IB BOOKS
Issue No. 37 - October/November 2007
Heed lessons of failure
by Pamela Brombal
Why do so many businesses that seem to have the necessary management and technical capacity to succeed, fail to do so? And why do the successful businesses thrive? These difficult yet typical questions often generate confusing and conflicting answers.
Dr Terence Sheppard, a business consultant with more than 20 years’ experience in assisting managers all over the world and founder of Sheppard Consulting Group, explains his take on these burning questions of business success or failure in The Writing on the Wall.
Terence says the difficulties do not lie in the market environment, or in the economic conditions of the day, as these affect all businesses equally. He suggests the real answer lies within the businesses themselves and, in particular, how they are managed.
“There are two requirements for business success – sustained demand from customers and sustained commitment from staff to the business,” he says.
“Achieving success in business is difficult. Sustaining success once you have achieved it is even harder and requires constant vigilance on the part of senior management in particular.
“To remain successful any organisation must continually re-evaluate its value creation to ensure it is still relevant to its selected market. To do this, companies must be talking to customers regularly about today’s products as well as tomorrow’s.
“The second area of a business that management must remain focused on if success is to be sustained is the development and management of staff. Without staff who are genuinely engaged in and committed to the success of its business, no organisation can succeed in the longer term.”
The Writing on the Wall takes as a case study the struggle between Coles and Woolworths – how one retail giant seemingly out-competed the other. The demise of Coles, versus the expansion of Woolworths, shows how large corporations can also ‘get it wrong’ and provides us wit...
