Staying ahead of the game

Former US presidential adviser and corporate consultant Dr Behnam N Tabrizi says companies need to adapt quickly to rapidly changing economic conditions

Dr Behnam N Tabrizi, a former advisor to US President Barack Obama, last week took time off to coach Thai CEOs on change and rapid transformation. The seminar took place at Assumption University's Bang Na campus.

A consulting professor at Stanford University in the US, Dr Tabrizi is internationally renowned for his fourth book, "Rapid Transformation: A 90-day Plan for Fast and Effective Change."

To mark Assumption University's 40th anniversary, Dr Tabrizi spent two days with top executives of Saha Group, True and other leading Thai corporations, during which he highlighted techniques for delivering fast and effective change.

Dr Tabrizi's expertise lies in corporate transformation, sales excellence, benchmarking and product life cycle. Previously, he has served as a consultant to Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Cisco, Lee & Fung and Haier.

In his opinion, piecemeal changes such as supply chain management, marketing revamps, or re-engineering are no longer enough for today's corporations, which need a more holistic approach to change.

Dr Tabrizi says his latest book is like a cookbook detailing recipes and steps necessary for making successful change and transformation.

First of all, a cross-functional team, not just the CEOs, which covers marketing, operations, manufacturing and finance, needs to identify the key issues facing the organisation.

Then, the team must come up with solutions to these issues and be able to implement them successfully.

In other words, you need to know the right strategy for your organisation, and execute that strategy in the right way.

For the US private sector, Dr Tabrizi says the current biggest challenge is how to cope with the relatively low demand across the board in the wake of the recession.

The solutions include boosting corporate performance, going more international, becoming more innovative and doing more with less.

It's also a very good time to upgrade talent, he says, adding that China is, however, facing challenges somewhat different from those of the US.

The Chinese economy is still growing at a high rate, so one of its immediate challenges is to manage the shortage of qualified human resources.

One area is to tap the pool of overseas Chinese and Asian nationals who can speak Mandarin but have not been to China lately.

To attract these talents, it's necessary to create an environment that does not alienate these people, so that they can assimilate into China's corporate world.

In the case of Thailand, Dr Tabrizi says the challenges are similar to those of China, due to a relatively high economic growth rate here.

However, Thai executives in general have fewer language barriers in accessing Western management techniques when compared to their Chinese counterparts, who mostly need translators when attending training programmes in English.

On President Obama, Dr Tabrizi says his book, "Rapid Transformation: A 90-day Plan for Fast and Effective Change," attracted the attention of then-senator Obama back in 2007 as he campaigned for the US presidency.

"He saw the book and used it during the campaign. I was also on his transition team for 76 days from November 4, 2007 to January 2008.

"[At the time], he faced huge challenges, two wars, an economic catastrophe, healthcare. I advised him on healthcare and IT issues," he says.

On the recent midterm elections, in which the opposition Republican party won and got control of the House of Representatives, Dr Tabrizi says the Republicans did well in terms of highlighing economic hardship, while President Obama did not do enough to sell the merits of his big spending on the healthcare plan.

In short, people voted with their pocket, and the jobless rate of 10 per cent meant they were suffering, so whether Obama will be re-elected in the next two years depends on the country's economic performance.

Last but not least, President Obama has also set high public expectations for change, but such a gigantic task is not easy to execute in the public sphere.