Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1505694
42 PCB007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2023 if anybody says "commodity" to me, I'll say, "Fine. You take that business and treat it as a commodity. It's all yours." Matties: Yet, for so many people, it's a race to the bottom when you're in that mind space. Well said. We will take some projects to vol- ume in China. But when we get those pro- grams toward the end of life, we start to see Chinese competitors come in. at's a choice that customers are going to make. If they really feel that they want to take a cut, they can pur- sue commoditization of a particular program. It's just our choice as to whether we participate or not. Matties: I think that goes to another point of strat- egy: It's just as important to know what to say no to as what to say yes to. Absolutely. e real magic in strategy is what hap- pens during the process; it's the sausage making that really is exciting about strategy as the teams work through their ideas. e next step is making sure that the strategy is communi- cated to the organization in how it ties to our vision and mission, along with the strategic elements that we are going aer, and how it can impact them. But upfront involvement of management is critical, and then communica- tion on the back side. Matties: That's exactly where I was headed— how important is it to communicate with your suppliers and customer base as well? When we do corporate presentations, we include our vision, mission, and strategic ele- ments—the three major strategic elements that we're focused on. We also share our values in every presentation that we make to customers. It's the values that I spend a lot of time on with than three major trends that impact the com- pany. We try to do the same because it helps one to really crystallize the major impacts that you have to look at as a company vs. getting caught up in some of the less critical areas. We always try to define three impacts, but some- times we end up with four. At least that's where we start. How do we address the major trends in our rolling three-year strategic plan? Every year, we come back to ground zero, take a fresh look at trends, and plan three major strategies that we will focus on in the three-year period. We define the tactics and we get a little bit looser there. We try to keep it to three, but we generally end up with five or six tactics, tying directly to the strate- gies. Matties: So, when people are devel- oping strategy, espe- cially in this industry, cir- cuit boards are often referred to as a commodity item. How do you bring unique value into strategy? It's all about differentiation and focusing on areas where you have differentiation. at can be several areas. But if we have a technology that we've been working on, that that gives us an edge, that's one area of differentiation. We believe that our field application engineer- ing capability and support of the customers in development work are critical areas of dif- ferentiation. We also have a footprint strategy that ties directly to our strategy. It's critical that we offer differentiation in those three areas: technology depth (and the advantages we have), what we provide in terms of differentiation, and customer support that's technical in nature. As you pointed out, Barry, When you're developing a strategy you should start with no more than three major trends that impact the company.