This has been the "TIME" week.
Infact the time factor has popped out a lot during my recent meetings.
When discussing with one of my best distributor (and quite experienced) trying to put together an aggressive plan, he came out with a short story:
"When I worked in a family owned company, we were doing 15.000 boilers per year and we prepared a plan to increase the sales to 20.000 in two years. It was a realistic and feasible plan with some good actions and things to do.
After we presented the plan the owner said... good but not enough. I want a plan to produce 60.000 units per year. We ended up in two years producing always 15.000 boilers"
And this story immediately came back to my mind when I saw FCA (Fiat Chrisler Automobiles) plan.
Moving in 5 years from 4,4 Mil vehicles of 2013 to 7-7,5 Mil per year (2014 will be 4,5Mil vs an original plan of 5,9Mil).
Alfa moving up to 150.000 only in North America (from 70.000 in total in 2013) and Jeep up to 1,9 Mil from 732.000 in 2013.
I will not stress on the fact this is the 8th plan in 10 years and guess what... in no case the numbers were even close to the reality.
Yes, market was down. Yes, the scenario has changed but... out of the original 66 models that were planned only 32 (ish) were launched. And you know that once you start being late...
The "When" is the key issue.
Unfortunately putting together a 5 years plan, but even a 3 years plan, make you think you have plenty of time. You can fill up your days with a lot of things and everything can be achieved.
You know that a good plan is made of 1% of inspiration and 99% perspiration. So everybody must work hard on this but often you realize, after six months or one year, that you're late.
Late projects tend to make this more complex as it's not possible to speed up a process by adding people.
The development plan MUST therefore be carefully evaluated starting with the REAL availability of people and, in general, resources. And, most of all, with a CLEAR target from the beginning. This is crucial as once you start being behind schedule it's very unlikely you'll be able to close the gap. That is valid both for FCA and for much smaller companies.
CLEAR TARGETS: who the company want to be
CLEAR DIRECTIONS: what the company needs to reach the targets
CLEAR PLANS: when things must happen and with which results
CLEAR RESPONSIBILITIES: who's going to make it
CLEAR CHECK POINTS: when and what should happen in between
Will also this FCA fail? I don't know. Certainly mr.Marchionne's record is not exceptionally good and I sincerely hope that this will finally work.
What I know for sure is that.
Guess who's suffering the most from things being late... SALES!
Sales development, unless it's driven only by a coverage of uncovered markets (but also in this case a ramp up phase is required), it is just the final part of a more complex activity.
Being the last part it often suffer the delays of the previous activities and, unfortunately, it will not recover the time that it's lost and it's suffering even more as the infrastructure that is supposed to help is not supporting properly.
Have a nice week end
Infact the time factor has popped out a lot during my recent meetings.
When discussing with one of my best distributor (and quite experienced) trying to put together an aggressive plan, he came out with a short story:
"When I worked in a family owned company, we were doing 15.000 boilers per year and we prepared a plan to increase the sales to 20.000 in two years. It was a realistic and feasible plan with some good actions and things to do.
After we presented the plan the owner said... good but not enough. I want a plan to produce 60.000 units per year. We ended up in two years producing always 15.000 boilers"
And this story immediately came back to my mind when I saw FCA (Fiat Chrisler Automobiles) plan.
Moving in 5 years from 4,4 Mil vehicles of 2013 to 7-7,5 Mil per year (2014 will be 4,5Mil vs an original plan of 5,9Mil).
Alfa moving up to 150.000 only in North America (from 70.000 in total in 2013) and Jeep up to 1,9 Mil from 732.000 in 2013.
I will not stress on the fact this is the 8th plan in 10 years and guess what... in no case the numbers were even close to the reality.
Yes, market was down. Yes, the scenario has changed but... out of the original 66 models that were planned only 32 (ish) were launched. And you know that once you start being late...
The "When" is the key issue.
Unfortunately putting together a 5 years plan, but even a 3 years plan, make you think you have plenty of time. You can fill up your days with a lot of things and everything can be achieved.
You know that a good plan is made of 1% of inspiration and 99% perspiration. So everybody must work hard on this but often you realize, after six months or one year, that you're late.
Late projects tend to make this more complex as it's not possible to speed up a process by adding people.
The development plan MUST therefore be carefully evaluated starting with the REAL availability of people and, in general, resources. And, most of all, with a CLEAR target from the beginning. This is crucial as once you start being behind schedule it's very unlikely you'll be able to close the gap. That is valid both for FCA and for much smaller companies.
CLEAR TARGETS: who the company want to be
CLEAR DIRECTIONS: what the company needs to reach the targets
CLEAR PLANS: when things must happen and with which results
CLEAR RESPONSIBILITIES: who's going to make it
CLEAR CHECK POINTS: when and what should happen in between
Will also this FCA fail? I don't know. Certainly mr.Marchionne's record is not exceptionally good and I sincerely hope that this will finally work.
What I know for sure is that.
Guess who's suffering the most from things being late... SALES!
Sales development, unless it's driven only by a coverage of uncovered markets (but also in this case a ramp up phase is required), it is just the final part of a more complex activity.
Being the last part it often suffer the delays of the previous activities and, unfortunately, it will not recover the time that it's lost and it's suffering even more as the infrastructure that is supposed to help is not supporting properly.
Have a nice week end
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