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A discussion with Mark Alder
Mark is the founder and principal of WisePath Strategy LLC.
He shares his thoughts on business decision making in small and large organizations, the craft of the jazz musician, and what WisePath Strategy is about. |
Q: So what's the deal with Goliath and unleashing the "Inner David"?
A: The marketplace has gotten tougher for businesses and business units that are billion-dollar sized. New regulations that cost you real money feel like rounding errors to billion dollar businesses. And that's behind a lot of industry consolidation. But we've all seen customers or competitors that have gotten to a size where they need people from 6 rival departments to agree just to execute a simple program. The "Inner David" is the ability to size up a situation, quickly figure out the best approach, and leverage the ability to be executing while a larger organization is still having a meeting to decide who will be at the meeting to make a decision.
Q: Are the challenges of large organizations fundamentally different than midsize or smaller ones?
A: No, but the speed bumps on the path are different. Large organizations often have functional experts on staff, but their challenge is their larger scale makes it harder to get the internal dots connected. Leaders and managers in smaller organizations have generalists, who may not be able to give specific opportunities the full bandwidth they require.
Q: What is an example of the generalist challenge for smaller organizations?
A: A great example is strategic pricing...even if a smaller organization has someone responsible for managing day-to-day quotes, they might not have the strategic breadth to ensure a pricing strategy by product line and channel is right for the competitive context of a business. So that responsibility lands on a product manager, who may already be at full capacity.
Q: Do these challenges apply to someone running a smaller division in a large multinational corporation?
A: In many ways it might, especially depending corporate structure. A corporation with a small headquarters may offer its divisions autonomy instead of a corporate staff waiting for an invitation to help on a project. In fact, the primary interaction with corporate may be to provide financial projections and results. They may be under headcount restrictions, so that would be a case where WisePath can provide helpful navigation without upsetting "corporate".
Q: You've been both a CPA and a jazz musician. How does that influence your work?
A: Although I discovered early that neither was the right life path for me, both experiences help me every day. In addition to a great understanding of financial statements, I saw as a CPA the importance of systems thinking...seeing how parts of a business fit together. An undervalued skill developing as an improvising jazz musician is the discipline of learning the tools...scales, chord structures and patterns, tunes...so that in a performance setting you can create something unique and beautiful. Michelangelo needed to understand stone and the human form before he created his Pieta or The Statue of David.
Q: So why the name "WisePath Strategy"?
A: I found, as a generalist in a specialist world, that my experience in the worlds of sales, of marketing, of finance, even for a time taking on responsibilities in HR and procurement was unusual. I also saw that combining that knowledge and experience with my creativity enabled me to see different "Paths to Results" than others might be able to see. So "WisePath Strategy" is that offering of how all the parts fit together in the marketplace.
Q: What makes a path a Wise Path?
A: I look for three things...1) is it based on the market environment, both at a high level and looking at fine details, 2) does it connect the dots, making sure that all the pieces fit together, and 3) does the path lead to a result?
Q: Why a market-facing and strategy focus?
A: The question of strategy is ultimately deciding how an organization decides what it does, and distinctively adds value to a target customer. So in my experience properly making decisions on how one presents a business to the market is the most critical form of strategy. And that means both the internal generators of growth (channel, product, marketing) as well as growth through acquisitions.
A: The marketplace has gotten tougher for businesses and business units that are billion-dollar sized. New regulations that cost you real money feel like rounding errors to billion dollar businesses. And that's behind a lot of industry consolidation. But we've all seen customers or competitors that have gotten to a size where they need people from 6 rival departments to agree just to execute a simple program. The "Inner David" is the ability to size up a situation, quickly figure out the best approach, and leverage the ability to be executing while a larger organization is still having a meeting to decide who will be at the meeting to make a decision.
Q: Are the challenges of large organizations fundamentally different than midsize or smaller ones?
A: No, but the speed bumps on the path are different. Large organizations often have functional experts on staff, but their challenge is their larger scale makes it harder to get the internal dots connected. Leaders and managers in smaller organizations have generalists, who may not be able to give specific opportunities the full bandwidth they require.
Q: What is an example of the generalist challenge for smaller organizations?
A: A great example is strategic pricing...even if a smaller organization has someone responsible for managing day-to-day quotes, they might not have the strategic breadth to ensure a pricing strategy by product line and channel is right for the competitive context of a business. So that responsibility lands on a product manager, who may already be at full capacity.
Q: Do these challenges apply to someone running a smaller division in a large multinational corporation?
A: In many ways it might, especially depending corporate structure. A corporation with a small headquarters may offer its divisions autonomy instead of a corporate staff waiting for an invitation to help on a project. In fact, the primary interaction with corporate may be to provide financial projections and results. They may be under headcount restrictions, so that would be a case where WisePath can provide helpful navigation without upsetting "corporate".
Q: You've been both a CPA and a jazz musician. How does that influence your work?
A: Although I discovered early that neither was the right life path for me, both experiences help me every day. In addition to a great understanding of financial statements, I saw as a CPA the importance of systems thinking...seeing how parts of a business fit together. An undervalued skill developing as an improvising jazz musician is the discipline of learning the tools...scales, chord structures and patterns, tunes...so that in a performance setting you can create something unique and beautiful. Michelangelo needed to understand stone and the human form before he created his Pieta or The Statue of David.
Q: So why the name "WisePath Strategy"?
A: I found, as a generalist in a specialist world, that my experience in the worlds of sales, of marketing, of finance, even for a time taking on responsibilities in HR and procurement was unusual. I also saw that combining that knowledge and experience with my creativity enabled me to see different "Paths to Results" than others might be able to see. So "WisePath Strategy" is that offering of how all the parts fit together in the marketplace.
Q: What makes a path a Wise Path?
A: I look for three things...1) is it based on the market environment, both at a high level and looking at fine details, 2) does it connect the dots, making sure that all the pieces fit together, and 3) does the path lead to a result?
Q: Why a market-facing and strategy focus?
A: The question of strategy is ultimately deciding how an organization decides what it does, and distinctively adds value to a target customer. So in my experience properly making decisions on how one presents a business to the market is the most critical form of strategy. And that means both the internal generators of growth (channel, product, marketing) as well as growth through acquisitions.