After reading Mary Truong’s recent blog post in which she outlined “5 reasons why performance management is good,” and related this to her own work experience, I was prompted to reflect on my experiences with performance management. I’ve had a few performance reviews in my day, and looking back on it now I can see that these reviews are indeed an effective tool in outlining company expectations and providing feedback so that employees are aware of what areas they are meeting or exceeding expectations in, and which areas of their performance are in need of improvement. However, I will say that being on the employee side of a manager-to-employee discussion is quite awkward. As someone who takes criticism very personally, having my performance critiqued by someone that I know well can be uncomfortable to say the least. Although, what I find even more uncomfortable is having to critique others, so I dread the day that I may have to evaluate someone’s work and discuss it face-to-face with them. But as unenjoyable as I personally find performance reviews, I do recognize their value in the workplace and I encourage companies to adopt performance management practices to establish company objectives and monitor employees’ execution of tasks.

By pure coincidence, very soon after publishing my previous post I found an article that relates to its subject perfectly. The post was about how Hostess Brand Inc.’s lack of innovation left it trailing behind competitors and led to the company’s ultimate demise. The article “Accelerate!” by John P. Kotter acknowledges that “perhaps the greatest challenge business leaders face today is how to stay competitive amid constant turbulence and disruption.” This certainly echoes Hostess’s situation; the company failed to stay competitive in the face of changing consumer tastes. The article provides examples of companies that “recognized the need for a big strategic move but couldn’t pull themselves together to make it,” again recalling Hostess.

According to the article, “the old ways of setting and implementing strategy are failing us.” The world is moving faster and companies need to be rethinking their direction and implementing operational changes every few years if they want to stay in the game. Kotter proposes a second operating system, one that designs and implements strategy with an “agile, networklike structure” and a different set of processes from the traditional hierarchy of companies. This second system will allow companies to react more quickly and effectively to market changes or operational inefficiencies.

Hostess Brand Inc, maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Ho’s, announced today that it will be shutting down. While this came as a shock to many loyal Hostess customers, the company had been suffering from major problems for years. Management changes, rising labour costs and debt were all contributors to the flat to slightly down sales volume in recent years. However, a lack of investment in marketing or innovation may have played an even larger part in the company’s demise. While competitors developed new snacks and variations of their brands in order to keep up with Americans’ changing tastes towards healthier foods, Hostess snacks remained basically the same. After filing for bankruptcy in 2004, the company needed to reinvent itself. Yet Hostess was unable to change its image as a maker of unhealthy products with suspiciously long shelf-lives. This, combined with union strikes and absurd pay hikes for executives, led the company into such a dire financial state that it was forced to shut down operations.

Hostess failed to develop a strategy that would keep it competitive with the rest of the market. In order for a company to survive, it must continue to innovate and keep up with consumer preferences.

http://news.yahoo.com/twinkie-maker-hostess-reaches-end-line-181830998–finance.html

Social entrepreneurship, the idea of using entrepreneurial principles to create and manage a “social purpose venture,” is in my opinion one of the more intriguing topics we’ve covered in class. The inspiring stories we heard about social entrepreneurs who have had major impacts on their communities made me want to explore the subject further.

While researching social enterprise in Vancouver, I happened across an article called The Case for More Social Entrepreneurship by Kate MacLennan. The article describes an example of a Vancouver registered charity that operates as a social enterprise: the Potluck Cafe Society. The Society’s cafe betters the Downtown Eastside community by employing disadvantaged residents and serving free meals. Interestingly, the busier the cafe gets, the more costly it is to keep it running, and these costs are mostly subsidized by revenues from the Society’s catering operation. In 2011 the catering operation earned about $500,000 less than executive director Heather O’Hara’s “ideal” operating budget for the cafe; nevertheless, the Society ensures that the cafe remains in operation because, as O’Hara explains, the cafe “serves a really important community function.”

The Potluck Cafe Society serves as a reminder that there is more to business than profit maximization; entrepreneurs can use their skills to earn revenue and better the world around them.

A t-shirt emblazoned with the “BlackBerry by choice” slogan

“Marketing 101 dictates that you generally don’t point out your own product’s shortcomings in your own advertising.” One would assume that this would be instinctive to marketers hired to fix image problems of well-established companies. Yet, as Peter Nowak points out in a recent blog post, RIM’s “BlackBerry by choice” campaign (introduced as a response to the suggestion that people only use BlackBerrys if forced to by employers) is indeed fixating on the negatives of the product rather than any positives. As Nowak states, “saying that users are there ‘by choice’ highlights a sort of defiance against something many find more desirable,” and “proclaiming that you’ve chosen something that isn’t very popular also highlights the fact that there may be reasons for why it isn’t popular in the first place.” I agree that “by choice” is a poor slogan for any product; it begs the question, “What’s wrong with it?” It is implied that some people are beingforced to buy or use it.

I recommend Nowak’s blog post to those new to the subject of marketing. The post is a fun, easy read yet provides thought-provoking insights on how to be successful in the world of marketing.