BE DiFFERENT or be dead Blog by Roy Osing

@passion4retail Gerry Spitzner “@royOsing a pleasure to follow your blog. Getting better all the time.”

September 9, 2010

MUG Solutions: A Great Case Study for Start-Ups

MUG Solutions of Vancouver, BC has developed an innovative solution to an increasing used drug needle problem in urban centers: a product that prevents biohazard such as used syringes from being stuffed into manholes. The value of this solution: work safety improves (the manhole environment is no longer contaminated with used needles) and manhole maintenance costs goes down (no need to clean in manholes ever again).

Tina Thompson, CEO, describes how she took her ‘Brave Business Idea’ and turned it into reality.

“Having a unique product or concept really does make some things easier, but doesn’t mean you can simply turn on the lights of your business and think everyone will just come to the party. You have to BE DiFFERENTin the market, be responsible to stakeholders, get credibility, and then tell EVERYONE.

Here are some specific Practices I adopted to launch my Company:
> The Guiding Principle Roy Osing gave us was: ‘To make a brilliant business out of a bright idea you have to BE DiFFERENT!’ This was critical in keeping us focused on what we had to do to be successful.
> We took this Principle and created the only statement to express our uniqueness:

We provide the only permanent solution that prevents biohazard contaminants (such as used syringes) and all other debris from entering manholes.

> We required a deep understanding of our customers’ secrets. Worker health and safety is critical to our clients such as Hydro and Communications Companies, but ultimately what expedites their decision making process are economics.The ability to provide a product that keeps EVERYTHING from going into the manholes was translated into the HUGE savings these companies would realize by never having to clean the manholes.
> Being DiFFERENT provides tremendous opportunity for recognition and press. We have an interesting story, with a unique product that solves a very real problem for everyday workers that most people aren’t aware of. We pitched as many media sources as we could and secured significant opportunities to tell our story.
> Essential to getting media attention: the ability to communicate your relevance (the important problem you are solving), your uniqueness (how you are DiFFERENT), and your elevator pitch (your only statement).
> We had to establish our credibility in the community, and there is nothing more effective than having a large well respected company providing a testimonial for your company/product/service. In our case we had the great fortune of working with TELUS and receiving a testimonial from them.
> We received two of the prestigious Stevie Awards for Women in Business 2008: Best New Company of the Year and Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year. We were also a finalist for two other Stevie Awards: Best New Product of the Year and Most Innovative Company of the Year. In addition, the Canadian Society of Safety Engineers awarded us with Outstanding Achievement by a Safety Professional.
> Ultimately, no matter how cool the product is, what matters is the human connection. There is a social issue that exists that results in the need for MUG Solutions and we are always sensitive to that. We meet with all stakeholders from occupational health and safety advocates, to company executives, to those who work at fixing the addiction issues in urban areas. Therefore, as a company we have a responsibility to hire human being lovers and we take that responsibility seriously. Our hiring principles, and our corporate strategy as a whole, focus on people who have a sense of social responsibility.”

Nicely done MUG Solutions and Good Luck!

Cheers, Roy

Remember to follow me on Twitter

Posted 9.9.10 at 07:59 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 6, 2010

Five (More) HUGE. HUGE. Things Not Taught in Business Schools

Five more subjects that should get focus in business schools but rarely get the attention they deserve:
1. Customer Learning
2. Customer ‘Secrets’
3. Value-Based Holistic Offers (VBHO)
4. Serving Customers Model
5. Vary the Treatment Principle

Teaching Points:
> Customer Learning (CL) is NOT Market Research. CL is a continuous process of learning as much as you can about the customers you have chosen to SERVE. It is a core competency that never gets outsourced. It gets done by all employees and is the force behind Customerizing your organization.
> A Customer Secret is an innermost deep desire that your customer has, or it can be a trait or characteristic of the person that no one else knows. People find difficulty in sharing their secrets and do so only with people and organizations they have developed a deep relationship with and trust. Secrets power the BE DiFFERENT Offer Creation process. They fuel the ability to personalize VALUE for the individual and enable organizations to get away from looking at the ‘average’ customer.
> A VBHO is a package of VALUE not a product or service. VBHO’s reflect the broad Holistic needs, wants and desires of a person as opposed to a narrow range of features-based needs. VBHO are more expressive of EXPERIENCES and not material goods. They are premium priced not discounted as the Bundling world persists in doing.
> The Serving Customers Model puts the customer in the control position of determining what they want their service experience to look like. It is a fundamental shift from ‘Customer Service’ in which organizations decide the level and ingredients of how customers are served. Customer Service has the company in control. Costs of supplying service are high priority determinants of what the service experience looks like.
> The Vary the Treatment Principle is played out by recognizing that no two people are equal and that if you want to create Dazzling Moments for an individual you need to vary how you treat them. Consistent treatment of everyone will result in variable levels of customer satisfaction. Variable levels of treatment will result in consistently high levels of customer satisfaction. The prime criteria, therefore, in designing a Serve-the-Customer Strategy needs to be the capability to create a Vary the Treatment relationship with each customer you choose to SERVE.

Cheers, Roy

Remember to follow me on Twitter
Take the BE DiFFERENT Quiz

Posted 9.6.10 at 08:00 pm by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 2, 2010

Five HUGE Things Not Taught in Business Schools

“O(B) = f(XX). The blueness of one’s ocean (think competitive advantage as defined in the popular book ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’) is directly proportional to one’s eXcellence in eXecution/XX. If one finds a strategic blue ocean one will ..... be copied,immediately; the ONLY defense, possibility of sustaining success is XX/eXcellence in eXecution.”—- Tom Peter’s from his latest book ‘The Little BIG Things’:

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”—- Peter Drucker

If these gurus speak forcefully and often about the need to execute, it is clearly a competency we need to equip our business school grads with.

Hence the top five academic - real world Relevance Gaps:
1. EXECUTION
2. EXECUTION
3. EXECUTION
4. EXECUTION
5. EXECUTION

OK perhaps a bit of overkill on my part but the point has to be made: this is a CHASM OF GIGANTIC PROPORTIONS!

Execution Teaching Topics:
> Be Anal about Execution! Anality is Strategic. Covet this competency.
> The Strategic Game Plan document must be 1/8” thick on the plan essence and 2” thick on execution.
> Theory is great, but without pristine (even inelegant) execution it produces ZERO results hence is worthless. How about evaluating the performance of a business school on the extent to which their ‘stuff’ has been successfully put into practice?
> Planning on the Run mobilizes a ‘Plan B’ mentality. No ‘Plan A’ has EVER worked the way its authors had intended. Plan >> Execute >> Learn >> Adjust >> Execute ...
> Recruit doers whose passion is to actually get things done. Anti-Pontificators Wanted! Left-brained Specialists not so much.
> Cut the CRAP. Blow up the thing that are no longer relevant to your strategy and/or prevent you from making progress. The ‘Grunge’ (thanks Tom Peters) must go in an organization, otherwise you get stuck in the present and can’t move forward.
> CEO’s - Chief Execution Officers are critically in need. Real strategic stuff. Execution Leaders will determine the success of any plan.
> CEO needs to be the Strategy Hawk who lives and dies by the success of strategy implementation.
> Cross-functional teaming. Results are delivered across the organization not through silos. If people are not working effectively together, dysfunction is created and results aren’t.
> Teach ‘the politics of execution’ in an organizational world full of biased people, power seekers and personal motives.