National Petroleum News (NPN) has been the independent voice of the petroleum industry since 1909 as the opposition to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. So, motor fuels marketing and retail is not just a sideline for us, it’s our core competency.
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ThePersonnelTouch New Year – Old Strategy? Remaining relevant A new year brings with it an opportunity to start over. A chance to wipe the slate clean, and approach your business with a fresh set of eyes. Do you want your business to be better or different? Better is good; different is better than good. Few companies are explicit about their future. Year after year they enter into the marketplace to compete with the same old outdated strategy. Some companies don't even have a strategy. That's like driving to a new destination for the first time without a map or GPS. They enter the marketplace stumbling over the same old marketing tactics they've employed for the last ten years. The problem is that the world has changed. Employing fossilized strategies against innovative, adaptable and nimble competitors will render your company irrelevant faster than the next price change on fuel. No strategy lives forever, and in recent years, strategy life cycles have been shrinking. Have you checked the expiration date on your company's strategy? If your Terry McKenna is company disappeared today, would your principal and co-founder of Employee Performance customers miss you? How long would it Strategies, Inc. (EPS), take your customers to find another based in Kure Beach, company that does what you do? If your NC. You can contact him at (910) 458-5227 or customers won't miss you, then how terrym@eps-i.com. much do they need you now? As the pace of change accelerates, more and more companies are finding themselves on the wrong side of the change curve. Great companies have a grasp on why they exist and who they are. Organizational Reflection As you begin 2013, now would be a good time to seriously reflect on your company with your management team. A candid, no-holds barred healthy and lively debate on the current state of affairs within your company. Wouldn't you want to know if everyone is on the same page in terms of what your company is trying to achieve? Are the folks in www.npnweb.com n NPN Magazine key leadership positions within your company all in the same boat rowing together towards a common destination, or do you have multiple boats headed in different directions? Do you have one team or two; field vs. headquarters? Now might be a good time to reengineer your company's management DNA. You as the owner/CEO of your company, along with your management team, should examine, challenge and question your assumptions about your competitors, employees and the industry, as well as your core beliefs. Be absolutely ruthless in challenging what you think you know. People in all professions, as well as companies and whole industries lose their way because they're operating on untested assumptions. The first step to getting better in any aspect of life, not just business, is facing and accepting reality for what it is. And reality isn't always pretty! Identifying and anticipating where you have performance gaps and a lack of alignment gives you an opportunity to address those issues before they are implicitly shown in weaker than necessary results. Is your business model aligned around your strategy? Is your strategy different or more of the same? Do you have the right talent in the right positions to execute your strategy? Will your system support and facilitate your strategy? Does your company focus on causes or symptoms? Are the folks in leadership positions true leaders or caretakers? Are you paying attention to the right metrics? What are the biggest gaps between rhetoric and the reality in your company? These are just a few questions you might want to deeply think about as you lead your company into the new year. Trust me, it's better that you take a proactive approach to soul searching and asking questions like these, than being forced to by an innovative, upstart competitor who has your company in their sights. For daily tips, insights and inspiration follow me on my Achieving your Potential Blog at: terrymckenna.typepad.com. January/February 2013 11