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Tip of the Spear Ventures

Venture Capital | Business Transformation Consulting

innovation

Mergers & Acquisition Disruption for Exponential Growth: How Amazon’s Purchase of Whole Foods Upended Retailer’s Strategic Plan – 2 Tips!

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The Point: When Amazon announced that they were buying Whole Foods for close to $14 billion, the stock price of Amazon rose to 2.4%. This stock price lift was reported by the news to add roughly $11 billion to Amazon’s market capitalization. At this same period, the stock price of Sprouts decreased by 6.3%, Kroger dropped by 9.2% and Super Value plummeted by 14.4%. It was obvious that one could perceive the short term plans of most traditional retailers (including mergers & acquisitions) – that is, working through some shredding machines. Amazon’s recent purchase now holds high implications towards the future of groceries, the food industry at large, including general shopping – it proved how the strategy of exponential growth could be used to disrupt any industry. This post will discuss how any Mergers & Acquisition deal can disrupt an industry using a powerful Strategic Plan that guarantees growth over competitors…Enjoy.

Mergers & Acquisition Disruption for Exponential Growth 2 Tips

Hello, We’re Amazon. We’re Here to Buy You!

The purchase announcement made by Amazon made the speed and nature of future Mergers & Acquisitions far more challenging for all of us, or did it?. There have been 3 questionable premises by which most traditional retailers are now looking to build Strategic Plans on. The first was whether they can include digital capacities quicker than how Amazon is adding more stores. The second being that Amazon’s e-commerce competitive space is still constrained to retails sales in U.S. The last was how retailers who are brick-n-mortar based can transition to a digital world with any profit by cautiously growing e-commerce sales.

It is now very clear that Amazon’s Strategic Plan intends to offer almost everything for customers- this is a strong indicator that the retail arenas are vulnerable. Think of this for a moment, if Amazon was able to buy into the grocery channel, what do you think can stop it from penetrating into department stores, furniture stores, drug stores or electronic stores (Or, fill in the blank when it comes to _____ stores?) Alibaba, for example, did that in China and beyond with their Strategic Plan without regard to Mergers & Acquisitions. Another thing to also consider is that Amazon may decide to use groceries to increase customers’ delivery frequency – this could pile more profit into home delivery vehicles faster. From now on, retailers in any industry must constantly learn how to develop viable retail Strategy Plans that can help achieve exponential growth and compete worldwide in scope. 

2 Tips on Using Mergers & Acquisition Disruption for Exponential Growth

Let’s use the Amazon Mergers & Acquisition as a case study to explain two tips as disruption for exponential growth:

Tip #1: Advance and Merge Physical with Digital Capabilities

Now more than ever, the Amazon Mergers & Acquisitions activity reflects that it’s more strategically reasonable to conclude only the most viable retail Strategic Plan is the one that can advance and merge physical and digital capabilities. This advance and merge will have to be better than Amazon (or your major competitor in your Industry). What this implies is that retailers need to constantly be well equipped in order to compete with Amazon in certain fundamental capabilities – For example, expense management and innovation.

Tip #2: Develop the Innovation Engine

The real truth is that it is not the e-commerce network of Amazon that gives it its greatest competitive advantage. Instead, it is really the innovation engine at its disposal that provides competitive advantage over its rivals. In order to compete with Amazon’s constant innovations; traditional retailers must relearn how to innovate like successful startups do. This will require the movement from predictive plans to adaptive and building teams of agile innovators. Agile innovation teams are small and also multidisciplinary – they are well equipped with every needed physical and digital skill required to complete with task. They are also geared towards rapid pivots, not predictable straight-aways. These teams tend to always prefer creative working environments, instead of hierarchical bureaucracies.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored the topic of Mergers & Acquisition Disruption for Exponential Growth: How Amazon’s Purchase of Whole Foods Upended Retailer’s Strategic Plan along with 2 Tips! As you have seen above, the retail world has recently learned the limitations predictive Strategic Planning can result to (as compared to a Strategic Plan consisting of adaptive innovation – especially in an unpredictable market!) The right moment could be upon us for retailers to rapidly learn how to adapt to their lists of strategic initiatives, merge digital and physical capabilities and improve on the funding/speed for execution through the development of innovation engines.

Sam Palazzolo

Leading at the Tip of the Spear - The Leader

PS – I just published my 4th book, aptly titled “Leading at the Tip of the Spear: The Leader” which looks at the skills needed to successfully lead in today’s business climate. I hope you’ll purchase copies for yourself/the leaders you know. 100% of the net profits go towards supporting my 501(c)(3) charity at the Javelin Institute. Amazon’s editors had the following to say about the work:

“In these days when so many expect so much recognition for doing so little, leadership seems easy, when it’s really harder than ever. To be that person who truly takes a chance, makes a stand, and ventures out in front of the crowd requires courage, commitment, and conviction—qualities that more than ever seem to be in short supply. There’s no shortcut to the skills that mark a true leader, but there are definite strategies that can help you set your internal compass, find the right route, and steer others onto the right path.

Leading at the Tip of the Spear – The Leader focuses on the physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual abilities that are found in leaders who are willing to lead. You will learn to develop your individual values and purpose, strengthen your foresight and failure-resistance, step up your self-control, plan for any contingencies, and always stay on the offense. It will take effort and energy to understand the proposed process and fully implement it in life and business, but leadership is all about doing hard things for the right reasons. Once you’ve mastered true leadership, nothing can stop you from having the career and the life you’ve worked for.”

The Leadership Challenge: Innovator or A$$hole – 5 Tips!

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The Point: In a constant drive for success and achievement, most leaders find themselves challenged with how best to spur on the creativity of their team to produce innovative results. However, 9/10 (but who’s counting?) this drive for innovation is misconstrued for a$$hole (Yes, that’s the word you’re thinking of – ahole!) behavior. In this post, we’ll examine the leader’s drive for innovation and provide five tips to avoid the ahole innovation trap… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge: Innovator or A$$hole – 5 Tips!

In Steve Jobs We Trust

Meet Susan (name changed to provide anonymity), a hard-driving mid-level manager for a Fortune 100 organization. Susan recently graduated from a top-tier Executive MBA program and is on career path fire in her organization (Even though it is an extremely BIG pond as far as companies go). Having made the half-way point for the year, she finds herself in the luxurious position of being ahead, well ahead, of her individual and teams goals. However, there is one small problem with Susan… She’s an A$$hole according to her team members.

In reviewing results for a recent Behavioral 360 Degree Assessment (One where not only Susan, but her stakeholders – Superiors, Peers, and Subordinates – provided feedback on her behavior/performance/leadership qualities) it was not surprising to see Susan ranking her self higher (at times significantly higher) than that of the stakeholders who she invited to provide feedback. The results were brushed-off by Susan with a simple shrug and accompanying statement of “They [stakeholders] just don’t understand my ‘Steve Jobs’ persona replication… I’m ahead of goal, right?”

The Drive to Innovate

The fine line between leadership innovation and aholery is an easy one to cross, criss-cross, and/or stay on one side as a leader. “Those that innovate survive!” is Susan’s motto, but is it all there is to the road to successful innovation attainment?

I would argue that establishing course direction and accompanying correction upon identification of off-course moments is crucial. However, technique for original goal development, implementation and adaptation is crucial to your stakeholders identifying you as either innovator or ahole. If as a leader you think your stakeholders are misreading the situation, then do something about their perception because their perception is the reality!

5 Tips to Avoid the A$$hole Innovation Trap!

The following are five tips to avoid what I have come to term the “Ahole Innovation Trap” as a leader:

Tip #5 – Goals 1.0

Establish goals with your superiors for what high performance results should be. These should include not only desired results, but metrics that will be captured along the way so as to verify goal attainment (Think of the all too popular ‘dashboard’ and you get the picture).

Tip #4 – Goals 2.0

Review goals established in Goals 1.0 with your team, and with your team’s input identify how these goals should/will be accomplished.

Tip #3 – Delegate Responsibilities

If in Goals 2.0 you’ve identified the desired course forward towards goal attainment, delegate responsibilities to your team members. Establish who will precisely do what by when. IMPORTANT: Review with the team what has just been developed a the conclusion (This might take more than one meeting!) NOTE: You as a leader are not void of responsibility here… Insure that you provide goals for yourself as well in addition to Tip #2 and Tip #1 as follows!

Tip #2 – Accountability

Establish accountability to achieve delegation responsibilities at frequent time intervals with the team. This way, not only can you police activities, but fellow team members can help keep each other on-time/on-target as well.

Tip #1 – Monitor/Measure/Modify

Lastly, as the leader it’s important that you monitor what was established through non-judgmental measurement intervals. If you are on-time/on-target identify how you can accelerate through the timeline. If you are off-time/off-target identify where you came off-track and how you can quickly get back on-track.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve taken a look at the leadership challenge of innovation or ahole, along with five tips for success in being known as an innovator. Regardless of your level of leadership, the skill of innovation can distinguish you from your peers. However, the ability to conduct goal attainment with accompanying ahole recognition can be career limiting.

 

Sam Palazzolo

 

PS – Susan turned out just fine… Through a series of executive coaching sessions with stakeholder feedback she quickly regained “Innovator” title!

The Leadership Challenge: Competitive Advantage – 5 Tips!

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The Point: I met with a leader during the week who was competitive to say the least (Make that extremely competitive!) In their drive to succeed, they often overlooked their individual purpose, the potential of their organization’s stakeholders, and the “bigger” picture of where their organization fit into the market that they seemed to dominate. Perhaps a good thing? Probably accompanied by many potential bad things though. In this post, we’ll take a look at harnessing the power of competitive advantage as a leader along with five tips to align directionally for success… Enjoy!

Are You Leading at the Tip of the Spear?

Go… Fight… Win!

It’s been said that business is war. In order to accomplish victory in such “battles” it’s important to keep in mind not only what will be gained in such moments, but also what very well might be lost. John was a small mid-cap sized organizational C-Suite leader. Appearing to be in control of the majority of his faculties, he set out a strategic vision during one of our leadership development executive coaching sessions.

“If we execute this plan, our competition will look to strike here” he commented drawing out what appeared to be a marketing battle map on a scratch pad. “If they strike here we’ll have them exactly where we want them… Weak!” While these were grandiose plans (and why aim small and miss small when you can aim big and miss big!), he lacked the perspective of other organizational leaders and stakeholders. The fight had been fought without single action step being taken, and John was claiming victory.

Competitive Advantage

The leadership challenge faced in this example is one that has many facets. So let’s see if we can’t break them down by offering five (5) tips for competitive advantage:

Tip #5 – Innovation

There’s no doubt that you’ve read a lot lately about innovation and its role in organizational domination. “Innovate or perish” seems to be a captivating mantra. However, what does innovation truly look like, and more importantly who is supposed to be doing all this innovation? The bottom line is that in order for competitive advantage to take place someone/somewhere within the walls of the organization had better be planning/developing what’s next.

Tip #4 – Engagement

Similar in leadership popularity to innovation is the concept of engagement. Leadership as well as stakeholders engagement level not only sets the tone for competitive advantage, but accompanying pace as well.

Tip #3 – Inefficiencies

How are you/your organization measuring your efficiencies? If you have a key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard that insures that you are approaching targets on-time (and modify course accordingly when off), then you have a leg-up on your competition that might believe they are measuring like-kind indicators but are lacking the “key” components.

Tip #2 – Learning Leaders/Organizations

The key to Tip #3 – Inefficiencies lies in your ability to learn as a leader as well as an organization. While success breeds more success, there is an often misunderstood component regarding what lessons can be learned from moments of failure. Learning from both provides competitive advantages.

Tip #1 – Tools

Do you/your stakeholders have the right data, and perhaps most important are they equipped to take action on what they learn? If so, you have properly equipped yourself/your stakeholders with the tools for competitive advantage. Without these tools (out of date, broken, and/or nonexistent) and you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve looked at the leadership challenge of competitive advantage and five tips regarding how you can seize such moments so as to continue to progress down successful paths as a leader. Leadership development and executive coaching provides a framework to explore such opportunities, but implementation/execution/sustainment initiatives play a crucial role in the battle for future success.

 

Sam Palazzolo