Department of inconvenient questions ...How often do you?

(Image source: Pexels)


Business today is all about multiple and frequent if not real time measurements of success and the efficient use of human and financial capital.

The business of reporting or indeed staying abreast of key metrics has become a business within a business and a badge of honour in its' own right....knowing your very latest numbers, the numbers talk.. right?


The Department of Inconvenient questions has recently completed the least thorough piece of research review ever into that sensitive area of marketing business called "How often do you spend quality time with your brand and wider business strategy? Do you regularly look at the strategic plan after it is written and hopefully signed off by head office ? How often is it used as a touchpoint to ensure alignment of daily activities? Ironically an enormous amount of time is spent creating strategic plans...which are then often underutilized .

My point is that more time needs to be spent regularly and systematically to stay in touch with and review the big picture strategic direction, as many markets today are subject to more significant and frequent game changing events than at any time in my almost 40 year career...this both in the board rooms, maybe especially in the boardrooms as well as in every brand or business unit.

You could stop here ...... but below is just a selection of typical number based events and frequency one might hypothetically need to navigate as a classical senior marketer:

Daily:sales dashboard, financials, research numbers, social media .

Weekly: sales ,s&op review,listings and customer updates , marketing activity,innovation and new launches project updates. Weekly call with head office

Monthly: sales , brand share and activities reporting, financials vs annual plan, action plans, listings , promotion and new products funnels and post launch tracking , sales forecasting,quality/ industrial reports.

Quarterly:detailed business updates for head office.

Annual: strategic plan followed by detailed budget for n+1 split to sku, month and customer.

Department of inconvenient questions

( Image title/source/ author: Crop triangle; Wikimedia common; author: Eddie Oosthuizen; user:AbdealiJK Travis)


As a food guy with extensive international brand and new product development marketing experience as well as unfortunately a failed restaurateur I enjoy reading Linkedin posts about amongst other things innovation and technology ( thanks LPK, Tom Goodwin and others)and various other food specific threads on hot food related topics such as plant based everything, alternative proteins( anyone for cricket?), lab grown meat and so on ( other soap boxes are available)...

This is all very stimulating intellectually , but then yesterday I read another food innovation/ tech story ( from "Food Navigator Asia "yesterday which I will try and append in the comments) which disturbed me in my own comfortable ,urban bubble.

So today this post from the newly created Department of inconvenient questions...staffed by completely unqualified people ie me , and with no commercial or other interest in this area, other than being a would be occasional world citizen, from the comfort of my armchair of course.
Why are people still starving in 2018 when the technology apparently exists to make important steps towards eradication ? Who,why and what are blocking the adoption/ commercialisation of things like Genetically modified crops , and now so called Golden rice aka vitamin enhanced rice, which is touted by its' proponents as a "life saver" ? I tried and failed to find some simple stats on global hunger to illustrate the scale of the problem , but need obviously to improve my search skills. Meanwhile just check your preferred news feed...


As this is a business blog I will try and stay away from making politically charged comments, but if the technology exists to make a meaningful impact in reducing starvation in places challenged by climate , know how or conflict then why isn't it happening? Do we need more private charitable initiatives by the likes of Bill Gates or, more action from eg the United Nations? Or is it a matter of freedom of choice , as some farmers fear being locked into particular seed suppliers.


This stuff is worthy of more debate and action than much of what gets debated around the conversation ecosystem..


ps: are some agribusinesses still routinely needing financially to throw away food in order to manage market prices or because their produce is deemed somehow not pretty enough ? Another committee maybe , or a working group?