Exchange Retailing Ideas with Lots of Others

Finland’s Nokia was the world’s mobile phone powerhouse. But a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article describes the company as having been in “steep decline” in recent years. Nokia has many strengths to bounce them back to extraordinary success. They still hold more than 30% of the market for global mobile phone sales. Still, what happened to Nokia can serve us as a cautionary tale.
     Bloomberg Businessweek attributes Nokia’s problems to an isolation that kept the company from challenging their own business assumptions. As a consequence, they failed to keep up with what consumers came to expect in product capabilities and handset design. Nokia had a reputation for hiring from within. It was only earlier this month that Nokia selected, for the first time, a non-Finn as its CEO. Their ideas stayed within. The operating system for their phones is used by no company other than Nokia.
     The lesson for us? Cut through isolation. Exchange ideas with lots of other business people.

• Broaden the range of people to learn from. Yes, you can’t learn from everybody. For one thing, you don’t have the time if you’re operating your business. For another thing, not everyone who catches your attention has lessons that apply to your business. But look for teachers outside your usual channels. As you read my posting now, do you find yourself thinking things like, “How can I learn from what happened to Nokia. They’re a manufacturer, and I’m a retailer,” or “What could I possibly learn from the experiences of a company like Nokia that is so much bigger than my business”? If you’re thinking like that, you’re at risk for isolation.
• How often do you and your staff interact with other businesspeople? The Bloomberg Businessweek article pointed to the physical isolation of Nokia’s headquarters, far distant from other consumer-electronics and Internet-development firms. There might be something to that. Texting, blogs, and videoconferencing can provide important information. But compared to face-to-face interaction, communication from a distance falls short in spreading the passion. Encourage your staff to participate in workshops and professional conferences.
• Every week or two, consciously question your business assumptions to see how they hold up. Decades of social psychology research—such as at University of Colorado, State College of Colorado, and Ohio State University—highlight how having a point of view primes us to ignore contradictory evidence we’d benefit by noticing.

Click below for more:
Visit Other Retailers
Call on Structural Equation Modeling