November 15, 2010

BE DiFFERENT YOU! The Voracious Career Learner

Are you a continuous Career Learner? Or, have you assumed that your formal education and job experience - previous and current - have generated all the intellectual property that you need to help your organization reach greater levels of performance and as a result enhance your career? Career learning is an imperative. Many don’t take the time to do it so it represents a critical component of personal differentiation. It involves acquiring completely new levels of knowledge outside of what you now know and what your jobs have taught you. A Career Learner makes a difference to the organization and develops immunity to survive.

Career Learners determine what is important to the organization and they are constantly learning about topics that can help. Consider this Strategic Learning as opposed to more casual learning where you focus on a subject that only interests YOU. Hopefully you can satisfy both objectives: learn something that interests you and also benefits the organization. But your priority should be to focus on an area that will provide benefits to your organization. If sales effectiveness is an issue, for example, go find out what the sales pundits are saying about the subject and what direction they are advocating. Learn about the options; determine which one is appropriate for your organization and modify it to fit your unique circumstances.

Here’s how the Strategic Learning Process works by way of example:
1. List the top three challenges your organization faces - declining market share, reduced margins and plummeting service quality results could be examples.
2. Determine the learning competencies that require adoption - marketing and serving customers
3. List your subject matter expertise categories - finance and marketing
4. Determine your learning gap - serving customers
5. Target the subject matter experts to fill your learning gap - there are numerous sources - authors as well as consulting organizations - that specialize in the topic of service quality. Find one or two that you find potentially productive.
6. Purchase relevant reading material, attend conferences, contact service quality consultants and start learning.
Strategic learning starts with the needs of the organization.

Hand-in-hand with learning is the application of new knowledge to enhance organizational performance. If knowledge is not applied to drive better results it really has little value. So, as you are engaged in the learning process, always be thinking about how you could possibly apply it or some version of it to make it useful to your organization. If knowledge isn’t applied to drive results it has no value - it’s about execution.

In the early part of my career I was transferred from Vancouver to Ottawa, Ontario to take a junior Pricing Analyst position for the Trans Canada Telephone System. The Telecom industry at that time was beginning a transformation from a virtual monopoly to an intensely competitive business. It occurred to me that with more competition coming in the industry, being a Pricing expert was simply not good enough; the competitive battle was going to be won or lost over the customer and the winner would be the company that did the best job of understanding and responding to customer needs. Price was an important component of the challenge, but the BIG picture was marketing.

My formal education was Mathematics and Computer Science and my previous job experience had contributed systems & productivity analysis as well as Pricing. There was much to learn if I wanted to gain any proficiency in marketing and make myself of value as the company moved forward to do battle in the competitive arena. I was infatuated with marketing and read everything that I could get my hands on concerning the topic. Within a year and a half I felt that I had at least a degree of intellectual competency that would make me a viable consideration for future opportunities when they came available. Obviously I needed to get into a position where I could practice marketing and show my stuff, but the first task was to be able to discuss and demonstrate that I understood marketing principles and concepts enough to earn the right to practice them.

The result of my career learning’s in marketing were gratifying, leading me to my first Officer position as VP Network Marketing, then on to Senior VP Marketing and later in my career to EVP & Chief Marketing Officer. In addition, I had the good fortune to successfully lead major Operating Divisions of the company by applying the strategic marketing competencies I had acquired. In fact I was the only Operations Executive with a marketing background and was therefore able to BE DiFFERENT from my peers who came up through the Operations ranks with no formal marketing background.

I was often asked how I managed to get these rather prestigious positions since I only had a math and computer background and had no formal education in marketing. The answer: a passion for career learning in marketing and the courage to apply new marketing ideas to BE DiFFERENT.

Stay tuned for the next YOU Article.

Cheers,
Roy

Remember to follow me on Twitter

Other YOU Articles
The Context for BE DiFFERENT YOU
Change Leaders Needed
Covet the Fox
Follow Remarkable Mentors
Be a Voracious Career Learner

Posted 11.15.10 at 06:59 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 11, 2010

What’s Your Personal TAG?

Some call it a Personal Brand. I call it a BE DiFFERENT TAG for a couple of reasons. First, personal success demands that you be unique in some meaningful way - hence the focus on DiFFERENT; second, it should be easy to describe your distinctiveness - hence the notion of a TAG. Some TAG examples…. Marketing Guru, Service Addict, Customer Champion, Strategy Hawk and Implementation Fanatic. Clear, simple, invokes a mental image, and easy to communicate.. That’s what we want.

Here are Five Steps to follow to create your own TAG:
1. Get intimate with The Strategic Game Plan (SGP) of your organization. You need a deep understanding of it and a clear Line of Sight to it. Translate your SGP into specific things that you need to do to support it. What are the key success factors? Does success require Marketing competencies? Sales? Service? Technology Leadership? Your TAG development must address what is important to your SGP. No sense TAGGING yourself with a competency that doesn’t matter.
2. Dissect your Competition. Who are “The Others” competing with you for the scarce career opportunities? Identify them. Rank order them. Learn their strengtha and weaknesses. Assess their internal Currency. Impute their Personal Career Plan. All of this is fodder for plotting your own course and creating your TAG to reflect it.
3. Create The ONLY Statement for YOU. “I am The ONLY one that… ” becomes your Personal Positioning Plan to drive your TAG. Remember your ONLY Statement must first, address the key burning strategic issue facing your organization. It must be highly relevant and compelling. Second, it must be TRUE. Leadership, colleagues and your connections must believe what you claim. Test it. Continuously.
4. Target the Foxes. Make sure the career decision makers in your organization are aware of your TAG and what you are doing to live it.
5. Engage and Connect. Get deeply involved in Implementation projects and activities. Connect with others who are considered critical to the success of your organization’s strategy. Your TAG must be considered critical to success.

TAG yourself Thoughtfully.
Cheers,
Roy

Remember to follow me on Twitter

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Posted 11.11.10 at 07:00 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 8, 2010

BE DiFFERENT YOU! Discover Remarkable Mentors

You likely don’t have the experience or background to figure out the BE DiFFERENT journey on your own. Get advice from those who demonstrate the BE DiFFERENT philosophy and who have been there, done that. Seek them out and build meaningful relationships with them for the long term. They may or may not be Foxes; it really doesn’t matter. What you are looking for is a coach to help you develop your personal skills and competencies and help you aspire to your career goals.

Your mentor doesn’t have to be within your organization. In fact there are many advantages on having an external mentor including having an objective, political-free point of view. What you are looking for are the capabilities that they have to BE DiFFERENT. Wherever they are, find them and discover the secrets that make them great. Copy and morph to them to work for you in the spirit of constructive emulation. Your BE DiFFERENT mentor can be outside your organization. Find them and discover the secrets that make them great.

Choose mentors that express competencies across the range of critical organizational areas including Human Resources, Strategy, Marketing, Sales and Serving Customers. Build your mentor portfolio and engage with them on a regular basis:
> Meet with them informally just to keep in touch and deepen your relationship with them.
> Take them an issue you are currently working on and get their views on the options to address it. Get their input. Figure out how they think.
> Ask them for introductions to others who possess the skills and experience you need to develop new competencies.
> Determine the challenges they are currently facing in their organization and how they are addressing them.

Voracious readers benefit from the plethora and diversity of ideas they absorb from a variety of authors. And in addition to getting new insights, reading can also help you develop mentor relationships. It is probably true that the most effective mentor relationship is one where you have regular personal contact with your mentor. That said; don’t discount the learning opportunities and guidance you can receive by reading and studying material produced by recognized leaders in the business world. Voracious reading breeds virtual mentors who collectively will influence your life.
I spent many hours studying the work of authors, business leaders and subject matter experts:
— Peter Drucker on business management.
—Tom Peters on what makes companies excellent.
— Ken Blanchard on how to get the most out of a precious minute on the job.
—Seth Godin on marketing.
—Don Peppers and Martha Rogers on One to One marketing.
—Chip Bell on service quality and customer service.
—Jack Welch on leadership and winning.
—Jim Collins on why some companies make the leap to greatness and why others don’t.
—And more.

These individuals collectively had a major influence on the many responsibilities I had over my career. I definitely consider them as mentors. They gave me ideas on a range of subjects that were both relevant to the challenges my organization was facing and that I was intrigued to learn more about. I would often combine the approaches of various experts into one that would meet my specific needs; the broader the range of views you have at your disposal the better able you are to create a solution that fits your circumstances uniquely.

I knew that people in my organization were aware of my author mentors when they would remark ‘Here we go. It looks like Roy has read another book.’ in reacting to a new idea I wanted to investigate. At first it was necessary for me to convince them that this was not the latest flavor-of-the-month approach; rather it was an effective way to be guided by the ideas and thoughts espoused by others. After seeing me do this numerous times, however, people got the idea that this approach was simply how Roy learned and implemented change that made sense.

BE DiFFERENT YOU is a tough road to go down. Find remarkable folks to follow and separate YOU from the herd.

Stay tuned for more YOU Articles…

Cheers,
Roy

Remember to follow me on Twitter

Other YOU Articles
The Context for BE DiFFERENT YOU
Change Leaders Needed
Covet the Fox
Follow Remarkable Mentors

Posted 11.8.10 at 07:00 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 10, 2010

BE DiFFERENT YOU! Change Leaders Needed

BE DiFFERENT people are proactively adaptive who thirst for change. They drive change as opposed to letting change drive them. They enthusiastically embrace the change process and treat it as an opportunity for the organization and themselves as opposed to treating change as a threat and something that can be avoided. They are good at anticipating how things will unfold but are brilliant reaction agents, reacting to an unforeseen event when it occurs. When Plan A is in jeopardy they move to Plan B in a heartbeat.

They are Change Leaders, as opposed to their more traditional organizational cousin, the Change Manager.

Change Managers want to perpetuate the momentum of the business, and reluctantly move into the change mode when the forces on them leave no other option. The Change Manager isn’t GREAT at reacting; they are limp reaction agents, reluctant to change and get dragged into it kicking and screaming with the real motive to keep the status quo for as long as possible. They act from the belief that change can be affected in a controlled and organized fashion and tend to look to incremental improvements to address the challenges of the day. Change Managers are students of the softer more evolutionary methods of organizational change. Incremental thinkers drive incremental change which often falls short of what is required.

Don’t look to Change Managers to be proactive and initiate required changes in your organization. Don’t look to a Change Manager for adrenalin-rushed reaction to move in a different direction as a result of unanticipated events. They simply will not do it. And don’t look for an out of the box alternative to the current way of operating your business; they will always be governed at best by modest incremental changes to the current operating model.

Change Leaders, on the other hand, understand that real change with breakthrough benefits for the organization is the result of introducing discontinuities to the current business model. They are proactive and are constantly on the lookout for operating models for running the business so that revolutionary break-through changes can be achieved. And in the face of unexpected events challenging the performance of their organization, expect Change Leaders to enthusiastically react with a sense of urgency to determine the appropriate life-saving course of action to take. Change Leaders will present your organization with tough decisions because their proposals will require taking higher risks to yield greater rewards. Expect them to make your organization uncomfortable with the inherent risks associated with the order of magnitude changes they bring forward.

To BE DiFFERENT, YOU must develop a plan to be a Change Leader; it won’t happen by serendipity. You will discover that most of your colleagues will fall into the change manager category and that differentiating yourself is very achievable and will get you the kind of currency in your organization that will highlight you for future opportunities.

Here are some things YOU need to consider to build a change leadership persona:
> Use your personal network to discover the most critical issues the organization is facing. You can’t lead change unless you have an intimate understanding of the threats and opportunities likely to impact your business future.
> Roy’s Rule of 3: focus on the critical few things that will deliver the maximum number of benefits to the organization. Beware of the long action plan list; you have neither the time nor the energy to do ten or twelve things really well nor will they be equally important in terms of the positive impact they produce. Look for 20% of the actions - your critical few list - that will deliver 80% of the needed results and get going. The long action plan list - pursuing numerous tactics - is a symptom of sloppy strategic thinking: a lack of appreciating the few actions required to produce the greatest impact. Chasing numerous tactics may make you feel good about how busy you are, but it can be deadly in terms of achieving real progress. 
> Be anal about executing your top priorities. Don’t get mesmerized by the brilliance of your idea; it’s worthless until you do something about it and achieve positive results.
> Take on a let’s do it differently attitude and way of working. Avoid linear thinking. Be a lateral thinker and look for out-of-the-box solutions to problems in the organization.
> Purge your vocabulary of words like evolutionary change and incremental change in favor of breakthrough and revolutionary change.
> Get on the internal speaking circuit. Talk up the importance of creating discontinuity for your organization as the way to meet the challenges your organization is facing and generate economic opportunity.
> Increase your scope of experience and expertise and be available to take on challenges in a variety of roles in your organization.
> Read insatiably, and develop a portfolio of new concepts and ideas that could be applied to solve your pressing business problems or lead your organization in new directions.
> Learn what others are doing to achieve extraordinary gains. Take what might work for your organization. Modify it and adapt it FAST. Be a Constructive Emulator. Find an exciting idea, adapt it to work for your own organization with a BE DiFFERENT flair and implement it with fire-in-the-belly. A word of caution. In Chapter Six of BE DiFFERENT or be dead I talk about the potential pitfalls of benchmarking your organization to another. Copying a Best in Class company may improve your performance relative to where you are now, but it won’t necessarily create uniqueness for you in the market and make you DiFFERENT. As a Change Leader YOU need to think beyond Best in Class .
> Seek out others in the organization others who aspire to be Change Leaders. Encourage them. Mentor them. Support them in their day to day activities. And be seen to be doing it.

Cheers,
Roy

Remember to follow me on Twitter

Other YOU Articles
The Context for BE DiFFERENT YOU
Covet the Fox
Change Leaders Needed

Posted 9.10.10 at 07:00 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)