It Is Management That Competes, Not Your Products
From time to time, you come across an article that stays with you. This is an article that I have kept with me over the years. My notes indicates that it was published in our local newspaper, Daily Express in February 2002. Written by Gunther Conradi.
At that time, I was in the midst of my marketing module for an MBA program. It just made sense to me because for a retailer to outlast his competition, it is management that is the winning factor. Not products, prices or advertisement. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues focused solely on the 4 Ps – Product, Price, Promotion, Place. Well, yes but if you don’t manage the 4 Ps, nothing you do will make you stand out from the crowd.
Other than the 30 years he mentioned, this is one of my favorite articles. I have been through the crash of 1997 when Asians economies took a major hit, and forex currency rates doubled. Yet in the years from 1997 to 2002, my retail unit experience sales growth of over 20%. We captured market share and outlasted many competitors. The lesson I learned was that there is no substitute for effective management.
Profitability Requires Good Management
It takes good management to secure that business behavior is in accordance with the changing patterns in the marketplace, including the overall environment.
Managers make or break an enterprise. Just look at the list of bankruptcies, de-listed companies and the hundreds suspended from trading ….. then we see what disastrous consequences bad management has to account for.
In business, a corporation’s life expectancy can be directly traced to the general level of its managerial competence. Managerial incompetence is a frequently over-looked factor when business go down and prices go up.
Management has its problems, challenges, commitment and place, playing the pivotal role ….. more managers are required but many of them have a poor perception on what they are supposed to be. The better management will respond positively when a downturn occurs. They do not accept a downturn as the cause of business failure. If there is a crisis, then there ought to be a crisis management, a contingency plan. The better management will always have and hold the competitive edge.
There must be practical ability and motivation to meet the challenges of the next 30 years. The task for today’s managers is to create conditions for tomorrow, to prepare their organizations to move into the future.
