The Hindu Business Line : Strategy is what we do

What is strategy? Let’s ask the former boss of Intel, Andrew Stephen Grove who, during his tenure as CEO, oversaw ‘a 4,500 per cent increase in the company’s market capitalisation,’ as Wikipedia records.

“In a single word, strategy is action. Strategy is not what we say. Strategy is what we do,” is Grove-speak, as captured by Richard S. Tedlow in Andy Grove ( www.penguinbooksindia.com). “Be quick and dirty. Engage and then plan. And get it better,” elaborates Grove.

“The time then comes to ‘rein in chaos.’ Decisiveness is vital in your determination of the company’s new direction,” writes Tedlow. “You need to develop a vocabulary to rally the troops… Just as ‘Intel Inside’ answered a host of questions for the end user, ‘The PC Is It’ answered a million questions for Intel as a company.”

But what if our strategy were wrong? Should we not hedge our bets? “No,” roars Grove. “Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment,” he argues. You need exquisite focus; without it, you will always be looking for a way out rather than a way to win, he persuades. “If you’re wrong, you will die.”

At least you will go down fighting, having a chance to win, reasons Tedlow. “Most companies don’t die because they are wrong; most die because they don’t commit themselves,” is a leaf from Grove’s book. Internal divisions can ‘divide your forces in the face of the enemy.’

Tedlow narrates the story of the great leap into the unknown that Grove took with his historic decision to sole-source the 386, when he jumped without knowing whether a safety net existed.

“Intel was biting its collective fingernails before Compaq put the 386 into its Deskpro, forcing IBM to follow and forever changing the structure of the information technology industry.”

A businessman should manage when management is called for and lead when leadership is called for, advises Grove. “Two sides of the same coin. Backhand and forehand,” However, it is not easy to hit a winning backhand if you have spent your life on the tennis court running around that backhand to hit a forehand at every opportunity, elucidates Tedlow.

Engaging read.

Push button and ‘mobile’ oven

You have pressed the button for the elevator to arrive, or for the pedestrian crossing to clear, but there is always someone next to you trying to speed things along by incessantly jabbing his finger on the button.

Such people believe that by pressing the button frequently and vigorously the elevator or ‘walk’ sign will take less time to appear. Alas, they’re wrong, says Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in Please Explain ( www.harpercollins.co.in).

“Some traffic lights in large cities have no external detectors or press buttons at all because of the constant flow of traffic day and night. These traffic lights simply work on timers,” he adds.

Though the ‘walk’ button is the most common input switch, “most city traffic lights can accept an override command from the Traffic Control Centre, e.g. to give a continuous set of green lights for ambulances, fire engines, or VIPs.”

An information box in the book speaks of how in New York City the buttons are becoming obsolete because computers are increasingly controlling the traffic lights. “Fewer than 20 per cent feed signals to the control boxes while the remaining 80 per cent are empty props.”

Sydney’s Central Business District has a different method: “The buttons have no effect between 7 am and 7 pm, Monday to Wednesday, and 7 am to 9 pm, Thursday to Saturday. However, they do work outside these hours, including all day Sunday. The rationale is that during busy periods the road traffic is relatively constant and the pedestrian crossings are in continuous use.”

Elsewhere in the book, you’d find an interesting discussion on whether you can cook an egg with mobile phones. The e-mail, which Kruszelnicki had received, contained detailed instructions.

“All you have to do is place an egg in an egg cup, sandwich it tightly between two mobile phones facing each other and then get one phone to call the other phone for 65 minutes… Nothing happens for the first 15 minutes. The egg then begins to get warm in about 25 minutes, is hot to the touch in 45 minutes and is actually fully cooked and ready to eat in 65 minutes,” the mail detailed.

After conducting the experiment that left the egg uncooked, Kruszelnicki delves into the physics part to smash the ‘microwaving an egg’ myth.

“Mobile phones transmit a maximum of 2 watts of peak power. But this maximum power is transmitted in short pulses for only one-eighth of the time,” he begins.

Each second is broken up into 217 ‘frames’, and each frame (which is about 4.6 millisecond long) is further broken down into eight ‘slots,’ each about 0.58 milliseconds long. “When you average the power transmitted by the phone over a second or more, you get an average power of 0.25 watts, or one-quarter of a watt.”

The mobile phone transmits information only in the first of these eight slots, clarifies the author. “No information is sent in the remaining seven slots. This is why the average power is one-eighth of the peak power.”

The peak power level, however, is used only when the phone is at its maximum distance from the base station, notes Kruszelnicki.

“When it’s close to a base station, the peak power that the phone transmits can drop to as little as 2 milliwatts (two-thousandths of a watt). That’s a reduction of 1,000 times. This is a lot less than the 600-1,000 watts of a typical microwave oven.”

Eminently and entertainingly educative.

Portfolio approach

Applications, projects, hardware and network assets are the components of IT portfolio, describes IT Portfolio Rationalization by Prashant Halari, Sushil Paigankar, Hitesh Salla and Rajaram Vengurlekar ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

The authors, who belong to Patni Computers, Mumbai, state that like a financial portfolio, the IT portfolio too must be re-evaluated continually and altered to suit the enterprise’s financial goals.

If properly executed, ITPM (IT portfolio management) brings clarity to budget allocation decisions, manages project life cycles and regularly measures their level of alignment and contribution to corporate objectives, they assure.

ITPM, however, is not a quick-fix solution. “The true power and value of ITPM will be revealed over a period of time… Patience and a proper phased approach are necessary to yield the right results.” Make ITPM an important cog in the wheel of IT governance, the authors urge, therefore.

Vigorous plea to rationalise.

Tailpiece

“There is so much wastage in our organisation that when someone came up with the idea of using IT (information technology) to cut waste….”

“You grabbed it forthwith?”

“No, we immediately decided not to consciously add to the wastage by spending on IT!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in