"Global competitive strategy" teachings of BSBAALJR
BSBAALSR is the incarnation of alleged-quality and quantity in business schools bestowing MBA degrees. There is no subject he emphasizes more than "strategy". About 80% of his temples feature gurus who sermonize on "global competitive strategy" and the rest of the temples more generally feature gurus who pontificate on "strategy" in general, which would include "global competitive strategy".
BSBAALJR, the incarnation of business schools regardless of alleged-quality, approaches the study of "global competitive analysis" by studying "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060523794/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/002-6320582-2337641?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00P#reader-link ) by IBM resurrector Louis Gerstner, "Built to Last Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060516402/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/002-6320582-2337641?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00R#reader-link
) by his favorite guru JC Collins, and "the Art of War" ( http://www.chinapage.com/philosophy/sunzi/sunzi-e.html ), a 2000 year old treatise by an ancient Chinese named Sun Tzu. BSBAALJR's favorite guru Collins also wrote BSBAALJR'S favorite text on leadership, "Good to Great" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0066620996/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/002-6320582-2337641?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00M#reader-link ).
These books are not specifically dedicated to "global competitive strategy", but they are BSBAALJR's main texts for approaching "global competitive strategy". BSBAALJR harvests them for info on "Global Competitive Strategy".
Since a significant minority of BSBAALSR's gurus emphasize strategy in general as opposed to specifically global competitive strategy, which is emphasized by all the rest of BSBALLSR's gurus, BSBAALJR by mining general strategy books is able to flatteringly emulate both elements amongst the gurus of BSBAALSR.
BSBAALJR's strategy hero Gerstner, left Nabisco in the early 1990s to become IBM CEO, and by 2002 had resurrected a sick IBM. Gerstner despised vision, visionaries etc., yet everyone considered him to be "visionary". Gerstner's story itself, shows some of the folly in BSBAALJR's habit of blurting out that some item on a checklist produces success in business.
For example, a checklist will declare that a company should have "vision", a "visionary" outlook. Yet how visionary a person is, is in the eye of the beholder, and is a matter of semantics.
Sure a company being visionary is to some extent important, but a company can overdo being visionary, as being visionary becomes a distraction of time energy and money; but we all already know this, that there are good qualities that companies have that however can become overdone as a result of which loss is experienced through the overemphasis of the given good quality.
Gerstner was a chocolate chip cookie executive who became a microchip executive at IBM. Being a computer nerd was not something that he was anywhere near being a world beater at. Being a computer nerd was not a passion with him. Yet he is BSBAALJR's hero for resurrecting IBM. At the same time BSBAALJR and his favorite guru Collins ("Good to Great...") tell us that in companies lacking dominant CEOs who all by themselves fixed everything, the trick was that they all specialized in the production of goods and services that they were world-beaters at producing, goods and services that their people had talent and skill with, goods and services that their people were passionate about.
If there is any lesson to this combination of BSBAALJR's favorite stories, it is that at the CEO level, having a CEO get involved in something he is ignorant of can produce glorious results, but at the sub-CEO level, getting people involved in things they are good at, world-beaters at, produces glorious results. In other words, the leader can be a generalist, but the underlings should be specialists, which is common sense. When Gerstner took over IBM, he returned it to its mainframe computer hardware software and service roots which it had traditionally excelled in.
To a certain extent, getting people involved in doing what they are good at, is a plus for a company. But such can be over-emphasized. The overemphasis of something leads to underemphasis on something else. Every situation is different so a level of emphasis on getting people involved in doing what they do best is can be appropriate in one situation but not in another. But we already know these things.
Still thanks for the checklist, people can forget the obvious; and no hard feelings about your statements of the obvious being hailed as "brilliant", because, otherwise, how could we correct the incredible stupidities practiced by our companies without looking bad?
Guru Collins declares that companies should get into what they are good at; but his declaration does little for me, because, I see how the hero Gerstner got into what he was not good at, and I see how Collins can resemble a child dabbling in finger-painting, when it comes to the scientific rigor of his sampling and rating techniques.
Collins focuses on companies without super-CEOs ("Good to Great") in an effort to understand, aside from its CEOs, what makes a company tick. Problem with this is, that it leaves out what makes companies with "super-CEOs" tick; it leaves out what makes CEOs tick, what makes them and their companies tick together; and how companies get their CEOs to "tick".
Companies are in a state of flux, some ("super"?) personnel move up closer to CEO levels, others move downwards falling from CEO levels or away from the company. It is difficult to measure to what extent a company has a super-CEO. People do not agree on what a super-CEO is. If they agreed on what a super-CEO is, in terms of definitions, they would still disagree on who is a super-CEO. What are we supposed to do, get out our CEO-meter, and get a reading on how super the CEO is?
What is needed is principles that can be applied to companies in general, without excluding companies that are supposed to be (I can see Collins' kindegarten teacher calling such "unfair advantage") bizarrely advantaged due to the possession of an extraordinary CEO. What is needed is principles that can be applied to companies in general, applied to them at both the CEO and sub-CEO underling levels. What is needed is more than a checklist, what is needed is a checklist that shows how many points each item on the checklist is worth.
Collins may not be able to supply these things but I ( vincemoon@rcn.com ) can.
@2005 David Virgil Hobbs
These are my opinions at this point in time they do not necessarily exactly correspond with fact.
BSBAALJR, the incarnation of business schools regardless of alleged-quality, approaches the study of "global competitive analysis" by studying "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060523794/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/002-6320582-2337641?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00P#reader-link ) by IBM resurrector Louis Gerstner, "Built to Last Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060516402/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/002-6320582-2337641?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00R#reader-link
) by his favorite guru JC Collins, and "the Art of War" ( http://www.chinapage.com/philosophy/sunzi/sunzi-e.html ), a 2000 year old treatise by an ancient Chinese named Sun Tzu. BSBAALJR's favorite guru Collins also wrote BSBAALJR'S favorite text on leadership, "Good to Great" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0066620996/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/002-6320582-2337641?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00M#reader-link ).
These books are not specifically dedicated to "global competitive strategy", but they are BSBAALJR's main texts for approaching "global competitive strategy". BSBAALJR harvests them for info on "Global Competitive Strategy".
Since a significant minority of BSBAALSR's gurus emphasize strategy in general as opposed to specifically global competitive strategy, which is emphasized by all the rest of BSBALLSR's gurus, BSBAALJR by mining general strategy books is able to flatteringly emulate both elements amongst the gurus of BSBAALSR.
BSBAALJR's strategy hero Gerstner, left Nabisco in the early 1990s to become IBM CEO, and by 2002 had resurrected a sick IBM. Gerstner despised vision, visionaries etc., yet everyone considered him to be "visionary". Gerstner's story itself, shows some of the folly in BSBAALJR's habit of blurting out that some item on a checklist produces success in business.
For example, a checklist will declare that a company should have "vision", a "visionary" outlook. Yet how visionary a person is, is in the eye of the beholder, and is a matter of semantics.
Sure a company being visionary is to some extent important, but a company can overdo being visionary, as being visionary becomes a distraction of time energy and money; but we all already know this, that there are good qualities that companies have that however can become overdone as a result of which loss is experienced through the overemphasis of the given good quality.
Gerstner was a chocolate chip cookie executive who became a microchip executive at IBM. Being a computer nerd was not something that he was anywhere near being a world beater at. Being a computer nerd was not a passion with him. Yet he is BSBAALJR's hero for resurrecting IBM. At the same time BSBAALJR and his favorite guru Collins ("Good to Great...") tell us that in companies lacking dominant CEOs who all by themselves fixed everything, the trick was that they all specialized in the production of goods and services that they were world-beaters at producing, goods and services that their people had talent and skill with, goods and services that their people were passionate about.
If there is any lesson to this combination of BSBAALJR's favorite stories, it is that at the CEO level, having a CEO get involved in something he is ignorant of can produce glorious results, but at the sub-CEO level, getting people involved in things they are good at, world-beaters at, produces glorious results. In other words, the leader can be a generalist, but the underlings should be specialists, which is common sense. When Gerstner took over IBM, he returned it to its mainframe computer hardware software and service roots which it had traditionally excelled in.
To a certain extent, getting people involved in doing what they are good at, is a plus for a company. But such can be over-emphasized. The overemphasis of something leads to underemphasis on something else. Every situation is different so a level of emphasis on getting people involved in doing what they do best is can be appropriate in one situation but not in another. But we already know these things.
Still thanks for the checklist, people can forget the obvious; and no hard feelings about your statements of the obvious being hailed as "brilliant", because, otherwise, how could we correct the incredible stupidities practiced by our companies without looking bad?
Guru Collins declares that companies should get into what they are good at; but his declaration does little for me, because, I see how the hero Gerstner got into what he was not good at, and I see how Collins can resemble a child dabbling in finger-painting, when it comes to the scientific rigor of his sampling and rating techniques.
Collins focuses on companies without super-CEOs ("Good to Great") in an effort to understand, aside from its CEOs, what makes a company tick. Problem with this is, that it leaves out what makes companies with "super-CEOs" tick; it leaves out what makes CEOs tick, what makes them and their companies tick together; and how companies get their CEOs to "tick".
Companies are in a state of flux, some ("super"?) personnel move up closer to CEO levels, others move downwards falling from CEO levels or away from the company. It is difficult to measure to what extent a company has a super-CEO. People do not agree on what a super-CEO is. If they agreed on what a super-CEO is, in terms of definitions, they would still disagree on who is a super-CEO. What are we supposed to do, get out our CEO-meter, and get a reading on how super the CEO is?
What is needed is principles that can be applied to companies in general, without excluding companies that are supposed to be (I can see Collins' kindegarten teacher calling such "unfair advantage") bizarrely advantaged due to the possession of an extraordinary CEO. What is needed is principles that can be applied to companies in general, applied to them at both the CEO and sub-CEO underling levels. What is needed is more than a checklist, what is needed is a checklist that shows how many points each item on the checklist is worth.
Collins may not be able to supply these things but I ( vincemoon@rcn.com ) can.
@2005 David Virgil Hobbs
These are my opinions at this point in time they do not necessarily exactly correspond with fact.
posted by David Virgil at 2:07 AM
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