BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
The World is Flat
If you haven't read it yet, I strongly encourage you to read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. Too many of us get up every day and do our jobs without looking just beyond the horizon. Yet, what's over there is available for us to see if we will just...
Hurricanes and Plane Crashes
Can you tell the difference between a disturbance and a Disruption? I've found in my speeches that most people can't. There's actually a big difference. A disturbance will cause you to pause and think about how to get your Success Formula to react...
It’s all about growth
What's the most critical element for a successful business? Without a doubt, it's growth. Growth is the primary requirement for good business health. Look no further than GM. Because GM didn't maintain growth, the company now has 1 retiree for every...
CEO of the Year
Marketwatch has named Ed Zander of Motorola as it's CEO of the Year. What a well deserved compliment. Motorola's revenues are up an eye-popping 59% since before Zander joined, and the stock price has doubled. The culture has changed from moribund and...
You want to be optimistic
Every time we hear about a company hitting a stall we want to be optimistic. We want to believe they will turn around their situation and recover their growth. Unfortunately, once a business hits a growth stall (regardless of the cause), it has a less than 7%...
Don’t blame your customers
We all know how Apple rejuvenated itself with the iPod. From a declining, niche player in personal computers the company took off after launching the iPod. Taking advantage of commercially available MP3 technology, Apple stepped in after Napster was sued...
Deja Vu all over again
Vornado has acquired a 1.2% stake in McDonald's (check out full Bloomberg News article.) Does anyone remember this scenario? It was just November, 2004 when Vornado bought 4.8% of Sears leading to Sears acquisition by Kmart. Simply put, the Sears...
Similarity breeds contempt
[We] "have a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas producing similar things with similar prices and similar quality." --- Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale in Funky...
What’s in a Name?
.... Apparently a lot. Have you seen what's been happening to the share prices of companies like New York Times, Gannett, Knight Ridder and Dow Jones? Down, down, down, down - from 25% to 35% in the last year. Why should such great companies be...
Spicy Growth
Imagine you bought stock in a small restaurant concept in 1993 (12 years ago) with a handful of restaurants. Today, that chain has expanded to 450 locations, profits have grown five-fold since turning profitable in 2004 and sales are up 33 percent in the first...
Sporting Disruptions
What is ESPN? Many people would say "a TV channel about sports." What an understatement. ESPN has not one, but several channels (in multiple languages) and radio channels. Beyond that ESPN is a magazine, an internet portal (over 17million...
Velveeta-land
Kraft's shares have dropped about 22% in the last year. They are flat over 2 years. They are down around 25% for three years, and down 35% from their peak in 2002. Recent profit announcements affirmed that Kraft is currently making 13.5% less than it...
Save your way to prosperity?
GM announced a plan to cut retiree and employee healthcare costs by $18B per year today. It also plans to cut another 8% of its workforce (25,000 jobs) on top of the 30% cut in employment it's taken over the last 5 years. Oh, and by the way, the company is...
Working within Permission
To do something truly new and innovative requires operating in White Space. You have to get outside the box of the traditional business in order to develop a new Success Formula. And for White Space to have breakthrough results it must have Permission (as...
Small Business Lesson
Fashion to Figure is a very small retailer that recently learned how to apply The Phoenix Principle the hard way (see full story). When founded, the hard working Harvard MBA behind this start-up locked-in on what he thought he would need for success. ...
Telltales of Trouble
Sailors tie up small pieces of cloth on their lines to observe changes in the wind. These pieces are called "telltales", as they give the first indications of issues which the sailor must address. We use this analogy when looking at businesses,...
Can you recognize a whirlpool?
American businesspeople tend to be optimistic. No one wants to project their business is declining, and they use all kinds of changing benchmarks to make it appear like their business is improving -- even if it's not. Case in point - Kodak. From...
Is Microsoft nearing the Flats?
It's always risky to challenge a company as large and successful as Microsoft - but read these quotes from the recent BusinessWeek article: "Employees... feeling trapped in an organization whose past successes seem to stifle current creativity."...
Walk Away Smiling
Readers of this BLOG know I'm a big fan of companies avoiding lock-in. I'm always pushing organizations to open White Space projects. So you'd think that a company looking to sell a business would be someone I'd attack. Not so quick there. Motorola is...
The Wrong Stuff
"The slide into bankruptcy protection of two of the USA's largest airlines is more a result of the carriers' bad assumptions and slowness to act than the recent rise in fuel prices or the devastating terror attacks four years ago." USAToday 9/15/05...
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