Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

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Read this book back in 2007, and wish I had read it earlier – would have saved some heartache!

The post date for this article is not totally a lie – I presented this review at our first shareholders meeting (19th January 2008), which followed the renewal process we underwent in late 2007.

Binary Review

Certainly worth the read:

The Book	What we thought
“10 Rules for Strategic Innovators” by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble	Not perfect, but it’s worth a read

This book is not perfect, but was (when I read it) confirmation of some of the gut feelings I had about some of the things we had been doing wrong in our business.

The core points in the book:

The basic principles are as follows:

Principle 1)  There are two distinctly different types of company:

(a)  Company A type are established companies, where the outcomes for the next year can be thought of as “Current + X%”.  With this in mind, management can be focused in a particular way – all about efficiencies, etc…

(b)  In complete contrast, Company B type (the authors label them “Strategic Experiments”) have a very uncertain future.  Start-ups are one type, and spin-offs another.

Principle 2)  The book then delves into the world of Strategic Experiments (NewCo) launched within established businesses (CoreCo) and, after talking through a couple of case studies, concludes that NewCo must do the following three things:

(a)  Forget (e.g. find its own culture, which is best done if it is physically separate from CoreCo)

(b)  Borrow (e.g. borrow the core expertise of CoreCo, which is best done if it is close by CoreCo).

(c)  Learn quickly (by a process of stating hypothesis, testing, refining hypothesis, etc…)

Principle 3)  The book then makes a telling point – that performance appraisal in Strategic Experiments should be:

(a)  Focused on how quickly NewCo learns from the market response, then adjusts its theories in the light on new information –

(b)  Definitely NOT on how closely it meets its targets.

Having been through the process in the early years of the company of (very much so) being a “Strategic Experiment”, I would certainly have liked to have read this book beforehand – and, as a result, not been so obsessed with targets that were total guesses in any case.

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This book review was one of 3 book reviews I presented in our first shareholder’s meeting of 2008 (back in 19th January 2008).  Hence, I have used artistic licence with the post date to put this into context.

Binary Review

This book was originally published in 1991 but was revolutionary in explaining how to market (and plan the development of) innovative products (specifically high tech) :

The Book	What we thought
“Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey A Moore	An excellent book, that’s well worth reading

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I continue to refer back to this book, despite having read and re-read it.

The underlying premise:

The book starts with the typical bell-shaped curve of customer adoption of any particular product, but argues it is a little different for the high-tech industry – in that there is a chasm between the two distinct parts of the market:

The Early Market (being enthusiasts and visionaries); and

The Mainstream Market (being pragmatists, conservatives and visionaries).

To often, the author notes, tech companies are encouraged by some early successes with the early adopters, and hence scale up too soon, expecting the J-curve to arrive, only to find themselves walking in the wilderness, looking for a beachhead into the pragmatists.

The book presents a whole load of information that’s useful – the following is what I summarised for our management meeting in January 2008:

1)  Seed new technology with enthusiasts (i.e. give it to the geeks, who will test it out for you and find the bugs) so they can help you to educate the visionaries (e.g. who are business people who will risk something that is unproven in order to win big)

2)  Once you have captured the visionaries’ interest, do whatever it takes to delight them, as they will serve as reference customers for the pragmatists.

BEWARE the chasm in between - we need to cross by choosing a targeted beachhead

3)  Gain the bulk of your revenue by serving the pragmatists – by becoming the market leader, and establishing defacto standards.  At this stage, the “whole product” is important.

4)  Leverage success with the pragmatists to generate volume so that the products are reliable/cheap enough to satisfy the conservatives.

5)  Don’t waste your time trying to sell to the sceptics BUT listen to what they say, as they may have valid points!

Even though we operate in a relatively narrow vertical market, this logic aligns with what we have found in the past – and we’re looking to learn from this to make our business expansion easier in future.

Hope this helps you, too!

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This book review was one of 3 book reviews I presented in our first shareholder’s meeting of 2008 (back in 19th January 2008).  Hence, I have used artistic licence with the post date to put this into context.

Binary Review

Certainly worth the read:

The Book	What we thought
“Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” by Verne Harnish	Not the best book I have ever read, but still worth a read

This book is one of the more useful ones I have read (obviously it must have been, if I discussed the lessons learnt from it during a shareholder’s meeting).

The core points in the book:

The book says that there are basically 3 fundamentals:

Fundamental #1)  We need to identify what our #1 priority should be (in terms of business performance improvement) and focus on that one:

(a)  The author related the story of Tiger Woods taking time out to re-inventing his golf swing – as a way of making the point that the priority should generally be the one that hurts the most.

(b)  The author notes that the challenge normally fits into one of the following 7 categories:
1 – we’re not big enough
2 – we’re lacking a key player
3 – our economic engine is broken
4 – someone else is controlling our destiny
5 – we need a war chest to compete
6 – we can’t raise money until we grow
7 – we’ve got to scale back, or we won’t survive.

Fundamental #2)  About data:

(a)  Critical numbers (are focused on your short-term goal)

(b)  Smart numbers (are focused on our long-term goal)

Fundamental #3)  The book basically says there is not much point planning for an in-between horizon.  It basically suggests to:

(a)  Have a regular strategic planning session.  For a normal company, this might be annual, but for fast-growing these sessions might be quarterly.

(b)  Break the targets down and then have weekly meetings to focus on how we’re implementing the plan for the current year (or quarter) – with a focus on a single issue each week.

Can’t really do the book justice in this short summary, though.