cost cutting - Kim Warren - Talking about strategy

Cost reduction and strategy

No surprise I suppose that many companies took the shock of the down-turn to focus on cost-cutting. In What worked in cost cutting—and what’s next? McKinsey’s report of a global survey offers mixed news – yes, plenty of costs were cut, but executives worry about sustaining those cuts and about continuing risks from the sluggish economy. What we don’t know – and probably never will – is the consequences. How many, for example, cut too much, in the wrong ...

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Strategy

cost cutting, cost reduction, mckinsey, strategic management

‘Gestures’, not strategy

Posted by: Kim Warren

It’s hard enough dealing with current difficulties in a strategically sound way, but it’s not helped by actions that are pointless or counter-productive – examples below.

Some of these actions just might be unavoidable if the business is in real danger of collapse, but very few are in such a bad state. It seems most are doing these things for purely symbolic reasons – ‘We must be seen to be taking the problem seriously’ – or else to hold up short-term profitability ...

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Strategy

across-the-board, cost cutting, crisis management, cut budgets, downsizing, downturn, executive travel, freeze hiring, gestures, investors, strategic management, supply-terms

Seize Advantage in a Downturn

Posted by: Kim Warren

More (mostly) helpful advice re the downturn from HBR is Seize the advantage in a downturn in which David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter of BCG offer thoughts to stabilize your business and find opportunities … but beware!

Good to see the Boston Consulting Group encourage us to focus on the core business (as we should have been doing in the first place), protect product development, look at competitors’ weaknesses etc. – and ...

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Strategy

BCG, Boston Consulting Group, business model, competitive advantage, competitive strategy, cost cutting, Daniel Stelter, David Rhodes, down-turn, harvard business review, HBR, organizational memory, rivals

Strategy in tough times

Posted by: Kim Warren

I have just been asked to include a specific extra section on this in the LBS ADP executive course on which I teach, which reminds me it may be useful to many others, so here’s a very short summary

First, it’s unlikely that making big throws on changing your strategic positioning will help much – it may even be damaging. Sure, you might get a bit of revenue support from adding or moving to a slightly lower-priced proposition as ...

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Strategy

ADP program, cost cutting, downturn, London Business School, rationalisation, rejuvenation, SAP, strategic management, tough times

How to Expand While Cutting Costs

Posted by: Kim Warren

An interesting article in on this topic, which is probably front of mind for quite a few organisations right now, in strategy+business. The article comes up with ‘the frugal growth triangle’, on the working relationships between business units, corporate and shared functions. Unfortunately, while there are some good suggestions in it, there are also plenty of platitudes .. get business units accountable, connect innovation to consumer insight, have business units ‘pull’ services from the infrastructure, choose core capabilities to invest in, ...

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Strategy

cost cutting, Expansion, resources, strategy dynamics, strategy+business