competition
Heading Into the Wind
By Tom Cramer
When the commander of an aircraft carrier gets the order to launch his planes, he immediately checks with his navigator to determine his heading. He then turns his ship so that he is fully heading into the wind so that his pilots will have the best chance for a successful launch. The View from the Cockpit In one of our earlier posts, we spoke of looking at your position as sitting in the cockpit. It is worth returning to that aviation metaphor to review the mindset of flying off into the wind. It …
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 …
Top 3 Ways CEO Can Outpace The Competition in 2019
With such a competitive business landscape, generating ways that you can use to leverage your resources and stay miles ahead of your competitors can be challenging. As the new year quickly approaches, now is the time to begin reflecting on what worked and did not work in 2018. According to leading CEO peer groups and CEO development consultants, these are the top 3 things you should be looking to do starting January 1st to put some distance between you and the competition throughout 2019.
- Narrow Your Focus. Often business leaders strive to accomplish …
Top 5 Ways a CEO Peer Group Sets You Apart
With a highly fragmented and competitive business landscape, finding innovative ways to set you apart as both a seasoned executive leader but also as an industry expert can be hard to find. A wide variety of professional development options are available, however, the benefits that a reputable CEO advisory group offers is virtually unmatched. According to CEO network experts, here are the top five ways that joining an award-winning CEO club can be the secret to outpacing your competition.
- Elevate your thinking to a new level. CEO peer groups are made up …
