Back to Guadalajara
Published Date
We are in Guadalajara, Mexico, running the 3-day global business game for a large group of managers at HP.
Most people in the group already have a strong finance background, so this program falls more into the ‘non-finance for finance managers’ category.
It was a slow start—teams did not start pushing out of the standard Royals industry until the second day.
When they grew their businesses, they chose to grow within the starting framework (i.e., Royals and the home market) instead of exploring new opportunities (new products, new markets).
Because they were conservative, their financial results were worse and more painful than if they had been:
- More adventurous
- Willing to take risks
- More proactive in seeking forecast information and using it
The teams are working well together, but they have similar professional backgrounds.
Maybe they would benefit from a broader cross-section of experience and attitude.
More diversity might create:
- Less agreement in the group
- More ‘stretching’ in their strategic thinking
In our experience:
- A classroom of salespeople can go bankrupt from taking too many risks
- A classroom of finance professionals can go bankrupt from being too conservative (as we saw here)
A healthy company needs managers of both types—or ideally, managers who balance both qualities.
Which was the intent of this program:
To introduce a bit of risk-taking to a conservative mindset.
Today is the third (and final) day—and it’s anybody’s game to win.
(Last night we ate dinner at El Sacromonte, a restaurant that specializes in traditional and modern Mexican foods. The food was incredible, and quesadillas with rose petals and strawberries is now my new favorite food—ensuring I’ll come back to Guadalajara again.)
