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From Stern+Associates: Managing perspective
Michael Alan Hamlin
Stern+Associates' Danny Stern writes with some interesting observations: "Admittedly, the economic fundamentals of the United States are troubled, and if we could have the economy of 2007 back we’d take it. However, as we deal with the realities of 2009, it’s vital to develop a perspective on managing fear.
"Michael Porter of Harvard Business School made a telling observation about the U.S. economy - it is larger than all of Europe’s and ten times the size of Japan’s. China’s economy, often portrayed as the economic powerhouse of the 21st century, is also 1/10th the size of ours. We shouldn’t act like we live in a country where work isn’t getting done, deals aren’t being made and value isn’t being created.
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Posted
3/31/2009 11:02:44 AM |
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BPO update: Dell bails in bid to improve profitability
Michael Alan Hamlin
Several weeks ago, server and PC manufacturer Dell Computer announced that earnings plummeted a staggering 48% to $350 million in the three months ending in January. Revenues also fell in double digits, 16% to $13.4 billion, and units sold was down 12% in a period one report described as “three of the worst single months since PCs were invented.” The company’s gross margin also dropped to 17.2% from 18.7%.
In announcing its latest results, Dell added that it raised a previously committed cost reduction target to $4 billion from $3 billion. In reaction, Stanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimated that the fabled technology company would have to cut another 12%-15% of its workforce on top of 9,400 jobs already eliminated, an 11% cut according to journalist Maureen O’Gara writing recently in .NET Developer’s Journal.
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Posted
3/25/2009 11:23:37 AM |
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The rocky road to reform in Manila
Michael Alan Hamlin
Read my review of Brett Decker's Global Filipino in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal here.
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Posted
3/19/2009 6:08:37 PM |
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Entitlement and competence
Michael Alan Hamlin
The decision of the Lopez Group of Companies (Lopez Group) to sell a 20% interest in electricity distributor Manila Electric Company (Meralco) last week to telecoms provider PLDT was an acknowledgement of the politically inevitable, the execution of a financial and debt service strategy, and the implementation of a brand rehabilitation program. In a matter of days, the Group addressed its three biggest challenges in a revolutionary way that many suspected but couldn’t help being surprised by when it became reality.
For the Lopez Group, the tradeoffs required to maintain a controlling interest in the Philippines’ largest electricity distributor simply no longer made sense. While it might have been able to effectively address some of those tradeoffs - which involved resisting political and regulatory pressures, dealing with emotional consumer ire, and addressing stagnating profitability - collectively the energy and resources required to manage these challenges could clearly be used with better results elsewhere. And now they will be.
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Posted
3/18/2009 12:37:40 PM |
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BPO future
Michael Alan Hamlin
Although job losses in the Philippines continued to mount last week, compared to the economic chaos in the United States, conditions here appeared almost rosy. While the Dow was plunging to a 12-year low below 7,000, General Motors was nearing bankruptcy, and the US government was announcing the loss of another 651,000 jobs in February, the Philippine Stock Exchange index was moving up 2.56% from the previous week, auto manufacturers were announcing that private car sales increased in January and commercial sales fell only slightly, and BPO investors were unveiling new job-creating investments.
While it is true that the stock market has been trading in a 130-point band so far this year and last week’s rise reflected a boardroom battle for Manila Electric Company, other regional markets are trading below 2008 lows. The Philippine auto market is tiny, but it directly employs about 75,000 Filipinos and directly and indirectly supports up to half a million families according to the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines, Inc. BPO directly employs many more, about 400,000, and will grow jobs industry-wide at around 30 percent this year according to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P).
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Posted
3/11/2009 12:00:12 PM |
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One dramatic moment
Michael Alan Hamlin
Journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell defines “the tipping point” as “one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once.” Gladwell rose to prominence back in 2000 when his book, The Tipping Point , was first published. In a New York Times review that year, Alan Wolfe called The Tipping Point “a lively, timely, and engaging study of fads.” Wolfe mischievously suggested that the study of fads has merit, because they “remind us of the potential for disorder always lying behind the placid surface of daily life.”
Gladwell argues that tipping points are the product of the interests of influential individuals, whom other people want to emulate. They can provoke revolutions in fashion, entertainment, and politics because momentum for change builds as more and more people emulate and adopt the perspectives of these influential individuals. Eventually, that momentum reaches a tipping point at which new behaviors and values become the norm. The 2008 election of Barak Obama is a perfect example of a tipping point, in which the previously unthinkable became a desired alternative to the political status quo largely as a result of the support of “influentials.”
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Posted
3/4/2009 4:50:23 PM |
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Not reporting
Michael Alan Hamlin
When I watch the Asian weather report every morning on CNN International, the temperature forecast for Manila is invariably missing. Alongside capital cities on a regional map are little black flags with the forecast temperature displayed. But in Manila’s case, the little black flag is empty just about every morning. In fact, I can’t recall if the forecast temperature has ever been displayed in that little black flag.
This used to incense me because I assumed that CNN International didn’t consider the Philippines important enough to include in the morning forecast. But then one morning the person delivering the forecast pointed to the empty black flag beside Manila and said something to the effect that, “We don’t know what the temperature is in Manila because Manila isn’t reporting. That’s why the flag is blank.”
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Posted
3/3/2009 2:14:01 PM |
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