Here is an essay on the ‘Corporate Agenda of a Company’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on the ‘Corporate Agenda of a Company’ especially written for college and management students.
Essay on Corporate Agenda
Essay Contents:
- Translating Strategic Ambitions of a Company
- Corporate Management Ownership
- Multidimensionality of an Organisation
- Stability Over Time
- Externally-Focused, Internally-Directed
- Result-Orientation Programmes under Corporate Agenda
- Few Programmes, Quantified Targets
- Linkage with Careers of Key Managers
- Implementation Emphasis under Corporate Agenda
Essay # 1. Translating Strategic Ambitions of a Company:
The history of the corporate world is the history of successes and failures. For every successful company, there are at least two or three other companies, which have been unable to survive the onslaught of changes in the market, competition and technology, and have withered away. A full one-third of the Fortune 500 companies in 1970 had disappeared by 1983.
Business schools, researchers and consultants have done case-based and empirical researches to find the reasons for successes and failures and have come up with prescriptions regarding what a company should do in order to rot only achieve excellence but also to retain it over a period of time. There are as many concepts and approaches as the number of opinion makers. Yet, corporate managers continue to grope in the dark, trying to translate strategic ambition into reality. An additional concern is how to sustain such ambitions over 10 to 20 years, thereby forming a base for still higher goals, unfettered by the resources and capabilities available from time to time.
The importance of strategic ambitions to shape corporate strategy, or the resource allocation process is well-known. A clearly-articulated and well understood ambition to dominate an industry- worldwide is the key to achieving global leadership. The cases of Xerox, Honda, Komatsu, Sony and Canon are classic examples of how global dominance was achieved by each of these companies by pursuing a strategic ambition that was beyond the conventional definitions of strategic planning and which required managers to commit themselves to heroic goals.
Translating strategic ambition into reality is, however, the real task of corporate management. There is no dearth of companies which chalk our their strategic ambition and yet do not become successful by any barometer of measurement.
For instance, many American companies, with their early exposure and long experience with management concepts and applications much earlier than any other country-should have continued to remain on top of the world trade and commerce even after the 70’s. But in reality most of them lost out to the Japanese. In such US based companies, neither the strategic ambition to dominate the global market, nor the resource endowment lacking, and yet, these companies failed to put their act together and realise their ambitions.
As global opportunities expanded and American companies failed to spot opportunities, in spite of having-in most cases-the required strategic ambition, the Japanese companies stepped in and threatened their competitive position-Xerox got destabilised by Canon; General Motors (GM) and Ford by Nissan and Toyota; Caterpillar by Komatsu; and Procter and Gamble by Kao.
It was not the American companies alone which suffered; companies from other countries, following a predominantly western management style, failed to respond adequately to the Japanese strategy, which was based on a highly-focused, down-to-earth key agenda. In the late 80s, Mercedes and BMW faced major competition from Toyota’s Lexus, Honda’s Acqura and Nissan’s Infiniti.
In India, while most affiliates of leading multinational companies (MNCs) were fairly clear in their statement of strategic ambitions (thanks to the inputs they got from overseas principals), the list of the top ten private sector companies included just two MNC affiliates belonging to British American Tobacco and the Unilever Group. As against this, Reliance Industries, belonging to a first generation industrialist-a company which did not even exist till the late 60s-had become the largest Indian private sector company with a turnover of $1.3 billion.
The difference between corporations that have achieved their strategic ambitions successfully and those who could not, despite having clear goals, is the absence of an explicitly outlined and carefully articulated set of moves that translate ambition into reality.
The top management of successful organisations becomes single minded and determined to ensure operational consistency and people’s involvement. These measures, which are identified as the means to achieve ambitious ends and are pursued with a missionary zeal and obsession, become the corporate agenda of the corporation.
The corporate agenda is a set of critical tasks towards which every person in the organisation, from the CEO to the lowest worker, directs his or her attention. Since the corporate agenda is worked out carefully, in order to ensure its consistency both in strategic and operational terms, it is easily comprehensible from the point of view of implementation. Achieving specific items of the corporate agenda on a time-bound basis enables the organisation to progress steadily towards its strategic ambition.
Corporate agenda is, thus, the ‘path’ to reach the target destination; and depending on the specifics of the organisation (defined in terms of competitive position, resources and capability, and top management orientation and styles), as well as the time span laid down, this ‘path’ or the corporate agenda is chosen. Once this has been done, the agenda becomes the fundamental priority of the organisation and is followed at all levels, irrespective of the nature of business and tasks.
It is this follow-through that is the essence of corporate agenda. Many corporations and their top managements give only lip service to the strategic ambition of achieving market leadership. It is ironical that they do not follow up their thinking properly with a set of corporate agenda that could translate their ambition into reality. It is this quality of following up (or the lack of it) that separates the successful firms from the not so-successful ones.
Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) was able to translate its strategic ambition successfully to become the largest corporation in electrical systems and equipment by carefully working out corporate agenda, consisting of large scale acquisitions and mergers, layoffs, plant closings, transfer of products between countries, etc. The agenda was to restructure not only ABB but also the continental electrical power industry, giving it a significant competitive advantage.
Japanese companies like Toyota, Nissan and Honda, in order to achieve their ambition to further expand market and increase brand dominance, identified reduction of product development time as one of the corporate agenda even as they actively pursued the plans to develop new models in 20-24 months, as against 38-48 months for GM, Ford or Chrysler. The now famous fight for the number one position in the world motorcycle market between Honda and Yamaha had shown how an ill-defined corporate agenda, in spite of a well- intentioned strategic ambition, came in the way of Yamaha when it tried to beat Honda.
Similarly, in the US cosmetic industry, dominated by such names as Procter and Gamble, a number of Japanese companies, such as Kao, Kanebo and Sheseido, tried to make inroads by pursuing their strategic ambition. However, it was only Sheseido having followed its corporate agenda with great persistence (though at a high cost) over a long time of 20-25 years which finally achieved some success. Sheseido’s corporate agenda included development of a sales and distribution network in the USA by leveraging a strong domestic profit position.
The clarity of its strategic ambition and corporate agenda helped Sheseido realise its goal. Xerox, after having become vulnerable to Japanese competition and having lost its market share by more than 50% in the copier segment, relooked at its strategic ambition in the mid 80’s and has been pursuing a set of agenda since then which was aimed at re-engineering its key business activities, viz., customer service, development, and manufacturing, which resulted in an improvement in its market share. A similar emphasis was seen in the case of Caterpillar, which pursued a corporate agenda aiming to make the company the lowest cost producer in the world’s construction machinery industry.
Since the early 1990s, Hindustan Levers was in the process of translating its vision to become India’s largest private sector group by ensuring a dominant market position in each of its businesses and pursuing a well-articulated agenda of restructuring its existing activities and making horizontal acquisitions.
In a similar race to become India’s largest private sector group, ITC Ltd. (an affiliate of British American Tobacco), which followed primarily a conglomerate strategy in the late 70s and 80s expanded fast into agro-based products, paper and packaging, hotels and tourism and financial services among Indian firms, Reliance Industries, holding the number one position among Indian private sector companies, pursued forward and backward integration with great process.
Another example in the India context was the entry of Coca Cola, which, while pursuing its strategic ambition of putting Coke within “arms reach” of every consumer, has implemented its corporate agenda for the Indian market successfully. Its agenda included building a dominant market position at the time of entry itself by acquiring the production, marketing and distribution rights of the largest Indian soft drink manufacturer. All these cases show that while most companies have the capability to develop their strategic ambitions, the successful firms follow up their ambitions by chalking out a corporate agenda which they pursue with great persistence.
Essay # 2. Corporate Management Ownership:
For any corporate agenda to be a successful initiative, the analysis and commitment have to come from the corporate office, headed by the CEO.
It is the CEO and his team who have the holistic view of the company and its environment, and it is they who shape and have the ultimate responsibility for achieving the strategic ambition of the corporation. Sony, Chrysler, ITC and ABB would not have grown or come out of crises had not their CEOs-Morita, Iacocca, Geneen and Barnevik-made it a point to set an ambitious vision first and then follow it up with an agenda for achieving the desired objectives.
General Electric (GE) chairman John F Welch, Jr, concerned with the declining customer services of the lighting business division-resulting mainly from organisational blocks, bureaucracy and cumbersome procedures-personally initiated the ‘workout’ process throughout the company.
This process finally reduced product development time, speeded up delivery schedules and also eliminated breakage of products during transit. Welch took these specific projects as part of corporate agenda and never lost track of them until the targeted performance was achieved. This is where the importance of corporate agenda lies-it pinpoints the priorities of the top management in key areas, not in terms of spending enormous sums of money, but in terms of paying critical attention. The top management of Canon outplayed Xerox in the battle for the market share not by spending more on R&D but by paying more attention to the specific agenda.
Seen from this angle, corporate agenda not only sets the route for achievement of strategic ambition, it also clearly spells out the tasks and priorities of the most important players in the implementation process, viz. the corporate management, including the CEO. The days when CEOs spent most of their time on vision statement, or focusing on key financial data, or representing their companies on some external assignments (like sitting on governmental committees) are over.
In today’s fast-changing technological and competitive environment, where there is competition for global leadership, the CEO and his corporate team will have to spend much more time to understand the implications changes that are taking place in their business and general environment, and then develop an agenda for responding effectively to the new situation.
ABB’s aggressive posture in the 1980’s and 90’s-relating Percy Barnevik’s strategic ambition to dominate the world market of electrical systems and equipment was implemented through a set of corporate agenda that included transatlantic acquisitions, restructuring to leverage global scale economies, and maintaining local responsiveness in individual market centres. The whole agenda was conceptualised, driven and monitored by the corporate management.
A relevant question that may be asked is- what should be the involvement of the Board of Directors in shaping the strategic ambition of a company and working out the corporate agenda. The non-executive directors of the Board, if chosen properly, can bring in their useful experience with other organisations and industries. This can act as a platform for outlining the company’s own set of corporate agenda. Unfortunately, thus far, the Board’s involvement in strategic planning has been a mixed one and there is no clear data available on this subject.
Needless to say, a good collaborative relationship between the Board and the executive management on matters of strategic planning can increase the involvement of the former in the strategy formulation and implementation processes.
A collaborative partnership between the Board and management also enhances the quality of the corporate agenda being chosen and helps in eliciting the Board’s support when the same is needed to facilitate implementation. An encouraging trend of a higher involvement of the Board in strategy- related matters is expected in the coming years. A study has already predicted a very high involvement of the Board in strategic planning compared to its meagre participation, even as recently as in the mid-eighties.
Essay # 3. Multidimensionality of an Organisation:
Corporate agenda deals with the life and death of an organisation. The successful identification and implementation of an agenda can take a company to greater and greater heights, but any inadequacy arising out of shortcomings in strategic perception or a lack of persistence in pursuing the agenda may lead to a continuing competitive decline. This very characteristic of corporate agenda makes it different from the other tasks and programmes which a company may undertake.
Various combinations of corporate agenda are pursued in response to the different situational contexts of strategic uncertainties and ambitions.
Some commonly noted agenda are:
a) Restructuring for increased competitiveness (viz., sharpen the focus, lower costs, improve quality and enhance services).
b) Building or regaining core capabilities.
c) Dispersing risks.
d) Repositioning (for achieving market dominance in preferred segments).
e) Leveraging resources (including the reconfiguration of skills and resources).
Whether one or more of the above items should become part of the corporate agenda depends on whether the same is (or are) important to long-term business success and ambition.
NEC, a global leader in the field of computation and communication, identified capability building in semiconductors as crucial. Likewise, Honda’s corporate agenda was to build supremacy in engines. The BOC Group leading industrial and medical gases giant-had cost competitiveness as one of its main agenda during the whole of the 80s and the early 90s, and went in for massive downsizing and disposal of loss-making businesses in order to achieve a strong cost position.
Gillette, faced a sharp decline in its market share during the early 70s, partly due to a shift in its own thinking that razors had become a commodity (a problem with the mindset of the Gillette managers) and partly due to the inroads made by disposables (an innovation at that time). Before it was too late, Gillette identified that its razor system using a replaceable cartridge had a quality brand image. Accordingly the company set its agenda for an aggressive repositioning of its brands in the minds) of the users by refocusing its marketing activities and introducing a new technology product, namely, the sensor blade cartridge.
The dispersal of risk through diversification, divestment and acquisitions/ mergers is adopted as a key item of corporate agenda when it is perceived that the risk-return combination is not favour ably placed, given the company’s current product-market portfolio. Japanese companies like Sony, Canon, Matsushita and Sheseido are known for gaining worldwide market dominance in their respective fields through a single minded pursuit of resource leveraging-first by low cost manufacturing, then, brand positioning, and finally, leveraging the distribution network.
For an organisation, the choice of one or more of the broad categories of agenda gets influenced, among others, by (i) the strategic ambition it had set for itself, (H) the quality of the shared understanding within the organisation with regard to the emerging patterns of business and competition, and (Hi) the self-imposed boundaries set by the top management, assuming a whole set of organisational specifics, like risk preference, culture, style and values. The battle for the global market share between the American and Japanese companies since the mid-60s had shown that these three factors significantly influence the corporate agenda of a company.
To support each corporate agenda, there exists a set of programmes which act as building blocks. The ownership of and the initiative for these programmes also lies with the corporate management. As in the case of the overall agenda, the corporate programmes cut across functional and departmental boundaries as well as SBUs. Even though in some of the programmes there can be overtones of one or the other functions or technologies, their central perspective always remains around the company as a whole.
The managers of functional departments and SBUs must take into account the corporate agenda and its related programmes, and their respective priorities must be consistent with and subordinate to the agenda and programmes. Seen from this angle, corporate agenda supports the integration and orchestration of various activities across the organisation.
ABB’s corporate agenda to have lean corporate staff was followed meticulously whenever an acquisition or restructuring was undertaken in any part of the world. Corporate management, starting with Percy Barnevik, ensured that individual company plans conformed to this corporate agenda which was essential to realise ABB’s goal to have an organic and lean organisation.
Texas Instruments (TI), pursuing its ambition to be a leading player in all the markets it served, had as one of the items on its corporate agenda the goal to be in the forefront of proprietary technology development.
Knowing very well that a 100% internal development of sunrise technologies would be a time-consuming and costly affair, TI chalked out a set of corporate programmes within the scope of this technology development agenda that included:
(i) A strategic alliance with Japanese companies;
(ii) Setting up offshore manufacturing facilities in Japan; and
(iii) A tie-up with the customers in telecommunication, computer and automotive industries.
Likewise, Philips NY, which faced tough competition from Japanese manufacturers, aimed to defend its dominant market position in the USA and Europe through two key corporate programmes, viz., to be in the forefront in technology development, and to have low cost manufacturing.
The company’s corporate programmes which supported these two agenda, included:
(i) A joint venture with AT&T to access some select AT&T products, and
(ii) A production and technology-sharing agreement with Matsushita Electric for standardising and lowering the cost of VCRs and compact discs (CDs).
These cases illustrate the intrinsic linkage between strategic ambition and corporate agenda, and also the multidimensional characteristics of the latter.
Essay # 4. Stability Over Time:
The time span for each item of corporate agenda will necessarily be a long one and may even extend up to 5 or 10 years. This is because the programmes that come under each corporate agenda may encompass multiple functions, products and SBUs, and may also involve such tasks as significant investment, restructuring, divestment or M&A.
Obviously, far-reaching changes like these cannot be effected over a short run; however, there will have to be short-term milestones against each long-term programme that comes under the corporate agenda. The relative stability of the corporate agenda will indicate the company’s commitment to the path it has chosen to achieve its strategic ambition. It does not, however, mean that even if environmental or internal assumptions undergo a severe change, the agenda will remain unaltered.
It is only natural that in the face of any major technological, competitive or organisational change, the corporate agenda will require mid-course correction. As long as the broad assumptions remain by and large unchanged, the agenda will remain stable, except for minor updating at the margins attractions can be effected if the need arises. An appropriate example is the Japanese invasion of the US market in the post where the former’s ambition to build strong market position was backed by the pursuit of an offensive agenda of having the lowest cost and widest distribution.
The agenda remained unchanged over the years. The ability to mobilise the maximum possible resources to support this agenda at the decisive points had helped the Japanese companies to win the marketing warfare again and again. Experience had shown that the relative stability of the agenda, with flexibility to make tactical changes and maintain a continuous focus on the target competitors’ products and markets, holds the highest promise of success.
Essay # 5. Externally-Focused, Internally-Directed:
A corporate agenda that aims to translate strategic ambition into reality will have to simultaneously be externally-focused and internally-directed in order to be effective in achieving its ambitions. This twin focus is the key to the formulation of the agenda and its supporting programmes.
On the external front, strategic issues relating to both customers and competitors need to be addressed. Knowing the customers and their explicit and not-so-explicit needs alone is not sufficient (since all competitors shall be equally aware about the same); in addition, the company will have to identify both the weak and strong points of its major competitors.
A clear understanding of the issues is essential to develop the right corporate agenda and defend the same. For instance, Digital Equipment’s agenda to build strong market position in the small computers business was based on IBM’s apparent weaknesses in that segment. Xerox lost out to the manufacturers of inexpensive copiers as it had not initially pursued an agenda to develop products in the low price range.
A look at the competitor’s territory and identification of the strategic gaps in its products and services, sales force, or distribution network is essential for developing the right set of agenda. If this is not done, the company will always remain vulnerable to surprise attacks from unexpected quarters.
If a customer and competitor focus in the formulation of the agenda is necessary to avoid channelisation of corporate resources in senseless and wasteful programmes, another prerequisite is the motive force behind it; like, having an instinct to win, or at least avoid losing out. In this age of intense competition and rapid discontinuities, it is the mindset of the corporate managers that will determine the quality of the agenda being developed and implemented.
A company’s clear strategic thinking and a drive to win can make an important difference between the success or failure of an agenda. In situations where a company is constrained by resources and encircled by leading competitors, the agenda should be driven by a survival instinct, such as avoiding the possibility of losing out (since how not to lose is as crucial as the objective to win).
In the US auto industry, different companies have different ambitions and the supporting agenda depending on the respective market position and internal assessment of their top management. While GM may be keen to hold on to its leading position in the industry and Ford may be aiming for rapid market share growth, the agenda of Chrysler and American Motors can be that of retaining a threshold presence in the market which is essential for survival.
The corporate agenda, in order to be meaningful to all levels of the organisation, must be framed in clear operational terms which can be quantified and measured. The importance of this linkage of the agenda with operations must not be lost sight of.
For instance, after Xerox recovered against the Japanese competition in the mid-80s, Paul Allaire of Xerox, made a basic transformation in his company. He identified four specific agenda for change, viz., organisation structure, R&D, a recruitment and managerial compensation policy and values and culture-each of which had strategic implications when defined in functional terms, and could be subjected to measurement vis-a.-vis the target.
Essay # 6. Result-Orientation Programmes under Corporate Agenda:
The programmes that are included under the corporate agenda must have a result focus. Such glamorous programmes as zero-base budgeting, TQM, Kaizen (continuous improvement), undertaking cultural change, large-scale training, massive process innovation, or quality circles, may appear as panacea for all the troubles faced by a company, but they cannot be effective in isolation-whether for improving the bottom line in the short term or making significant progress towards achieving the strategic ambition.
The choice of each item of a corporate agenda has to be based on the sole consideration of the end result that can be achieved and the corporate wide impact it can have to drive the company forward towards its ambition. Very often, activities tend to get confused with results as managerial logic loses sight of the outcome and concentrates on the process, instead.
The requirement of a result-driven focus obviously points to the need for an operationally- consistent agenda. This means that each item of the agenda should be framed in such a way that the people down the line may understand in clear terms what is expected of them, say, from the next quarter to the next three or five years. Such a focus will trigger action and translate potential into results.
A properly-developed corporate agenda, when pushed single-mindedly by the CEO and his top management team, ensures that the managers of the SBUs and functional departments do not have a separate agenda When this happens, is felt everywhere, be it the production, marketing, distribution or support services.
The BOC Group had identified its strategic ambition as gaining a dominant market position through:
(a) Becoming a preferred supplier in all the markets they operated in, and
(b) Having a strong cost position.
The company’s corporate agenda included, among others, two operationally-focused, result- oriented programmes, viz. downsize numbers in all locations where productivity was not of internationally competitive standards, and dispose off uneconomic businesses earning returns below a threshold level.
The company pushed its subsidiaries and affiliates around the world to achieve these two agenda and favourable results could be achieved through such an effort.
Similarly, a corporate agenda that aims to achieve global brand dominance can include specific programmes of strategic importance, like, cost, quality, flexibility, service and speed, all of which are essential for creating and sustaining competitive advantages. Complexity arises when significant performance improvement is needed urgently to progress rapidly towards the direction of growth and, in such cases, the goals and targets have to be set for fairly short cycles.
Essay # 7. Few Programmes, Quantified Targets:
Corporate agenda are really strategic programmes aimed to realise the ambition of the company. Such an ambition is not reached in one or two years’ time, and in reality, it can even stretch up to five or ten years. Once the desired ambition has been realised, it becomes the task of the corporate management to hold on to that position and to set still higher ambitions that are limited by the resources and capabilities available at that point of time. In all these corporate development programmes, it is essential to have quantified targets for each item on the agenda and to measure the results vis-a-vis such targets. Without such a review, performance is bound to fall short of expectation.
For a corporate agenda to become an effective vehicle for realisation of strategic ambition, the goals have to be stretched and tightened further and further, rather than remaining satisfied with the previous achievements. The goals related to the corporate agenda have to be broken down into short-term milestones (say, quarterly or half-yearly) and the performance has to be measured against them.
It is only by measuring the short-term performance and making mid-course corrections that a company will be able to implement the strategic programmes it has identified under its corporate agenda. The agenda shall provide the logic and a strong sense of direction during the process of setting short- term targets and making subsequent evaluations.
The thrust involved in setting goals for a corporate agenda should capitalise on the unexploited capabilities and dissipated resources. There is also a need to focus on a few items since all the targets shall not be equally important. If the statement of the corporate agenda includes a large number of programmes, there will only be cynicism among the ranks. What is needed is a specific and focused perspective rather than a wide angled and diffused thinking.
The number of programmes should be restricted to a maximum of three or four and more than 90% of the success should be achievable by concentrating on these few areas of action. Given the dearth of time with the top management, anything more than these few will go beyond the ability of the CEO and the others in his team to monitor progress, initiate mid-course correction, and to intervene when necessary.
For example, in the early 70s, when NEC had become ambitious to exploit the twin benefits of computation and communication, it had focused its corporate agenda on strengthening its capability in semiconductors through strategic alliances that would enable it to have a firm footing in the emerging field of computers, communication and electronic component manufacturing.
Similarly, many us companies facing stagnant growth and adverse cost position in the early 80’s, pursued their ambitions to re-establish themselves as one of the world leaders in their industry of operation, and implemented a carefully worked out corporate agenda that included, disintegration of operations into autonomous units (Johnson and Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Eastman-Kodak and GE), rationalisation, downsizing and plant closing, divestment of overseas assets (Monsanto, Gulf Oil, ITT, Cheese rough-Ponds and United Technologies), and the use of computer-integrated manufacturing technologies.
The emphasis on having a few items only on the agenda underlies the importance of strategic thinking with regard to the cause-effect relationship between each item and the ambition set. Since the resources of the top management and significant financial commitments are involved in executing a corporate agenda over a period of two to five years or beyond, extreme care is necessary at the planning stage to identify the right priority areas that will have the greatest impact. In the unfortunate event of finding at a later date that the agenda is inadequate or inappropriate, the outcome may be expensive and fatal.
Essay # 8. Linkage with Careers of Key Managers:
The CEO and his top management team must have an explicit ownership of the corporate agenda that is being pursued. They have to act as the accelerators and catalysts to achieve the short- term milestones as well as the long-term goals envisaged at the time the agenda was set. The commitment to pursue the agenda assiduously through the process of communication, goal-setting and follow-up across the organisation, should be absolute.
To strengthen this commitment, rewards and punishments-including career progression-need to be linked with the results achieved, since personal stakes are essential to ensure the success of an agenda. Starting with the CEO, the personal stakes should be extended down the line to direct the attention of the key managers.
The agenda must challenge the innovative and administrative abilities of the managers to create or seize opportunities, side-step or demolish obstacles, speed up implementation, and make a dramatic effect on results. The right combination of risks and rewards and a supportive MIS to give feedback on performance will facilitate the process. The managers must feel that achieving the purpose of the agenda in totality shall ensure bright future prospects for the organisation as well as for individuals.
The challenges and risks associated with the agenda and the prospects of rapid career growth and financial rewards hold the key to success:
1. Lee Iacocca’s departure from Ford under an unfortunate circumstance and the challenge of the Chrysler assignment provided force and determination to the agenda pursued by him to turnaround Chrysler.
2. While pursuing his agenda to ensure the fast growth of ITT, Harold Geneen made sure that he always had the very best of talent in the corporate office-people who were competent, innovative and hardworking-and rewarded them with salaries higher than the industry standards, performance bonuses and rapid career progression.
3. Prior to becoming the President and CEO of ABB, Percy Barnevik was the MD of ASEA, Sweden, one of the two companies that merged to form ABB. His perception of the way the structure of European electrical systems and equipment industry could be strategically altered coupled with his personal drive, led to the merger of Brown Boveri of Switzerland and ASEA, a series of transatlantic acquisitions, and his rise to the position of the CEO of the twenty-nine billion dollar ABB.
4. Jan Carlzon, fighting a grim battle to reverse the declining fortune of Scandinavian Air System (SAS), pursued his agenda to convert SAS into an excellent airlines through an extraordinary improvement in services. He empowered his management team to demolish the bureaucratic procedures and rules that had been getting in the way of the services.
5. Lincoln Electric, a US-based manufacturer of welding machines and induction motors, followed the practice of no retrenchment and high average salary per employee in spite of a very large decline in revenue during the early 1980s. This consistently resulted in achieving its corporate agenda of becoming one of the lowest cost producers (with a productivity of 250% above the industry average) in a fiercely competitive industry.
Similar explicit linkages of agenda with career and rewards are also practised at 3M and HP.
Essay # 9. Implementation Emphasis under Corporate Agenda:
Corporate agenda is an operational charter, for which the implementation responsibility rests with the CEO and his team. It is not a vision statement that indicates what kind of company the organisation will become 10 or 20 years hence. The agenda defines the path of transition from the current state to the desired state in terms of specific arts or programmes, with clear milestones and first person responsibility for driving the same forward. There is no ambiguity whatsoever about ‘what’ or ‘how’.
The agenda itself facilitates communication within the organisation, generates deep commitment to work across functional boundaries and helps in integrating various tasks at different levels. It also makes resource allocation transparent and provides the criteria thereof-be it time, technology, people or money. Value systems get shaped, new skills and expertise are acquired, age old culture and bureaucracy are questioned, administrative and power structures get altered, yardsticks for career progression and performance are as the corporate agenda gets pushed towards fruition by the top management.
A well-developed corporate agenda, owned and driven by the corporate management, provides scope for the cultural overhauling of an organisation. The implementation focus of the agenda bridges the gap between the current resource configuration and the one required for achieving the desired non incremental, stretched targets. The agenda itself provides the directions of the changes that are needed in organisation structure, management processes, system of rewards and punishment, mix of skills and expertise, profiles of key people, values, leadership traits, etc. to facilitate its implementation.
With its corporate wide perspective and operational consistency, the agenda makes a dramatic impact on the rest of the organisation in terms of making things happen, enabling individual and group excellence, and achieving the desired ambition-be it a strong global market position, competitive advantage building, brand dominance or neutralising a target competitor. The intrinsic capability of the organisation-as embodied in its people, technology, market position and brands-gets fully exploited as the corporate agenda challenges, stretches and motivates employees to develop a passion to become ‘heroes’ in the desired areas.