What is your businesses key metric?

What is your businesses key metric?

Oct 22, 2018 | Strategy

Every business has a key strategic metric, one that encapsulates the productivity of the investments made in the business, that can be tracked over time, and broken down progressively as you move into the operational levels of your business.

The metric you choose should reflect the strategic choices you make. It should never be about profit, which is just an outcome, the metric you choose should be the single thing that drives the commercial sustainability of your business. It also acts as a ‘touchstone’ for everyone in the business, from the Directors to the cleaner. Everyone knows, understands, and can relate what they do in some way to  the metric, it removes any confusion about what is important.

I have two acquaintances working in senior roles in large law firms. One is judged on his ‘Billable hours,’ the other on the rolling annual value of the clients he handles. The first  works 70 hours/week, and ensures that every available 10 minute period in his diary is billed to somebody, for something. The other concentrates on the relationships he builds with his clients, setting out to become their legal ‘go- to’ man, providing advice on a range of issues in their businesses, often issues he sees before they do, given the ‘engagement’ he has.  Both manage staff that have similar KPI’s directly feeding into theirs.

Two distinctly different KPI’s in very similar businesses that result in very different outcomes for both the employees and the clients.

Bricks and Mortar retailers all use some variation of the sales or gross margin/square foot of retail space as a key KPI. It may be calculated in slightly different ways, but all use it, and cascade the measure down through their organisations, in both the store management and buying functions. On line retailers  by contrast generally measure the cost of acquisition of a new customer, and their ongoing lifetime value.

What is your key metric, and how does it reflect your strategic choices?

 

 

The 5 strategic dimensions of price

The 5 strategic dimensions of price

Oct 17, 2018 | Marketing, Strategy

Setting prices is one of the most challenging, but often sidelined management decisions. Given that price has more impact on the bottom line than any other single factor, it is crazy that it is so often left until the last moment, or to a superficial assessment. The manner in which price is packaged and delivered should attract considerable time and creative effort.

In many cases the consideration goes little further than looking at costs, competing prices, and perhaps the gross margin.

Nowhere near enough.

Just setting an arbitrary price, struck at the last moment, without deep consideration seems irresponsible. Pricing strategy is the most important variables over which management has control, and that control should be exercised to reflect your strategic priorities, while delivering maximum value to your customers.

In order to find the best ‘fit’ between these two usually competing outcomes, there needs to be more than just passing consideration given.

There are two processes to undertake.

  1. Set a pricing architecture.
  2. Set a price list.

These are fundamentally different, but the first should always drive the second.

Striking a price architecture should be a strategic process. It is a trade-off between the wide range of factors that drive a customers purchase choice in various circumstances, and the costs and margins involved in addressing those choices.  However, once set, the architecture of your pricing should be reasonably stable.

The actual price lists built on top of the pricing architecture can be varied as often as you like, and as often the market in which you operate will allow, in response to  the factors that drive purchase.

In some markets, you will have little room to move, in others, there will be a wide range of options. The common factor is that a responsible management maximises the return over the long term, which necessarily involves having satisfied, repeat customers, with a minimum of churn.

In every case the price set will be the end result of a range of trade-offs that are made. The most obvious and clearly understood is the simple  price/units trade-off, but this comes at the end of a wide range of trade-offs made in the manner in which the architecture is constructed.

Business model.

Every business model has its own characteristics that have an impact on the way prices are set.

In a retail franchise model, the prices are often set by head office, and the individual franchised outlet has limited ability to vary them.  A supplier of grocery products through an Australian supermarket, has almost no control over price if they want to retain distribution. The seller of a bespoke solution to an expensive problem can set their own price, so long as it remains slightly below the cost of the problem, and guarantees the solution.

The emergence of the web as a sales channel has led to a rapidly expanding menu of pricing options.  The SAAS industry in increasingly using subscription models differentiated by the availability or otherwise of some sort of ‘tripwire’ or ‘freemium’ model followed by varying price levels based on features, available seats, transaction numbers, and a host of other variables from which customers can choose.

Market power.

In a monopoly, the monopolist can set his own prices at the point that maximised the profitability, without regard to the well-being of stakeholders beyond the shareholders. At the other end of the scale, when supplying a raw commodity, you have no pricing power at all, you will be purely a price taker.

Spending some time considering Michael Porters ‘5 forces’ will be time well spent.

Almost all situations fall somewhere in between a commodity and a monopoly, and in most situations there are substitutes, or the threat of substitutes emerging when the margins become sufficiently attractive.

Market power can be built by the process of branding, which requires long term investment  and again, trade-offs. Apple currently sells about 15% of mobile phone units sold around the world, but has 85% of the profit in the mobile phone market. This is an almost unique situation, matched by few ever before, the possible only others were Kodak, in their heyday, and Microsoft in the 90’s. Currently emerging we see the Digital trio, Facebook, Google and Amazon who have huge market power setting prices in ways that reflect the depth of that power.

Strategic priorities.

Price is a primary indicator of the positioning of your product in the minds of customers. The level of price is very often used as a signal of quality. Think about the array of wines in your local grog shop. To most, the majority are unfamiliar, and they lack the objective experience to make judgements, so price becomes a default indicator of quality.

Apple as noted has done a masterful job of reflecting the strategic priority of margin over volume.  By contrast, Aldi has become successful  in every market they expand into  by keeping overheads and transaction costs to an absolute minimum throughout their supply chains, and reflecting these savings in low shelf prices, which delivers volumes.

One producer of dried pasta in Australia holds a 70% market share with a combination of a dominating proprietary brand, many alternative and cheaper brands across every conceivable distribution channel, together with supplying pretty much all the house brand products in the market. There is a pricing matrix that covers the whole market, creating meaningful differentiation of price and brand. They do this by leveraging the economies of scale they have built in the operational processes throughout the production chain, from the control of the supply of grain through to the packaging of the end product, and ensuring that nobody else can compete on price. It has been a masterful job, implemented with consistency and determination over a 30 year span. The retail price you pay for dried pasta varies enormously, but the cost of the products are differentiated only by the characteristics of the semolina used, a marginal cost difference in the scheme of things. However, having watched blind tastings of pasta, the knowledgeable consumers can pick the premium brand from the others, in order of quality of the grain in some (hidden to me) taste and texture characteristics with unfailing accuracy.

Price packaging

Packaging of price is not something most would think about in a specific manner as they would the external product packaging. However, any price list with some sort of structure that reflects volume, channel, or some other sort of difference is in effect price packaging.

Creative thinking about the packaging of pricing can pay huge dividends. A feature that adds no value will not attract a customer, but the same feature that does add value to someone else becomes a benefit that can be priced for that customer.

A friend just bought a European sports car, lovely thing at an inflated price based on the marque, with a long list of ‘optional extras’. He chose the few ‘extras’ he wanted, all the while whingeing that a much cheaper Korean sports car, with similar performance (according to his research) that did not have the cachet of the brand he bought, had them all as standard. Both are examples of price packaging, in a manner that is driven by many of the other marketing and strategic characteristics of the choices available.

Behavioural drivers

We are increasingly aware that psychology has a huge impact on our behaviour, and as a result, those who understand the psychology can ‘manage’ the drivers of price to their benefit.  Anyone with responsibility for the construction of price should be aware of  the basics at least. The original (readable) book was ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini in 1993, followed up more recently by a new book ‘Pre-Suasion’ in late 2016, both of which add considerably to the well-known principals of ‘anchoring‘ and the ‘Rule of three.’

Anchoring is simply the first price that is mentioned usually becomes the basis of the following conversation, so the logic is anchor high.  The rule of three is where you ensure there are three alternatives with differing prices, and you present the highest first, which makes the others look cheaper, and uses the high price as the anchor. Any more options than three, and you risk confusion creeping in and the greater possibility of a no decision as a result. Add to these models is the obvious $24.99 price instead of $25.00 which works all the time, and the common ‘Huge savings on special’ offers where the saving is calculated against a price that nobody in their right mind would pay.

The more you dig into the behavioural drivers of price, the greater the range of options you can create. Scary when you think about it, as they are all being used on us every day.

 

The final word should go to Warren Buffett, someone who knows a bit about making a profit.

“The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power. If you have the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you have a very good business. If you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10% then you have a terrible business’.

 

How much should I spend on that winning that tender?

How much should I spend on that winning that tender?

Oct 2, 2018 | Customers, Governance, Strategy

 

That is a common question, which requires some rephrasing to be answered with anything other than ‘It depends’

‘How much should I invest to increase my chances of winning that tender’ is a better question.

Would you spend 20k to have a 50/50 chance of a $5 million contract?

How about if your chances of success were only 20%. Would you still spend the 20k?

There is a continuum here, one that should change with your circumstances, and your judgement of your chances in the tender process. The management challenge is quantifying the level of risk tolerance that exists at that time.

‘How much should I spend’ is a form of question that implies a short term is involved, ‘How much should I invest’ implies a longer term. It may only be a semantic difference, but  there is a great difference in the manner in which you approach the tenders preparation.

Quoting on tenders has two elements, the first is that now it is a tender, the implication is always that you are just one of several to tender, so it is an auction, of sorts.

The second is that there is never a sure fire thing, even when you have the inside running for any one of a large number of reasons, the most usual being incumbency of some sort. The fact that there has been a tender made public is an indication that the tenderer is not only looking for a price, they are looking for ideas.

To some questions you should be asking yourself:

  • How valuable is the tender to me? If the tenderer is your biggest customer, and you are an incumbent for this sort of job, the answer would probably be very valuable, not just for the job being tendered, but for the ongoing relationship and flow of further work.
  • What is the strategic value of the customer? This will often be a similar answer to the previous question, but your largest customers always started as a new, much smaller customer, and grew, so considering how ‘strategic’ they may be is important. An acquaintance of mine has what he calls a ‘green-keeping’ business that specialises in public spaces. He will do everything possible to win tenders put out by public bodies, councils, schools, and the like, as each one he wins is strategically important not just to the current cash flow, but to the position he holds in the competitive field.
  • How unique is my solution? When you can do something none of your tender competitors can do, price becomes less important. Following the above example of the green-keeping business, he owns a tractor towed machine that ‘cores’ a surface, an important factor for vigorous grass growth on areas like football fields. All of his competitors need to hire such a machine (sometimes from him) as the need arises which adds a significant cost to maintenance and a resulting reluctance, which often enables him to get a superior outcome.
  • How close is the strategic fit of the tenderer to the profile of my ideal customer? Every successful business has an idea of what their ideal customers look like, and the closer to the ideal profile a tenderer is, the more important it will be to win a tender that arises from them.
  • How does the job fit into the existing workflow? When you have a ‘hole’ in your work flow, filling it becomes more urgent, the alternative being to cover the overhead costs from reserves or remove them. When the latter course is taken, it can be hard to resource back up when the work flows in again.
  • How does the job fit my capability mix? A key part of having a profile of the ideal customer is that the mix of capabilities you can deliver exactly matches what is required by the tenderer. Having to buy in a capability you do not have is a strategic decision, and should be made carefully.
  • What is the net cash flow from the project over the life of the project? To do any sort of financial calculation, this forecast is an absolute necessity. It should be done in any case, as you are bidding for the contract, and therefore should have calculated your costs and the financial benefits and risks. This is all that is needed for a financial calculation.

 

Having determined how important the job may be to win, the task is to increase your chances and decide how much to invest in winning.

There are two variables, the amount you invest, and the chances of winning the tender. To do a financial calculation on the options, you could use a function called  ‘Net Present Value’  or NPV. We all recognise that a dollar today is worth more than a projected dollar tomorrow. The value of tomorrows dollar being reduced by  the amount of inflation, and the certainty of the projected cash flow from the project.

To do an NPV calculation, you need to have projected the cash flows to which you are applying the formula.

The NPV formula is simple in principal: Assume an amount of $20,000 is outlaid with the projection that in the following 3 years the project will deliver 100k/year positive cash flow in current dollars, and the discount rate is 5% to allow for 5% inflation.

The cash flow looks like:

$20,000 initial investment, followed by year 1 net cash flow of $100,000, plus year2  100,000 X .95 = $95,000 plus discounted year 3 of $90,250.

The net cash flow from the project is therefore $285,250.

Therefore the net present value of the initial investment at the end of the project is $285,525 – $20,000, or $265,525. In this case, it would seem that the investment of 20k in winning the tender would be a very good investment indeed.

The discount rate can be changed to reflect not just the future value of current dollars, but to also  reflect the risk of not winning. This can be a more complex calculation, but relatively easily done with a formula called Internal Rate of Return (IRR) available in every spreadsheet package.

These two calculations, NPV and IRR are routinely done in tandem by accountants to calculate a risk adjusted return from an investment.

When considering the question ‘how much should I spend on this tender‘ they will together be very handy tools.

Cartoon credit: Scott Adams and Dilbert.

Content quality trumps quantity, every time!

Content quality trumps quantity, every time!

Sep 28, 2018 | Communication, Strategy

Marketers have always created ‘Content’ as a means to  raise awareness, motivate an action, build a brand. It is what they do in an effort to hook into the behavioural patterns of their customers in order to build a relationship and generate revenue.

Human beings learned to tell stories as a means to communicate the things that are important to them way before they learned to record things on clay tablets.

So, ‘Content’ is not new, the form has just morphed over the last 20 years with the emergence of digital tools as a more efficient way to spread the ‘content’. We also know that the ubiquitous bullet points may simplify things, but they are easily forgotten, whereas a compelling narrative is remembered.

It is just the way our brains have evolved to work.

Content should be organised as stories, marketers should know this by now, and mostly do, but often fail to give us stores that are memorable and relevant, that touch an emotion.

The old story of the poet and the beggar makes the point.

The beggar asks the poet for money, but the poet having none himself offers to re-write the beggars sign, which just says ‘Blind. Please help.” to ‘Spring is coming, but I will not see it’. A week later, when the poet sees the blind man again, he is not surprised to hear the donations have soared. A simple change of word from a fact to a story that touches the emotions.

Our brains are wired to recognise and recall stories, details are remembered, so when you relate the story to others, all the colour, movement and emotion of the original remains.

Stories take a lot of development and telling, they are very hard work and are optimised over time. Attention to detail, selecting stories and story lines that really dig into the emotions are crucial.

Marketers are now required to measure everything, stories are no different. Generally the conversion rate that is relevant is the best measure. How many finished the story, how many then did what you wanted them to do.

Mediocrity rules, the 80:20 rule is really 95:5 in stories, as only the great ones  get read, create engagement and sharing, and to do this, it is all about quality, not quantity.

Ever wonder why some content goes viral?

Well for one reason or another it is in the 5% that is worthy of  the attention and sharing, aim to be in the 5%, which means that the effort has to be organic, you cannot outsource passion and commitment, it has to be in the DNA of the business.

(Sorry about the ickky  word in the headline, I have even stopped playing 500)

Cartoon credit. My thanks again to Tom Fishburne, the Marketoonist. Another marketing story told in a cartoon

P,S. This morning, in my inbox was this new ‘storybook’ by the great Hugh McLeod and Brian Solis, supported by Linkedin. It makes my point better than I ever could. I encourage you to download it and have a look. I love Hughs work, as any reader will know, I often have his cartoons as headers, as the say so much in a few lines.

 

 

 

 

The 7 foundations of a successful enterprise

The 7 foundations of a successful enterprise

Aug 31, 2018 | Governance, Leadership, Strategy

 

I was asked the question ‘what makes a truly successful enterprise’ at a workshop that had strategy development as its purpose. It is a regular question that I get in various forms, and a question that I ask myself from time to time.

The easy answer is the marketing responses:  know your customer, understand your markets, select the market niche in which  you compete in and dominate it in some way, all of which are correct, but are not the full answer.

The full answer lies in having the right foundations for the enterprise, foundations upon which everything else is built.

Like the foundations of a house, they are rarely visible, and almost never all visible at the same time.

It seems to me that they also create a virtuous circle, and the lack of one impacts on the others in a manner greater that you would expect.

None have anything to do with the tools that are used, particularly all the new digital tools and platforms.

Have a clear, well communicated strategy.

Strategy provides the framework within which enterprises make decisions at all levels that add to the value of the activities being undertaken. It is as much about what you will not do, always a harder choice than what you will do, as it requires the killing of someone’s ‘baby’ idea.

A strategy that is held in the c-suite, no matter how good it is, will be compromised by not being communicated throughout the business as the decision making foundation. Whether you set out to be the low cost supplier, supply only those  who fit a certain profile, deliver continuous innovations, whatever it is, make sure everyone understands it.

Execution.

No plan is of any real use until it is used. Execution of the plan is 9 tenths of the game. Relentless focus on the strategy, and execution with the appropriate feedback loops that enable tactical adjustments to be made as new information emerges makes a strategy successful. Without execution, strategy is just a set of potentially good ideas and vague promises.

Business model.

Many managers spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about the structures of their businesses, often missing the key component of the manner in which it delivers value to the key group of customers articulated in the strategy.

20 years ago, the number of potential business models was limited by the physical limits of communication and logistics. While this still applies, the flow of information facilitated by the net has changed the face of business, and has spawned a pile of new business models  and ways to reach customers and deliver value. It also seems that business models have trouble cohabiting. Therefore  choices need to be made that should be dictated by the strategic priorities.

Talent.

Businesses are just places where people gather to do the work, so the better the people the better the work. You need talented people to get the work done, a business is nothing without people. Taking this one step further, it is really the networks of people that deliver value.  ‘Joys law‘ named for Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy holds that ‘no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work somewhere else’. The self-evidence of this statement should encourage management to find ways to include some of these people into their commercial ‘eco-systems’. In a small way, many Australian businesses are doing this already,  outsourcing increasingly complex tasks offshore. The initial push is usually cost, but many are finding that quality can be as good as or better than is available locally.

Behaviour.

The way people behave, collectively,  becomes labelled ‘culture’. Culture is usually described in the terms first used  by Michael Porter 30 years ago, as ‘The way we do things around here‘ which is also a description of the behaviour that prevails. Is it collaborative, congenial, non-discriminatory, a meritocracy? Again, the sort of behaviour you nurture is a key determinant of the culture that evolves, and should make up a key component of individual and group KPI’s.

Leadership.

The behaviour of people is driven by the leadership style of the ‘boss’ and senior group. Together they dictate the terms of the culture, select the appropriate talent for the tight reasons, select and deploy the KPI’s based on the behaviour required to execute the strategy. Falling back on the wisdom of Peter Drucker, again, who said ‘Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things‘. It is the leadership that extracts performance from an enterprise beyond the average, the willingness to be held accountable, inspire, and explore.

Timing.

The value of getting the timing right is a wildly underestimated contributor to success. From simple internal matters like making that key presentation to the directors when they have had a series of good results, to major external factors such as recognising the point at which a technology that may have lain dormant for years suddenly has a place. Penicillin, the computer mouse, digital camera, Wireless LAN, touch screen, and thousands of other innovations lay dormant, unused until something changed, creating an impetus for the innovation to be commercialised, often in ways unforeseen by the developers. They are in effect a solution to a problem not  yet identified, or sitting outside the sight of incumbents, or simply the wrong time wrong place in some trivial way. A personal example. In the very early eighties I worked for Cerebos in Australia, as a product manager for a number of their brands, Fountain amongst them. I saw an opportunity for a pasta sauce to complement the then very small, but expanding dry pasta market. Fortunately there was an Italian food technologist in the development team who developed a range of very good pasta sauces, which we launched in test market  in Victoria. The test failed, for a number of reasons, that had nothing to do with the quality of the products, or the strategic thinking that was behind them. Eighteen months later, Masterfoods launched ‘Alora’ pasta sauces and  built a category. In blind tests, when considering a second try, the failed Fountain sauces significantly outperformed the successful Alora products, but their timing was way better than ours.

 

When you need to inject the wisdom of ‘been there done that‘, give me a call.

 

21 Lessons from a manufacturing turnaround

21 Lessons from a manufacturing turnaround

Aug 28, 2018 | Branding, Change, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy

 

I was asked the question ‘what did you learn from the turnaround of the GPD‘ a while ago, and was persuaded to present on it.

The GPD was the ‘General Products Division’ of the Dairy Farmers Co-Operative Ltd. It produced all the dairy products you manufacture with milk, which were at the time (mid 80’s) unregulated, while the stuff you put on your cereal in the mornings was regulated to the wahzoo. The GPD  was spun out of the much larger milk business so it could be run as a business, and not an outpost to absorb the milk not required in the regulated market.

Various aspects of that journey have been in these pages before, but I had never contemplated the question in depth and from a height, at the same time.

I started with the business just after it had been set up, then called the ‘By-Products Division’ and in the early stages of building a new ‘state of the art’ factory in Western Sydney.

The division was commercial road kill.  I know that as I did the first P&L by hand, (calculator, 18 column ledger sheets, pencil and rubber)  from scraps of information gathered and constructed from a variety of sources, and a lot of observation.

From that position, turning over $32 million, losing somewhere between $6 & $8 million, with the heavy commitment of the half finished high tech plant nobody knew how to run, 8 years later it was turning $162 million and making good money, with much improvement still to be done. It was a very substantial turnaround, not without its share of drama and missteps,  moments of joy and ‘what the hell just happened’. It was a journey that involved everybody in the business, at first reluctantly, then enthusiastically, had built astonishing momentum that was really only obvious to those on the inside.

Then it was stuffed up by a stupid decision to re-incorporate the business back into the milk business in order to ‘spread the successful commercial DNA‘  in preparation for the inevitable deregulation of white milk.

Over the first 6 years I carried responsibility for the Logistics, and part of  the sales, in addition to the marketing role I was hired for, and for  the last 2 years that the GPD was a separate entity, I was the GM. My ideal job at that time in my life.

Over the eight years, the business and its processes was totally reorganised, the  culture completely turned around, and we launched a string of successful market leading products, all of which contributed to the success.

So what did I learn, in no particular order?

  • You have to engage all employees, at all levels in the journey. They must understand their role and importance in that journey and to each other.
  • When you make a blue, recognise it early, correct and move on. Chasing a sunk investment that is not working is a terrible mistake to make.
  • Never look back with nostalgia, just for the lessons as input for what is next.
  • Price is not a measure of customer value, it is simply a means to express it that is understood, and unfortunately, usually misunderstood. Price only really matters when all other things are equal.
  • No business can be all things to all people.
  • Look after your small customers, one day they might be your big ones.
  • Standards of performance and behaviour have to be both present, well understood, transparent, and meticulously followed by those who set the tone.
  • The greater the general level of transparency the better. Hiding bad news never works, and brushing over problems just lets them fester and get worse. ‘Nip it in the bud’ is always a good piece of advice.
  • A managers job is to support the efforts of their staff, not the other way around. Successful companies extend trust to all employees at all levels, and deals with those who breach that trust openly, and absolutely consistently.
  • Breaching trust is very different to making a mistake. ‘Good’ mistakes are the result of initiative, trial and error implemented with due diligence, and are essential for learning.
  • Continuous investment in product and brand development is necessary, and even more important when times are tough. A great mistake is to see this investment as an expense item in the P&L, available to be managed to deliver a short term result. A powerful brand does not happen overnight, is the outcome of many thousands of small actions and improvements, as well as the obvious external marketing activity,  and it is the greatest asset any business can have.
  • The culture of the place is very hard to describe to an outsider, but clear to an insider. It is a mix of rules, experiences, stories, relationships, habits, and is more complex than any family.
  • Have in place a robust and well understood strategic process which serves as a framework for all decision making at all levels. When an opportunity presents itself, no matter how attractive it may seem, if it is outside the framework, leave it alone.
  • Have in place a robust but simple set of KPI’s intimately connected to the strategy, cascaded through every level, and proactively managed.
  • Never compete with a stronger competitor on their ground.
  • As far as possible, fund growth from cash flow. Long term debt is sometimes necessary, but can turn toxic when the best interests of the lender and the business diverge.
  • Be prepared to kill your favourite children and sacred cows, just be careful to ensure they are not golden geese in disguise.
  • Look for diversity in the thinking styles of people, and encourage that diversity of thought to bubble through and influence the whole business.
  • Treat employees as you would a trusted associate, not a piece on a chess board to be moved around at will. That trust will pay huge dividends in morale, productivity and loyalty
  • Institutionalise regular interaction and conversations across functions and up and down the company, without the impediment of formal roles.
  • Continuous improvement in everything should be so ingrained that people feel its absence keenly.

My final two years in Dairy Farmers were as GM Marketing of the much larger entity that now included the former GPD. While the business continued to be successful, the pace of change and improvement stalled under the dead weight of the still regulated milk business. After  two years, the MD of the business reached the end of his tether with me, constantly being a thorn in his side demanding change, and I with him, so one morning we parted company. The irony is that during this time, I (and the marketing team) launched the single most successful product I ever launched, the last in a long list of successful product launches as an employee. However, the means by which I had to subvert the ‘rules’ to do so were the nail in my corporate coffin.

Another two years on after my exit, the business was flogged off, ultimately to a Japanese brewer, at what I regarded as a fraction of its long term value. A sad end indeed to an iconic Australian food manufacturing business, and perhaps a metaphor for the whole food industry.