HP is the proverbial Silicon Valley company: Conceived in a Garage in Palo Alto by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard it grew into a multinational Information Technology powerhouse. Along the way it shed important businesses (its precision measurement devices was spun off into Agilent), and it acquired major businesses like Compaq Computers and EDS, a huge IT services operation. It also acquired smaller players like networking specialist 3Com and struggling mobile phone maker Palm.

On the leadership side HP seemed to struggle to find the right leader for the IT giant. While Carly Fiorina (CEO from 1999 to 2005) oversaw the merger with Compaq, Mark Hurd (CEO from 2005 to 2010) acquired EDS and Palm. Leo Apotheker (CEO from late 2010 to September 2011) seemed to try to steer the HP tanker to a more services / Software company. Apotheker himself came form German Software giant SAP, where he was ousted as CEO reportedly because of major customer and employee discontent with his actions and leadership.

At HP Apotheker took over when HP’s share price was in the mid forties and market cap was in the $80 Billion area. Starting around March 2011 HP’s share performed poorly. However, Apotheker’s moment came when he uttered that HP wild change strategy, will shed the PC-hardware business and concentrate on Services and Software. The stock market reacted and within days HP’s value plummeted from around $ 75 Billion to about $47 Billion. Nice job.

Now, also the board reacted, Apotheker had to go (receiving a multi million severence package), and ex-Ebay CEO Meg Whitman took the reigns.

So, what went wrong at HP? Is the sharp drop in corporate value Apotheker’s fault? Which role plays the board, and why is it that a CEO utters something about divesting the Hardware business publicly without demonstrating why it is good for stake holders and nhow it will be done to not damage the corporation?

Can  you see a pattern between Steven Elop’s “Burning Platform” memo that sent Nokia into a tailspin, Reed Hasting’s price increase and retreated Qikster spin off from Netflix, and Leo Apotheker’s musings to get rid of the PC Hardware business? How is it that these well paid CEOs destroy Billions and Billions of Dollars of shareholders wealth overnight, and can stay on or get rewarded with a severance package many multiples higher than the life time income of professionals.

I will post a discussion why it went wrong in these companies in part 6 of this series.

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

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?

Qwikster is no more. In an abrupt change of strategy Netflix announced on Oct 10th that they will give up on spinning off their DVD-by-mail service dubbed Qwikster, only a few weeks after they announced they would spin it off.

Strategic masterpiece? Well, you can look at it from two very different perspectives:

1. Great move! Netflix heard that customers do not like the split, and Netflix listened to customers and stopped the spin off. It really shows that Netflix is a customer oriented organization. Or
2. Desparation! Netflix has no clue what they are doing, and after customers left in droves used the emergency brakes to rescue what is left.

In my opinion Netflix did some very bad moves within the last few months:

• They raised prices for their services by up to 60% without improving services.
• They lost a major content provider, which means for customers that they are supposed to pay more for less.
• They tried to separate their streaming services from the DVD-by-mail service without realizing that these services are complementary for their customers. Streaming content is more TV show and older B movies, while DVD-by-mail tilts to movies and newer content.
• They communicated awfully, even when they tried to explain why they do what they are doing they apparently totally missed the customer’s point of view, there was no benefit articulated why Netflix’ moves would be good for customers, short and long term.
• They underestimated the competition, be it Amazon, Hulu or iTunes on the streaming side, and Red Box and Blockbuster on the DVD side.

But why did they do what they did, and why did they do it how they did it? Read on in a following post in this series.

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

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?

Netflix, the movie rental service, has been a consumer favorite and Wall Street darling for a long time. Netflix changed the way Americans consume movies and Netflix drove competitors out of the market with their simple and valuable business model. Customers manage a queue of movies and TV episodes on their website, and Netflix ships out DVDs to the customer’s home complete with a prepaid envelope to send the disk back. They also introduced a streaming service where customers can watch movies and TV series on consumer devices using connected TVs, set top boxes, computers, tablets or smart phones.

All for a flat fee without concerns to incur nasty late fees.

As more and more customers signed up, Netflix’ share price rose to a high of almost $300 in July 2011 valuing the company at $15.8 Billion. Who could stop Netflix’ run?

Apparently inside Netflix’ corporate walls a new strategy evolved. Management identified that the DVD rental business will be replaced by streaming content via the Internet, and Netflix needs to concentrate on streaming services to ensure to stay in the lead. Netflix’ DVDs-by-mail service seem to be a destruction and might even hinder the growth of the streaming library because most content provides price their offerings depending on the number of subscribers. There are certainly other considerations for management and board to pursuit this strategy, for the purpose of this post it is sufficient to know that Netflix came up with this new strategy and started to execute on it.

Miserable execution of a sound strategy?

In July 2011 Netflix made a — for the public — surprising announcement:

They will price their service offerings for mail service (DVDs) and streaming service separately and – in the process – hike the price for their services by up to 60% if the customer wants to keep both. Very little information was given why they do that, in a press release they even tried to sell this as a potential price reduction. Netflix’ Chief Service and Operations Officer released: “By better reflecting the underlying costs and offering our lowest prices ever for unlimited DVD, we hope to provide a great value to our current and future DVD-by-mail members” .

What Netflix did not expect was the firestorm of negative reactions fueled by social media and entries on Netflix’ blog. The discussion was mainly about the 60% price hike for the combined DVD / streaming offering, in a time when the U.S. struggles with an anemic economy and stagnating incomes. Shareholders did not like the announcement either and share prices started to decline. Later Netflix warned that subscriber growth started to be lower than anticipated and became even negative. And share price accelerated its downturn.

Later Netflix’ CEO released a letter to customers somewhat “apologizing” for how they managed the information flow about the plan changes. He also introduced that Netflix will split off the DVD by mail service entirely into the new “Qikster” service, thus leaving Netflix with streaming only. Again the reaction by customers and shareholders was very negative, and Netflix shares plummeted. All said and done Netflix shares moved from $300 in July to less than $110 end of September 2011, destroying more than $9 Billion in shareholder value.

Sound Stragey?

Hard to say. Definitely it does not make much sense to send digital information stored on a physical DVD by mail. Electronic delivery via the Internet seems to be the way of the future. However, Netflix has at least 2 problems:

1. Timing / Data Caps: Many consumers might not be ready to solely rely on their Internet connections for entertainment purposes, and increased usage of the Internet for multimedia content delivery is running into Data caps increasingly enforced by ISPs. There are very few products available that still allow unlimited data on wireless phone networks. Also, providers using cable or DSL have data caps. A lot of content streamed from Netflix’ servers bring customers close to approach these limits. It seems premature to bet the house on streaming only when a the delivery channel (Internet) is out of Netflix’ control and – worse – very often run by direct competitors like AT&T (uVerse) or Comcast with their content offerings.
2. Content: Netflix streaming content in general provides TV episodes and older B movies. Latest movies are usually not available via streaming. These movies are usually released on DVDs, which means for a lot of customers that streaming alone does not cover all the content they wanna watch.

Execution Blunder?

Certainly. The public outcry fueled by social media, subscriber cancellation, and collapse of share price are evidence that the execution of strategic change was mismanaged. What the most egregious blunders are, why I think they were made, and what management could have done differently will be subject of a later post in this series. But before I go there, I want to look at HP’s suicidal moves that lead to the firing of their CEO a few weeks ago.

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

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?

The Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 92 for the week ending September 25th 2011. This is still in the “subdued business” area, where it has been stuck since May this year. However, it is a nice improvement compared to last week’s reading of 82.
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

Nokia of Finland was at the top 2007. Sure, their market cap was even higher in 2000 at the climax of the tech bubble, but only 4 years ago Nokia outperformed any competitor in the mobile phone business. Overall they lead the cell phone market and invented the smart phone. Their share price was around $40 per share, their market cap almost $150 Billion.

From 2007 to 2009 Nokia’s share price went down to $10, market cap was about $40 Billion. Obviously there was a lot wrong with Nokia, most notably they miscalculated the impact of new entrants into the market, like Apple and Google. And they were way too slow to answer their new challengers with competitive products.

Consequently the board decided to hire a new CEO, tasked to stop the meltdown of Nokia, its market share, its profits and its share price. In September 2010 Steven Elop, and ex-Microsoft executive took the reign in Espoo, Nokia’s headquarters near Helsinki. Elop started out streamlining Nokia’s strategy, promised to simplify development of the software running their phones by using a cross-platform tool (Qt), and repositioned Nokia’s existing offering apparently strengthening their strengths and addressing their weaknesses.

The stock market rewarded the new way with a steady increase in share value from about $8 at the low to almost $12 at the recent high in February 2011.

But then something happened.

In February 2011 Nokia’s CEO announced a new strategy, comparing Nokia’s existing offerings to a burning platform, and announcing – among other things – that Nokia’s existing operating systems are obsolete, and Nokia will focus on an operating system developed by Elop’s previous employer, Microsoft.

The reaction of the market participants was devastating. Nokia’s share price lost about 25% immediately after the announcement, and a total of more than 50% within 6 months after the announcement. Nokia’s market cap crashed from about $44 Billion to about $19 Billion, a loss of $25 Billion within 6 months.

So, what is the problem here?

Is the new strategy flawed? Apparently the market thinks so. (And I do too, but this is beside the point).

But for certain the execution of the new strategy is deeply flawed.

I will examine the execution flaws in a following post, but before that please read about my other 2 contenders for miserable execution of strategic change, Netflix and HP.

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?

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

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

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

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

The Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 95 for the week ending April 10th 2011. This is up 10 points from last week’s reading of 85.  A reading below 100 suggests subdued business activity for consultants and executive level contractors in the Bay Area.

The 95 reading is closing in 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