BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
Crystal Balls versus Good Planning
Most businesses plan by using two very simple processes. First, managers try to extend the past into the future. Planners build a track record of data on everything from sales and market share to prices and economic variables, and then they extend that...
When D&E Doesn’t Work
Unfortunately, most of the time Defend & Extend behaviors don't work. They don't improve revenues, cash flow, profits or returns for employees, suppliers and investors. A case in point are the large U.S. domestic airlines. (This blog is focused on...
When D&E works
I attack Defend & Extend Management a lot. Too often, managers try to succeed by just doing more of the same - often faster or cheaper. But when markets have shifted, that can produce ever declining performance instead of improvement. Then why is...
Could be a company changer
It's been 32 years since Network emerged from Hollywood to win 4 academy awards be nominated for 6 more. At the time, CBS was #1 in broadcast news, and Walter Cronkite was a fixture on the American landscape. All Americans watched as Walter told us about...
Take Action
General Electric (see chart here) announced today it is looking at ways to sell its appliance business (see article here). Great move! Too many companies hold onto a business for all the wrong reasons, and refuse to take action to keep themselves in the...
Fake Growth
Tuesday we learned that HP (chart here) is buying EDS (chart here) (read press release here, read Reuters article here). So is this a good deal? The reasons to be pessimistic outweigh the reasons to be optimistic. What we know is that the market for...
Growth stalls are deadly
Giant insurance company AIG (see chart here) has hit a growth stall. AIG has reported two consecutive quarterly losses, the worst in company history, and worse than the prior year (read article here). This constitutes a growth stall - and implies that the...
Excuses, Excuses
Sara Lee (see chart here) missed its estimates yet again, and the CEO had no shortage of excuses for the poor performance (read article here). Let's see, since taking over in 2005 the new CEO has made the company smaller by selling businesses for cash, yet...
Breath a sigh of relief
Microsoft (chart here) announced it is backing out of its offer to buy Yahoo! (read article here). We should all breath a sigh of relief. Twenty years ago Microsoft was well on its way to taking over the desktop in corporate America - resulting in...
Mindset – not location
A colleague was bragging to me today about his company's 3% growth. "We're doing great" he said "given this lousy economy." Great? 3%? I looked at him and said "Great is Genpact" (see chart here.) Genpact...
Wake up or get out of the way
A lot has been recently about Rupert Murdoch's News Corpation's (see chart here) bid to buy Newsday newspaper in New York (read overview article here.) The officianados in media are worried about concentration of media ownership - as well as the politics of Mr....
Take the money and run
Thirty years ago The Steve Miller Band put out a son "Take the Money and Run" - and that's exactly what the investors in Wrigley (see chart here) now need to do. Mars has made an offer to purchase Wrigley at a substantial premium, and investors get...
Educator Lock-in.2
This week a dozen high school seniors pulled a prank at their public high school in Zion, IL (read about the prank, with video, on Chicago NBC5 news website here). Apparently the boys thought up the idea of having 1 boy dress up like a gorilla, then the others...
Avoid Javelins
There's a phrase used by stock brokers - "Don't try to catch a falling javelin." They use this to describe a stock that has fallen recently - often a lot. Clients will ask "XY company stock has dropped Z percent, has it beome a good...
Too Locked-in to learn
Educational systems get a lot of attention all over the world. For years Americans thought their educational system was the world standard. America was early in offering an education free to all citizens. And Americans quickly got to the top of world...
Looking for past glory
Harley-Davidson (see chart here) has had one heck of a 20 years. If you put $100 in Harley stock in 1986, it would be worth $23,000 today. Profits have gone from $4.3million to $1billion in 2007. As boomers got older and richer they gained disposable...
Making the Turn
It's hard to turn around a Locked-In company. But it sure is exciting to see a CEO try. And that's what is happening at Allstate (see chart here.) I blogged previously about this historically staid company that has begun Disrupting and using White...
First do no harm
Hundreds of years ago philosopher Hippocrates created an oath, and for years medical doctors subsribed to it. Dramatically paraphrased, it included the notion "Doctor, first do no harm." The objective was clear - if you go messing around with a...
Wasting Time and Money
Microsoft (see chart here) is huge and has a lot of cash. So do you care? What made Microsoft an incredible company was how it managed to aid the growth of PC technology, making the machines every day parts of our lives. Microsoft products ranged...
Fleet of Foot
Great companies don't only get into new businesses, they know when to get out. Look at GE - a company that sells almost as many businesses as it buys every year. Another company following this practice is Philips (see chart here). In the U.S. few...
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