The Clown asks Sir Andrew in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, “Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life”. Sir Andrew wants a love song, because, he says “…I care not for good life."
The Clown sings,”What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: in delay there lies no plenty. Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,Youth's a stuff will not endure."
The company cannot endure without beginning now to love the core value of their company. We can start to define some key activities relating to the ongoing struggle to nurture the core.
- Deciding what is core is core.
- Gaining and keeping access to your customer is core.
- Understanding what is and what will be core to your customer is core.
- Finding unique value in satisfying customer needs is core.
- Managing prioritized descriptions of solutions to customer need is core.
- Owning the design rules, not necessarily the design itself, is core.
- Delivering the solutions, not necessarily developing them, is core.
- Providing the best solutions at the right time for the customer is core.
- Empowering people who excel at core activities is core.
The most important activity, by far, is the habit of regular systematic review of what is core.
Insource core activities. Cultivate the people, who have access to and know what the customer needs. Empower those staff, who know how to create and maintain detailed technical descriptions of solutions to these needs. With few exceptions, you do not have a complete team, if you outsource core activities.
Outsource non-core activities. Make partnerships with providers who can create what you need based on your design rules, in most cases using the partner’s design and development expertise. With few exceptions, your cost structure is not sustainable and you are not delivering the best possible return on investment, if you insource non-core activities.
Comments