Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Why Should You Want To Keep The Same Vehicle

Business.

Ask the world to compete to find breakthrough methods - competitive advantage is based not on doing what others already do well, but on doing what others cannot do as well. - - john kay. Most would agree that focused improvement is critical to staying competitive or gaining new advantages.


What organization can afford to stand still? - if you are trying to accomplish something well beyond the future best practice, you' ll need to be cautious in your spending, as well. But find ways to innovate at below normal costs, and exciting panoramas of opportunity open up. Going to the next level of performance can be extraordinarily expensive. For a vehicle owner, one such option is to buy a lifetime warranty on parts and labor. That' s a good deal for those who keep their vehicles on the road for a long time.


In that way, should any of the parts fail you have no additional expense. - parts soar in price the older your vehicle is. Why should you want to keep the same vehicle? You' re also covered if the vehicle maker has designed a part that keeps failing. The biggest expense you have is driving a new vehicle off the dealer' s lot and turning it into a used machine. Keep that vehicle on the road for many years, and that cost, however becomes a modest annual depreciation expense.


The decline in value can be over ten thousand dollars. - at the same time, you also avoid incurring the additional depreciation expenses of taking another new vehicle and turning it into a used one. If you buy your vehicle from the dealer where it received regular service, you can also be reasonably sure that there have been no accidents and few problems. Savvy buyers also know that you can buy used vehicles in the first place and avoid most of that depreciation. That dealer will also inspect the used vehicle and sell you a warranty on it for parts and labor. Should many parts fail at the same time, especially if they include key parts of the engine and transmission, the cost can be in the thousands of dollars. A key advantage of buying a warranty is that you never face an unaffordable vehicle repair bill.


Yet you can drive off most used vehicle sales lots by paying only a few hundred dollars down. - without a warranty, many people will scramble to pay the repair bills to keep their vehicles running. To conserve cash flow, many vehicle owners will opt for the lower near - term cash flow option of not buying a warranty. . . even if it is much more expensive in the long run. That outlay will mean some major belt tightening in other aspects of what they do. Bag lunches will be replacing salads from the local deli. Vacation may be day trips to the beach rather than a winter jaunt to Florida. How do these lessons apply to your organization?


Running up against such a limit in capabilities, many organizations choose to scale down their improvement standards. - chances are that your organization has exploited most ways of creating new advantages that you already know how to do. When that happens, it' s as though the organization has developed a permanent disability that will hinder future progress. See the opportunity differently! That artificial limitation will remain until higher improvement standards return. Consider how few of the world' s best thinkers and doers have worked on creating your breakthrough competitive advantages. When you involve more of the world' s best people, it' s as though you had a lifetime warranty for making organizational improvements.


From that perspective, the surface opportunities have barely been explored while the deeper potential advantages remain hidden.

No comments: