Co-dependent Strategies
I have been exploring the concept of co-dependent strategies for awhile and thought I'll throw it up for some discussion here.
Co-dependent strategies explore the intrinsic integration of organizations with their supply chain and business partners. The communications service provider world has two distinct camps :
(a) the older incumbents leveraging a unilateral approach with linear control over their supply chain, and a model that excludes partners from direct consumer interaction (CSP is the sole consumer aggregator) and
(b) some of the newer providers that are more nimble in market reaction - because they rely on content and device partners to independently touch the end consumer, while building mechanisms to integrate the partner's functions such as marketing, sales, operations and revenue generation into their own.
The linear, command-and-control structures work well when there is a strong requirement to drive costs out of operations or take proven, new initiatives into the mainstream. To handle the ambiguous challenges posed by current innovation/reaction cycles, do-it-alone approaches are infeasible - and require a degree of "organied chaos" (ala Google).
Flexible co-dependent strategies are built around global value chains - to offer increased responsiveness to customer needs, tackle fluctuating human capital needs and increase competitive aggression. It also brings increased, multi-dimensional market intelligence to the table from several partners that interact with the consumer base. Focus shifts from consumer aggregation to complexity aggregation.
It requires for the service provider to introduce increased modularity and reusability in its business processes so they can be linked across organization boundaries.
Thoughts and comments welcome...
Comments
Co-dependent strategies are high-risk strategies and hence, the payoff is higher. In order to execute a high-risk strategy AND get a favorable payoff, one needs to ensure the following:
1. The risk-management principles in place are suitable and constantly re-visited.
2. There are extremely sharp, committed, and detail-oriented individuals and teams (with good communication among the team members).
Of course, the org has to be flat and not a place where there are set number of years for someone to become something - if the person is skilled enough then the person must be put in the position.
3. Constant education/enabling of the individuals in the teams w.r.t. team learning, market knowledge, etc.
Any org-leaders opposing this learning must be shunted as they are the root cause of sabotage in such setups.
Finally, the term "organized chaos" is more of a "misnomer" than just an oxymoron - it is used for sensationalization purposes by the media or even the companies (Google has a position named "Chief Chaos Officer" - it is only to push up their popularity and eclectic indices).
The place needs to be wired in a certain way to achieve good results from a co-dependent strategy.
Posted by: Manik Patil | May 25, 2007 06:39 PM
Thanks for your comment Manik. Yes, co-dependent strategies imply much change management both within and outside the enterprise. Related topics include "team virtualization" and "process modularization".
Posted by: Deepak Padaki | May 27, 2007 07:54 PM