Large companies need to manage their internal affairs so that, from the customers’ point of view, the organization appears to act in a simple and coherent manner.

Cheers

Andrew

I learned recently that you don’t have to ‘imagine’ what driving without road rules ‘would’ be like – you can see what it indeed is like by visiting Manila in The Philippines.

I spent a couple of days in Manila last month on my way to a southern island in The Philippines for my friend’s wedding.

Apparently, the capital city does have road rules, but they are rarely enforced. The city streets resemble a pure free-for-all. Drivers just go anywhere they please anytime. It’s a war zone – it’s every driver for themselves. Passengers can expect to experience approximately one near miss every two hundred meters.

If you want to see the results of a sales team without a system, just look at Hewlett Package during the 1990s.

I remember reading in Business Week several years ago that the company once had no fewer than 86 divisions, many of which operated independently and had their own sales team.

Worse still, there was negligible communication between divisions. The upshot was that corporate customers received different sales calls from different divisions in the company, each trying to sell them different products. Often the client would receive conflicting sales messages and advice from different HP divisions.

Of course, from the corporate customer’s point of view, HP looked dysfunctional and dealing with them was a nightmare.

Cheers

Andrew