Closing Address of the UOB-NUS Case Competition 2015

Many of the international case competition advisors and judges related to me that they found my address at the end of the case competition compelling in that they were things that they had impressed upon their business school students. I reproduce it here and hope that it will in a small way help all of you as you progress from school to work:

Thank you NUS Business School & Prof Lau for organizing this case competition. UOB is very proud to be associated with this prestigious case competition.

Thank you judges for your time and valuable feedback.

And thank you participants from all over the world. I know a lot more work and sweat went into this than the judges could ever imagine. The quality and standard is excellent and even more so given this is an undergraduate competition.

I would like to leave all of you with 5 points that I hope will help some of you as you make the transition from presenting a case in university to presenting a proposal at work:

1. Give the essence upfront. Many of my younger colleagues (and even some more experienced ones) often present with the essence at the end. In today's competition finals, only one team had an executive summary. Senior leaders of any organization are very busy; I myself often have up to 12 meetings a day. And I receive many propositions from staff and partners. My advice is to give the conclusions upfront, with a short summary of why you came to that conclusion in the first place, followed by your detailed analysis. This will keep the meeting weary executive focused on what you have to say. Many presenters feel that they must indulge the audience with the minute details of their analysis. Remember that we pay you for your conclusions not your analysis. If we like your conclusions and the reasons why you concluded what you did, then we will want to see that your analysis is spot-on and not the other way around.

2. You must have at least 2 viable options. My rule would be not to make any major decision with less than two options, as having one option alone does not make for thoughtful and well-considered decision making. It is a clear sign of biased decision making. In this case competition, a broad-based strategy vs a niche-strategy would have been two good and potentially viable options to choose from. None of the case finalists did so. You wont have the time constraints that you were placed under, at work, so thinking through at least two options, and defending why you picked the one you did will make your arguments much more robust.

3. Customers & Competition. Strategy is about insights. Insights can only come about through thorough understanding of your customers and the competition; who are they, what do they want and value, what is our company's current positioning, what should it's future positioning be, how do we differentiate and sustain this differentiation. The answers to these questions when contrasted with the company's current capabilities lay the foundation for a good strategy. Few of the teams spend enough time and rigor on this in today's finals, and perhaps then unsurprisingly, I find many then go on to do the same at work.

4. Structure is as important as substance. In any complex case or real situation at work, structure and categorization are crucial for you to break the problem down to solvable pieces and to allow you to present a complex situation to your audience with great clarity. In starting to create your presentation, I would place great emphasis on how you plan to structure and present, before creating the first slide. Given today's store of knowledge that is easily available at everyone's fingertips, we suffer from too much information. Structure helps you cut through that clutter and focus the audience on how you arrived at the conclusion. It also helps you ensure you spend equal time on all the important aspects. Given that this is an FMCG case, the traditional (and perhaps outdated) structure of the 4 P's (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) would have encouraged more of you to spend equal time in Product and Pricing, as you did in Place and Promotion.

5. Clarity through brevity. How do you quickly make an audience unfamiliar with the topic at hand rapidly understand what you are talking about? For me brevity works wonders, and with brevity often comes clarity. As an example from the case today, two possible market positions would have been "From hygiene to smelling good" and "Value in the middle". The first describes a possible option to position BBW's bath and shower products as helping Singaporeans move from their focus on hygiene to smelling good. The latter reveals that there may be value in staking an undefended middle ground in fragrances in both the Thai and Singapore markets, which value lower-end mass and premium respectively. Too many people use too many words to describe what could be said in much fewer.

Finally, after all this, does what you suggest make enough money? Whether it be right now or much later. The Valiram Group is privately held, so it's results will not be publicly available, but even then they will have to file their earnings, and understanding how much they make now, would help you get a feel for how much you need to generate in order for your proposal to be interesting, and in the end selected.

One final parting point, "Sell it with Conviction", as most of you did. Sometimes it is impossible for the senior leadership to know if your plan will work or not. Many well thought out plans go awry for many good reasons like competitive reaction, etc. The leadership team often places their bets on who is energetic and convincing enough to make it happen (and of course on your prior track record).

I hope you will find these few points powerful and compelling when you next find yourself pitching to your new boss or many years later to the board of directors.

Best Regards, Dennis

Sent from my iPad