or click on our logo
Please use the menu above to navigate through our site.
It's Important!
The February 2007 Harvard Business Review contains an article entitled, "How managers' everyday decisions create - or destroy - your company's strategy".
This thought is at the heart of the
Our focus is on "hard skills". These are the skills associated with managing the business as opposed to managing people - though we recognise that the two are inextricably intertwined - in fact, the need to take an holistic perspective is one of the recurring themes of our courses.
HappyAtom works with organisations in a number of ways. Our Services page provides more detail. Briefly, we provide training - development of materials, train-the-trainer, delivery - and consulting services.
Strategy Training
Click for a more a more detailed view of our approach to strategy and strategy training.
Strategy is a word that is so often misused that we felt the need to define what we mean by it. Similarly there is a wide variation in what people understand by a "Business Plan and how one is created.
Strategy training can help you to identify the path by which your organisation can create sustainable competitive advantage. It is long-term and is concerned with the type of decisions that require substantial investment of time, resources and capital; decisions that will have an impact far into the future.
A key concept in our approach to strategy training is focusing - what will you do and what will you not do with regard to:
- markets
- products
- customer and supplier relationships
- skills ... etc
Developing strategy means stepping back from the business to gain a broader perspective.
Marketing and developing business strategy
"Failure to understand the importance of market segmentation , market share, service, and reputation, among other things, is the principal reason why companies fail to compete successfully in so many world markets. Making what they consider to be good products and then giving them to the sales force to get rid of is just not enough." Malcolm McDonald
Marketing is at the core of HappyAtom'ss strategy training programmes. It is absolutely essential that managers understand the source of revenues. How can one develop an effective strategy if one does not understand marketing concepts such as:
- brand - what it is, how it is shaped, what effect it has, its value
- segmentation - why it is the foundation of marketing and how it should affect everyone in the firm
- positioning - something that takes place in the mind of the customer
- how customers buy - their criteria and processes, factors that influence their choices
- competitors - who they are (not always obvious), their likely actions ..... and so on
For more information on our marketing expertise, please click here.
The pitfalls associated with developing strategy
Our strategy training programmes help managers to avoid the pitfalls associated with strategic plans!
- the weight of detail blurs the critical success factors
- conventional financial analysis discourages investment
- resentment as the people closest to the "coalface", interacting with customers and suppliers, are told what is important by people furthest from the coalface.
- action plans are not integrated into daily plans
The HappyAtom approach overcomes these dangers by:
- ensuring that the performance drivers in the business are clearly identified and measurement systems established - what gets measured gets done!
- conventional financial analysis is balanced by new approaches that value intangibles such as brand, relationships, skills
- involving people throughout the organisation in the planning process. As Deming said, "If you want to know how to put the wheel on a car better; ask the man who puts the wheel on the car."
- using approaches such as the Balanced Scorecard; making strategy an integral part of everyone's everyday job. Developing the leadership skills of managers.
