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The old idea of Monkey See, Monkey Do doesn’t just apply to monkeys.  It applies to all of us as leaders, co-workers, friends and family.

My boy Maverick taught me that lesson yet again this weekend. Maverick is a wild child – a true feral wild horse. So all of this domesticated living is pretty different for him. But he’s a quick learner, and smart.  You have to be smart to survive in the wild.

This week I had the idea to put Mav in with Shadow, my gelding Morgan. They played in the arena together and had a blast, so I moved Pearl to another slot and let Mav and Shadow have the big paddock.

I was a bit worried that first night – you never know what two horses, especially those gelded later in life like both my boys, are going to do when you’re not around. I knew neither would kill each other, but I didn’t know if they’d fight or bond in the dark of night with no one to watch. (continue reading…)

Introduction

Porter (2002) states that root of the problem lies in the lack of distinguishing between operation effectiveness and strategy. The expedition for productivity, quality and speed has resulted in management tools and techniques, total quality management benchmarking, time based competition, outsourcing, partnering, reengineering, change management.  In any organization, strategy management is the key to its success. There are many theories based on this assumption that without a proper strategy and planning, it is difficult for any industry to survive irrespective of its size. It is necessary to understand here that all the major corporate organizations have established themselves, thanks to superior strategic planning and implementation. The retail industry is making news everywhere with not only the traditional industries increasing their outlets but some major corporate industries also intruding into this industry like Fresh @ Reliance of Reliance Industries, More of Aditya Birla Group in India. Wal-Mart, a US based retail industry, which is known as the giant in the retail industry has survived and is still the huge enterprise in the world which deals with almost all the F&B products, apparels, etc. It is not only the largest company in world but also the largest company in the history of world.(Fishman, 2006) The present paper is divided into four sections to understand and answer as what makes Wal-Mart the best in the industry, 1) retailing industry at the time of Wal-Mart’s innings, 2) Wal-Mart’s Competitive advantage and key components, 3) Wal-Mart’s Strategy and 4) Sustainable growth of Wal-Mart. (continue reading…)

It is a very frequent occurrence that the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is just an afterthought when preparing and negotiating a contract, and the buyer is usually waiting for the supplier to produce the SLA agreement. Of course, this leads to the situation in which the SLA actually protects the supplier, not the buyer.So here are the items one must do to achieve at least a reasonable if not good SLA:

1. Remember that any SLA is open for negotiation, but only in initial purchase- although the supplier may propose a very rigid position on the SLA (especially common in large companies), the SLA is part of the sales process. Standing by a rigid position should immediately raise red flags that the proposed “unchangeable” SLA is protecting the supplier, not the buyer. So the best opportunity to negotiate it is during the initial RFP negotiations. Once the product/service is sold and goes into production use, the buyer has lost all power of negotiation. So be very wary to agree that you will negotiate the SLA after delivery, end of warranty or some similar wording. (continue reading…)