I Got It! :-)

Yesterday, it was quarter to eight in the evening, my cellphone rang. I got a call from my personnel agent--Mr. Dittmann. It was THE call--the ONE I´d been desperately awaiting since my very final interview with the head of sales and marketing dpt. at Skoda Auto company last Wednesday. So, after four interviews in three weeks, I finally got it! I pulled it off! :o) Brand Manager at Skoda--presumably the most admired company in the Czech republic--will be my very next job. Having quit the Ogilvy Mather´s BBK ad agency only two weeks ago, I was facing a win all / lose all situation. Hence, it´s clear that I shouted YES quite loudly upon hearing Mr. Dittmann´s big news yesterday :-)

Now, let me just add one thing here, let´s call it "lessons learned"... As some of you would opine, more or less deliberately, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Yes, I wanted to hit that proverb and I wanted to hit it deliberately indeed: this is not the right way of thinking when you want or plan to achieve something better in your live, respectively in your career. There´s a space in our lives between action and reaction, between stimulus and response, it´s called freedom to choose and I love the way Stephen Covey--the world´s no. 1 guy in personal development and leadership--puts it it his latest book The 8th Habit: In those choices lie our growth and our happiness. Your power to choose the direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation. It is the one gift that enables us to elevate our life to higher and higher levels.

I believe that according to this, the choice between a bird in the hand and two birds in the bush is, in fact, the choice between mediocrity and something more than merely that--something really great. As for me, I do not want to live a good, mediocre life, I do want to live a great life. With the right vision, discipline, and passion, everyone´s invited.

Česká vsuvka - nějak jsem měl vždy spadeno na personální agentury... navíc ne úplně pozitivní zkušenost jsem udělal z Kanady :)...O to nadšeněji teď musím prohlásit, že spolupráce s Dittmann Consulting, resp. Horton International, konkrétně s p. Leo Dittmannem byla naprosto skvělá, profesionální, s vysokou přidanou hodnotou.

Why Is SONY In Troubles

I like the way Al Ries puts it: Hang too much on a star and it will fall from the sky. Clear. Simple. And true too. SONY is experiencing serious profit troubles as a result of that. In fact, if you did a survey, you would probably find that Sony is the world’s most admired electronics brand. Way ahead of whoever might be in second place. However, like most Japanese companies, SONY is heavily line extended. Sony puts its brand name on television sets, videocassette recorders, digital cameras, personal computers, cellphones, semiconductors, camcorders, DVD players, MP3 players, stereos, headphones, broadcast video equipment, computer screens, computer hardware, batteries and bunch of other products.

Again, building a brand and building a profitable brand are two different things. Does SONY make any money? The sad fact is NO. Net profits after taxes of SONY Corporation are tiny. In the last ten years, SCorporation had revenues of $519.2 billion. But net profits after taxes were only $4.0 billion. That’s 8/10th of one percent of sales. It’s hard paying off your bank loans, not to mention paying dividends to investors, with that kind of return.

Yet Sony’s most profitable product is the PlayStation video game, a brand which makes only marginal use of the SONY name.

Here are some interesting business insights I´ve found on the Internet:

Compare SONY with Dell Computer. Sony makes personal computers and a lot of other products. Dell just makes personal computers (until recently when they added printers.) In the last ten years, Dell Computer had sales of $140.3 billion and net profits after taxes of $8.5 billion, or a net profit margin after taxes of 6.1 percent.

That’s not fair, you might be thinking. To compare with Sony, you picked a company (Dell) that is exceptionally profitable.

Actually that’s not true. Dell is in a highly competitive business where profit margins are thin. (IBM has never made money in the personal computer business and Hewlett-Packard’s PC business is barely profitable.) As a result, Dell’s 6.1 percent profit margin is not spectacular.

The New York Times follow-up article here:
Falling Prices Bring A Deeper Loss At Sony