Strategic - Decisions & Tradeoffs - Aditya Yadav

1. *
“Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76

2. * A Typical Global Company
* Fortune 500/1000
* 200 Divisions
* 40 Countries
* 25000 Employees
*

3. *
@ Acme Inc.

4. * Original Question “How do we take decisions?
It is virtually impossible to decide between
tradeoffs. What do we do?”
* The Correct Question - “Decisions seem
impossible to make only when you are not
clear about your purpose and reasons. Once
that it is clear and a consensus is achieved the
decisions themselves are rather trivial.”
*

5. *
And The Philosophy Behind The Answer

6. * Porter says – Strategy is about decisions
* Porter says – the best choices give better strategic advantage
* There are a lot of decision making frameworks
* There is one called Even Swaps from John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa
* We say Strategy is about the Reason behind the Choices.
* We say once the Reasons are clearly articulated and consensus achieved, decision making is trivial and consistent
across the Organization across the Globe
* We say if you want to succeed w/ Strategy Making you have to be absolutely clear about your
1. Values
2. Principles
3. Practices
4. Purpose
5. Philosophy
6. Direction, and
7. Ground Rules
* If you are going to counter argue saying – how do you optimize multi-objective functions. I will say once the reasons
are clear we don’t rule out using mathematics or any other decision making frameworks (even Even Swaps) But our
focus in decision making is on the 7 pointes mentioned above. For us the act of taking the decision is Trivial and
Consistent ;-)
* Lets be clear – we are focusing on Reasons and not mathematical constructs or framework's per se. Those are
secondary to us.
*

7. 1. Theory vs Practice
2. Normative vs Pragmatic
3. Benfit vs Cost
4. Revenues vs Profits
5. Market Share vs Margins
6. Stability vs Change
7. Present vs Future
8. Time vs Money
9. Build vs Buy
10.Inhouse vs Outsource
*

8. 1. Acquisition vs Organic Growth
2. Diversify vs Focus
3. Capex vs Opex
4. Global vs Local
5. Copy vs Innovate
6. Early Adopter vs Laggard
7. Risk Friendly vs Averse
8. Management vs Leadership
9. Doing something vs Opportunity Cost
10.Suck Costs vs Marginal Costs
*

9. 1. Transparency vs Privacy
2. Control vs Self Organizing
3. Bottom Up vs Top Down
4. Centralized vs Decentralized
5. Mass Standardization vs Independence/Creativity
6. Follow Demand/Market vs Lead Demand/Market
7. Proven Business’s/Model’s vs New Business’s/Model’s
8. Training vs Education
9. Acquire Talent vs Build Talent
10. Experience vs Facts
11. Generalists vs Specialists
*

10. * Which of these decisions/tradeoff’s can you make if
your Reasons are not clear?
* Conclusion: Strategy is not about Choices its about
the Reasons behind those Choices
* Ref: My Deck on - The Pyramid Of Maturity
* Figure out the Why’s! and the What’s become pretty
Easy!!!
* Figure out the What’s! and the How’s are probably
already known by your ground staff. Or it can be
standardized easily too.
* MTV Enjoy!
*

11. Aditya!!!
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