Increasingly there is an awareness of being time focused. Business
is now adopting a Time-to-Market (T-t-M) philosophy. This T-t-M
approach advocates the importance of reducing the overall time taken
to implement a project. Consider the potential benefits of reducing
implementation time. Firstly, a commercial return is produced sooner.
Secondly, by being early into the market the opportunity exists to gain
a price premium and/or market share. The T-t-M focus is achieved by
parallel processing and, conversely, spending more time developing a
robust planning specification.● Delegation
Effective managers realise they cannot do everything themselves, they
know that management is the art of delegation. The art is often to bal-
ance the degree of delegation with the appropriate span of control.
The manager needs to understand the strength, weakness and group
dynamics of the team members.
Strategic implementation 269Illustrative Example 13.2
Ericsson: time-to-market
The mobile phone industry provides an illustration of how critical T-t-M cycles can be.
Although the market is booming, it is characterised by intense competition and rapid techno-
logical development. Ericsson – the manufacturer on mobile phone handsets – has recently
seen its market share drop within this growing market. These difficulties are largely attributed
to the delay in launching a key product (The T28). The company is quoted as stating that the
T28 was nearly a year late and that they had to cancel the T36 because it had only a short mar-
ket life. Such delays caused Ericsson to miss out on demand for low-cost handsets aimed at the
expanding pre-pay mobile phone market.Many managers have a problem with letting go. Remember that delega-
tion extends the capacity to manage and frees the leader from the mun-
dane. Additionally, if staff are encouraged to take decisions, overall
decision making can be improved. The people ‘on the spot’ are more
likely to have a fuller grasp of the situation and be able to make effective
decisions.
Key principles of delegation include:
● Focus on the objective. Be crystal clear about what has to be achieved
but flexible in how it is to be achieved.
● Delegate authority not just responsibility. Empower people to make
decisions and manage resources.
● Test people on smaller and less important tasks and gradually give the
more able employee greater scope.
● Explain how tasks are monitored and define circumstances in which
they should refer back to senior management.
● Refrain from undue interference but be watchful.