The Clifton Review
The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.
While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.
Peter Nygard’s 360 Degree Approach
By P.J. Malone
While the advent of the Internet has brought some security challenges to our lives, it has also opened up a deep well of resources for businesses across the world, and has given entrepreneurs access to lots of strategies and tools to help them achieve success. A particular advantage is the ability to review the successful steps of others.
Another area fashion mogul Peter Nygard focused on to align various parts of his business to ensure success was in product development and product delivery.
One of his organizational processes is to determine the customers’ views and desires to ensure there is a match between what the customer wants and what products his company is producing.
Nygard used a type of 360-degree approach to be able to discover his customers’ views. In addition to asking the customer directly, the company was one of the first to formally invite the sales agent into the product development process at the start of the design cycle to have their input on the customers’ views.
As a micro strategy, the company’s real time assessment of best sellers and worst sellers through their visual communication screens gives a real time reflection of customers’ likes and dislikes.
Product standards are also aligned. In order to ensure high quality standards, Nygard consistently sent his people into the field all over the world to manufacturers to ensure they were trained on and delivering on ‘The NYGARD standards.’
One of the most important alignment aims, and the most impactful step Peter Nygard took that transformed his business in many ways, is seen in the form of his Product Development Committees.
These product development bi-annual week-long strategy sessions’ core focus is on ensuring product development is aligned in every way to maximize the ability to reach the company’s business goals.
Despite all of the resources out there to help businesses, achieving business success is still challenging because every business is different and it is difficult to provide solutions that are tailored for each. Nevertheless, there are always clues to not getting business strategy right.
Jonathan Trevor and Barry Varcoe of the Harvard Business Review article, “How Aligned Is Your Organization?” (hbr.org) suggest reasons for what they call “Misaligned Enterprises”.
According to their article, there are four main reasons for why many businesses go off the rails:
- Enterprise leaders are unaware of the risks of misalignment.
In other words, these leaders focus on the wrong thing and don’t realize the importance of ensuring that all of their various organizational components line up.
- Nobody “owns” enterprise alignment.
Different individuals are responsible for different parts and nobody is in charge of making sure the various components are strategically aligned.
- Complexity makes enterprise alignment that much harder.
The more complex the organization, the more difficult it is to align its various components.
- Activity is mistaken for progress.
Business activities can get so hectic that it is difficult to find time to have in-depth discussions and make tough choices about what improvements may be necessary.
We will continue to offer strategies in upcoming editions for augmenting your business success.
