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

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1st Five things Business Schools Don’t Teach
Customer Learning
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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.

Curriculum designers: there you have the new course list to enhance the relevance of your graduates when they enter the business world.

Cheers, Roy

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Related Blog Articles on Execution
The A, B, C’s of Execution

Posted 9.2.10 at 08:00 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 18, 2009

BE DiFFERENT or be dead: A Student Tutorial

One of my fondest memories is the time I spent presenting to business students what the ‘real world’ of business was like, answering their questions and explaining my views on the value of a business education as one advances their career. My University major was Math and I would always get the question: ‘When did you last have to use a differential equation to solve a business problem?’ Well…. Never!

It has been some time since I had the opportunity to present real business world ideas and concepts to business classes. I hope to change this with the publishing of my new book.

I believe students would benefit a great deal from being exposed to my work, and would see it as a valuable supplement to the formal business curricula offered by any institution. BE DiFFERENT concepts and ideas are not only backed by sound business principles, they have been road tested and have delivered successful results in real complex businesses by real people.

What a great combination: sound theory accompanied by a portfolio of examples where the theory has been executed successfully in a variety of businesses. I have always had an issue with hiring MBA-type people who have a sound grasp of what should be done and only a case study background of how to actually do it. To be productive in a business, students need more than just a taste of practical experience. They need to be submerged in the practical stuff for a prolonged period of time to get infected with an execution bias.

My book offers the potential of enhancing the student’s appreciation for and understanding of concepts that work. Through customized BE DiFFERENT seminars and workshops students will deepen their knowledge of creating success and survival approaches in Business Strategy, Marketing, Sales and Serving Customers (known by the rest of the world as ‘customer service’).

In a class room format each student will get the experience they are used to and more. A lecture is given on the many BE DiFFERENT concepts and learning will be re-enforced with break-out sessions where students get the opportunity to work with the lectured material.

For you business students thirsting for insights from an experienced senior executive ask your professor/teacher to ,Contact Roy for one of my sessions. It will be worth it! Or when you read my book and you have questions,contact me Cheers, Roy Osing

Posted 2.18.09 at 07:57 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (1)