MBA in a Nutshell

How Can a Manager Get Important Things Done?

January 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Distinguish the Variances That Require a Manager’s Attention

When critical care facilities in hospitals monitor patients’ vital signs, staff nurses are notified only when vital signs go beyond each patient’s pre-programmed range. Unless the monitoring devices sound an alarm, nurses take for granted that the patient’s condition is stable enough and will receive only routine medical attention.

The “Management by Exception (MBE)” method is the notion that a manager’s attention must be focused only on those areas in absolute need of his/her engagement.

As a rule, lower-level managers should handle recurring decisions. Only problems concerning extraordinary matters should be referred to higher-level managers.

This “exception principle” emphasizes that executives at the upper levels of an organization have serious restrictions on their time, capacity, and willpower. They should refrain from being caught up in minutiae that can be handled just as effectively by their junior managers.

A case in point: many companies establish protocols that designate the level of authorization required for purchases. Companies delegate authority carefully, prescribing spending limits for each level. For instance, a team leader’s approval is necessary for purchases of over $1,000. A department manager must approve purchases of over $5,000, the divisional leader for purchases of over $10,000, and the CEO for purchases over $50,000.

Managers Just Can’t Do Everything

The exception principle helps managers focus their attention on more worthy matters that justify their attention. Most managers hesitate to manage by exception because of the very human predisposition to focus on the immediate, tangible, and well-defined problems as against the distant, high-priority, challenging, and abstract problems.

In other words, mangers must distinguish programmed decisions from non-programmed decisions. Programmed decisions are routine activities that are well-defined and can be dealt with by using an established protocol. Non-programmed decisions are exceptional or significant endeavors that involve unfamiliar, one-time, and unstructured problems needing higher-level decision-making.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Get Lost in the Thicket of Trivia

As a manager, there are only a few things that you must do. Focus on those and delegate the rest. But keep an eye on how things are going; you are still accountable for any work you delegate.

Decentralize as much decision-making as possible. Establish protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that empower your staff and enable your organization virtually to run itself.

Identify what deviations constitute as an exception and intervene only to solve significant problems.

A Guide to Your First Management Role // Book Summary of Julie Zhuo’s ‘The Making of a Manager’

December 16, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

First-time managers are often unprepared for—even unaware of—the responsibilities and challenges of being a manager. This is particularly true at fledging startups that don’t have bonafide HR departments to guide their novice managers nor can afford management coaches. Besides, it takes a new boss a year or two to learn the basics and become comfortable in his/her new role.

When Facebook was small enough and “the entire company could fit into a backyard party,” 25-year old product designer Julie Zhuo was asked to become a manager. Zhuo had started at Facebook as its first intern and then gone full-time. Having no prior managerial experience, she acted how she thought managers were supposed to act and made many mistakes. In due course, she found joy in the role, expanded her skill set, and evolved to become Facebook’s VP of product design.

In The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (2019,) Zhuo has chronicled her experiences from ramping-up into management and getting to know herself better. It’s the book she wishes had been there for the novice manager that she was.

Zhuo offers many hard-earned insights that only time in the trenches can reveal:

Operate from first principles. “Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.”
Not everyone is cut out for a managerial responsibility. “Being a manager is a highly personal journey, and if you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team.”
Let go of your old “individual contributor” role and make the shift to being the boss. Don’t spend time trying to do the work. Invest your time in coaching, supporting, and developing employees. Don’t run interference between them.
Discover your decision-making proclivities. Map out your strengths and weaknesses. “Great management typically comes from playing to your strengths rather than from fixing your weaknesses.”
Realize that the source of your power as a manager is everything but formal authority. Respect trumps popularity.
Don’t manage everyone in the same way. Learn to appreciate how distinctive each individual is in what he/she wants from work and what animates him/her to work well.
Trust is a critical ingredient in relationships. “Invest time and effort into creating and maintaining trusting relationships where people feel they can share their mistakes, challenges, and fears with you.”

Zhuo offers practical—if basic, but sufficient—advice for setting a vision, assessing the culture, delegating problems, giving feedback, aligning expectations, setting priorities, establishing a network of allies and confidants, hiring cleverly, and other responsibilities of leading a team. She delves into many difficult circumstances she’s encountered, e.g., handling previously-peers-now-employees whom she passed over for a promotion.

Recommendation: The Making of a Manager is an excellent primer for novice managers. It offers an insightful, practical, and relevant playbook for making the transition from being an outstanding individual contributor to becoming a good manager of others.

Complement with Andy Grove’s High Output Management (1983,) Loren Belker et al.’s The First-Time Manager (2012,) and Michael Watkins’s The First 90 Days (2013.)

How to Get Your Budget Through

December 3, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Be familiar with your company’s procedures and criteria for approving and managing capital expenditures. Your management will require a compelling return-on-investment (ROI) study (net present value, payback, breakeven, or internal rate of return estimates) vis-à-vis explicit or implicit hurdle rates.
Establish clear links between your budget and corporate strategy. If your management can see the real benefits to the business, they’ll find the costs easier to absorb. Amazon’s customer-oriented culture requires every proposal for a new feature, product, or service to be pitched by means of a “Mock Press Release” arguing how a hypothetical Amazon customer would first learn about the feature and its utility.
Don’t just roll your budget over from the previous year adding a certain percentage “and then some.” Many companies have adapted a cost-management tool called “Zero-Base Budgeting” that requires you to justify each line item in your budget as if it were an entirely new claim for an entirely new project.
State your assumptions explicitly. Prepare worst-case and best-case scenarios to augment realistic forecasting of the future and help prudent decision-making. Keep your budgets ambitious but realistic.
Allow room for contingencies. Avoid rigidities that could inhibit the quick and effective response to an unexpected event. Bring your contingency planning into the open for a careful review.
Add some fat, but not too much. Keep this in your back pocket, but be ready to make some cuts by knowing what their impact can be. Be clear and confident when questioned about any of the numbers in your budget.
Explain how true you were to the previous year’s budget. Make a distinction between controllable and uncontrollable budget variances. This will build your management’s confidence in your pitch for the year ahead.
Put your budget proposal to test with your team and supportive peers. Encourage them to ask all the difficult questions they can imagine. They may not only know where the skeletons are hidden and help you with the answers you’ll need, but also become indispensable allies in getting your budget approved.
To persuade each member of management, know what matters to him/her and link your budget to his/her objectives. Discuss your budget with the key decision-makers separately before a group discussion. (Management consulting firm McKinsey calls this technique “pre-wiring.”) By getting each participant’s buy-in, you can count on his/her support and avoid surprise reactions and disagreements.

Your Product May Be Excellent, But Is There A Market For It?

July 24, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Akio Morita, the visionary co-founder of Sony, liked to tell a story about recognizing opportunities and shaping them into business concepts.

Two shoe salesmen … find themselves in a rustic backward part of Africa. The first salesman wires back to his head office: “There is no prospect of sales. Natives do not wear shoes!” The other salesman wires: “No one wears shoes here. We can dominate the market. Send all possible stock.”

Morita, along with his co-founder Masaru Ibuka, was a genius at creating consumer products for which no obvious demand existed, and then generating demand for them. Sony’s hits included such iconic products as a hand-held transistor radio, the Walkman portable audio cassette player, the Diskman portable compact disk player, and the Betamax videocassette recorder.

Products Lost in Translation

As the following case studies will illustrate, many companies haven’t had Sony’s luck in launching products that can stir up demand.

In each case in point, deeply ingrained cultural attitudes affected how consumers failed to embrace products introduced into their respective markets.

Case Study #1: Nestlé’s Paloma Iced Tea in India

Marketing and Product Introduction Failure: Nestle's Paloma Iced Tea in India When Swiss packaged food-multinational Nestlé introduced Paloma iced tea in India in the ’80s, Nestlé’s market assessment was that the Indian beverage market was ready for an iced tea variety.

Sure thing, folks in India love tea. They consume it multiple times a day. However, they must have it hot—even in the heat of the summer. Street-side tea vendors are a familiar sight in India. Huddled around the chaiwalas are patrons sipping hot tea and relishing a savory samosa or a saccharine jalebi.

It’s no wonder, then, that, despite all the marketing efforts, Paloma turned out to be a debacle. Nestlé withdrew the product within a year.

Case Study #2: Kellogg’s Cornflakes in India

The American packaged foods multinational Kellogg’s failed in its initial introduction of cornflakes into the Indian market in the mid ’90s. Kellogg’s quickly realized that its products were alien to Indians’ consumption habits—accustomed to traditional hot, spicy, and heavy grub, the Indians felt hungry after eating a bowl of sweet cornflakes for breakfast. In addition, they poured hot milk over cornflakes rendering them soggy and less appetizing.

Case Study #3: Oreo Cookies in China

Marketing and Product Introduction Case Study: Oreo Green-tea Ice Cream Cookies in China When Kraft Foods, launched Oreo in China in 1996, America’s best-loved sandwich cookie didn’t fare very well. Executives in Kraft’s Chicago headquarters expected to just drop the American cookie into the Chinese market and watch it fly off shelves.

Chinese consumers found that Oreos were too sweet. The ritual of twisting open Oreo cookies, licking the cream inside, and then dunking it in milk before enjoying them was considered a “strangely American habit.”

Not until Kraft’s local Chinese leaders developed a local concept—a wafer format in subtler flavors such as green-tea ice cream—did Oreo become popular.

Idea for Impact: Your expertise may not translate in unfamiliar and foreign markets

In marketing, if success is all about understanding the consumers, you must be grounded in the reality of their lives to be able to understand their priorities.

Don’t assume that what makes a product successful in one market will be a winning formula in other markets as well.
Make products resonate with local cultures by contextualizing the products and tailoring them for local preferences.
Use small-scale testing to make sure your product can sway buyers.

3G Capital and the Fringes of Cost Management // Summary of Bob Fifer’s ‘How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less’

April 24, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

3G Capital’s Playbook: Look at EVERYTHING—There are No Sacred Cows in Cost-Cutting

Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital's Playbook for Cost-Cutting: Zero-based Budgeting During the past decade, the achievements of the Brazil-based private equity group 3G Capital have drawn attention to the aggressive cost cutting methods outlined in management consultant Bob Fifer’s How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less (1995.)

3G has raised the profitability of its acquired businesses by sacking thousands of workers, shutting down factories, simplifying operations—even using cheaper ingredients. In Israel, the 3G-controlled Heinz was forced to rebrand its iconic ketchup as “tomato seasoning” after a cost cutting-inspired shift to GMO-derived constituents. 3G’s playbook, however, encourages increasing budgets for strategically important business functions—for instance, Kraft Heinz has increasingly expanded spending on advertising and product improvement.

At every 3G-run company—Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller, Heinz, Kraft Foods, Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeyes,—the “zero-based budgeting” accounting tool forces managers to justify all claims on their organizations’ financial resources. As I noted in a previous article, this method forces managers to justify every line item on a team’s budget as if it were new a claim for an entirely new project, instead of merely being carried over from the prior year:

Zero-base budgeting advocates say that it detects inflated budgets and unearths cost savings by focusing on priorities rather than simply relying on the precedent. Managers secure a tighter focus on operations by justifying each line-item in their budgets, thereby reducing the money they allocate to the lowest level possible. Managers can also contrast competing claims on their ever-scarce financial resources and therefore shift funds to more impactful projects.

How to Double Your Profits has become a must-read for all managers affected by any 3G deal. This obscure book, purportedly written in just 15 hours, was also a favorite of such business luminaries as Sanford Weill (of Citigroup,) Bob Lipp (Travelers Insurance,) and Jack Welch (General Electric.)

3G’s methods have upended an entire industry known for characteristically lower profit margins. The specter of being acquired by 3G has forced Unilever, General Mills, J.M. Smucker, Nestle, Pilgrim’s Pride, Phillip Morris, and other consumer staples companies to implement sweeping cost cutting programs.

Every Expense is Evaluated to Be Cutback Unless It Contributes Directly to the Bottom Line

How to Double Your Profits obsesses about cutting costs by any and all means possible. Every corporate resource is a cost-center that must be pared down to the bone—unless it’s a strategic function. When it comes to marketing, for example, the author recommends outspending the competition in both good and bad times.

Seventy-eight brief chapters (“steps”) deal with every possible drain on time, money, and people in the modern corporation: reducing layers of management, cutting the amount of time managers spend in meetings, shrinking corporate expense accounts, eliminating first-class air tickets, getting rid of pointless reports, and so on.

Focus on profits. “We’re here to make a profit. In fact, we’re here to make as much profit as we possibly can. Profit is the most accurate, most all-encompassing measure of whether we truly are the best. … Profits benefit all of us … when the profits slow down, we all suffer.”
Run a true meritocracy. Set expectations about how performance will be measured and what rewards will accrue to what levels of performance. “Within any level or group of employees, there must be wide disparities in salary, tied to demonstrable differences in performance and contribution to the bottom line.”
Avoid paralysis by analysis, make decisions faster. “Superb managers are instinctual, making the right decision most of the time based on limited data. The quantification that less-skilled managers insist upon is in fact illusory: They wind up making decisions based upon that which can be quantified rather than that which is important. Most of the critical variables in any business decision can only be judged and evaluated based on experience and instinct, not quantified.”

Much of the advice is effective, if predictable, but some suggestions are clearly crooked:

Step 24 / Declare Freezes and Cuts: “Send a letter declaring an across-the board 3% reduction to suppliers. Make sure the letter is from someone high up and intimidating….(after getting the bill) deduct 3% from the bill and say, ‘Didn’t you read my CEO’s letter? Are you trying to get me fired? “
Step 37 / Accounts Payable: “Never pay a bill until the supplier asks for it at least twice. You’ll be surprised: A few suppliers will take as much as two years before they finally get around to asking for their money.”

But Then Again, There is only so Much Fat to Cut out: The Crisis at Kraft Heinz

When discharged without due forethought, elements of Fifer’s cost-cutting mindset could lead to corporate myopia and an utter disregard for such intangible assets as human capital, brand value, and corporate philanthropy.

Certainly, in businesses with substantial cost inefficiencies and bloat, cost-cutting can produce considerable gains in profits, but even with these firms, gains will be time-limited, because there is only so much fat to cut out.

Cost Cutting and The Crisis at Kraft Heinz Aggressive cost-cutting has been blamed for the recent travails at Kraft Heinz. Over the last three years, Kraft Heinz’s fading return on invested capital and decreasing sales point toward a leadership team that has been giving precedence to near-term cash flows to the detriment of its long-term competitive position (“moat.”)

With the expansion of cut-price private-label brands, consumers are no longer remaining devoted to brands like they once did. Kraft Heinz’s roster of products is less appealing to customers than it used to be, and cost cutting hasn’t helped—Kraft Heinz has invested just 2%–3% of its sales on brand spending, as against 7%–9% at comparable consumer goods companies.

Recommendation: Fast Read ‘How to Double Your Profits’

Bob Fifer’s How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less, even if out-of-date and brash in style, could help drive systematic cost-consciousness in large firms that have bloated cost structures in the hypercompetitive business environments.

Entrepreneurs, managers, and employees will find in How to Double Your Profits many ideas for establishing a culture where every employee feels liable for adding value to the organization’s bottom line. The key takeaway lessons are:

Determine which costs are strategic (costs that bring in business and improve the bottom line) and over-invest in those processes as long as they are effective, i.e. producing better results. “Place the burden of proof on justifying costs, not on eliminating them.”
Avoid over-quantifying and over-analyzing processes and results, particularly when the extra precision will not have any bearing on business decision-making.
Consider business processes as a means to an end—a focus on business results should trump a focus on business processes. In other words, focus single-mindedly on business results.

Complement with Francisco Souza Homem de Mello’s The 3G Way (2014) and Cristiane Correa’s Dream Big (2014)—informative books on 3G written by Brazilian business journalists who’ve covered 3G and its founders over the years. Warren Buffett, who regularly teams up with 3G Capital, recommends these books.

Beware of Key-Person Dependency Risk

September 7, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

Key-Person Dependency Risk is the threat posed by an organization or a team’s over-reliance on one or a few individuals.

The key-person has sole custody of some critical institutional knowledge, creativity, reputation, or experience that makes him indispensable to the organization’s business continuity and its future performance. If he/she should leave, the organization suffers the loss of that valued standing and expertise.

Small businesses and start-ups are especially exposed to key-person dependency risk. Tesla, for example, faces a colossal key-man risk—its fate is linked closely to the actions of founder-CEO Elon Musk, who has come under scrutiny lately.

Much of Berkshire Hathaway’s performance over the decades has been based on CEO Warren Buffett’s reputation and his ability to wring remarkable deals from companies in duress. There’s a great deal of prestige in selling one’s business to Buffett. He is irreplaceable; given his remarkable long-term record of accomplishment, it is important that much of what he has built over the years remains intact once he is gone. Buffett has built a strong culture that is likely to endure.

Key Employees are Not Only Assets, but also Large Contingent Liabilities

The most famous “key man” of all time was Apple’s Steve Jobs. Not only was he closely linked to his company’s identity, but he also played a singular role in building Apple into the global consumer-technology powerhouse that it is. Jobs had steered Apple’s culture in a desired direction and groomed his handpicked management team to sustain Apple’s inventive culture after he was gone. Tim Cook, the operations genius who became Apple’s CEO after Jobs died in 2011, has led the company to new heights.

The basic solution to key-person dependency risk is to identify and document critical knowledge of the organization. (Capturing tacit knowledge is not easy when it resides “in the key-person’s head.”) Organizations must also focus on cross-training and succession planning to identify and enable others to develop and perform the same tasks as the key-person.

Idea for Impact: No employee should be indispensable. A well-managed company is never dependent upon the performance of one or a few individuals. As well, no employee should be allowed to hoard knowledge, relationships, or resources to achieve job security.

How to Buy a Small Business // Book Summary of Richard Ruback’s HBR Guide

June 26, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Beyond the capital markets and startups, I’ve been exploring buying a suitable small business to invest in and operate. To inform myself with the process of searching and valuing privately-held establishments, I recently perused Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff’s resourceful HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company (2017.)

The authors of this HBR Guide teach a popular Harvard Business School class on “acquisition entrepreneurship.” Their curriculum trains self-employment-inclined MBA students to search, negotiate, and buy an established business and become an entrepreneur-CEO within a year or two.

According to the authors, MBA students are drawn to their class by the prospect of a meaningful leadership responsibility earlier in their careers, as opposed to slowly climbing the corporate ladder or taking on the great risk of starting a company from scratch and establishing a viable business model.

The first section of the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business can help you decide if entrepreneurship is a good match to your temperament, lifestyle, work-experience, and career ambitions. The largest part of the book provides a comprehensive roadmap for all aspects of acquiring a business—bankrolling the search process, deal-sourcing, managing risk, organizing equity- and debt-financing, running due diligence processes, structuring the purchase, and closing the deal. The final section of the book discusses changing the leadership over and transitioning into operating management.

Reflection: Is Acquisition Entrepreneurship Right for You?

Self-employment is not for everyone. Entrepreneurs need to be smart, driven, business-savvy, self-motivated, strategic, resilient, persuasive, and be able to deal with uncertainty.
On top of the challenges of self-employment, acquiring and operating a small-business will require reaching out, projecting self-confidence, and persuading people you don’t know—business brokers, financiers, investors, regulators, sellers, employees, and customers.
During your exploration of what business to buy, you’ll have to quickly learn about unfamiliar industries, markets, and companies. As a leader, you must be able to develop cross-functional expertise quickly.

Searching: A Full-time Job in Itself

Plan to commit full-time for six months to two years to raise funds from financiers, identify and vet potential acquisition targets, and negotiate with sellers on a realistic purchase price. Afterward, plan for no less than three more months to perform due diligence and complete the transaction.
“When you are seeking out a business to buy, you might face months when you work 12 hours a day and simply not find a desirable prospect. It’s a frustrating experience with lots of effort and no reward.”
Arrange for debt and equity financing from potential backers and risk-sharing partners. Contact affluent folks in your network and investors who specialize in small-businesses. The networks of people you bring together to help your mission can also lend a hand during the deal making and the due diligence processes.
To find potential businesses to buy, try reaching out directly to businesses whose owners may be inclined to sell. Engage small business brokers (there’re some 3,000 small business brokers and intermediaries in North America,) or comb through databases of small businesses for sale.
For potential sellers, look for business owners who, after building their firms over the decades, are approaching retirement and don’t have an inheritor interested in running the business. Many aging business owners are determined to ensure that their businesses live on.

Seek Enduringly Profitable Businesses: Recurring Customers and Predictable Revenue

Look for “enduringly profitable businesses”—stable, slow-growth companies in dull-and-boring industries (such as sandblasting, equipment maintenance, industrial repair and overhaul, window-cleaning, service-providers) in small, defensible niche markets.
Seek businesses whose business-to-business customers are unlikely to switch vendors because the product or service their customers buy isn’t a big part of the costs of their business. Consequently, they’re not motivated to shop around for lower-cost vendors and squeeze margins.
Focus on businesses with yearly revenues of $5 million to $15 million and cash flows of $750,000 to $3 million.
Avoid promising start-ups and risky turnaround opportunities; “it is tempting to imagine buying a troubled business or one with uneven performance, because the purchase price would be very low. But we strongly advise against it, because you’ll have to reinvent the business model and doing so is a very difficult and risky endeavor. Instead, buy a profitable business with an established model for success—one that is profitable year after year.”
Avoid high-growth businesses because “high growth means that your new customers will quickly outnumber your existing ones. Because new customers bring new demands, there are many ways to get in trouble. New customers are, well, new; they have no loyalty to the company and no history. High growth requires great management effort. It also absorbs money rapidly, and raising that money puts a strain on the business and its owner. A rapidly growing firm also attracts competitors, which see the expanding market and the opportunity to attract new customers. So, in a high-growth business, you could work hard and still fail if you cannot keep pace with your competitors. And even if your business survives, you might find that competition has forced you to sell at low prices, so you enjoy little financial reward after all. Making this all the harder, the seller will demand a much higher price for a business that has the potential to grow quickly.”
Avoid technology-driven companies (they face shifting customer needs and therefore demand constant reinvention,) cyclical business, and businesses with well-established competitors.
Small business-owners usually don’t hire large consulting firms or investment banks to sell their businesses. Their businesses are too small to appeal to private equity firms. “We think it makes sense to buy a business with between $750,000 and $2.0 million in annual pretax profits. … At the upper end of our size range—$2 million or more in profitability—we find that institutional investors, like smaller private-equity firms, start to become interested and that competition raises the purchase price, reducing the financial benefits of owning the business.”
“EBITDA margin (EBITDA/revenue) ≥ 20% for services and manufacturing or 15% for distribution and wholesale”

A Checklist for Enduringly Profitable Businesses

Initial Filters:

Is the prospect consistently profitable?

Is it an established business instead of a startup or turnaround?

Is it in the right size range?

Is it located in a place you are willing to live?

Do you have the skills to manage it?

Does it fit your lifestyle?

Deeper Filters:

Is the prospect enduringly profitable?

Is the owner serious about selling the business?

Valuing the Company and Negotiating a Deal

Use the company’s past financial information to project future earnings and your return on investment. Then decide on how much you should pay for a small business: “You’ll need to base the offer price on the general range of 3x–5x EBITDA.” Adjust the multiple for profit margins and growth prospects.
Run a primary due diligence—“a focused period of rapid learning in preparation for making an offer. This is when you’ll test the seller’s initial claims and verify the information that has made the business appealing to you. … You’re looking for any reason that you might not want to acquire this business.”
Finance using equity and debt. “Visit banks and approach your investor network to raise money for the acquisition. You should be prepared to provide information about the business and its industry, details on the due diligence that you’ve done, your financial projections, and the deal terms that you are proposing.”
Once your offer has been accepted after negotiations, run a confirmatory due diligence “in which the company’s records will be fully open to you. You will typically have around 90 days to work with your accountant and attorney to check for any inconsistencies and red flags. … This can be an extremely nerve-racking time for both the buyer and the seller, so it’s important to be patient and calm.”

Transitioning into Leadership and Emphasizing Business-as-Usual

As part of the negotiated deal, try to get the seller to stick around for 3 to 6 months to help you in the transition.
“After closing the sale, you should focus on four tasks: introducing yourself to all your managers and employees, meeting with external stakeholders, communicating the transition plan to everyone, and taking control of your cash flow.”
“The most common trouble for small firms under new owners is running out of cash. … So set up a process whereby you approve all payments before they go out, and review your accounts-receivable balances at least weekly. You should also implement a 90-day rolling cash-flow forecast.”
Meet with all the constituencies and reassure them that they won’t see any immediate changes. Lay emphasis on “your overarching goals for the company—for example, excellent customer service, commitment to quality, a satisfying work environment—and encourage people to stay focused on their work.”
Visit every major customer as soon as you can. Keep your ears open for ideas to improve your product- and service-offerings.
Don’t make any big changes early on, get to know the business, and be very respectful of all the constituents—they know more about the business than you do.

Recommendation: Read ‘HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business’ for a Very Good Introduction on How to Buy and Organize Finance for a Business

Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff’s HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business is excellent manual for prospective entrepreneurs, employees of small businesses, financiers, and value-seeking investors. You will also become acquainted about interactions with bankers, brokers, sellers, accountants, and attorneys you meet while searching for a business to buy.

Looking at Problems from an Outsider’s Perspective

March 28, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Fixation Hinders Creative Thinking

In two previous articles (this and this,) I’ve addressed the psychological concept of a “fixed mental set” or “fixation:” assessing a problem from a habituated perspective can prevent you from seeing the obvious and from breaking away from an entrenched pattern of thinking.

A period of rest, entertainment, or exposure to an alternative environment can usually dissipate fixation. The resulting shift in perspective can alter your point of view in a literal and sensory way, or it may change the way you think about or define the problem at hand.

A particularly instructive example of the beneficial effects of altering thought perspectives comes from Andy Grove’s autobiography / management primer Only the Paranoid Survive (1996.) Grove, the former Chairman and CEO of Intel who passed away earlier this year, was one of the most influential tech executives Silicon Valley has ever seen.

Japanese Onslaught on Intel’s Memory Business

Memory chips dominated Intel’s revenue, since the company was founded in 1968. In fact, Intel had a near monopoly in the memory business. However, by the late ’70s, a few Japanese competitors emerged. Grove reflected, “The quality levels attributed to Japanese memories were beyond what we thought possible. … Our first reaction was denial. We vigorously attacked the data.” In due course, Intel recognized the threat to its competitive position. (Between 1978 and 1988, the Japanese companies grew their market share in the memory business from 30% to 60%.)

At the same time, a small entrepreneurial team of engineers had developed Intel’s first microprocessor. In 1981, Intel persuaded IBM to choose this microprocessor to run their personal computers.

By 1985, when Grove was President, Intel’s executives engaged in an intense debate on how to respond to the onslaught of Japanese competitors in the memory business. One faction of engineers wanted to leapfrog the Japanese and build better memory chips. Another faction was in favor of disposing the lucrative memory business and betting Intel’s future on its promising microprocessor technology—something they believed the Japanese couldn’t match.

The “Revolving Door Test:” Getting an Outsider’s Perspective

In the middle of this intense debate, Grove was at a meeting with Intel’s CEO, Gordon Moore (of the Moore’s Law fame.) Grove had an idea for Moore; he recalled this episode in Only the Paranoid Survive,

I remember a time in the middle of 1985, after this aimless wandering had been going on for almost a year. I was in my office with Intel’s chairman and CEO, Gordon Moore, and we were discussing our quandary. Our mood was downbeat. I looked out the window at the Ferris Wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon and asked, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?” Gordon answered without hesitation, “He would get us out of memories.” I stared at him, numb, then said, “Why don’t you and I walk out the door, come back in and do it ourselves?”

The switch in perspective—i.e. asking “What would our successors do?”—provided a moment of clarity for Moore and Grove. By contemplating Intel’s strategic challenges from an outsider’s perspective, shutting down the memory business was the discernible choice. Even Intel’s customers were supportive:

In fact, when we informed them of the decision, some of them reacted with the comment, “It sure took you a long time.” People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.

From the time Intel made the important decision to kill its memory chips business, it has dominated the microprocessor market.

If existing management want to keep their jobs when the basics of the business are undergoing profound change, they must adopt an outsider’s intellectual objectivity. They must do what they need to do to get through the strategic inflection point unfettered by any emotional attachment to the past. That’s what Gordon and I had to do when we figuratively went out the door, stomped out our cigarettes and returned to the job.

People in the trenches are usually in touch with pending changes early. Salespeople understand shifting customer demand before management does; financial analysts are the earliest to know when the fundamentals of a business change. While management was kept from responding by beliefs that were shaped by out earlier successes, our production planners and financial analysts dealt with allocations and numbers in an objective world.

Idea for Impact: If You’re Stuck on a Problem, Shift Your Perspective

Often, you can find the solutions to difficult problems merely by defining or formulating them in a new, more productive way.

Consider employing Andy Grove’s “Revolving Door Test” and examining your problems through an outsider’s lens. This shift in perspective may not only engender intellectual objectivity but also muffle the emotion and anxiety that comes with momentous decision-making.

Book Summary of Peter Drucker’s ‘The Practice of Management’

February 21, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi 5 Comments

Peter Drucker (1909–2005) was the 20th century’s leading thinker on business and management. He was amazingly prolific—he produced 39 volumes on management and leadership and worked right until his death a week before his 96th birthday.

Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954) played a pivotal role in the recognition of management as a professional discipline. Even six decades after publication, The Practice of Management remains relevant for its original, profound, and timeless ideas. Drucker’s conception for the organization as an integral part of society, his elucidation of the nature of managerial tasks, his emphasis on good governance, and his prescription for effective leadership have served managers well over the decades.

Here are some prominent insights from The Practice of Management:

Drucker accentuated the need for clarity about the meaning of a business. He argued, “‘what is our business’ is the most important question successful management groups have to address.” In corporate strategy, this inquiry has become the underpinning for business analysis and the formulation of mission statements.
A business exists to “create a customer.” Therefore, managers need to query who their customers are and what the business must try to do for its customers.
The Practice of Management contributed to a rich analysis of the role of business in society. Drucker proposed that a business exists at three constructs that influence each other and thus establish the organization’s performance, mission, and business definition:
1. as an economic establishment that produces value for its stakeholders and for the society,
2. as a community that employs people, pays them, develops them, and coordinates their efforts to increase productivity,
3. as a “social institution that is deeply embedded in society and values and as such is affected by public interest discussion, debate, and values.”
“The manager is the dynamic, life-giving element in every business” who defines the organization’s mission, develops and retains productive teams, coordinates various activities, sets goals, and gets things done.
Leadership gives the organization meaning and purpose—leadership defines and nurtures the organization’s central values, creates a sense of mission, allocates resources, and builds systems and processes in pursuit of the organization’s goals.
Management entails farsighted thinking about the future state of things and taking appropriate risks to capitalize on opportunities. Additionally, “managing a business must be a creative rather than adaptive task. The more a management creates economic conditions or changes them rather than passively adapts to them, the more it manages the business.”
Managers inculcate the dominant cultural norm in the organization through their actions. These values become evident in the decisions they make concerning whom they recruit, whom they retain and promote, the goals they pursue, and the ethical parameters with which they frame their decisions.
The Practice of Management popularized the concept of management by objectives (MBO) for the successful execution of an organization’s strategic plan. The MBO process ensures delineation of key objectives, prudent allocation of resources, dedication of effort on key goals, use of real-time feedback, and effective communication. MBO helps managers organize and motivate their employees, promote effective communication, develop employees, measure performance, and increase their sense of empowerment.

The Practice of Management is one of those books that his admirers tend to appreciate more with every successive reading. Drucker’s remarkable virtues as the “father of modern management”—viz., clarity, usefulness, and common-sense pragmatism—are all on display in this book.

Recommendation: Read—it’s the best book you’ll find on the responsibilities, tasks, and challenges that managers undertake. The Practice of Management will have a profound effect on your thinking.

Use Zero-Base Budgeting to Build a Culture of Cost Management

May 17, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Traditional Incremental Budgeting

As part of the traditional budgeting process, managers tend to roll their budget over from one year to the next. In addition to accounting for any strategic initiatives or headcount changes, they simply add to every line-item in the previous year’s budget a certain percentage “and then some” to account for cost inflation. They assume that the ‘baseline’ is automatically approved, so they justify just the variances versus prior years.

The drawback of this budgeting process is that nobody questions the underlying ‘baseline’ costs. Further, these cost increases are carried from year to year.

Zero-Base Budgeting

In the 1970s, Peter Pyhrr, a Texas Instruments accountant, formally developed zero-base budgeting. In his influential Harvard Business Review article and a book titled Zero-base Budgeting, Pyhrr advocated that a prior year’s budget should not be used as a benchmark for the next year’s budgeted costs.

With zero-base budgeting, managers prepare a fresh budget every year without reference to the past. Consequently, they start every line-item in the budget from a zero-base even if the amount didn’t increase from the previous year. They are thus forced to justify all claims on their organization’s financial resources as if they were entirely new claims for entirely new projects.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Zero-Base Budgeting

Zero-base budgeting advocates say that it detects inflated budgets and unearths cost savings by focusing on priorities rather than simply relying on the precedent. Managers secure a tighter focus on operations by justifying each line-item in their budgets, thereby reducing the money they allocate to the lowest level possible. Managers can also contrast competing claims on their ever-scarce financial resources and therefore shift funds to more impactful projects.

Zero-base budgeting critics call attention to the many practical difficulties of implementing this time-consuming tool. More importantly, since zero-base involves give-and-take, the budgeting process is susceptible to favoritism, cronyism, and political influence.

3G Capital’s Success with Zero-Base Budgeting

Zero-base budgeting has garnered much attention in the last few years as the centerpiece of an aggressive cost-cutting recipe used by 3G Capital, a thriving Brazilian buyout firm that’s renowned for its parsimonious operations. 3G’s predominant investment strategy is to acquire and then squeeze value out of companies, particularly in the food and restaurant industries.

At Anheuser-Busch, InBev, Tim Hortons, Burger King, Heinz, Kraft, and other acquired companies, 3G’s hard-nosed managers have used zero-base budgeting to initiate sweeping cost cuts. They’ve shut down factories, laid off thousands of factory workers, eliminated hundreds of management jobs, sold off corporate jets, forced executives to fly coach, restricted employees’ office supplies to $15 a month, and even asked employees to seek permission to take color printouts.

Inspired by 3G, many other companies have adapted zero-base budgeting to root out bloat. Some have even gotten carried away—for example, Pilgrim’s Pride (an American meat-processing company) used zero-base budgeting to measure how much soap employees use to wash their hands and how much Gatorade hourly employees consume during breaks.

Idea for Impact: Zero-Base Budgeting Is an Effective Cost-Management Tool

Cutting operating costs is an ever-bigger priority at many organizations. For each line-item in your budget, ask “Should this be done at all?” and “Is this the most efficient and effective use of our resources?”

Consider zero-base budgeting to rigorously find cost-effective ways to improve your operations. It can bring about cost discipline, force your operations to become lean, and ultimately boost your bottom line.

MBA in a Nutshell

Distinguish the Variances That Require a Manager’s Attention

Managers Just Can’t Do Everything

Idea for Impact: Don’t Get Lost in the Thicket of Trivia

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Products Lost in Translation

Case Study #1: Nestlé’s Paloma Iced Tea in India

Case Study #2: Kellogg’s Cornflakes in India

Case Study #3: Oreo Cookies in China

Idea for Impact: Your expertise may not translate in unfamiliar and foreign markets

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3G Capital’s Playbook: Look at EVERYTHING—There are No Sacred Cows in Cost-Cutting

Every Expense is Evaluated to Be Cutback Unless It Contributes Directly to the Bottom Line

But Then Again, There is only so Much Fat to Cut out: The Crisis at Kraft Heinz

Recommendation: Fast Read ‘How to Double Your Profits’

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Key Employees are Not Only Assets, but also Large Contingent Liabilities

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Reflection: Is Acquisition Entrepreneurship Right for You?

Searching: A Full-time Job in Itself

Seek Enduringly Profitable Businesses: Recurring Customers and Predictable Revenue

A Checklist for Enduringly Profitable Businesses

Valuing the Company and Negotiating a Deal

Transitioning into Leadership and Emphasizing Business-as-Usual

Recommendation: Read ‘HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business’ for a Very Good Introduction on How to Buy and Organize Finance for a Business

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Fixation Hinders Creative Thinking

Japanese Onslaught on Intel’s Memory Business

The “Revolving Door Test:” Getting an Outsider’s Perspective

Idea for Impact: If You’re Stuck on a Problem, Shift Your Perspective

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Traditional Incremental Budgeting

Zero-Base Budgeting

Advantages and Disadvantages of Zero-Base Budgeting

3G Capital’s Success with Zero-Base Budgeting

Idea for Impact: Zero-Base Budgeting Is an Effective Cost-Management Tool

Suggested Reading

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