grantbrewer.com

Election words

2008-09-05T13:17:00+02:00

The New York Times has an excellent and interesting information graphic that shows how open various words are used by the different speech-makers in the either the Democrats or the Republicans. It is an interesting representation and the actual words that feature are food for thought. The Republicans do talk about God an awful lot!

SA Blook, Chapter 3 — What the world thinks of South Africa

2008-06-02T08:00:00+02:00

Understanding South Africa is a challenge. It is a country full of paradoxes and extremes. As the setting of one of the most remarkable political transformations in modern history, it is also home to widespread poverty and mind–numbing violent crime. We remain trapped by past beliefs in our strengths — such as the idea that South Africa is a rich country because of its mineral wealth, or that our extraordinary political transition owes us opportunities in a global economy — and we're struggling to define what exactly we contribute to and how we relate to the world around us. How do all these things come together to forge a nation that can define its own meaning for the twenty first century, and in doing so create an emerging land of opportunity.

About Me

2008-05-20T21:35:00+02:00

I'm Grant Brewer, a strategy & technology consultant from Johannesburg, South Africa. I've been consulting in one form or another for more than thirteen years, and primarily focus on how technology can enable better business processes, products & decision making. I am a partner at Ernst & Young, one of the largest global Advisory companies in the world. I get a kick out of exploring new things and out of finding simple & elegant ways to overcome complex challenges. And occasionally I ramble on about things related to the work, the web or life to anyone who will read.

Vodafone to Offer Apple’s iPhone in Ten Markets

2008-05-06T19:51:01+02:00

Freeing information from autocracy & over control

2008-01-15T07:00:00+02:00

It is always striking how difficult it is to get hold of information from an organisation as a customer, or even as an employee. It is not unusual to be chased from call centre agent to call centre agent as you try to determine an accurate and truthful answer to your questions. Just as common is the employee that struggles to find the correct information such as the most up to date report or a contract. In today's post-information age, getting access to data in organisations shouldn't be this difficult. People have got used to the ease with which they find information with tools such as Google, and this expectation has got to be translated into organisations. Freeing information is about treating customers and employees as partners and with respect. It is about allowing them the freedom to define their own contribution to your organisation as either a customer or an employee.

Pick ‘n Pay Home Shopping

2007-11-29T09:38:00+02:00

I decided to register for home shopping at Pick 'n Pay today. I've been a regular user of Woolworths' home shopping site site for many years, but needed to buy things that Woolworths don't stock. So I pointed my browser at http://homeshopping.picknpay.co.za/ expecting things to go smoothly. Well it wasn't to be.

The Independent’s Rugby World Cup front page

2007-11-12T19:50:00+02:00

Social networking should be useful in business

2007-11-01T07:00:00+02:00

These days I frequently read about organisations banning the use of social networking tools like MySpace, LinkedIn or FaceBook. The issues of rising bandwidth usage and the associated costs, and the potential waste of time if employees are spending too much time on these sites that support such a decision. However, perhaps organisations should take a step back from their immediate reaction and explore a strategy that might embrace social networking in the enterprise. Banning the use of external social networking sites may be short sighted and unnecessarily clumsy. The key is to find common ground -- perhaps limit the time that these social sites are available, say in until nine in the morning and after four in the afternoon. Or over lunchtime. Taking the high ground and embracing the the way modern employees work by implementing social networking as a form of knowledge and people management within your organisation can lead to happier, possibly more productive employees and more importantly better informed employees.

Standard Bank & China

2007-10-25T10:03:00+02:00

1000 days before 2010 World Cup

2007-10-23T08:28:01+02:00

With a successful rugby World Cup campaign behind us, I caught sight of [this article][] on [Accelerate Cape Town][] highlighting that there are 1,000 days to go before the FIFA World Cup 2010 kicks off in South Africa -- that leaves very little time for preparations, although it seems from what I hear and read that things are on track. The article's author, Linton Rensburg has a few interesting comments.

Strategy is not a competitive advantage

2007-09-28T08:50:00+02:00

Strategy is about choice. It’s about implementation. It’s about reality. It is about so much more than a document or a planning session. Strategy is worthless when it exists only as an idea, trapped in the intellect of its originator. Only the capacity to act creates value or competitive advantage. Strategy is about direction and a business concept that has focus, a purpose and has a clearly understood way of creating value. Most importantly, good strategy is about bringing the the ideas and the implementation together in an ecosystem that becomes far more valuable than the sum of its parts — an infinitely more difficult and costly for competitors to copy.

Why are products so complex?

2007-08-28T10:29:00+02:00

Technology and progress were meant to make us more productive and make life easier. We were meant to be enjoying more leisure time, whilst technology helped us get the job done. We know that this idea was far from the truth, but there is still a nagging doubt that life (and the products and services we consume whilst living) have become more complex to deal with rather than less complex. One of the keys to overcoming the challenge is to stop trying to please everyone -- accept that some potential customers won't buy your product or service, and this takes courage. Good strategy often requires the courage to take such a stand. If you get your product portfolio right and get customers to understand your products you might be on the road to creating value through product leadership. And that might help you lower the cost of sales and lower support costs as you get the right product to the right consumer, just when they want it.

Brazil unveils strategy on crime

2007-08-21T10:36:00+02:00

China’s Trade in Africa Carries a Price Tag

2007-08-21T08:45:00+02:00

Innovative strategy is more than passion

2007-08-08T07:00:00+02:00

It is not unusual to see organisations that are struggling because they allow the passion and the belief in a new idea to masquerade as strategy. It is true that new ideas will almost always fail unless someone has the passion and the belief in the idea to stay with it through all the challenges. However, fresh ideas and people that are passionate about them are not uncommon, yet successful businesses built on these same ideas are a lot less common. Innovation is more than ideas. Re-inventing an industry or a product category takes more than research and a fresh take on the business model. Managing innovation and implementing new business models is notoriously difficult -- regardless of whether you're an established business, a new business unit or a start up company. It is a common mistake to assume that sheer passion and belief will bring a strategy to life. New ideas need the passion and the belief -- they also need good strategy, leadership and implementation.

Startups are hard work!

2007-07-03T07:00:00+02:00

Staring up a new venture is hard work. It is hard work, regardless of whether you're establishing a real independent start up business, starting a some kind of non-profit organisation or starting a new line of business in an existing organisation. Everything just seems to take much more effort and take much longer than you originally think. I don't think I've ever met or read about a entrepreneur that commented with hindsight that turning their idea into reality turned out to be far easier than they had imagined! The fact that setting up a venture to commercialise your new idea is a lot more difficult than it seems at the outset means that entrepreneurship needs to go far beyond ideas. We've commented before that developing a strategy is difficult, but often more easily achieved than implementing it. This is entirely true of strategies focused on implementing new ideas - truly talented entrepreneurs have skills that extend past the ideas to encompass operational skills and a great deal of patience! The successful embrace these apparent conflicts and above all they develop the patience to trust that their vision will materialise piece by piece over time. Rome was indeed not built in a day.

Cracking your next product implementation

2007-05-30T07:00:00+02:00

The strategy development and the design of products or services has been completed. Now onto your next leadership challenge: surviving a successful product launch. Surviving is a good choice of words, because product or service development and the subsequent implementation can be a real challenge. Often, the organisations focus on the product design and development because this is seen to be the innovative and glamorous process. This is at the expense of the good product implementation, without which a good idea never sees the light of day. Any project to implement a new product is going to be a challenge, will suffer changing requirements and hostile deadlines. Good managers know that this is a reality, yet understand how to manage the expectations and demands so that the collective effort results in a better product or services for the business and its customers.

Is your strategy implementation failing?

2007-05-04T07:00:00+02:00

The strategy is defined. You're a leader - your job is to develop the strategy for your team. Wrong! Your job is to deliver results. Coming up with strategies is often the easy part since it is frequently an intellectual activity. Choosing between alternative ideas and then managing their implementation is the hard part. Quite often, managers are not as well prepared for managing projects that cut across functions and business processes, where most of the project team are not under their direct management.

Operations: implementing strategy

2007-04-02T23:00:00+02:00

Operations is what a company does. It is the core. Strategy tells us what we're going to do and how we might be doing it - operations gets down to the doing and actually implements a strategy. It is easy in conversations about strategy to lose sight of the fact that all strategies need to be implemented otherwise they remain concepts or ideas. No business can be successful by focusing only on building strategy. At some point every organisation (even a non-commercial organisation) has to implement. Operations is perhaps not seen as the glamorous side of business strategy, but it is equally important because it is where the doing gets done.

Preparing yourself for leadership

2007-03-01T12:30:00+02:00

Last month outlined ideas to focus your first hundred days leading a new team, but what if you're not yet leading the team? What do you need to develop to make sure that you're going to be an effective and charismatic leader able to inspire commitment, demand discipline and achieve performance? Here are some of the characteristics or capabilities of people that make good leaders and managers. Be warned, great leadership does not follow a formula and there is as much art as there is science in developing as a leader.