Page 37 - 201902 SCA February 2019 Volume 56 Number 1

FEBRUARY
2019
Are you doing the right thing?
continued from page 17
and re-badging of the Homebase stores alienated its
traditional customer base and this factor, coupled with
an adverse macro-environment, resulted in Wesfarmers
selling the Homebase chain to Hilco for £1.00 after an
investment of $1,700 million. The 24 stores out of a
total of 250 that had been rebranded as Bunnings have
been converted back to Homebase.
So, was it a case of “doing the wrong thing” or
“doing things wrong”? Essentially, it’s the former. The
market leader B&Q is much closer to the Bunnings
model than Homebase so this market sector was
already well catered for. Whilst the Homebase stores
were underperforming, this owed more to “doing things
wrong” rather than “doing the wrong thing”. Wesfarmers
believed otherwise – a major strategic error.
The second example of “doing the wrong thing”
is closer to home – the Victorian State elections of
November 2018. Whilst some in the Liberal party
claimed that their poor showing in the polls was due
to an underfunded and ill-executed election campaign
– “doing things right” – the evidence strongly
suggests that the policies put forward by the party,
not only went down poorly with uncommitted voters
but also alienated many hardcore Liberal supporters.
As political commentator Barrie Cassidy put it, “their
policies may have played well to Queensland voters
but not to Victorians”. In short, the Liberal disaster
was a simple case of not “doing the right thing”.
When businesses – and other organisations for
that matter – ignore or fail to recognise events or
trends in either the macro or more often the micro-
environments, the adverse impact on their health is
both sudden and far-reaching. It is often compounded
by management’s reluctance to abandon or even
modify a hitherto successful business model.
Rather than questioning the alignment of the current
business model with the external environment in
which it now operates, management seeks to lay the
blame on the implementation of the strategy – the
“doing things right” component.
Globalisation and market fragmentation, in
particular, are two factors in the micro-environment
that organisations can fall foul of. Wesfarmers
believed that the Bunnings business model that has
been so successful in the Australian market would
be equally profitable in the UK one; Liberal party
strategists wrongly believed that progressive social
policies and commitment to tackling the impacts
of climate change held less appeal to the Victorian
electorate than law and order and short-term
solutions to the costs of power generation. Whilst
international businesses need coherent overall
strategies, they may need customisation to align
them to local market environments. Just because
“doing the right thing” works in one environment
doesn’t mean that it works equally well everywhere
else that the organisation has a footprint.
Blaming the messenger is always easier than
taking heed of the message, particularly if you have
played a role in writing the latter in the first place! n
Graham Haines is the principal of Plans to
Reality, a consulting practice that assists
organisations in the implementation of business
plans and other major programs.
Journal of Surface Coatings Australia 35

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