October 29, 2009

Line of Sight to Strategy means BE DiFFERENT Execution

A colleague of mine, Ron Cox, Founder and CEO of Tailwind Consulting in Tampa Florida has recently published an article that hits the BE DiFFERENT mark dead on!

His article is entitled Connecting People to Strategy and it deals with the challenge most organizations face - how to get everyone on the same strategic page so that strategy can be executed flawlessly across all functions in the organization and dysfunction is avoided. Ron quotes a statistic that says ‘a staggering 95% of employees in a company are either unaware of or do not understand the strategy’. No wonder execution fails!

You can read the article for yourself but it points out something that somehow never gets dealt with. Corporate leaders go on a retreat and create a ‘helium filled strategy’ to get them t the next level (a description used by management guru Peter Drucker) and stops short of figuring out HOW it will be executed.

This is more than just defining the critical tactics and objectives to be accomplished by various people who are accountable. It is about translating the strategy into what it means to each function involved in delivering it. What specifically should the call center rep do DiFFERENTLY? The product analyst? The sales person? The internal audit manager? If at the most granular level each employee in the firm doesn’t know how to behave and what results to produce within the context of the new direction change will simply not happen and improved results expected by the new strategic game plan won’t be achieved.

Line of Sight to the strategy means what it implies; each employee can ‘see’ the strategy from their position and they understand what they need to do to contribute to the strategy. Line of sight eliminates the problem of people not understanding the strategy since the translation to individuals cannot be done in the absence of such an understanding.

How do leaders establish Line of Sight in their organization? Workshops. Workshops. And more Workshops with each functional unit. The idea is to have the leader present the new strategy to a group of employees in the same work group and have THEM come up with the specific behaviors and deliverables necessary to conform to the strategy. Leaders must approve their conclusions otherwise synergy and consistency will be in jeopardy.

Arduous work? Painfully detailed work? Time consuming work? Yes on all counts, but what about the payoff? How much are you willing to invest to see your strategy executed flawlessly and results improve by orders of magnitude relative to your competitors?

I hope you said ‘Whatever it takes!’

This what leadership is all about. Its not just creating the vision, for without the means to realize it the ‘brave idea’ it remains an illusion. Leaders must get down and dirty to establish Line of Sight for all people in their organization; if they don’t they are wasting their visionary time unless they (and their shareholders/owners) see everlasting value in pontification.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 10.29.09 at 03:39 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 26, 2009

The Formula to BE DiFFERENT

BE DiFFERENT =

BE RELEVANT, UNIQUE and DRIVEN in the Strategic Game Plan for your organization. Dumb it down and answer the three fundamental questions to capture the essence of what you have to do to WIN. Create your ONLY statement around requirements that both matter to your target customers and which you and only you provide. And, focus on execution recognizing that a plan that can’t be implemented is worthless.
+ BE HOLISTIC to create value in your marketing function. Provide value-based Offers for your chosen customer groups based on a Customer Learning competency your organization adopts. Look at the total customer in terms of their broad attributes and requirements and not a thin slice of their product needs. Discover Customer Secrets and use them as the driver of your Offer development efforts.
+ BE DAZZLING in serving your customers. Treat creating memorable experiences as a critical priority. Vary how you treat your customers to enhance their loyalty. Adopt the elements of a dazzling experience plan - hire human being overs + empower frontliners to ‘say yes’ + kill dumb rules that make no sense to your customers + recover from your service blunders: fix the problem and do the unexpected by leveraging the customer secrets you have discovered.
+ BE INTIMATE in your sales strategy building strong relationships with your customers. Avoid promulgating product flogging behaviors that do little to generate loyalty and make you the same as everyone else. Strong deep relationships encourage your customers to buy stuff over the long term; product flogging is short term thinking at best.

There you have it, the essential elements of establishing a BE DiFFERENT strategy and culture in your organization.

Cheers, Roy Osing

Remember to follow me on Twitter
BE DiFFERENT Quiz

Related Blogs
Build a BE DiFFERENT Strategy
Customerize your Marketing
Sales - Build Deep Customer Relationships
Hire Human Being Lovers
Recover from your Service Blunders
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Empower your Frontline to ‘say yes’

Posted 10.26.09 at 05:46 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 22, 2009

Recession, Recovery, Growth, BE DiFFERENT

Lets face it, over the last several months there has been much said and written about the latest economic downswing and the challenges it poses for organizational survival. And yours truly has been an active part of that conversation in my blogs, seminars and media interviews. Throughout my commentary, I have advocated that in tough economic times businesses need to clearly articulate a BE DiFFERENT value proposition to their target customers. If they can’t, they will loose customers to their competitors who can, and they will forgo their rights to attracting new new customers as well. The past several months have coughed up evidence to prove that this death spiral continues until the organisation fails, taking its employees and investors with it.

BE DiFFERENT and the specific Practices driving its platform is fundamental to organizational success in ANY economic environment, however.

This must be said NOW as traditional media and bloggers are talking of economic Recovery and of the specific things business should be doing to ensure their company’s are successful transitioning from the downturn. The national newspapers in Canada have ‘experts’ talking about the importance of ‘focusing on the customer’ and ‘knowing their competition’ while others advocate the very real importance of ‘customer referrals to drive the loyalty and growth process. All good Business 101 stuff, but fall woefully short of addressing the crying need for organizations to understand that it is BEING DiFFERENT that creates long term success not merely doing a better job of the basics. The basics are important but they are the table stakes of the game and are not a sucess predictor in any economic environment. As a sidenote, I get offended by authors of their Business 101 material when it is being positioned as the ‘Recovery Recipe’. Simply not true!

And, if the economic cycle continues, I expect to witness more discussion on how businesses should position themselves for growth - the Boom phase - as they merge from recovery.

Come on!
There is no magic formula for surviving a recession.
There is no silver bullet for developing a successful recovery plan.
And there is no prescription for maximizing the benefits inherent in a growth market.

Business success begins with providing VALUE to the people you choose to do business with and capturing their hearts and minds. It continues with giving them a service experience to remember every time they ‘touch’ you. And it ends with doing it in a way that is DiFFERENT than anyone else in your market. If you can’t be remembered for being special, well, I would say the end is only a heart beat away.

The REAL issue for all organizations is that regardless of the economic cycle they are in, if they can’t find a BE DiFFERENT spot for them in their target market they will fail. It’s just that in a recession, death comes quicker as the ineffectiveness of the organization ‘stand raw naked’ in a market with hyper-competition, price sensitivity and customer churn. They are exposed for what they really are - a mediocre business that is basically the same as everyone else competing on price with no real value to offer - and market punishment comes quickly.

The irony here is that many businesses were modestly successful when times were good and inefficiencies could be masked by healthy top line growth. Costs were higher than they should have been, lack of focusing on the right customer segments was forgiven, ineffective business processes were tolerated and dysfunctional corporate acquisitions were lauded as bold strategic moves all on the back of healthy revenue growth.

The simple fact is that the fundamental BE DiFFERENT Practices that I have been speaking about so much since the release of my new book
need to be adopted by any organization PERIOD (if they want to survive, prevail and thrive over the long run that is). And there are principles that that can guide the short term cost cutting requirements of a downturn. The point is with a BE DiFFERENT strategy and long term context for your organization you can take short term measures without getting caught when the economic cycle changes.

If you look at economic cycles as separate events and plan for them accordingly, you will ALWAYS do the wrong thing in a downturn cycle. You will first eliminate costs of ‘low hanging fruit’ and then go after Operations. Good people are let go - OOPS! We need them later. Front line service expenses are reduced - OOPS! Customers are not impressed. Training budgets are slashed - OOPS! people competency takes a time-out. Marketing programs are terminated - OOPS! new Offer enhancements are put on hold. And on it goes.

Executives are now saying that with all the short term thinking they have had to do, they are unprepared for the ‘economic growth wave’. No kidding. The wrong people have been let go. Changes in customer needs have gone unnoticed. Competitor moves have not been watched. All as a result of not having a solid long term BE DiFFERENT strategy to guide short term decision making through the vagaries of the ‘mother economy’.

BE DiFFERENT and get it right the first time. You will sleep at night. Your investors will too. Your employees will feel led. Your customers will feel cared for. Your competitors will feel threatened which will make you sleep even better.

Cheers, Roy Osing

Remember to follow me on Twitter
BE DiFFERENT Quiz

Related Blogs
BE DiFFERENT Formula
Build a BE DiFFERENT Strategy
Customerize your Marketing
Sales - Build Deep Customer Relationships
Hire Human Being Lovers
Recover from your Service Blunders
Kill Dumb Rules
Empower your Frontline to ‘say yes’

Posted 10.22.09 at 01:42 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 19, 2009

Customer Contact: A Moment of Strategic Opportunity

A BE DiFFERENT Strategic Game Plan for an organization morphs its marketing function into Customerization where Customer Learning is critical Customer Learning from my book is a continuous process of gaining insights into the customer groups you have chosen to serve. It is a process that seeks to mine out as much information as possible from each time you organization touches the chosen customer. The more secrets you discover, the better off you are in terms of creating Holistic Value-based Offers that address the broad range of requirements each customer has.

A customer contact needs to be viewed as a Moment of Strategic Opportunity. Contact employees simply cannot be allowed to ‘do their own thing’ during a Moment of Truth’ with the chosen customer. Everyone will have their own approach which can be deadly in terms of strategic value being produced. Some will get it right while others won’t, leaving mixed results and probably confused customers.

Rather, the contact moment with the customer must be engineered to extract the secrets the organization wants to discover. Algorithms require development to do this and training applied to ensure that all employees from service, call center and sales functions know their role and act consistently to acquire the critical information necessary to execute its Strategic Game Plan.

Furthermore the behaviors expected must be integrated in contact employees performance plans and any bonus pay programs. If compensation isn’t affected the chances are that little progress will be made.

And don’t forget technology. Applications need to be developed in the same vein. They need to gather secrets in the same way people do. Your web site, e-mail marketing programs, Twitter posts all need to treat a customer exposure as a strategic opportunity.

So, define your secret gathering action plan and design the customer contact to deliver to your BE DiFFERENT learning goals:
- what is said to the customer
- the interaction process with the customer
- the behaviors expected of the contact employee
- the secret categories of information desired

Make it simple otherwise people won’t follow it. A check-list is a good place to start along with a process flowchart that paints a picture of what the interaction looks like when it is being done right.

Cheers, Roy Osing

Remember to follow me on Twitter

Related Blogs
Customerize your Marketing
Customer Learning
Create Holistic Value Based Offers
Customer Secrets
Twitter Value
Twitter - Customer Learning Tool
BE DiFFERENT Quiz

Posted 10.19.09 at 05:50 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)