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    Claus Schafhalter is executive level Management Consultant and owner of Sunogos - Change for the Better


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    • Strategic Change, Execution Blunder (Part 1) – Introduction

    By Claus Schafhalter | September 23, 2011

    Crossroads

    Par­tic­i­pat­ing in or watch­ing the stock mar­ket in 2011 can be nerve wreck­ing. Shares go up and down dri­ven by macro-economic devel­op­ments, reces­sion fear, and relief that every­thing will be fine. There are a cou­ple of well known com­pa­nies though that fall much more than the mar­ket. In this loose series I want to dis­cuss three of them, all at one time mar­ket lead­ers in their seg­ment, and all lost 50% or more of their share value after announc­ing strate­gic changes.

    These are my candidates:

    In all 3 cases I do have strong opin­ions about the mer­its of their announced strate­gies. But let’s be clear about it, with­out insider infor­ma­tion and intel­li­gence about mar­ket dri­vers and com­pe­ti­tion I am not in a posi­tion to eval­u­ate their strate­gies 100%. How­ever, I’ll take the free­dom to ask ques­tions regard­ing their respec­tive strate­gies, ques­tions that the exec­u­tives hope­fully answered before they announced their new directions.

    Still, this series will con­cen­trate on the way these com­pa­nies imple­mented their strate­gic change. After all investors pun­ished these com­pa­nies by devalu­ing them 50% or more after they announced their strate­gic change. Clearly, some­thing went wrong here. I will try to explain from a strate­gic change man­age­ment per­spec­tive and will show how change for the bet­ter could have been approached differently.

    Claus Schafhal­ter, Suno­gos Inc.

     

    Find the other install­ments of this series:

    Strate­gic Change, Exe­cu­tion Blunder:

    (1) Part 1 — Intro­duc­tion
    (2) Part 2 — What Hap­pened At Nokia
    (3) Part 3 — Net­flix’ Trou­bles
    (4) Part 4 — Net­flix Com­mits A U-Turn
    (5) Part 5 — Does HP Know What It Wants To Be?

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    Topics: Change Management, Strategic Change, Strategic Execution | No Comments »

    Bay Area Consulting Business Level At A Low 82

    By Claus Schafhalter | September 22, 2011

     

    After post­ing  Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index at a colleague’s site I bring it back to my blog. Not a lot has changed to the bet­ter dur­ing the recent weeks. The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 82 for the week end­ing Sep­tem­ber 18th 2011. This is solidly in the “sub­dued busi­ness area, where it has been stuck since May this year.  A read­ing above 100 sug­gests enhanced busi­ness activ­ity, a read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area.

    As always, please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the weekly read­ing can swing wildly.

    Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

    Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

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    Topics: Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index - BA-CBL | No Comments »

    Bay Area Consulting Business Level At 100

    By Claus Schafhalter | May 6, 2011

    The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 100 for the week end­ing May 1st 2011. This is at the neu­tral line for this index and up 31 points from last week’s read­ing of 97.  A read­ing above 100 sug­gests enhanced busi­ness activ­ity, a read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area.

    Please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the weekly read­ing can swing wildly.

    Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

    Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

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    Bay Area Consulting Business Level Virtually Flat

    By Claus Schafhalter | April 26, 2011

    The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 97 for the week end­ing April 14th 2011. This is vir­tu­ally flat, down 1 point from last week’s read­ing of 98.  A read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area.

    The 97 read­ing is very close to the neu­tral line for this index and is slightly above the index read­ing for March 2011 which came in as 93.

    Please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the weekly read­ing can swing wildly.

    Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

    Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

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    Topics: Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index - BA-CBL, News | No Comments »

    Bay Area Consulting Business Index Improves To 98

    By Claus Schafhalter | April 22, 2011

     

     

    The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 98 for the week end­ing April 17th 2011. This is up 3 points from last week’s read­ing of 95.  A read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area.

    The 98 read­ing is very close to the neu­tral line for this index and is slightly above the index read­ing for March 2011 which came in as 93.

    Please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the weekly read­ing can swing wildly.

    Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

    Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

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    Topics: Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index - BA-CBL | No Comments »

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