The world’s greatest companies - Happily Demand Driven
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Mon, Oct 17, 2011
One of my heros is the late Col. John Boyd, a 20th Century Sun Tzu. A brilliant military strategists whose lessons apply perfectly to business. A tenet of his was “analysis and synthesis” AKA: destruction & creation. The idea was look at several things pull them apart to their ingredients, mix them up and put them together to make something totally new. On my flight back from the RFID Center Denmark I pulled two books apart with a great revelation! (not literally, the books were on my iPad).
The first was Ted Leonsis’ new book The Business of Happiness (which I highly recommend, not just because I knowTed but because it’s a great book) which suggests happy companies are the most successful. Google’s “don’t be evil”, Walt Disney’s “make people happy”, Vail’s “Experience of a lifetime” etc. prove his point.
Disney, Google,Vail all focus on making their clients (and hopefully their employees) happy, but they also have something else. They are driven by demand.
For years companies were all about Supply and Demand. Optimizing the supply chain was, and still is, a multi-billion dollar industry. (Think airlines, fast food, and cellular service). With a sea change in global economies a tsunami has wiped out the law of supply and demand. Winning companies now are Demand driven.
Winners are practicing mass customization; figuring out ways they can give the customer what they want, when they want it, seemingly one at a time (which makes customer happy). Car companies that used to figure out how to produce the most cars in the shortest time, are now trying to figure out how to develop new cars (responding to demand) as quickly as possible. Computer companies let you pick from a laundry list of options. Nike allows you to customize sneakers. Amazon solicits your opinion which drives market behavior. This optimization of the Demand chain reflects itself in how something meets a buyer’s need. This is where RFID comes in and can play a great role.
Coke’s latest innovation in the UK is a soft drink dispenser that has dozens of different choices. It uses RFID to track what flavor is being used, when and how much. They could even add an RFID & Facebook connection and make it viral. This is data capture to optimize demand. It could be used in myriad situations. Demand analysis is the crux of the modern day success. You can read more about Demand chains in Kash & Calhoun’s How Companies Win - but I’ll give you one example of a phenomenal company that does both and is crushing it.
Zappos.
In fact, the founder of Zappos wrote a book called Shipping Happiness (which I also highly recommend and I don’t even know the guy). The culture, methods, and strategy set the retail world on its ear. The way Zappos wanted to meet demand was so radically different they had to start and run their own logistics operation instead outsourcing to a perennial leader like FedEx.
Zappos focused on the demand chain, and they were a happy company. Employees got new challenges regularly, continual training, a chance to do meaningful work, benefit financially and change an entire industry. They were happy, their clients were really happy and the company was years ahead of competitors.
Take happiness, take client demand and pull them apart to find out what items drive them in your company. Then mash them back together to focus on happiness combined with optimizing your Demand Chain and you’ll have a massive hit on your hands - I’m already betting on that.