MANILA, Philippines—Acting Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez, an advertising expert, became the darling of headline writers when, in his first press conference, he dished out this sound bite: “It is such an obviously beautiful product, the Philippines should be as easy as selling ‘Chickenjoy,’” referring to the best-selling product of Jollibee, a former client.
The new secretary explained: “So the question you have to ask yourself is, Why is it so hard? You know why is it so hard? Because maybe our approach to it is not simple enough. The best marketing communication campaign anywhere in the world … are really hinged on the simplicity of a proposition…. It’s really more about a single-mindedness of image …”
Simple approach
The remark about Chickenjoy delighted journalists. But the more meaty passages that defined the new secretary’s approach came from these words:
“Tourism advertising is not just about slogans, advertising is about strategic discipline …”
“What do you have to say to someone who lives about 6,000 kilometers away in Norway for him to come all the way here to see some goldfish under the sea? You have to have a very single-minded proposition that comes alive in his head, in his mind. That’s what we have to look for.
“Now the job of turning that into a simple slogan … sifting all of that and capturing it in three or four words … that’s going to be very serious work (transcript provided by the Malacañang Press Office).”
Management tool kit
The term strategic discipline suggested the work of management gurus Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad.
Hamel was a resource person in San Miguel Corp.’s strategic planning ritual in the 1990s. Regarded as a leading expert in strategic thinking, he co-authored books with Prahalad, another management scholar.
Their thoughts, especially on core competencies, are relevant to Jimenez’s passion for strategic discipline.
First, a definition: Core competencies are those unique internal capabilities that give you a competitive edge. The test of a core competence is if you take the capabilities away, your firm (i.e., tourism) will disappear.
Core competencies must produce high performance on the critical success factors of your target market, i.e., tourists. Any performance gaps between competencies and critical success factors must be corrected.
Critical success factors are those few areas, external to the firm, in which a company, i.e., Department of Tourism, must excel to win in its target market.
Critical success factors rarely change, no matter what you and your competitors do. But you can do much about your core competencies.
For example, the core competencies of 3M, makers of Scotch tape and Post-its, are innovation and product development arising from their core technologies in adhesives and films.
Those of Honda are power train engineering arising from expertise in metallurgy and combustion technologies.
Value delivery
According to Hamel, “core competencies are the collective learning in the organization, especially how to coordinate diverse production skills and integrate multiple streams of technologies. It is also about the organization of work and the delivery of value.”
How to identify a core competence?
It allows potential access to a wide variety of markets.
It makes a significant contribution to the perceived consumer benefits of the end product (“WOW Philippines!”).
It should be difficult for competitors to imitate (meaning, unique). And it will be difficult if it is a “complex harmonization” of technologies and skills.
“The critical task for management is to create an organization capable of infusing products (and services) with irresistible functionality,” Hamel says. “Ultimately, it requires radical change in the management.”
Faster
On strategy, Hamel writes: “Companies (or countries) that have risen to global leadership … began with ambitions that were out of all proportion to their resources and capabilities.
“But they created an obsession with winning at all levels and sustained that obsession over the 10- or 20-year quest for global leadership. This obsession is called strategic intent.”
Sounding as if he is addressing Philippine tourism, Hamel continues:
“In the end, an organization’s capacity to improve existing skills and learn new ones is the most defensible competitive advantage of all.
“The essence of strategy lies in creating tomorrow’s competitive advantages faster than competitors can mimic the ones you have today.”
Stretch
“Strategic intent implies a sizeable stretch for an organization. Current capabilities and resources are not enough. This forces the company to be more inventive, to make the most of limited resources,” Hamel added.
“Whereas the traditional view of strategy focuses on the degree of fit between existing resources and current opportunities, strategic intent creates an extreme misfit between resources and ambitions.
“The important question is not ‘how will next year be different from this year,’ but ‘what must we do differently next year to get closer to our strategic intent?’”
Translated to the nuts and bolts of the daily grind, this means Tourism Secretary Jimenez, by his own definition, will need all his advertising savvy—and then some.
He needs to be a transformational leader as well. And he needs to produce a blockbuster breakthrough idea: Something the Aquino administration needs for a host of other problems—garbage, traffic, schools, jobs, rice, highways, trees, floods, drainage, energy, water, technology, law and order.
(The author is chief executive of a management consulting firm. E-mail mibc2006@gmail.com.)