This blog is originally published as a sub-chapter of The G.O.S.P.E.L. of Strategy.
To best understand your options, you need two kinds of facts, i.e., the facts about your business' external and internal environment. We will discuss Internal Analysis in this post, as well as how to combine both Internal and External Analysis -- while avoiding Analysis Paralysis.
2.4. Analyze Internal Factors
Your available options are also highly influenced by your internal circumstances. A hypothetical example: Let’s say you want to make $1M personal income in 12 months and have three options:
Buy a strategic London property at $3M, refurbish it for $0.5M, and then sell it back at $4.5M.
Put $100k in spread betting, take a 1:10 leverage (Implying a position size of $100k * 10 = $1M), and bet on a portfolio that consistently generates more than 100% annual return in the last three years.
Write a best-seller e-book, get it published, then sell a million copies at $2.99 each with 30% royalty.
Which option is the best for you? It depends on your internal circumstances, e.g.
Are you familiar with the regulations related to the property market? Do you have access to $3M capital, either equity or loan?
Do you know how to identify winning stock and how to manage risk properly? Are you familiar with the pitfalls of spread-betting?
Will your wife be happy with you quitting your job to write an e-book? Do you know any top publishers? Can you reach one million readers?
As you can see, the best option for me isn’t necessarily the best one for you.
There are three internal factors you need to consider when you are analyzing the internal condition of your business:
Existing capabilities of your company.
Your company’s capacity for change.
Key levers in your company.
2.4.1. Existing Capabilities
Assess your company’s existing capability because if your company can’t execute the strategy, then your strategy is set for failure from the beginning. Understanding the organizational capability help you to determine the most appropriate options for your company in three ways.
First, it helps you to avoid the wrong options. Pursuing an option that you can’t manage well is a recipe for disaster. Take as an example the case of AIG, the giant insurance firm. For decades, AIG was a global powerhouse in the business of selling insurance. Banking on its reputation and historical performance, in the early 2000s, AIG moved from its core insurance business into esoteric financial instruments (including credit default swap) and expanded into aircraft and equipment leasing, capital markets, consumer finance, and insurance premium finance.
Unfortunately, some of its new business lines, such as International Lease Finance and the Financial Products group, weren’t easy to understand. Even the AIG top managers had difficulty understanding each of the different pieces of the business and how they contributed to the overall risks of the company.
In just a few years, AIG was on the brink of collapse due to losses sustained by these new business lines (total losses of nearly $100B—the second-biggest corporate annual losses in history).[xxvi] Had the US Government not rescued AIG with a stunning $182B bailout, the AIG would have gone bust in 2008.[xxvii], [xxviii]
AIG got into trouble when it moved beyond its traditional insurance business (where it has a strong capability) into new businesses that it couldn’t manage. AIG only became profitable again after it simplified its business and returned to its core insurance business.
Second, it helps you to design improvement plans. Once you understand your company’s current capability, you can compare it against the required capability to identify the gaps you need to improve (in mindsets, behaviors, underlying processes, and systems). Then, you can plan to address those gaps.
For example, Newag is a Polish company specializing in the production, maintenance, and modernization of railway rolling stock. It has to collaborate with a complex network of stakeholders: the railway stock designers and builders; land and track owners; infrastructure and utility providers; train station builders. Following an internal diagnostic, the executives at Newag knew they needed to increase the speed, quality, and effectiveness of the collaboration if Newag was to be successful.
So, Newag invested in digital collaboration tools, which give it the ability to manage multiple stakeholders, share and validate information, and speed up project implementations. As a result, it can complete its projects 40% faster than previously.[xxix]
Whenever I conduct an internal diagnostic for a new company, I assess the capability of the key people. I would interview all the executive team members and their direct reports (usually the top 30-50 people in the company). The objective of the interviews is two-fold: 1) understand the main problems faced by these people; and 2) provide an initial assessment of the capabilities of these people.
Imagine if you are the new coach of a basketball team. Among the first things you would like to know are the full capabilities and characters of your players. You can only start preparing the correct training programs and appropriate strategy to win the championship after understanding your players’ capabilities and characters.
Third, it helps you to identify your competitive edge (aka your Spear). This is the most important benefit of understanding your existing capabilities: it enables you to identify the special capabilities that give you an edge in the market. For you to be a winner, you need to have an edge. Without an edge, it is difficult for your strategy to spearhead the market.
It is always easier to win by doing what you are already good at. It is why Sun Tzu, the master strategist, said: “Know your enemy, know yourself, you will win all battles.”[xxx] If we translate Sun Tzu’s saying into a modern strategy speak: “Know your external factors (including your competitors), know your internal factors (including your capability), you will win the competition.”
The tool VRIE is handy to help you identify your sharpest edge (i.e., your special capabilities). Assess if you have any capability that is:
Valuable (i.e., solving people’s problems). Is the capability useful? Does it generate significant value? For example, knowledge of pop culture trivia has limited practical value. In contrast, knowledge of medicine can save a life (highly valuable). Examples of valuable offerings:
Akamai Technologies, a global content delivery company, provides data routing service, enabling faster, cheaper, and more secure digital data consumption (e.g., video downloading).
Stericycle, a medical waste disposal company, helps physicians and other medical providers avoid potential liabilities from medical syringes and other medical waste disposals.
ADP, a payroll and human resources management provider, eliminates the need to hire in-house employees to handle payroll administration.
Medtronics, a medical technology company, builds medical devices that some people literally can’t live without, e.g., pacemakers, spine robotics, insulin pumps.
Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s are two rating agencies whose ratings help financial institutions assess the riskiness of debt securities.
Rare (i.e., not common). Is the capability rare, difficult to find, and in limited supply? For example, neuro-cardiologists are rarer than family physicians. Hence, they enjoy a higher premium (better pay). Examples of rare offerings by source:
Brand power: Having a strong brand makes you unique/rare. For example, customers are willing to pay more for Four Seasons hotels because they associate them with premium services. Thus, the Four Seasons could charge prices 136% and 163% higher than other luxury hotels in the US and Europe.[xxxi]
Design effect: Doing things differently can also make your customers perceive you as rare. Nordstrom, a department store chain, made itself synonymous with ‘Customer Service.’ This exceptional customer service comes from the level to which Nordstrom trains and empowers its employees. Small details matter for them, e.g.,
Nordstrom salespeople rarely point. If you have a question about where something is located, they will walk you there.
The salespeople are trained to walk your bagged purchase around the counter to you (vs. just handing it across the counter).
The salespeople offer to ring up your purchase without you ever having to stand in line.
The customer service people are taught to answer the phone on no more than the second ring.[xxxii]
Patent protection: Having a patent stops competitors from copying your product. For example, pharma companies like Pfizer have many patents that protect their products for 15 to 20 years.
License constraint: Regulatory licenses and approval that are difficult to obtain can make your business rare by limiting competition. For example, in the UK, meat-processing waste treatment is strictly regulated by Animal By-Products Regulations 2005 (England) and 2006 (Wales). Due to the imposed strict standards on how the animal by-products must be treated, it is difficult to get approval to build a new waste treatment plant. As a result, there are only a handful of meat-processing waste-treatment players in the UK.
Irreplaceable (i.e., not easy to be replaced by others). Is the capability difficult to be copied or substituted? For example, programming skill was once valuable and rare, but many people can do it nowadays. Many engineering jobs are now outsourced to India and the Philippines. On behalf of a large manufacturing company, I once outsourced our IT engineering jobs to low-cost countries. It was tricky, but the cost-saving was sizable. Today, many white-collar jobs are endangered professions due to the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics. Example of irreplaceable offerings by source:
Network effect: When everyone uses your products, it is difficult for people to replace your products/services. For instance, Microsoft Office products (e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Outlook) are widely used. More than 91% of the Fortune 100 companies use Microsoft Office,[xxxiii] and more than 1.2 billion Office users worldwide.[xxxiv]For me, it’s difficult to switch to Google Docs, OpenOffice, or Apple iWork because most of my clients use Microsoft Office exclusively. Using alternative products often results in formatting problems, formula issues, and broken macros.
Size benefit: When you are becoming so big, you achieve economies of scale, making it difficult for people to replace your products/services. A notable example is LabCorp and Quest, the two dominant players in the laboratory testing business. Because of their big size, they have economies of scale, and they can offer low prices. As their smaller competitors couldn’t match the low prices, they folded, leaving LabCorp and Quest unchallenged in the market.[xxxv]
Location advantage: When you are strategically located, it is difficult for people to replace your products/services. A case in point: the money transfer business Western Union. As of 2020, it had 500,000 agent locations across 200 countries. Western Union has successfully signed exclusive, long-term agreements with strategically located agents (e.g., supermarkets, retail chains, stores, post offices, banks). These high-traffic locations make Western Union’s network more valuable to consumers (they can send/receive money at convenient locations). At the same time, the more consumers Western Union has, the more valuable Western Union is to the agents because it can deliver more consumers to them. Thus, agents prefer to sign a deal with Western Union, not its competitors. As a result, Western Union becomes the market leader in money transfer and is difficult to be replaced.[xxxvi]
Switching-cost constraint: If the switching cost is high, your products will be irreplaceable even though better or cheaper products are out there. For instance, Bloomberg, a high-end provider of financial and trading information, has embedded its services with customers through much training. So, it doesn’t make sense for those customers to switch and invest the time to learn another product. The cost of additional training time would outweigh the savings from switching to a lower-priced competitor.[xxxvii]
Quality differentiation: When the quality of your product is the best in the market, no one can compete with you. For example, Precision Castparts is a leading manufacturer of high-quality castings, forgings, and fasteners. For the jet engine manufacturers (the customers) who need flawless components to ensure the aircraft engine functions correctly while in flight, Precision’s products are simply irreplaceable. Even though Precision Castparts charges much higher prices than its competitors, it’s still the go-to company for its customers.
Exploitable (i.e., can be used by the company). Can the organization use the capability to the maximum potential? For example, having detailed knowledge about EOR (enhanced oil recovery) isn’t adding any value if you are working in a food company. I spent some years in the Oil and Gas sector in my consulting days. At one point, I was a member of McKinsey’s Global Energy & Materials Practice. This sector-specific knowledge is pretty much useless for me now. Another example: having unique recipes of delicious pizza is pointless if the pizza factory doesn’t have machines capable of producing top-quality pizza bases.
Combination of the above (i.e., the capability which is Valuable, Rare, Irreplaceable, and Exploitable). If you have the capability which fulfills all these criteria, rejoice. You have found a sharp edge that can become the basis of your competitive advantage. If you don’t have any, think about which existing capabilities you can upgrade to become a VRIE capability.
An example of the VRIE analysis for a petrochemical company:
Last point for this section: a capability can come in many dimensions. Check which capability of yours is the VRIE capabilities.
2.4.2. Capacity for Change
Assess your company’s capacity for change because the future capabilities depending on this capacity. Some of the capability gaps you can fix. Some of the gaps you can’t fix. Some companies can change. Some companies can’t.
When you match your strategy with what your company can do, you massively increase your success odds. Jack Welch, the famous CEO, said: “An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage.”[xxxviii]
To assess your company’s capacity for change, compare both the current and the potential capability of your organization (strengths, weaknesses, and constraints). The outcome can help you:
Determine the most relevant option for the company;
Identify gaps in mindsets, behaviors, the underlying processes and systems; and
Reduce the deviations between strategy and execution.
Don’t forget: a company’s capacity for change is highly dependent on its power dynamic. A Harvard Business Review study found that 50% of failure and unsuccessful strategy execution are due to organizational politics?[xxxix] Surprising, isn’t it? It is the internal people, not the external enemies, who sabotage the strategy!
Well, this result shouldn’t be surprising. Politics is part of human society. It will always be there as long as humans are banded together. The higher you climb the corporate ladder, the more politics you will face.
It is certainly much easier if everyone in the company is in the same camp. But, usually, that isn’t the case. Just imagine it like the special agent 007 James Bond’s work: your enemies are not only the external villains but also the internal traitors.
I once implemented machine learning to create an automatic credit approval system for a client. Previously, all credit applications had to be reviewed manually by an ‘army’ of credit analysts. With machine learning, we ‘trained’ a computer program (basically a mathematical model) to predict the likelihood of defaulting (the model ‘learned’ from the historical pattern of bad debts). Then, the program can make an instant, automatic approval decision (if the probability of default is lower than 5%, the model would automatically approve).
The solution should help the Credit Department people the most (by reducing their workload significantly). However, enormous resistance came from the Credit Department. They were worried about losing power and relevance due to the introduction of automatic decision-making algorithms.
You need to know how to read the power dynamics since it can become the barrier or the driver of success:
Who are the key decision-makers? Who are the key influencers?
What are their open interests? What are their hidden interests?
What is their willingness to take risks for specific initiatives?
Who are the right people for specific tasks?
Who should I keep engaged and committed?
Whom should I be wary of? Who are the likely blockers? How to handle them?
When you start engaging a new company, map the political landscape using the above questions. Understanding corporate politics will help you to implement your strategy. Politics is like the Game of Thrones: If you don’t play it, it only means you are playing to lose.
2.4.3. Key Levers in the Business
Very important: you need to find the key levers of the company. In every strategy diagnostic, always ask: “what are the key levers here, which would make a significant impact?”
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s one of the mantras McKinsey ‘beat’ into me when I was a junior analyst. The 80/20 rule stipulates that ~80% of the results often come from ~20% of the levers. For example, for Whole Foods Market (an American grocery chain), 75% of purchases were made by 25% of the customers who shopped exclusively at the store.[xl] Another example: In 2010, American Woodmark, a kitchen and bath cabinet manufacturer, had two customers out of thousands that accounted for 71% of the company’s sales (i.e., Home Depot and Lowe’s).[xli] Last time I checked, in 2019, both Home Depot and Lowe’s still accounted for 49% of the company’s sales.[xlii]
I have found more extreme cases in real life, i.e., the 90/10, 95/5, and even 99/1. For instance, I know a UK food company with over 50 customers, but 90% of its sales come from a single customer, i.e., Mark & Spencers Food.
When you are analyzing the internal condition of your company, quickly narrow down from ‘seas’ of data into a few most important variables that disproportionately affect the outcome. Every company has this: the 3-5 key levers that become the ‘backbone’ of performance. If you fix these levers, you will see a significant breakthrough impact!
For example, if 80% of your profit comes from the top ten customers, you should focus on these ten customers. If raw materials account for 90% of your expenses, you want to spend most of your time in this cost bucket when cost-cutting. Finding these levers allow you to focus on the key variables and allow fast decision-making.
Repeat after me this mantra: “Eighty-twenty. Eighty-twenty. Eighty-twenty.” The mantra will ‘save’ you during troubled times. It is an excellent concept to be engraved in your mind.
2.5. Ensure the Fit between Internal and External Factors
A winning strategy’s hallmark is the harmony between internal and external factors. When your internal strength matches the external opportunity, it is much easier to win in the market. For example, if your company’s strength is in food experimentation (an internal factor), and vegan food is hot in demand (an external factor), then consider the option of offering innovative vegan food to the market.
To create a winning strategy, you must find an option that matches your internal conditions to your external conditions. Consider the case of Circuit City, a US consumer electronics retailer. When the company began its rise to prominence in the 1970s, the consumer electronics industry was dominated by mom-and-pop retailers of varying quality and efficiency.
Burgeoning demand kept the retailers afloat – despite three drawbacks: 1) Consumers weren’t loyal to the retailers; 2) the switching cost from one retailer to another was low; and 3) customers often feared that retailers were preying on their ignorance of high-tech products.
Furthermore, the environment was marked by untapped efficiencies (limited economies of scale) and unmet customer needs (products were often unavailable or out of stock as each retailer carried a limited selection of brands and small inventory).
Circuit City devised a highly effective strategy that took advantage of its internal strengths (i.e., access to capital and scientific management know-how) and external opportunities. The company invested in: large stores that stock a wide selection of consumer electronics; sales-tracking technology; automated distribution centers; and brand-building efforts. As a result, the company differentiated itself from competitors based on selection, availability, and consumer trust. It simultaneously drove down costs. Circuit City’s low prices and other strengths led to massive sales volumes that further reduced unit costs. The company could lower prices with lower unit costs, which drove even greater volume in a virtuous cycle.
Note how well this strategy matched the external environment. By meeting consumer needs and building a brand that shoppers valued, Circuit City made it less attractive for customers to switch to other retailers. As Circuit City’s brand rose to prominence and consumers came to rely on the recommendations of its salespeople, sales volume grew. Soon, the company became far more powerful in negotiations with suppliers. Its investments in branding, distribution, information technology, and large stores created new barriers to entry. And these scale-driven cost advantages gave the company a powerful way to overcome smaller rivals.[xliii]
SWOT is a simple but powerful tool for matching your internal and external environments. If you use it correctly as a thinking tool (as opposed to a filling-in-the-box exercise), it helps you generate insights. Think: “Given the internal and external factors, what is the best option for me/my company?”
Too simple and straightforward? When I first encountered this tool, I thought so. Later, I realized that SWOT is far from simple. After many years, I have learned that SWOT is an elegant and straightforward tool. It is indeed as Bruce Lee, the legendary martial artist, once said: “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch, and a kick is just a kick.”[xliv]
After all, a winning strategy is straightforward and not complicated. Albert Einstein, the famous scientist, once advised us: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler!”[xlv]
SWOT is popular because it’s a simple yet versatile tool. In the right hand (the hand of a master strategist), it can become a ‘deadly’ weapon of strategy. I tipped my hat to Albert Humprey, the man who invented this tool.
Several pointers on how to use SWOT effectively:
Don’t create a long list. It is counterproductive to do so. Note that SWOT is a tool to summarize and synthesize all of your previous analyses. Don’t list all factors in the small boxes; synthesize your thinking instead.
Don’t be vague. Be specific and action-focused. For example, there is not much value from saying: “weak capability in software development.” You can’t immediately see the solution. Being specific is more valuable, e.g., “There is no standardized software development process in the company” or “We only have one software developer while needing ten.”
Derive the so-what. If you don’t derive the so-what, the list of factors isn’t meaningful. You need to push the thinking forward. On its own, you won’t get much from it because SWOT doesn’t tell you the so-what. But, used together with all of your previous analyzes, you should be able to generate the so-what yourself.
Don’t overestimate your strengths and opportunities, nor underestimate your weakness and threats. Sometimes people don’t want to admit that the company has serious weaknesses. Sometimes they create made-up strengths (which can easily be ‘mowed’ down by the competitors) for the company. Sometimes people are overexcited about a new opportunity and underreact to new threats. I remember how our Regional Sales Director was super-excited when the economic sanctions against Iran were lifted in 2016. He thought he was going to increase his sales significantly. Well, it didn’t happen. By 2018, the US unilaterally re-imposed the sanctions.
2.6. Beware of Analysis Paralysis
When analyzing your options, beware of analysis paralysis. Two things can cause it.
First, having too much data creates noise and clouds judgment. Imagine, for instance, the challenge facing Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toy “R” Us, in the fast-changing, complex toy industry of the 1950s. Had he sat down and analyzed all of the interdependent configurations of choices in toy retailing—from marketing to operations, from human resource management to logistics—it is unlikely he would have come up with a strategy as coherent and effective as the one Toys “R” Us adopted. Lazarus’ simplified analysis (by focusing on the most important options only) enabled Toy “R” Us to become the dominant retailer of toys for several decades.[xlvi]
To avoid analysis paralysis due to too much data, adopt the design-first philosophy instead of the data-first philosophy. The Design-First philosophy suggests being selective in data analysis (i.e., designing the analysis based on particular reasons). This school of thought advises you to always be aware of your data gathering and analysis purpose by asking: “why am I analyzing this?”
In McKinsey, we have phrases for this: “Be Hypothesis-Driven!” and “Don’t Boil the Ocean.” The phrases embody the design-first philosophy by suggesting:
a clear purpose should drive your analysis;
you don’t have the time and resources to analyze every single thing in life;
you must be strategic in your analysis.
On the other hand, the Data-First philosophy suggests being ‘greedy’ in data analysis. Given the availability of a vast amount of data and massive computing power, one can always employ various machine learning algorithms to run thousands of analyses automatically. In fact, by testing many of the unknown and seemingly unrelated variables, we can capture unexpected insights within the data. As a data scientist, I like to use the data-first philosophy to explore my dataset.
However, as a strategist, I prefer the design-first approach because randomly analyzing a vast amount of data can be counter-productive:
Too many variables can be dangerous. Jan Ittner, my former colleague at BCG, said: “If your data is too big, you’ll find a strong correlation between unrelated things… Purely due to random coincidence.” Similarly, Roy E. Welsch, my data science professor at MIT, cautioned us: “correlation does not imply causation.” For fascinating examples of misleading correlations, go to the following website: www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations. On the page, you can see – for example, the ‘US Spending on Science, Space, and Technology’ is strongly correlated (correlation power of 99.79%) with ‘Suicides by Hanging, Strangulation, and Suffocation.’ Or ‘Divorce Rate in Maine’ is highly correlated (correlation power of 99.26%) with ‘Per Capita Consumption of Margarine.’
Too many variables will slow you down due to the curse of dimensionality. To obtain a statistically sound and reliable result, the amount of data needed often grows exponentially with the number of variables. When you have an enormous data size (several terabytes or more), running computation-intensive algorithms suddenly takes days, even with the power of cloud computing. I once developed a set of predictor models on a 500Gb dataset. The model training process took days whenever I pressed the run button (even when run on a server, not on a local machine). It’s highly unlikely to get an accurate and robust model in the first few runs in data modeling. Typically, we need many iterations, trials and errors, and validations. As a result, the model building took weeks. In the meantime, the deadline didn’t wait.
Without ‘design’ thinking, you might miss essential variables that aren’t in the existing datasets. For example, once a data scientist working for me built an artificial intelligence model to predict the likelihood of successful color re-dyeing. However, after spending many days, he failed to deliver a reliable model. Not because of his modeling skill. But because the dataset didn’t contain some crucial variables that determine the absorption of the dye, e.g., the water quality, the winding quality, and the pre-treatment type.
The second cause of analysis paralysis: having too little data. In business and life, you’ll often face ambiguous options (i.e., you don’t know which ones are the bad ones and which ones are the good ones). In cases like this, you would like to take the time to analyze and determine which one is which. But, sometimes, the information you’d like to have simply isn’t available. When this occurs, it’s easy to get stuck and suffer analysis paralysis while you try to find the ‘perfect’ decision.
To avoid analysis paralysis due to too little data, take action decisively. Because in such situations, waiting and doing nothing is far worse than pursuing a ‘good enough’ option quickly.
Action often provides feedback and clarity. If you take action and find that it’s the ‘wrong’ choice, you actually find new and useful information. For example, if you’re in a burning building and can’t decide between trying to exit from the front door or the back door, attempting to escape from either door is better than sitting indecisively. If you reach the front door quickly and find it’s blocked, it doesn’t mean you made the ‘wrong’ choice. By taking action quickly, you now obtain valuable information about your situation and what not to do. If you do this quickly enough, you still have enough time to turn around and attempt to escape out the back door.
So, when the clarity simply isn’t available, analyzing more won’t have any material impact on the outcomes. It is far better to simply take any reasonable action in these situations than to be paralyzed with indecision.
At this point, you have come far. You have determined your goal, the most important thing you can do. You have done your ‘homework’ and analyzed your options. You are now ready to choose the best option as your strategy. But how do you know which one is the best? The next section will address this question.
Continue to explore the secrets of Winning Strategy here.
[i] Andrew Roberts. 2015. Napoleon the Great. Penguin Books. [ii] www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/Napoleon_tactics.htm [iii] www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-strategic-yardstick-you-cant-afford-to-ignore [iv] pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html [v] Michael Arndt. 2010. Urban Outfitters’ Grow-Slow Strategy. BusinessWeek. [vi] ICCT. 2020. The Retail Fuels Market in Indonesia. Working Paper 2020-23. [vii] Matthew Boyle. 2009. Wal-Mart’s Painful Lessons. BusinessWeek Online. [viii] wharton-ibr.com/blog/2020/11/25/why-walmart-was-destined-for-failure-in-japan-by-sarah-zhang-w22 [ix] asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/How-Walmart-flopped-in-Japan-and-elsewhere-overseas [x] Based on personal experience while travelling to these countries. [xi] The Manufacturer. Vol 23. Issue 9. December 2020. [xii] Based on personal observation. [xiii] www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=19 [xiv] www.statista.com/topics/3594/auto-dealers-in-the-us/ [xv] www.dairyuk.org/the-uk-dairy-industry/ [xvi] hbr.org/2005/04/how-strategists-really-think-tapping-the-power-of-analogy [xvii] www.quotes.net/quote/40044 [xviii] Michael Shearn. 2012. The Investment Checklist: the Art of In-depth Research. John Wiley & Sons. [xix] Based on discussion with a friend of mine who worked for the UK Government. [xx] www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/17/donald-trump-concede-joe-biden-election-2020-what-happens-president/ [xxi] eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/06/election-2020-War Games-trump-vs-biden-race-show-risk-chaos/5526553002/ [xxii] The Manufacturer. Vol 23. Issue 9. December 2020. [xxiii] www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/shocking-sales-results-from-m-s-deepen-fears-of-recession-in-uk-769273.html [xxiv] hbr.org/2005/04/how-strategists-really-think-tapping-the-power-of-analogy [xxv] Adapted from McKinsey & Company’s Strategy Under Uncertainty, [xxvi] insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/what-went-wrong-at-aig [xxvii] www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/american-investment-group-aig-bailout.asp [xxviii] www.thebalance.com/aig-bailout-cost-timeline-bonuses-causes-effects-3305693 [xxix] The Manufacturer. Vol 23. Issue 9. December 2020. [xxx] quotefancy.com/quote/1548411/Sun-Tzu-Know-yourself-and-you-will-win-all-battles [xxxi] Four Season’s Annual Report. www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1030555/000116923203003172/d55326_ex99-1.htm [xxxii] www.shopify.co.uk/retail/119531651-how-nordstrom-made-its-brand-synonymous-with-customer-service-and-how-you-can-too [xxxiii] blog.goptg.com/microsoft-office-365-statistics [xxxiv] www.windowscentral.com/there-are-now-12-billion-office-users-60-million-office-365-commercial-customers [xxxv] Michael Shearn. 2012. The Investment Checklist: the Art of In-depth Research. John Wiley & Sons. [xxxvi] www.westernunion.com [xxxvii] Michael Shearn. 2012. The Investment Checklist: the Art of In-depth Research. John Wiley & Sons. [xxxviii] www.brainyquote.com/quotes/jack_welch_173305 [xxxix] strativity.com/hbr-change-report/ [xl] Michael Shearn. 2012. The Investment Checklist: the Art of In-depth Research. John Wiley & Sons. [xli] American Woodmark’s Annual Report Year 2010. [xlii] American Woodmark’s Annual Report Year 2019. [xliii] hbr.org/2005/04/how-strategists-really-think-tapping-the-power-of-analogy [xliv] www.gobigcreativelab.com/a-punch-is-just-a-punch-leadership-lessons-from-bruce-lee/ [xlv] quotefancy.com/quote/757912/Albert-Einstein-Make-everything-as-simple-as-possible-but-not-simpler [xlvi] hbr.org/2005/04/how-strategists-really-think-tapping-the-power-of-analogy
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