Vivek Sood's Blog, page 57

5 ways to turn your company around using your business network

There are a number of factors that have ensured that business have been struggling in the current economic environment. Technology has made many business models defunct, incomes and profits are falling due to cost cutting and price conscious consumers and off-shoring has hollowed out entire industries.

Given this reality, business networks are essential to struggling companies to help turn their fortunes around. Here are five ways you can use your business network to turn your company around – the five cornerstones of a Five Star Business Network.

Develop Fire-Aim-Ready Innovation: To go from ‘zero’ to ‘hero’ in the current business environment, your company needs to develop a culture that promotes innovation. This is the ‘fire’ element, the fire in the ‘belly of the enterprise’ that encourages it to develop new products. You can hire people from your network to help your company develop this ‘fire’.  If your company has this, you should aim to promote your product to  a niche market. Then you will be ‘ready’ to achieve success.
Develop seed efficiency: To turn around your business, it needs to develop ‘seed efficiency’. Cutting overheads will allow your to cut costs and focus on areas of profitability. Utilising your network will help you to learn how best cut your costs and develop maximum efficiency.
Ensure transaction optimisation profitability:  Any good business needs to ensure that its e-commerce mechanisms are up to scratch. In an age of instant gratification, consumers don’t want to spend a long time buying your product. Ensure your e-commerce facility is optimised in order to turn your business around. Find  your network gurus with e-commerce gravitas in order to maximise your profitability.
Phase in your products according to the original design: In order to turn your business around, you should also exploit your network to get feedback on whether your products are being developed the way that they are intended. This will allow you to maximise sales from products with a clear design value.
Results focused outsourcing: If there is a part of your business that is lacking, you can outsource it to a results driven connection in order to the perform the business function properly. This will in turn help you turn your business around.

10 Ways To Create Value Through Your Business Network

The key to realising value in your business is to use your business network. The marketplace has moved on from the time when competition was just among companies. Your business must now succeed  based on the quality of the your network of suppliers and customers.  You have to leverage trusted connections to help you design, produce, market, sell and maintain your products and services.

Below are ten ways you can leverage these relationships to create value:

Optimise your online network: Business oriented social media like LinkedIn has made maintaining and building your online business network easy. You can source information, pursue warm leads and even ask your online supplier and customer contacts for inspiration for your next venture. You should maintain regular contact with these connections to stay up – to –date with where product trends and innovation are heading in your industry.
Optimise your offline network: Despite the advent of online business networks, offline business networks still provide a very useful medium where you can meet your next supplier or customer. You can join exsiting groups such as the Freemasons, Rotarians and clubs including chambers of commerce.
Understand the principle of the ‘network effect’:  Another way of creating value from your business network is understanding the concept of the ‘network effect’. The ‘network effect’ is the idea that the more value adding supplier and customer connections you make, the more valuable your network becomes, until it dominates others.
Harness the buy-in of online contacts for your product or service: Online contacts such as LinkedIn connections can provide feedback on your business ideas and can provide case studies of their success in developing their own products and services.
Realise that your business network is your most valuable asset: Your business network is your most valuable asset because of the latent energy of the participants in it. If you have a high quality business network, your suppliers and customers will invest in your success or help you to work out how to be successful.
Use a high quality IT system to formalise your network: Your business network requires a high quality IT system and strategy to formalise it.
Adopt the cornerstones of a Five Star Business Network:  A Five-Star Business Network adopts five principles: “fire-aim-ready innovation”, “Speed-to-Store Efficiency”, “Transaction-Optimisation-Profitability”, “Advanced-Product-Phasing” and “Results-focussed outsourcing and Modularisation”. Find out more information about you can add these principles to your business network by buying Global Supply Network’s award winning book 5-Star Business Network.
Keep up to date with market information: Decision making technology has developed so much over the least 40 years that it has demands businesses keep up to date information. The same applies to your decision making. You need up to date information in order to make the best decisions.
Apply the 80/20 rule: You will get 80% of the results in building your business network from 20% of the interactions you have with customers and suppliers. This rule still applies.
Focus on serving deserving customers and suppliers.

Five Slow Poisons that are Killing the Western Businesses, and making CEOs’ jobs harder than they need to be

By – Vivek Sood

(Sydney, Australia based Vivek Sood is the world’s foremost authority on Global Supply Chains which are the commercial engines sitting deep within modern economies and driving them. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and has done courses from Harvard, MIT, and University of London. As the Managing Director of Global Supply Chain Group, he works as a consultant to CEOs and boards of directors of large global corporations, and helps them multiply profits by using the full power of global supply networks. He is also the author of “The 5-STAR Business Network”.)

 

Recently, while on a business trip through Spain and USA I was struck with a thought that western businesses are gradually but surely being killed by a number of slow poisons which are so ubiquitous and accepted by all of us, that we fail to notice their impact on the businesses, economies and people. All of these slow poison were useful and necessary at a previous time and served well at that time. However, they have far outlived their usefulness and are now detrimental to the health of western businesses, economies and societies. Let me outline what I think five of these slow poisons are.

Unions

In the 1930s and 40s unions made great strides in betterment of working conditions of the factory workers, dock workers and most other trade workers. Since then, unions or their glorified cousins such as American Medical Associations, Pilots and Harbour Masters Federations and similar bodies are doing no service to the companies, the economy and even to their own membership.

 

Why? Because – they have made conditions so tough for businesses and consumers that they will do anything they can possibly do to go around union labour. Think about the medical tourism, outsourcing, offshoring, double-stack trains and other means devised to circumvent having to use unionized inputs.

 

In my view, the places unions are needed today are Dubai, GCC, Bangla Desh, Vietnam, China, Myanmar, Philippines and Indian Call Centers. These are the places where conditions should be improved to make them more acceptable. The unions serve no useful purpose whatsoever in western economies where the pendulum has swung too far on the other side.

Now, before you accuse me of bias – let me put it on record that I was a member of a powerful Maritime Union for more than a decade, and have observed the workings of unions from a very close quarter. Without going into too many distracting details, let me state the conclusion I draw from my observations – the places where unions have existed for more than 25 years they hardly benefit that supposed beneficiaries – their memberships. Ironically, the places that need the unions the most – as stated above – do not allow effective union activity.

 

Wide Income Disparity

Aligned with the poison of the unions is the second key killer – the wide income disparity between the incomes of the top-tier and the bottom tier of the society. At one time the top tier in a company would earn no more than 15 to 20 times the wages of the bottom tier in the same company. Now 40-50 times is the norm, and in some companies a multiple of up to 100 or more can be seen.

 

Nothing saps the morale in a company more than the feeling of injustice and unfairness among its employees. If the remuneration committees of the boards of directors were really serious about the performance of the company, and shareholder interest – the first step they would take would be to link all the salaries in the company to the lowest paid workers’ hourly wages and put guidelines in place to limit the multiples thereof. Ironically, this will help not only the shareholders, but also the management itself. They will find their jobs a lot easier as a result and massive spends on culture change, and change management can be avoided by one simple step.

 

Complacency

The sense of entitlement, complacency and the imperial privilege can be observed even today in almost all the nations that once had a great empire – Spain, Portugal, Britain and France.

 

Unfortunately, now the same feeling can be quite frequently seen in the United States, Australia and even Canada. There seems to be a belief among a large number of people that the world (or nature, or universe or some such entity) owes them a comfortable living, whether they do anything to deserve it, or not!

 

In the former imperial nations it is understandable because generations grew up hearing legendary stories of fabulous riches derived from the empire where just being part of the winning team ensured a comfortable lifestyle. For example Cecil Rhodes famously said “Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.”

However, many people – perhaps even the majority – in new world, long famous for its work ethic seems to be getting caught in the same degenerative disease of wanting something for nothing. That game can continue only for a limited time.

 

 

Wall Street and other similar institutions

Being a Chartered Financial Analyst, it pains me greatly to add wall street and other financial institutions to this list. After all the function of finance serves a useful purpose in the economy – capital raising, allocation and performance monitoring. However, the events of the last decade have demonstrated that wall street does less than adequate job at all of these functions.

That in itself is not enough to include it in this list. For that to happen, its impact on the rest of the economy, and the businesses at large has to be sufficiently detrimental to be deemed poisonous. The fact that instruments of risk management such as esoteric options and other derivatives have now become instruments of unbridled speculation where risks are rarely fully explained to the other side, the vast growth in the virtual economy of derivative trades that far surpasses the real economy and repeated bail-outs due to propensity for moral hazard trades by too-big-to-fail institutions have all created a two-tier economy of real businesses that make and sell things and banks that conduct business that no one (not even their own CEOs) fully understand. Like the priests in the Pharaohs courts they continue to exhort people to trust their skills and intentions while their actions wreak havoc on the economy.

 

Ivy League MBA institutions

This inclusion also pains me a lot because I do have an MBA from an elite business school in Australia. However, on balance, after studying the theories emerging from these business schools over the last 25 years or so, I have to say that while most of the economic and finance theory is hogwash, most of the strategic theory is merely a late codification of existing practices of the companies. Tenured professors in most these business schools merely conduct research that feeds on each other while of little practical use to the businesses.

 

After all, If it was useful, you would expect the businesses to be thriving and the economies to be robust. I can give hundreds of examples of such theory but in the interest of brevity of this piece let me give just one – business schools continue to teach the importance of market risk (beta) when it is clear that in the era of zero interest rate policy all the underpinnings of the Capital Asset Pricing Model are flawed.

As a result, in an era when technical advances and scientific research have created an abundance of outputs ( agricultural, industrial and other material needs of human existence), convoluted economic and strategic theory has managed to create an environment of anxiety, uncertainty and scarcity among the population.

 

Does this mean that there is no hope for the western economies. I would not be writing this blog, if I thought that was the case. As I said at the beginning, each one of these poisons served a useful purpose at one time. And, they can serve a useful purpose again, once a purposeful antidote has been designed and used to neutralize the poison. That is a topic for the next few blogs.

Is your global strategy on track?

When you make decisions for your business, many things have to be taken into account. Besides, nowadays, strategies have to be based on a global approach, which makes it even more complicated to understand and to elaborate. For this reason, you might not be sure of the decisions you made, although it seemed to be the best option. You can ask yourself this question many times, but the most important is to make sure that your global strategy is good. In The 5-STAR Business Network (http://bit.ly/5-STARBN), a book by Vivek Sood, you will read a lot of things about global business networks and their importance for your business in today’s globalised business world. In fact, today, everything must be based on a global thinking. Any time you have to make a decision for your business, “global” is the key word and the basis for best achievements. Then, you have to be aware of every global trend and act accordingly. Long-term planning must pay attention to key issues of worldwide importance.

 Because of the increasing importance of this global approach, networks have become important too. In the global scene, you cannot play without a great network. “Networks have become more powerful than they ever were in the past”, Vivek Sood said in his book. Moreover, he added, “Global Business Networks will have an increasingly bigger role to play in the future”, which reveals its increasing importance.

Relying on several reports and studies, Vivek Sood exposed many important points about global business networks and clear explanations of its functioning.

Many players intervene in the global stage and that is the reason why any strategy must take into account this dimension. Any single strategy must be aligned with the business strategy of the company, which itself must be based on a global approach.

Today, your businesses are dealing with global issues in a hyper-globalised world, which means that expertise and influence will determine your position, and your network plays a key role in this story. Whether they are small or large businesses, they must have a global strategy, in order to compete with any competitor in the global market, and to benefit from the best assets, by working in team with global partners.

Although it might not be easy to manage relationships with global partners, located all over the world, it is the best option to develop your business on the global stage and to make your place in the global market. You cannot be a leader without having a global approach for your strategy. You will have to deal with global issues anyway, even if you do not focus your strategy on a global approach, so it is better to do it in the first place. Global strategies will give you the best opportunities and the best results in the end.

To conclude this article, we have no choice but to accept that globalisation is a reality and global approach is no longer an option for your business strategy. Everything in your company must be aligned on this global strategy, if you want to achieve the best.

by Anais Lelong

Amazon’s Drones – How Viable?

Amazon is known for its bold moves, innovation and customer centric thinking. Just yesterday it released a video of drone delivery of customer purchases from its warehouse and fulfilment centre which became the talk of the town. Regulatory and technological issues apart, I will only take a supply chain perspective in this blog to examine the economic and operational constraints this might face. At this point I have not made up my mind whether I think it is a viable option from operational and strategic viewpoint.

Firstly, let us examine the volume of service required. We do not an estimate of how many packages will be delivered by drones, but we know that Amazon’s annual revenue is approximately $48 Billion, and growing fast. I noted in my book The 5-STAR Business Network that amazon nearly doubled its revenue in 3 years. That is an exceptional growth rate, and shows no sign of abating. By the time drone service is released sometimes in 2015 or beyond, Amazon would have increased its revenues to nearly double again – say $96 Billion per year.

Sale value of a transaction ranges from $5 for a cheap paperback to several thousands of dollars for fashion and electronics. It will be interesting to see the transaction value distribution at Amazon, but for this discussion an average sale value per transaction estimate is sufficient. If the average transaction value is say approximately $100 then the company is making $48 Billion divided by $100 = 480 Million transactions per year now. By the time delivery with drones is in place it will be making double that, say 1 Billion transactions per year.

Now Amazon already makes deliveries on Saturdays, so the total number of delivery days in a year will be approximately 300 days. That will amount to nearly 3.3 Million deliveries per day. Not all deliveries will need to be made by drones because only a few customers (say 10%) will opt for this high price, high value service. Depending on the price, and urgency the customers will make their own decisions, but it is likely that if the service is high prices most customers (90%) will opt to wait for the regular post deliveries. Here we have not yet considered capital costs of buying the drones, operational costs of housing and running them, and maintenance costs of upkeep of these drones. Neither have we considered the capital costs of retooling the warehouses to allow drones to operate.

Why? Because pricing formula at Amazon is based not just on costs but also on what the market will bear, and the competitive landscape.

At the same time Amazon will want to price the service at a level sufficiently low so that the volumes are strong enough to strategically make it a viable offering, yet prices sufficiently high so that the volumes are not so high that impose operational constraints in the warehouses. With a targeted 10% of the package volume to be delivered by drones, Amazon will be looking to make around 330,000 drone deliveries a way.

Given the short range of these battery powered drones, Amazon will likely need many more than its nearly 21 delivery centres around the USA. The plans are still not clear, but if the number of such delivery centres increases to about 40, each delivery centre will be making 8,250 drone deliveries a day. With say half an hour to and from the delivery location, and 16 hour operations – each drone can make around 12-15 (say 14) deliveries a day. That means each delivery centre will need 600 drones for operations besides spare ones for maintenance, back-up and queuing.

Now try to imagine a fulfilment centre with 600 drones buzzing in and out 16 hours a day. Do you think it is a viable operation? Email me with your views on info@globalscgroup(dot)com

10 ways to create value through your business network

The key to realising value in your business is to use your business network. The marketplace has moved on from the time when competition was just among companies. Your business must now succeed  based on the quality of the your network of suppliers and customers.  You have to leverage trusted connections to help you design, produce, market, sell and maintain your products and services.

Below are ten ways you can leverage these relationships to create value:

Optimise your online network: Business oriented social media like LinkedIn has made maintaining and building your online business network easy. You can source information, pursue warm leads and even ask your online supplier and customer contacts for inspiration for your next venture. You should maintain regular contact with these connections to stay up – to –date with where product trends and innovation are heading in your industry.
Optimise your offline network: Despite the advent of online business networks, offline business networks still provide a very useful medium where you can meet your next supplier or customer. You can join exsiting groups such as the Freemasons, Rotarians and clubs including chambers of commerce.
Understand the principle of the ‘network effect’:  Another way of creating value from your business network is understanding the concept of the ‘network effect’. The ‘network effect’ is the idea that the more value adding supplier and customer connections you make, the more valuable your network becomes, until it dominates others.
Harness the buy-in of online contacts for your product or service: Online contacts such as LinkedIn connections can provide feedback on your business ideas and can provide case studies of their success in developing their own products and services.
Realise that your business network is your most valuable asset: Your business network is your most valuable asset because of the latent energy of the participants in it. If you have a high quality business network, your suppliers and customers will invest in your success or help you to work out how to be successful.
Use a high quality IT system to formalise your network: Your business network requires a high quality IT system and strategy to formalise it.
Adopt the cornerstones of a Five Star Business Network:  A Five-Star Business Network adopts five principles: “fire-aim-ready innovation”, “Speed-to-Store Efficiency”, “Transaction-Optimisation-Profitability”, “Advanced-Product-Phasing” and “Results-focussed outsourcing and Modularisation”. Find out more information about you can add these principles to your business network by buying Global Supply Network’s award winning book 5-Star Business Network.
Keep up to date with market information: Decision making technology has developed so much over the least 40 years that it has demands businesses keep up to date information. The same applies to your decision making. You need up to date information in order to make the best decisions.
Apply the 80/20 rule: You will get 80% of the results in building your business network from 20% of the interactions you have with customers and suppliers. This rule still applies.
Focus on serving deserving customers and suppliers.

The Newest Supply Chain Model

 In the traditional business world, relations between organisations were different from what they are today. Collaboration between organisations – if there was collaboration – used to follow a linear model. In fact, when several organisations had to collaborate, they used to do it through a very linear model, with traditional supplier-buyer relationships. This model is based on rigid hierarchical structure between the different actors. Although it could work in the old business world, it is a little more complicated today. However, the problem is that many organisations have not evolved according to the new globalised business world, and they are still using the traditional model.

 The key word for today’s business world is “network”. In fact, no business can be successful if “network” is not the basis of its logic. You can learn more about the importance of global business networks in Vivek Sood’s book, The 5-STAR Business Network (http://bit.ly/5-STARBN). Any decision and project must be based on the network today. Therefore, companies first have to build an efficient global business network, which will be the basis of its supply chain and its entire organisation structure. Thus, this is the first step for any single organisation. Besides, businesses do not act alone today: network involves multiple relationships and interactions between businesses. That is the reason why your supply network must be very flexible; it is because interactions are infinite.

 Therefore, when interacting together, in a business network, organisations have to do it in harmony, and with flexibility in their structure. The production teams and the procurement teams work together, to provide the best product to the customer. Collaboration is necessary in the relationship among the supply chain partners to create, market and sell the products. Likewise, collaboration is also required to make the products, move and store them. In other words, we have no choice but to admit that collaboration is necessary to build a great supply network and manage efficiently our supply chains. In effect, in today’s globalised world, collaboration is necessary during the entire process, so your supply chain can give the best results. Besides, your customer will be satisfied because of the efficiency of your supply chain, which will produce in the shortest period at the lowest cost. Then, your customer will have a good product, in a short delay, and at a reasonable price. That is the reason why you do not have other choice if you want to beat your competitors in the market place.

Besides, your business network would be so big and efficient that your business will benefit from their know-how and knowledge. Therefore, you can also expect innovations. You will benefit from your partners’ innovation, which will help you create even more value than with your own innovation.

Consequently, the power of modern supply chain models lies in collaboration and interaction. In effect, modern organisations cannot keep following the traditional linear model because there are many more businesses involved in a business network today than 20 years ago, for example.

To summarise, let us say that today, supply chains involve many actors, which means that businesses must collaborate in a very flexible way, in order to get the best from each partner and provide the best product for the customer. This will lead to better results for businesses.

by Anais lelong

WHY ARE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ESTIMATES REGULARLY OFF BY A FACTOR OF 2-3 TIMES?

 Reblogged from Startup Answers: (written by Michael Wolfe)

Let’s take a hike on the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles to visit our friends in Newport Beach. I’ll whip out my map and draw our route down the coast:

The line is about 400 miles long; we can walk 4 miles per hour for 10 hours per day, so we’ll be there in 10 days. We call our friends and book dinner for next Sunday night, when we will roll in triumphantly at 6 p.m. They can’t wait!

We get up early the next day giddy with the excitement of fresh adventure.  We strap on our backpacks, whip out our map, and plan our first day. We look at the map. Uh oh:

Read more…

Amazon and the 5 STARS

 We already defined the importance and features of a successful business network, through the necessity of 5 key cornerstones – Fire-Aim-Ready Innovation, $eed-to-$tore Efficiency, Transaction Optimisation Profitability, Advanced Product Phasing, and Results-focused Outsourcing and Modularisation – in the previous article. Now let us prove it by taking an example, which reflects their necessity.

Amazon is a perfect example of company applying these five characteristics efficiently, which led the company to an undeniable success. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, knew how to use them to its benefits. This success enabled Jeff Bezos to “build the largest online retailer in the world, where customers can acquire anything that they desire over the Internet”, said Vivek Sood in The 5-STAR Business Network (http://bit.ly/5-STARBN), when exposing Amazon’s success.

The company, through a very efficient and smart strategy, managed to achieve low prices, a wide inventory choice, convenience, and customer satisfaction. This was possible because Amazon’s strategy was based on the 5 cornerstones of successful business networks. The main advantages for customers provided by Amazon were low prices and quick delivery. In fact, customers could get their product very fast by ordering on Amazon.com than any other website. Then, Amazon was far beyond its competitors, and this has been made possible thanks to its thoughtful strategy.

First, innovation was very important, especially in terms of designs, and especially at this time because there were only the first fruits of the e-commerce. In fact, online commerce was kind of innovation itself for Amazon, because it enabled people to get whatever they wanted online. Besides, the fast delivery was a result of $eed-to-$tore efficiency: by using efficiently the supply network, Amazon could give satisfaction to customers faster than competitors, which pushed the company towards the leaderships, about the online commerce. Jeff Bezos once said, “Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful”, a sentence that speaks for itself. It shows that Amazon knew how to choose the right partners and benefit from all the resources of its supply network. In fact, there is no point in collaborating with suppliers that do not offer the best results. Provider selection is very important despite the number of them available on the market. Then, Amazon is very good at Transaction Optimisation Profitability, and this is what made the company so profitable, and created a virtuous circle. About Advanced Product Phasing, it is obvious that Amazon was also very good. In fact, if you look at the evolution of the products sold by Amazon, you can easily notice the logical evolution, which follows the innovation and product life cycle.

Finally, Results-focused Outsourcing and Modularisation have also played an important role in Amazon’s success. In fact, according to Vivek Sood, “Outsourcing and Modularisation form key underpinning of Amazon’s ability to act”. Services are outsourced in a very efficient manner for the company to achieve better results. In effect, this is a results-oriented outsourcing. Besides, IT services and logistics services are both chosen according to a result-oriented process and they work in a results-oriented environment too. The data driven approach is mainly responsible for that, and it was very helpful to have this approach for Amazon. Indeed, data are very important when building a global business network, and it will be the basis of provider selection especially, so data collection cannot be neglected.

by Anais lelong

Complexity Management

 Although this title can seem a little absurd, this article aims at understanding better the principles of complexity management. In effect, complexity is a large concept, which usually seems unmanageable for most managers.

Let us start with the pillars of complexity management for businesses.

 Strategy Alignment

Most projects fail because this condition is not respected. In many organisations, departments and their people often act and make decisions for themselves. They do not pay attention to the business strategy. Each one wants the best results for its department. However, managers should understand that their decisions also impact on the rest of the business. For this reason, any project must involve a team project formed by people from all the departments and functions in the company. This team project should think and act according to the common interest of the business. Thus, all the strategies have to be aligned with the business strategy. In effect, interactions and complexity will be easier to manage if all the strategies are pointed towards the same goal.

 Transparency

Nowadays, we think that all the information is accessible to anyone but this is not entirely true. Although there is a lot of information in organisations, everyone tries to keep it for himself.  Information is synonym of power and nobody wants to share it, for fear of losing power of decision in front of others. However, any decision should be revealed to the entire organisations, so all the departments are aware of what is actually happening. This will enable them to make decisions, which will suit to the business strategy. Thus, the conclusion is that information must be available easily to avoid useless interactions, which will cut complexity.

 Sustainability

When starting new projects, organisations must beforehand make sure that it is not a precipitated decision and that it is suitable for this kind of organisation. In effect, all systems are not good and effective for all businesses. Organisations have different needs and requirements, which should be satisfied by different and suitable decisions and implementations. Preparation is a key factor for sustainability of any project implementation. Sustainability enables to have less complex systems. In effect, sustainability involves long-term relationships, which imply less multiplication of interactions and then less complex systems.

 Modularisation

Complexity can be easier to manage through smaller units. In effect, large systems imply a tremendous amount of interactions whereas smaller units are more manageable. Using modular systems is the key to implement projects successfully and outstrip complexity. Although interactions still exist, they are easier to manage through modular systems because any other can replace them at any time. Complexity is not a threat anymore if you control it with modularisation. The concept of modularisation is developed into a chapter of Vivek Sood’s book, The 5-STAR Business Network (http://bit.ly/5-STARBN), and will be even more deeply analysed in his next book, Outsource, Outsmart, Outprofit.

 Therefore, these four elements are the most important pillars in complexity management. If you understand how to use these pillars, complexity management will be made much easier for you business. Although complexity can be helpful, it is not worth it to let it control your business. Complexity will certainly beat you. However, you can learn how to be able to manage it and tame its interactions, by using these few elements above. You can find a more detailed approach in the book The 5-STAR Business Network, by Vivek Sood.

by Anais Lelong