Position and move are essential information you need to put in place a strategy. The strategy is put in place through attacking and defensive actions.

In this case, the customer wants to reduce the number of vendors on IT space. We have classified the different vendors depending if they are tier-1, tier-2, tier-3. The picture below represents a small tier-3.

We have tried to represent the capabilities of these small tier-3 vendors and the way we will attack them, or put actions in place to defend against them.

1. Point guard (HHRR): drives the ball (business) and distributes the work in a small vendor. We propose to attack and hire these key people which provides value and quick time response.
2. Shooting guard (IT): Here has a defensive role: to restrict the dribble penetration of any type of deliverable that is not based on standard documents based on the customer framework. This defensive action tries to stop vendor differentiation.
3. Small Forward (buyer): with a defensive role too: to choke the vendor lack of variety reducing their moves, and limiting the prices.
4. Power forward (CTO), will wait for innovation, and extra value. He will play with small forward to choke the ability of the vendor to compete.
5. Center (CIO), once the point guard did his job, and the others are containing and choking the vendor, the center will promote alliances to try to other vendor (tier-1 or tier-2) to acquire or enable an alliance with the small tier-3 vendor.

Basketball is a team game, and this situation (customer/vendor) is also a game which requires to the whole team to work together.

Every game is different, as the opponent is different (for a tier-1 vendor, you should play the game differently).

Your actions has to be defined with respect your own capabilities and taking into account the strengths of your opponent.

Basketball is a statistical game too, so play with numbers and calculate how you will win-lose this game with the proposed strategy. You will lose some possessions (regulation, a long term contract you cannot cancel…), but will you win the game? For instance 3-points shoots is pure mathematics:

• 40% 3p shoots means 1,2 points per possession;
• 56% 2p shoots means 1,1 points per possession;

Professional basketball coaches are playing with these numbers to win games.

Twitter just announced that they are removing the 140 characters for direct messages. To me as user this means they become a clone of Facebook. Which of the main things you do in Facebook cannot be done in Twitter?

Facebook did a move adding the possibility of replying to replies, so the replies are more organized.

Facebook usage seems to be declining in terms of people entering direct messages; people attach pictures, videos, links… In twitter there are pictures, links… but people write more (at least the people I follow). By this reason I started to pay more attention to twitter than to Facebook.

the amount of “Likes” is high in both platforms, it’s easy and cheap for people to click on “like” or the small star.

With this move, the battle continues to attract users, traffic, relevancy… Twitter investors are starving of revenue, let’s see how the new CEO plays the game.

The essential advantage defines coherence as a resolute, clear minded focus in a company on three critical elements:

1. Its way to play
2. its most distinctive capabilities
3. its lineup of products and services

The better aligned these three elements, the more coherent company.

There are four basic, specific, observable ways in which coherence generates value.

1. Effectiveness
2. Efficiency
3. Focused investment
4. Alignment