Kairon Gnothi

去年就写好的，却一直标记为“隐藏”的文章。现在终于可以放出来了。其实很悲凉。

（音乐在feed里出不来的话，请点击到网页吧）

「君のその自由が眩しすぎる」
“Your freedom is so bright”
と言う少女に
When a young girl said
「存在する意味すら見つけられなくでも?」
“Even though I can’t find the meaning of my life?”
と答えた
I replied

人がもしない物ばかりを
If people are creatures
ねだる生き物だとしたら
Who beg for things they don’t have
僕たちが本当にほしい物は
Then what on earth
いったいなんだろう
Do we really want?

それからも少女はひたすらに
After all that struggling
もがいたあげく
She realised how futile it was
こみ上げる虚しさに気づいたとき
And till then, the girl
新たな発見を
Made a new discovery

僕たちはいつも
It’s by always dreaming
夢を見る事で明日への扉開く
That we open the door to tomorrow
この世界に確かなものなど
Even knowing
ないことを知ってても
That nothing in this world is certain

きっとある
Surely
まだ見ぬ場所には
There are flowers waiting for us
僕たちの待つ花が
In a place we haven’t seen yet
飽きることに
Before
なれて
We get used to
加速してしまう
Being fed up
その前に
We’d speed up

あそこがもし この世の果てでも
Ah, even if that place is the end of the world
他人が無駄だと笑っても
Even if people laugh and say all is in vain
共に行こう あきらめるよりも
Let’s go there together
怖いことなど ないのだから
Because nothing scares me more than giving up
===========================================

In memory of 2006.

The summer of 2006, like most summers I had experienced before, was a mess.

In June, after months of preparation, the launch of MW finally started and went as smoothly as I had expected. After nearly a month of traveling around and giving trainings to distributors and sales, I successfully turned those who never before touched salad dressing business into experts of this category who could coach the buyers of stores. Pity that I don’t do insurance or pyramid selling. Pity that the launch went so smoothly that I had to deal with troublesome goods return when MW failed due to a thoroughly foreseeable and avoidable quality issue in August.

In July, after months of preparation, the distributor stock return of Sgs finally started and went as bumpily as I had expected. Countless meetings with Finance and Tax to discuss invoices wearing red or blue, ah, and with IS to persuade systems to recognize each other’s strange names. It was also great fun to design the report format and explain to sales to ensure getting accurate feedback. For company K, Sgs, after its entering China over 10 years ago, meant write-off at cost of millions in the end, in my hand, and nothing else.

In July, my former boss was transferred to North Region Director position and North Region Director became my new boss. It was OK. It was really OK that my poor new boss was pushed onto the line of 2007 OB planning about 1 month after his accession. And I, the one who had been maintaining the MS Excel format OB system and improving it with dazzling MS Excel tricks, the one who had just been out of trainee stage for mere half a year but had done a beautiful and skillful presentation in English at the trainee graduation ceremony, was chosen to cooperate with FP&A to assist Boss to plan 2007 OB and prepare the presentation deck in MS PowerPoint format. God save Bill Gates.

In August, I made an discovery which astonished no other than myself that the 2007 OB, and probably all the OB before and after that, had been/was/ would be built upon 100% assumption. One of the few facts that was referred to was the National Store Information which I planned and carried out at Q1 of 2006. In the Q3 feedback, listing fee cost showed 25% increase than Q1 while store numbers remained stable. Yet the feedback was not only weaved into the OB, but also warmly welcomed because it perfectly explained to management team the dramatic increase of 2007 OB upon the 2006 version. This is reality, we said in the deck, and is up to management to decide whether to accept it. For me, this was yet another part of the 100% assumption: we ASSUMED the feedback to be reality.

I love summer. I have always been loving summer, as much as I love mess. People say failure is the mother of success. I say clarity is the child of mess and chaos.

Ever since I entered TM, I sensed the miraculous phenomenon permeated here with complaint and helplessness: “We should take over the C part From Marketing!” or “We don’t have system! We do everything by manual labor!” or “Always money! Isn’t money Finance’s job??”

I heard such remarks once and once again. Whenever we were doing things doomed in vain yet we had to, whenever we were having dinners after OT into near midnight, I heard my colleagues murmured complaint in such ways and felt sorry for the resentful look on their tired faces.

In the good old days of 2005 and early 2006, when everything was under control and in order, I happily took the complaint as truth and wanted to help with the way out of the mist. I did not see chaos, nor did I sense clarity. I worked diligently on system improvement and budget control, and sincerely believed that by doing so we could go out of the mist into a future Where my colleagues need not complain.

Until the summer of 2006.

Today, no one recalls the summer of 2006, except me keying in these words. No one explained to me what caused the mess in the summer of 2006, but I have kept tracking and asking until I feel the air around clears up.

The mess I experienced was mainly caused by two reasons:

(1) K started to watch revenue From 2006. All the calculation basis before 2006 was built upon volume. Revenue and volume differ dramatically. Simply put, when watching volume, sales would like to sell lower-priced faster-going SKUs. Bonus packs, which meant 25% extra vol., were mostly welcome promotions by sales, even if not really welcomed by customers and consumers. Under the revenue rule, however, low value brands started to suffer and sales tried all out to sell more higher-priced goods. Bonus pack was meaningless. It took up future purchase space of consumers without bring any extra benefit to the present.

Under the revenue rule, management started to care PTD percentage in the whole business, and the result was so shocking that we later invited Bain to search over the trade to conclude that our PTD percentage was not higher than the average level of the FMCG industry. The extremely high spending controlled by TM became a focus centre and mostly sensitive issue, which resulted in a hard 2007 OB planning.

In conclusion, the revenue rule exposed the company’s weakness. And many unreasonable presences could hide no long. We had to face them and fought over in 2006 and From then on.

(2) Unprofessionalness and feebleness of Mktg were further unclosed in the changing situation. Mktg in K is not an innovative one. One of the supporting fact is that K never launched any locally- born new brands in China. During the past 10 years or so the only thing K has been doing is extension. Brand extension, line extension, penetration, expansion, plus introducing successful foreign SKUs recommended by K Global (which surely excludes MW). Predictable results of foisting all kinds of sub-brands/SKUs into a brand include blurred brand image, wagging position, rough segmentation and finally, decreased brand value and loss of consumer loyalty.

Outside, Mktg does not have the strength to defend its brands; inside, Mktg does not have the power to defend itself. It has been doubted that according to 2007 OB TM is holding as much money as, if not more than, Mktg. Since Mktg’s money is divided into A and C two parts, while C money planning always goes with TM’s P money, in reality the real sum left in MKtg’s control is a rather poor mouthful. And even this little sum of money can not function fully: under the revenue rule without proper guidance, sales people of K can use their huge sum of P money to achieve maxim total revenue, while composition and share of each brands in this “max revenue” frequently do not agree with their strategic status designed by Mktg (…If they ever designed any. I really doubt that). For example, Mktg may invest into a new product which is strategically designed as future “star”, but sales will ingnore this product if it is not expense enough to bring along revenue shortly after its launch. With a TM controlling huge PTD, sales in K are rich. Mktg may put on TV-ads to support the new product, but sales can return PTD resources allocated for this product (together with sales target, namely, they need not sell it) in exchange for sth more expensive (that is the reason why expensive brands are always the first to run out of P money in promotion seasons).

As a result, the company relies heavily on limited several brands (SKUs, actually). Ignored brands are shrinking, new products are not cared about, and future vision is lost. Business may grow under such circumstances, but I won’t call it development.

Mktg probably have their own difficulties. I seldom talk about them. I am sales. and next I will explain why I want to leave TM, especially when it is so important and powerful department.

Because I am not an ordinary employee. An ordinary employee focuses on what his/her position or department requires. But I focuses on the company status and seek after what the market requires. My mentality is

Were the company mine.

Yap. Were the company mine. Were I the owner who is eager to defend my own business and interest, what would I do? What should I do?

I will decide that current TM is unbearable.

Firstly, current TM is not a TM. It is a finance/ commercial sub-function rather than a sales function. The supporting fact is when AP define this department they said the priority of it was Budget Control. Money control. Not business control. In reality, TM function includes

1. channel strategy planning (and calculating money)

(Which we do not do. We never had an strategy longer than one year. So we honestly call them “projects”. More over, we don’t have channel sense either. More and more over, clearly channel definition and strategy won’t help with anything even though we have them, because we don’t have human resources to cover anything other than modern trade and a few WS markets in top 30 cities. Oh, that is not TM problem, so let’s stop here and forget about it).

2. channel promotion planning (and calculating money)

(Which we do in OB. We try our best to make it more or less go along with last year’s version. The lesson is, if you make any subtle changes in your planning, e.g. you put 5% discount in 2007-Mar promotion but last year it was 6.25% in March, Boss will immediately ask you why you do that… Err, I think 6.25% is a troublesome number and 5% looks more tidy…Oh?? Do you have any business sense in that? No? Change it back!…So, the safe and smart way is to keep everything what they were. Strangely, no one will challenge you why you do not change anything…Aren’t the markets changing?)

3. Promotion preparation routine… SAP, PPP, Money process vs..Revenue/Volume process….(and calculating money)

(Which we get FP&A From Finance to help us with. At the beginning of each quarter, FP&A will kindly tell us how much each brand owns, and how much each region gets From each brand, and all we need to do is to translate each region’s money on each brand into numbers of displays and promotional volumes. For example, FP&A told me last month that in Q2 my brand Mb could have x RMB Yuan in North, y in East and z in South. Poor West does not get any money From me, though it is the second largest market for Mb. But FP&A have decided that, so I simply turned x into 100 displays and 500 tons of discounted Mb. The same with y and z. )

4. Others: New product listing, stock clearance, distributor incentive, distribution projects… (and calculating money)

It is not that calculating money is wrong. We do trade incentive and surely we spend money. The wrong point is that this TM knows nothing but money… Oh no, again I made this mistake. The wrong point is that this TM should know things other than money. Don’t forget our priority is budget control. It will seem rather strange if a budget audit function can produce channel strategy or channel promotion plans or anything like that.

Secondly, though TM is positioned as a budget control function, it is not qualified and failed in both efficiency and effectiveness due to

1. Information asymmetry & Split of rights and responsibilities between TM HQ and Frontier sales

We do not know the facts because we are sitting in the heaven, so far away From the earth. Currently our budget is built upon assumptions. The reality basis of assumptions is my evil National Store Information. I wrote to the Director the other day explaining why I suspect the price feedback From frontier has been amplified on purpose by our own sales force. The reason is simple: frontier sales knows the actual prices, and though they spend the money they do not have the responsibility of saving it. On the other hand, we several people at TM HQ are responsible for saving money, or spending the money efficiently, but we do not know the prices. It is possible that sales force can reduce the price by negotiation with buyers. But it is only possibility and sales carries risks when they can not achieve success in negotiations. And whatever money they spend, it is NOT their own money. In the end, sales force will sooner or later learn to reduce their risks by feedback a higher than actual price, and they know clearly that TM HQ will take the responsibility instead of themselves.

At the HQ level, we have only two choices: accept or not, to be or not to be. My advice to Director is that we reject the feedback and go back to 100% assumption – set up a hard standard even it is not true. Listing cost feedback in 2006 Q4 showed a 45% increase than the Q1 version, and the trend is not under control because of syndicated results From countless individual amplification behavior. But for the company, if we take whatever frontier sales tell us, K will not be able to afford any listing in 3 years.

2. “Central planned economy” model

I need not explain much here. I just feel strange. In a time even the Chinese government is busy setting up market economy, a foreign company like K should apply central planned economy within its organization. TM HQ wholly owns all its PTD, even region level does not have any resources, not to mention cities.

It is the root of all evil. It makes TM overwhelmingly powerful to break up reasonable balance between Mktg and Sales; It occupies all the attention of TM and in K no sense of channels is developed during the past years; It results that TM has to copy channel plans year on year because we knows/ notices nothing else; It makes regions and cities accept any promotion however stupid it is so long as it provides money which local does not have any; It causes high cost, low efficiency, null effectiveness; It is even the reason why K’s business nowadays heavily relies on NKA and top 30 cities — because we luckily have an NKA team, who are experts in hyper/super channel and half-experts in chain store/CVS — but no one is asked to know any other than this little part of modern trade; It is also responsible for the shrinking brands, which do not have any opportunity to shift to other channels and 2nd tier cities…

It will be going extreme by saying the company is so much lagged behind time that any little change can bring along a big progress: Reducing TM’ money and increasing A investment; Lowering budget control level to cities, making cities own and take care of their own money; Promotional budget automatically taking certain percentage of a city’s sales revenue achieved last month or quarter or whatever; Setting sales target by brands or at least strategic new brands should get protection in target setting; Linking frontier sales’ bonus with city performance…

And most important of all, changing TM’s name into Sales Administration; Limiting the function responsibility to budget/performance audit; Setting up a new function named Channel Mktg and inviting experts From Pepsi or Nestle to build up the team; CM job divided by channel (vertical) and putting category management under CM as horizontal division to set up a matrix to effectively cover channel needs.

Still, I know this is not going to happen. Not in the near future. Unusually powerful TM supports unusually powerful sales. For any reform, the cost of turbulence is high and the risk of loss and failure is large. And attack and obstruction From existed interest groups will be fierce.

Were the company mine. Thus I say so. When the company does not belong to anyone and everyone is only an employee, no one will take any risk to save the business. To save trouble, few will even think about it. Honesty, I don’t care much about K. K is only just starting to build up a company brand in China to enhance its awareness. I guess they finally realized building up product brands’ awareness one by one is really costly these days. Still K does not value its own brand. It is not like C. I do feel pity for many product brands owned by K. In Nab’s time they were legends, but today they are dying gradually in silence. If K continues in this way, those low-value brands will surely die and new brands have only narrow chances to survive, depends on whether they are born with a silver spoon in the mouth.

In the CNY period, I happily found Sgs displays in Wal-mart. It is fortunate for Sgs to be sold to W, whose achieved sales vol. within 4 months after the handover equaled K’s whole year’s sales target on this product. Good luck to you Sgs. Please continue your story in China.

The most recent news about MW is that we’ll probably give it up in China. Not forever, but for how long is not yet known. If so, what is the meaning of its launch last year? Just to appear in front of buyers and leave them a bad impression? Just gave consumers a chance of glance so that they can forget about it? When I was trying to do my work well, I took part in the crime to hurt the brand. So strange to say if I had postponed or cancelled the launch for some excuse last year, all would have been a lot better.

MW is a legend in US. To explain MW failed in China due to a stupid quality issue is like to say Sherlock Holmes died From over-eating.

======================================

I did not explain directly, but if you read carefully the words above, you can understand why I have made up my mind to leave. I tend to think a lot when I feel things not right. I want to know what the problem is and I want the solution. During the OB planned I got the chance to see the whole picture and dive deeply into it, and From then on out of a mist of mess and chaos my vision has been clearing up. In the latter part of 2006I started to track market by reading hundreds of pieces of news per day about 20+ FMCG companies, and collecting information of Sales/ TM/ CM structure and function process as much as possible whenever I met people From other companies. The problems I perceived and solutions I conceived are not castle in the air. They must have occurred elseWhere and people have had memories and experiences about them.

Thus I want to see more with my own eyes. I am not experienced enough to judge whether similar models can be applied on K, or how. So much to learn in future.