Transform

In this section, you will gain:

- A full understanding of the options you have for changing either your market or your organization.
- An awareness of what is required to move out of one market archetype and into another.
- An in-depth understanding of management's unique role in each market/archetype pair.
- Detailed knowledge of how to manage the entire change process suggested by your Organization/Market Profile.

Keys to Market Mastery

It's time for you to dig more deeply into the archetypes and see how they apply to you.

You may be wondering whether to change a product line, or get into a new market, and you may not be sure if your organization can handle the shift. You may be frustrated that you have been unable to get your company behind a new program or product offering. You may want to get a handle on what happened to that fantastic organization you had back when its products were new. Or you may have identified a real discrepancy between your organization and its market. (For example, you may have discovered that you have a lot of ruler managers floundering in a jungle market.) In all of these situations, Perfect Biz Match can help.

Remember, however, that no archetype will provide you with a perfect, exact description of any market or organization. Each organization is and always will be unique, and each will have at least a few aspects of all four archetypes in its culture. However, there will nevertheless be a set of dominant, overriding characteristics that will help you understand your organization and its needs better.

Remember, too, that it is possible to master a market only when your organization is aligned with it. This dictum underlies everything in Perfect Biz Match. Perfect Biz Match is dedicated to helping you determine exactly what your organization should do and be in order to create such an alignment and be successful.

Next you will learn the basics of changing your organization, the market environment(s) it chooses to operate in, or both. You will also learn how to more closely align your organization and its market(s) if they are already in the same quadrant.

Making the Choice

For many years, managers would adopt the style of their leader and assume that the leader's knowledge and instincts about the market would be sufficient. Decisions were often reached intuitively, and results often derived more from what was not done than from what was done deliberately and strategically. Read More

The Force Behind the Change

If your score is 3 or more, an archetype change - that is, a change in either your organization's archetype or the market environment(s) in which it operates - is clearly indicated. The most common situation creating such a need for change is the movement of a product or service from one market environment to another. Read More

The 21st Century Shift in Markets

Over the last twenty years, globalization and technological changes have greatly accelerated the rate at which products and services typically move from one market environment to another. Organizations that used to operate in the same environment for decades now must face significant change - and very difficult choices - after only a few years, and sometimes after only a few months. Read More

Becoming a Hunter Organization

In a jungle market, companies compete relentlessly to attract and retain customers by attending to their every desire. This is typically combined with an equally relentless drive to reduce costs in the supply chain. As a result, hunter organizations need to:

- eliminate traditional hierarchical thinking
- place the decision-making power as close to the customer as possible
- get products to move through the supply chain as quickly as possible
- create highly-committed, highly-flexible organizational groupings

In this section we'll look at how organizations move into a jungle environment, and what needs to take place within those organizations in order for them to become successful hunters.

Getting Pulled In

Your company offers a product or product line that is experiencing significant competition for the first time.
Read More

Slipping In

You are part of an industry that is no longer oriented primarily toward new products.
Read More

Diving In

You are a startup company or business unit entering a contested environment. Read More

Being Pushed In

You are moving from a dominant position to a highly contested one with a particular product or product line.
Read More

Forcing a Way Back In

You're attempting to move out of a commoditized battleground environment by changing the nature of your product(s), your methods or channels of distribution, or both. Read More

Becoming a Warrior Organization

A warrior organization needs to be able to implement a strategy quickly and effectively throughout the entire system at once. A special kind of culture is needed to do this well. Such a culture requires strong product leaders (who function not unlike generals), functional leaders, a limited hierarchy, and loyal workers who are ever willing to follow orders and strategies.

There are two ways to enter a battleground market:

Survive as One of the Winners from the Jungle

Your company merges with or acquires others in your industry, forming a larger organization with a more integrated line of products that have become commodities. You will eventually share the market with a few other large players, who are also consolidating to offer their products more efficiently.
Read More

Drift into this Market from a Declining Kingdom

After dominating the market for some time as the premier producer of a product in high demand, your company finds that the product has become a commodity and is now produced equally well by a handful of competitors. Read More

Becoming a Ruler Organization

A ruler's primary concerns are: 1) being the only company to deliver desired products to eager customers; 2) watching out for potentially serious competitors; and 3) constantly working to increase the value of its products and services.

However, though many organizations strive for ruler status, it is a rare and fortunate company that achieves it. This status is usually accomplished through a combination of hard work, innovation, smart decisions, good timing, and luck. Only a very small percentage of businesses ever become rulers; indeed, in today's business world, there are not a great many kingdoms left.

In this section we'll examine the three ways in which companies can move into a kingdom environment, and what they need to do in order to thrive as rulers in each situation.

Conquering and Leaving the Frontier

Your new product has been a success in the frontier, and enjoys a patent, or some means of marketing or distribution, that no one else can duplicate. Read More

Escaping from the Jungle

As the result of your successful manipulation of a product, product line, supply chain, and/or marketing channel, you pull away from all other competitors and achieve market domination.
Read More

Taking Control of the Battleground

Through smart and aggressive marketing, you wrest the great majority of market share from the last few competitors in a battleground market. Or, alternatively, your company simply acquires some or all of the remaining significant players. Read More

Becoming a Pioneer Organization

Any organization that offers new-to-the-world products or services needs to operate as a pioneer. Pioneers must be able to succeed in the very difficult circumstances created by frontier markets, where much of what is encountered is new and unknown. Pioneers must gain a foothold in the marketplace while surviving the many unexpected and threatening events that inevitably occur when introducing new products or services.

In the beginning, no one knows about a pioneer's new product or service; no one sells or distributes it; there is no established channel for getting it to market; and there may not even be a fully-developed process to produce it.

Innovation is the most central and distinctive quality of pioneers. Managers in pioneer organizations not only expect R&D people to come up with new products or services, but expect them to find a new and less costly way to produce and deliver them.

Perhaps the most important task of pioneer managers is creating the circumstances and climate in which innovation can occur. (Compare this with the primary tasks of battleground managers, which are to increase sales volume, add points of distribution, and reduce costs; or with those of the ruler manager, which are to crush or buy out any serious competition.) This focus on innovation shapes many of the organization's decisions about people, space, management style, and the availability of research and development resources.

There are four ways to enter a frontier market:

Starting an Entirely New Organization

You are an entrepreneur who has developed a new product or service. Either you've got some investors or partners or you're able to start up an organization of your own. Read More

Moving From the Jungle

One of your organization's inventions or adaptations is so new and different that it has created a new business and has put you into a new market and/or distribution channel.
Read More

From the Battleground

After your organization's regular product or service lines have become commoditized, it develops a new product or service for which there is no already-developed market.
Read More

From the Kingdom

The innovation needed to maintain your organization's dominance in the market is so successful that - perhaps unexpectedly - you are poised to enter the frontier.
Read More