ups and downs, each day brings additional unknowns to add to the complexities of your job. It Starts and Ends with People However, the single biggest aspect of your job is leadership. It is your responsibility to find, recruit, develop, and retain the …
The CEO’s Secret Weapon: Record & Transcribe Your Meetings
We’ve all had it happen, we leave a strategic meeting with our executive team or a client and struggle to remember what was discussed or agreed upon days or weeks later. In many cases, even if notes were taken, they may not be complete and it can always be helpful to have access to the exact conversation. One innovative tool is redefining how CEOs are showing up to meetings and leaving with everything they need to revisit the conversation at a later time. That tool: Otter.Ai. Simply hit …
