FiberGeneration

It's About Small Teams Within Large Companies Making Big Impact

[updated 10:06PM]
Reading Robert Scoble' s latest post, on how small teams can make a big difference within large companies, I thought about... the Agilent Mini-OTDR. This little box, which is not as sexy as the iPhone of course, was the GameBoy of his kind at its release back in 1996.

To make it short, this product was a breakthrough-paradigm shifting optical tester, inventing a brand new category - the so-called handhelds - for a brand new type of end-users : the fiber optics installers. Almost 12 years after its release, the Agilent Mini-OTDR is still the reference, as the two main competitors JDSU and EXFO (ever heard of those names ? ;-) even do copy & paste - including the naming system.
What's the link with Scoble' s post ? Small teams. The Mini-OTDR has been defined, designed, and engineered by a 6-people team, within the HP Optical Communications Division group (aka Agilent Photonic Test Division or something like that as of today). Take Scoble' s text, replace "Microsoft" by "HP", "Yahoo" by "EXFO" and you get the same picture.

Who said "Less Is More" ?...

post-scriptum : the hands carrying the Mini belong to my dear buddy Dieter *John* Gustedt, the guy who made the Agilent Modular Network Tester real.

JDSU vs. EXFO : How 'bout This One, T&M Folks ?

Silicon Valley-based Sunrise Telecom seems to enter a heavy disturbance zone. That's what you get when you do Product Marketing the wrong way (shall I add that Product Marketing and Business Development - hence sales - are part of the same virtuous circle ?). IMHO, SRT will be gone by end 2009 the latest, except if they decide to change their strategy and restart from scratch. Means that's one (small) player less on the Communications Networks Test & Measurement battlefront.

Now, think of this one : what if Agilent Technologies decides to come back on this market, as they did back in late '99 ? My bet : they would go with a couple of M&A deals. Agilent should buy EXFO. Because : a) EXFO' s products portfolio is complementary to the actual Agilent' s one (which is 80% on R&D and Manufacturing, whilst EXFO is 80% Installation & Maintenance), and b) EXFO' s model is HP Test & Measurement, aka Agilent Technologies.

Such a deal would definitely position Agilent as the number one leader on the I&M Testing marketplace, whilst JDSU and Anritsu would be forced to fight hard (read: innovate) to survive in between Agilent and Fluke+Tektronix.

Just This (29.07)

That's me in the corner, after a 5-days long Agilent Musketeers workshop in Keystone, Colorado, back in July 2000.

Doesn't look like, but I promiss : this workshop has had tremendous outcomes for me and the team two years later.

Warm thanks (and much more) to my very friend (and much more ;-) Handy of Boulder, CO.

See this post's geographical context.

geo:tool=blockrocker.com geotagged geo:lat=40.2782161 geo:lon=-106.8516541

It's About the Test & Measurement Industry

In a recent post, I mentionned  a handful of  test & measurement players, silencing numerous companies. The reason is pretty simple : IMHO, Agilent Technologies, Danaher's Fluke+Tektronix, Anritsu, and JDSU are the only companies aimed to survive the forthcoming T&M industry shake-up. We are the verge of a new booming era in the Telecommunications, thanks to the enormous demand for bandwidth worldwide. Hence the mandatory consolidation in some sectors, Test & Measurement being one of the most vibrant.
That's why my take is, lots of the small guys will disappear one way or another. Mergers, acquisitions, banckruptcies, the whole range of possible futures is wide open for the EXFOs, the Spirents, the Ixias, and the one small firm somewhere down the Silicon Valley which I can't mention anymore (hint : they have a very very little useless subsidiary nearby the Leman lake, and their name is the opposite of the moon going dawn). Even the Yokogawas will face the big question someday...
In 10 years from now, I see only three survivors out of the Four-Tops above : Agilent, Danaher, and Anritsu. Don't ask me why : just a bit more than a feeling, from a 25-years presence in this industry. It has to do with their history, legacy, and roots, somehow.

Nevertheless, there is one thing I can tell : I'll do my very best to play a pro-active part in this shake-up, thru the Testing 2.0 adventure. See you in 10 years !

Test & Measurement Industry : The Consolidation Still Goes On

According to Lightwave earlier this week, Danaher Corp. and Tektronix Inc. announced they have reached a definitive agreement under which Danaher will make a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of Tektronix for $38.00 per share. The aggregate purchase price is approximately $2.8 billion, including debt, transaction costs, and net of cash acquired.

With the acquisition of a venerable company, Tektronix, which is a reference in the T&M Test & Measurement world  together with Agilent Technologies (formerly Hewlett-Packard), the industry landscape is going to change once again. The alliance between Fluke - another pretty strong reference at every Telecoms & Datacoms network installer on the Planet - and Tek is creating a new  one-stop-shopping center covering the whole spectrum of typical applications, from lab & manufacturing (Tek) to installation & maintenance (Fluke), from low-end/high quality/mainstream test gear (Fluke) to high-end/high quality/advanced (Tektronix).

Whilst T&M market leader Agilent Technologies  has to face three major competitors : JDSU, Anritsu, and the new Fluke+Tek actor now, the French-Canadian firm EXFO is left alone as a small player in front of giants. EXFO, whose role model was HP Test & Measurement (aka Agilent) will most probably be set ready for a merger with another group.

   

Note that EXFO's stock slipped quite heavily yesterday, and that Tek's raised rose nicely at the official announcement.
Charts available at Yahoo!Finance here.

post-scriptum : For you who are not familiar with the Telecoms Test & Measurement, I'll publish a brief history of the sector, to show how the T&M folks are still surfing on the ripples of the Internet Bubble' implosion.

Always be nice with your former employer

My dear friend Ralf Stolte is an happy man today. His company, Adaptif Photonics GmbH, will be acquired by Agilent Technologies. Press release here.
The funny thing : Ralf has spent most of his career at HP/Agilent Technologies, before leaving during the downturn back in 2001. He's now back home, going to work with the very same people at the  Agilent' Photonic and Network Test Division in Böblingen, Germany, than 6 years ago.
Never say never again.

It's about Learning

Reading CNET the other night, a headline grabbed my attention : " Record exec: Mobile industry could learn from Apple "
A report by Marguerite Reardon of CNET News.com. Quote Marguerite :

In a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless trade show, EMI's Eric Nicoli warned the industry that it would not reach its potential if mobile operators, handset makers and content providers don't work together and put the customer first. He said they need to make sure that every product they develop for consumers is one that people want, is easy to use, and provides value at an affordable price.
"We will not reach our goals if we carry on as we have been doing," he said. "Not to diminish what we have achieved so far, but there are important challenges to address if we want to take this business to the next level. And that means we must put the customer at the forefront."
"Apple makes stuff that people love to own," Nicoli said. "They love the simplicity and user-friendliness of the iPod and iTunes. Apple doesn't employ any sorcery or dark magic to achieve this. They listen to what consumers want. And that shouldn't be Apple's unique privilege."

Very interesting indeed. Those folks at the Mobile industry are definitely not Average Joe, they have MBAs - at least, they play golf with their peers of Wall Street, their business is driving the whole Telecoms industry at large - at the end of the day, we need fibers to carry mobiles 's signals. So, how come they forgot a simple fact, which even self-made-men like myself do know and apply every single day since the very begining ?  : " It is the customer who determines what a business is...What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers value, is decisive--it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper." Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, 1974, p 61.

Maybe they were driven by bozozity until the very moment Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone ? By claiming that " [the Mobile industry] need to make sure that every product they develop for consumers is one that people want ", Mr. Nicoli admits that they all tells his pals at the Mobile Industry that they failed listening to their customers. Now, he also made a giant step towards recovery : he is learning. He's learning that the Mobile industry has he tells them they have to learn about its their own mistakes, its their competition (Apple is coming after them with the iPhone), and its their environment.

So, what is learning, in business ? I found no better way to explain the whole idea than what Hal Stitt, my coach during my Musketeers years at Agilent Technologies, says :

"  learning as a winning business strategy means learning more and learning faster than your rivals do about your customers, your competitors, your business environment and the opportunities available for your business to win customers. "

Hal likes to describe the whole concept with this diagram, based on Peter Drucker' assessment which claims that it's the customer who decides the winner.

I like it too, for it is crisp and clear. Plus, according to my own experience as a  customer in B2B since 20+ years, it is exactly the way it works : a short loop, involving both the customer and the vendor in a constant dialog, always makes this vendor successful.
Perhaps the guys in the Mobile Industry were more used to a more rigid process, such as this one :



Definitely not a KISS  ' Keep It Simple, Stupid ' approach, such as the one developped by David Kolb in the early 80's : -------
In this diagram, replace " Concrete, Experience" by " Customer ", " model " by " Application ", " Test " by " Feedback ", and " Reflect " by " Product ", and you get another representation of Drucker's model. Please note that I didn't put the accordingly modified diagram on purpose : do it yourself, you will better... learn ;-)


Back in 2001, Hal Stitt has published a white paper " About Learning " . I am pleased to post the first three pages, for it explain the whole idea :

LEARNING VERSUS KNOWING ORGANIZATIONS
Contrasts and Comparisons

Knowing Organizations
Most organizations we have seen and read about over the past 40 years have focused more on knowing than on learning. Knowing is a state, learning is an action. Learning changes the state of knowing.

Knowing organizations promote and hire people mainly based on what they have done, on what they know. Less value is placed on the person's ability to learn. Training focuses on skills and processes with a direct impact on job performance. Little or no effort is put into training people to learn, encouraging learning, or rewarding learning.

Management effort in knowing organizations focuses on getting better and better at what the organization does, instead of what it could become. Effort is more likely to be put on careful measurement of results and comparing them with expectations than on encouraging learning. Knowing organizations put people in jobs to get results, to fix problems, to turn around failing organizations. If sales are not up to expectations, they will bring in a sales manager who knows how to fix that. If manufacturing is not meeting expectations, they will bring in a new manager who knows how to fix it. If the company is not meeting investors' expectations, they will bring in a new CEO who knows how to fix that.

In knowing organizations, learning is seen as down time. It interferes with performing.

Learning Organizations

Learning organizations hire and promote people based more on their ability to learn than on what they already know, more on what they can do than what they have already done. Learning organizations realize that results are related to actions by probability. They realize that just because something worked in the past doesn't mean it will work in the future. They realize that just because something worked in another company or another organization doesn’t mean it will work in your company or in your organization.

Knowing is not transferable across organizations or over time. The situation changes, but knowing is static. Learning is transferable. Learning is dynamic. Learning includes learning about changes in the situation.

Sun Tzu's quote is often misunderstood. The time at which your must know the enemy better than yourself
is at the time of the battle. In war, what you knew yesterday, last week, last month, last year can get you killed. In business, it just means your customers buy from your competitors.

Learning organizations see learning as a competitive sport. If they can learn more and learn faster than their competitors, they can outperform those competitors.

Innovation is a core business function. Innovation is the engine powering successful competition. Learning drives innovation. Without a stream of new learnings, innovation only happens by accident.

What your organization will learn outweighs what it already knows.

We see three fundamental reasons why what your organization will learn is more important than what it already knows:

• Knowledge and experience were gained in the past. There is no logical reason to believe the future will be like the past.

• A very high proportion of knowledge and experience is similar among competitors. It is too often a very weak differentiator.

• The belief that the organization already has the answers leads to arrogance and complacency, which leads to defeat.

Learning is the root of competition
Your organization is either learning and innovating better than your competitors, in the eyes of your customers, or you are a target for those who are. Learning leads to innovation, which leads to winning—if you innovate better than your competitors, in the opinion of the customers.

The most valuable learnings lie outside your organization *
Getting good information first hand from good sources outside the organization, but within the system the organization serves, is a core behavior of learning organizations.

Learning only counts when it affects behavior
We do not advocate learning for learning's sake. Learning has no value to the organization unless it affects behavior. Not learning or learning the wrong things is bad enough, but we believe learning the right things and not acting on the learning is the worst possible outcome. It kills morale and motivation in the people who have learned something vital to the organization's success if they are prevented from acting by decision makers who have not. It's ludicrous! The people who have learned something vital are the people the decision makers should be motivating.

The purpose of learning is to win
We believe the most important purpose of learning is to create changes that will create wins. That is diametrically opposite to the purpose of hierarchical organizations: to develop and maintain order and control.

Learn What?
All businesses learn about their businesses. But the winners learn more about their customers and competitors than their competitors do. To win, most customers must prefer your products and services over your competitors. You cannot get customers to prefer your products and services by focusing your learning on your own organization— by looking in your mirrors. It requires learning about your customers. It requires understanding your customers well enough to know what your organization can do for them in the future that they will prefer over the offerings of your competitors.

Hal's White Paper " About Learning " available here (.pdf), with update online here.

*note : helping clients do that is one of DeltaNet's core strengths. To contact Hal @ DeltaNet, click here.

Peter Drucker' official biography here.

--- updated Apr. 2d, 2007, after EMI announcement on DRM-free ---

Control Freak

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal posted a freaking good article on "How Steve Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth" with Cingular (now AT&T). Shall you have only 30 seconds before you, you can get the flavour of this article by reading the Quoted section here in  one of my favorite daily newspapers : Good Morning Silicon Valley.
I ain't comment on the iPhone' s multi-touch user-interface  enabling a new revolution (it's well done here ), Steve Jobs being a genius (read here and here) , or Apple playing a giant chess game against Microsoft ( here, here, and here - and more).

Actually, the most interesting part to me is this one (at the end of the article) :

Usually, carriers catch more than a glimpse of the products their handset partners are working on. They get to provide input on what applications or features might make the device more marketable.
Not this time. Several small teams within Cingular worked on the project, but each handled its own specific task without knowing what the other teams were up to. Employees had code-names for the project to avoid mentioning Apple by name, says a person familiar with the matter.
Cingular sent a team of technical personnel to Apple's offices to test the device, making it sure it would work on the carrier's network. That rigorous process is normal for the release of any phone. But this time, technicians weren't allowed to handle or see the actual phone. Instead, they were given access to a dummy version that would only allow them to do the necessary network tests.

I was suspecting Steve Jobs and his team to use such secretive technics during the development phase of their strategic new products. Why that ? Simply because it happens that I had a similar idea back in the early 2K's at Agilent Technologies (nope, I'm not saying that I'm another Steve Jobs : there is no other Steve Jobs ;-)
At this time, we were to develop a brand new product, strategic for the future of our business unit. As a member of the Apple Developper Connection program, I was used to the methods the Cupertino firm put in place for Mac OS X (the 10.0 release) : regular beta seeds, beta testing program, feedback collection, etc. Hence the idea to use the same process for our new product : create a beta testers community, send them each new build of the firmware, get them engaged with the product development timeline, etc.
More : to avoid leaks - the Telecoms world is a small world... - I wanted to get the applications (i.e. the core value of this new product) tested by separate individuals, in such ways that no one would know what the others were doing. Also, using a fake hardware was planned, so nobody would learn about the real thing - see here :  this product features a stunning design still unmatched by its rivals, five years after its official launch...

Unfortunately, we couldn't implement this program : our product didn't run under MS Windows or any of the commercial OS at this time (not speaking of Linux or Mac OS : the Test & Measurement industry is living in a MS Windows world...). So, we were simply unable to get people outside of the company to test a single line of code. Kind of Mission:Impossible made really impossible !

Today, the landscape is totally different. The emergence of the Web 2.0 has changed the way we can develop new applications, even those to be implemented onto a fiber optics test handheld. Design your app as a Web-based one, and you're done : APIs, widgets, snippets, etc. It's all there, available, and easy to deploy, test, and use. That's what Apple did with the iPhone, by the way : consider each function (e.g. phone, internet, camera, etc.) as an application per se, then consider it as being called as a widget... Assign one guy or one team per widget, and you reach the ultimate secrecy level : nobody will know where this stuff is going to be implemented, and how it will be used !
Actually, I will use this proven method with the developments at Testing 2.0. 

 

Sun Tzu & The Right Fights

Note : This post is the first of a series about winning in Business when you are a challenger willing to become The Leader. It is based on my experience as Business Development Manager and Product Whatever Manager at Agilent Technologies, from 1999 to 2003. Any startup or any small player serious about its business should be able to apply the following strategy to become market leader. Simply because it worked quite well during the hard times of the Telecoms Industry downturn. Why the heck would it fail during the Web 2.0 gold era ?!!!

In late 1999, Ned Barnhold, CEO of the HP' spin-off Agilent Technologies, announced his decision to penetrate the telecoms networks' installation & maintenance testing marketplace, for the company to become market leader within the next two years. Born as a pure " R&D and Manufacturing " oriented vendor, Agilent was the undisputed Test & Measurement worldwide leader on those segments, by far. The company was serving all the big players of the Bubble : the Lucents, the Alcatels, the Nortels, etc. Every single network equipment manufacturer was buying Agilent' s lab. and/or production tests solutions.
On the outside plant side, no one relevant actor was using Agilent branded testers : Agilent was a challenger on the Installation & Maintenance (I&M) markets.

So, Barnhold' s decision to focus on I&M was... a challenge ! An exciting one, for those of us who were directly involved with it. Enter the Musketeers and all that stuff which did our life for the next three years or so (and still does, for some of us ;-).

To achieve this goal : become #1 on the I&M market place by 2002, starting from (almost) scratch, we called on Sun Tzu and his proven methods for winning a war - ooops, sorry : for winning in Business.
We picked the one quote which replace MBAs diplomas in the Real World : “Know the enemy better than you know yourself, and the outcome has already been decided.”, and we built the whole strategy from it. We looked at ourselves (Agilent per se, the structure, the people, the use and habits, the way of doing business, etc.) and our competitors, selecting one of them as our * enemy #1 * (that was before 9/11; today, I rather use another terminology, e.g. " rival number one "...). We came up with the conclusion that to become the market leader in less than three years time frame, we had to concentrate our energy on our sales channels. Hence the name of this strategy as a whole : Winning Sales Channels Attributes - I will come back to that one in the final post of this series (well, teasing is an operational marketing tool, right ?).
In order to reach this ultimate objective, we decided to put together three sub-strategies (note : only three) :
• The Right Fights : to win a customer
• Bid2Win : to win tenders and deals
• Be Friend of Technicians : to win speed in new product generation

I have mentioned the Bid2Win in a previous post (see here), however I will come back to it in a couple of weeks. Next week, we will discuss the last one " Be Friend of Technicians ", which is about talking directly to the end-users of your products in order to get their feedback...

Today, I am going to describe you the Right Fights strategy : how to grab market share by winning customers. Here is it :
• A Right Fight is NOT about winning a deal.
• Find weakness in leader’s strength.
• Attack where the leader is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
• Choose when and where to fight.
• Limit the time and the place of the attack.
• Need at least 75% more strength at the time and place of the attack.
• Fight to win the leader’s position, not only the order – acquire the benefits of leadership.

Then, we looked at the respective behaviors of an industry leader and its challengers :

What is the Leader doing ?
a. Appropriate Strategy : Defend against all threats. The challengers will determine where and when to pose a threat.
b. Appropriate Tactics : Focus attention on existing customers. Listen for potential, developing threats. Counter all threats early.
c. Resource Deployment : Bias resources toward the biggest accounts and the biggest product lines. Deploy more than enough resources against each threat to insure the win.
d. Competitor Knowledge : Broad and accurate intelligence to identify potential threats early.
e. Expected Outcomes : Maintain very high market share, and the economies of scale that creates.
f. Failed Outcomes : Loss of market share. Loss of leadership position.

What is the Challenger doing ?
a. Appropriate Strategy : Choose when and where to compete. Win virtually all of the contests you enter. Do not compete if a win is not certain.
b. Appropriate Tactics : Focus attention on new target customers. Operate just beyond the edge of control. Enter chosen contests with fanatic will to win.
c. Resource Deployment : Bias resources toward the most important contests that can be won with certainty. Put more than enough resources on the few most important contests to insure the win.
d. Competitor Knowledge : “Know the enemy better than you know yourself, and the outcome has already been decided.” Sun Tzu
e. Expected Outcomes : Take market share from larger competitors. Attain high market share and the economies of scale that creates.
f. Failed Outcomes : Loss of market share. Very disappointing financial performance. Disaster, loss of the business.

Last, provided that we had only a couple of years ahead of us to achieve our CEO' s objective, the sense of urgency was a key element in our decisions process. Here are the four points which lead us to the final decision :
•We had to accelerate our learning.
•We didn’t get the chance and the time to learn by doing every mistakes by our own again.
•We had to learn form the successful and the unsuccessful fights the organization was going to fight.
•We had to learn from the mistakes of our competition.

So we have setup the “ Right Fight Process ”, consisting of the three steps in use by all armies in the World since General Sun Tzu (circa 500 B.C., by the way): Brief - Execute - Debrief.
Here we go :
#1. The Think-Tank Team identify fight (i.e. competitor' s installed base, or green field)
#2. Define the opportunity for the company (i.e. the potential)
#3. Set operating model to “not business as usual” (i.e. set business as unusual as the rule)
#4. Understand customer’s business and competitive situation (i.e. do your homework ;-)
#5. Define Team, owner and roles (team, team, team)
#6. Find THE potential customer champion (i.e. find the guy who will make you win)
#7. Make sure the customer problem is understood (i.e. ask questions, again and again)
#8. Build business case for the customer (with the customer)
#9. Build the battle plan (without the customer ;-)
#10. Visit the customer w/ proper Team (do not forget to apologize for not being here earlier)
#11. Anticipate and plan contingencies (i.e. Plan B, Exit Plan, No Way Plan)
#12. Deliver the plan to the customer (i.e. execute)
#13. Offer demo (i.e. demonstrate how your product can solve the customer problem)
#14. Deliver the perfect budgetary quote (i.e.
#15. Follow-up w/ customer.
#16. Do not forget to take the order!

As we were based in Germany, the Right Fights Process was summarized on two short/easy-to-use/user-friendly tools : a Q&A form - the " Right Fight Spec Sheet " - to be filled by the " Fight " owner, and an MS Excel spreadsheet - the " Right Fight Score Card ". Those tools were created to allow the management to quickly get the whole picture of the " fight " (by the way : we didn't say " deal ", see the difference ?).
The Right Fight Spec Sheet consisted of a crisp & clear list of items grouped by topic (simple, huh ?), with " Yes / No " tickle boxes. Filling in the form was way faster than a survey on the web (well, as long as Windows didn't crash - ooops, sorry, bad joke ;-). Here is an example of the questions / topics / items - comments in italic :

About the Competition :
Target rival #1 in the considered region. Yes / No. " Beat the best and you will beat the rest " was our motto.
Hurt competition. Yes / No. Our aim was to become #1 within the next two years. It couldn't happen without hurting our competitors.
Disrupt/confuse competition. Yes / No. Thanks to General Sun Tzu, this is a strategy the challenger can use with great effects.
Fight that will drive you to the position of leader. Yes / No. The question was : is the fight bringing us one step further to reach our goal to become #1 in less than two years.

About the Customer Relation :
Increase the sense of loyalty. Yes / No. Was there a need to increase loyalty at the specific fight location.
Fight that enhance the image. Yes / No. Was it a fight that would enhance the image where it was desperately needed e.g. become friend of technician.
Fight that lets us become friend of the technicians. Yes / No. Would the fight help us * Musketeers * to achieve our goal to become friends of the technicians.
Long lasting effect. Yes / No. Could we estimate how much revenues the fight would bring us in the long run.

The score card was even simpler to use (please don't think that we were all damned bozzos : we were in a hurry, so we had to create and use fast tools ;-). Put in some rough numbers and names, press the "enter" key, and boom, you got this nice palette of colors : green, yellow, red. Sounds familiar, huh ? Green for " Let's go fighting ", Yellow for " Let's wait for more information ", and Red for " Let's stay at home for the time being " (or something like that meaning that this fight is definitely not a fight to fight, right ?). Here is a real example, dated 2001- there is no more confidential data in there : all the service providers listed have either disappeared or merged with another one, the internal organization has been completely modified, and the people are either gone or working elsewhere in the company.

Oh, there is one more thing (okay, this post is not about Steve Jobs; however I strongly believe that he is using such of strategies quite well ;-)
Before going outside to knock at your target customer' s door, you still have to plan your mission. Putting together the strategy is one thing, implementing it is a different story - although a good plan means easy implementation. Hence the mandatory mission planning, that we the famous Agilent Musketeers called : " Combat Mission Planning ", according to the Top Gun terminology. You can use the following plan as a template for your next mission - ooops, sorry : your next customer call ! :

a. Define the mission objective : A mission objective is a clear, measurable, tactical statement of a goal that can be achieved by those people responsible for its execution.
b. Identify the Threat : Once you have a clear mission objective, you have to analyze thoroughly the competitive threats to your outcome
c. Identify your support assets : Once you have your mission statement and knows the competitive threats, scour your internal assets for the one thing that might make or break the sale.
d. Emphasize your strength and their weaknesses. Never engage in a costly frontal attack when you can outflank the competition and still win.
e. Set your timing : Once the plan is in place, the only thing left is to find the optimal moment to strike: Identify your optimal mission timing.
f. Plan for contingencies : It’s far easier to work out your options in the quietness of your office than in the hectic battlefield.

As a conclusion, just this : the Right Fights strategy, together with the other two "Bid2Win" and "Be Friend of The Technicians", helped Agilent Technologies to be ranked #1 Test & Measurement vendor by Frost & Sullivan in 2002. Right in the middle of the Telecoms downturn and the turmoils it caused in the entire industry. It demonstrates the effectiveness of our decisions, the first one being to rely on proven methods based on Sun Tzu' s principles. In my humble opinion, applying this strategy during * good days * is even more productive.
Of course, I will give you a real case example of a successful fight soon : back in 2001, Agilent took over one of the World' largest optical network carrier out of the hands of its rival number one. A quick, smart, successful strike. Unfortunately, it didn't last long : the downturn hit this carrier hard ! Anyway, that was fun. Stay tuned, and Carpe Diem.

Me and Mrs. Agilent

Some of my beta-readers (there are beta-testers for hardware/software products, so why not ?) made the same comment : I am often referring to Agilent Technologies. Well, I agree with that. And if I didn't, a customer feedback is a customer feedback : you must listen to it.

So, why do I write about Agilent so much ? Simply because I have learned a lot with this company. The six years I have spent within the HP and Agilent world have been the most exciting I ever lived in my professional life. It was the pre-Bubble time, the Bubble time, the post-Bubble time. It was the Hewlett-Packard time, the HP/Agilent Technologies 'split time, the Agilent time. It was the " small department within a large division " time, the " 60-people-startup-kind-of division " time, the " 90% laid-off " time...

I want to share my experiences of this very particular period with you. I want to give you real-life materials. I want to offer you proven tools for successes in the High Tech world. That is why I will write a lot about Agilent !

A comic life

Thanks to a recent post from Guy Kawasaki on his blog, I recently discovered a new way to present a story. Comics ! As a professional presentation designer, I like it. As a Macintosh (power) user, I love the Comic Life app from Plasq : it brings a new life to photos, pictures, and all those jpegs files which sometimes sleep deep into our hard drives ;-)

Here is my first attempt to write something "different". Of course, it's about the Agilent Musketeers. Of course, that was my life.

ps : My special thanks to all the people you see in this comic story. My bosses Robert & Frank, my friend Peter, my goofy friend Handy, plus Phil, Steve, Frank B., and the Agilent ONT team. It has been an honor to work with you, so, I am pleased to offer you the Eternity of the Blogosphere ;-)