Within today’s competitive market, the ones that outlast and survive are those that can do more things and programs with lesser resources. This is why increasingly, we are seeing companies’ budget requiring a reduction in overheads and capital expenditures, whilst profits and revenues are expected to increase.

Companies have little choice as the marketplace, the shareholders and the investors dictate this. As with eating, in company less corporate fats really does mean more.

Carl von Clausewitz, a nineteenth-century Austrian officer who fought in the Napoleonic wars and is regarded as the ‘father’ of western military strategic thought, wrote in his classic book On War: “War is not the action of a living force upon lifeless mass, but always the collision of living forces.”

And Field Marshal Montgomery said during the Normandy campaign in the Second World War: “Battle is not a one-sided affair. It is a case of action and reciprocal action repeated over and over again as contestants seek to gain position and other advantage by which they may inflict the greatest possible damage upon their respective opponents.”

In other words, the enemy fights back! This is the reason that military strategists focus on the enemy. You can only be competitive when you get better whether in product/service quality, delivery, reliability, etc vis-à-vis your competition.

You must also be more efficient and effective in deploying your resources.

What the world is facing now is the global situation of excess capacity and oversupply. These excess capacities could last for at least another 20 years until the third world countries develop sufficient middle class demand to absorb the goods and services.

We are also facing increasing turbulence and problem as long as the manufacturing sector produces three times more than before. The competition for a shrinking market will continue to intensify and exacerbate daily.

The Chinese can produce computer hard wares and high end electronic products as well as the developed world. Singapore has lost the electronic segment to Penang, Malaysia, which in turn is seeing this segment gradually hollowing out to China.

This is why American CISCO is tailing the Chinese telecommunication, Huawei, which is becoming a major threat to it. The Chinese telecommunication company Huawei Technologies is teaming up with Siemens Information’s mobile division to jumpstart the TD-SCDMA (Time Division – Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) market in China.

Thus in today’s highly competitive marketplace, an underdeveloped country such as China is able to compete head-on with the developed countries in the high-tech industry.

This is unseen some forty years ago. In the global economy, the modern telecommunication and transportation have made possible for the skilled people in the third world countries to compete against the developed ones. Therefore, one needs to compete more with less.

www.corporateturnaroundexpert.com

Dr Mike Teng (DBA, MBA, BEng, FIMechE, FIEE, CEng, PEng, FCMI, FCIM, SMCS) is the author of the best-selling business book “Corporate Turnaround: Nursing a sick company back to health”, in 2002. In 2006, he authored another book entitled, “Corporate Wellness: 101 Principles in Turnaround and Transformation.”

Dr Teng is widely recognized as a turnaround CEO in Asia by the news media. He has 27 years of experience in corporate responsibilities in the Asia Pacific region. Of these, he held Chief Executive Officer’s positions for 17 years in multi-national, local and publicly listed companies. He led in the successful turnaround of several troubled companies.

He is currently the Managing Director of a business advisory firm, Corporate Turnaround Centre Pte Ltd, which assists companies on a fast track to financial performance. Dr Teng was the President of the Marketing Institute of Singapore (2000 – 2004), the national body representing some 5000 individual and corporate marketing professionals in Singapore