Be Different or Be Dead

by Roy Osing

Organizational Assessment Quiz

Are you curious how your organization measures up to the BE DiFFERENT concepts you’ve read in the book? Wonder where your strengths are? What your biggest challenges to improve look like? If you have decided that your organization needs a BE DiFFERENT makeover, where do you start? What area deserves immediate attention versus those that require less attention for the moment?

The Organizational Assessment tool is a simple method to apply your own judgment and opinions to determine where your organization sits in terms of possessing BE DiFFERENT capabilities relating to the major Sections of the book: Business Strategy, Marketing, Sales and Serving Customers.

Have some fun with this (remember, no one is watching!) and rate yourself on 40 specific BE DiFFERENT dimensions. And see how you measure up by having your results (a simple average calculation for each section) visibly displayed for immediately in a bar-chart. You not only see your scores for each Section you also are shown your greatest shortcoming; if you want to BE DiFFERENT you will know where to start.

For each dimension, use a 1 to 5 rating scale as follows:

‘5’ = the BE DiFFERENT position – you have excelled in implementing an overwhelming number of the concepts in the book. Nice!
‘3’ = the BE Half Way position – you are well along the journey to adopt BE DiFFERENT capabilities although there are significant deficiencies to address.
‘1’ = the BE dead position – you are nowhere in terms of building BE DiFFERENT in your organization. Major surgery is required to begin your transformation to be successful and survive.

That’s about all there is to it. So go ahead and start your own BE DiFFERENT journey.

Business Strategy

Marketing

Serving Customers

Sales

ABOUT THE BOOK

BE DiFFERENT or be dead: Your Business Survival Guide demonstrates proven ways to help organizations successfully thrive and survive in the turbulent waters of today’s global economy; things you can do today to be successful and immunize yourself against business failure tomorrow.
Second Edition Price @ $29.95 USD; $34.95 CDN

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1.	You have developed the only Statement for your organization; it clearly defines your unique value proposition for your targeted customers…	1 2 3 4 5
2.	Your organization competes by offering unique value that attracts premium prices in the market as opposed to value that attracts lower prices and is provided by many…	1 2 3 4 5
3.	Your business had decided not to compete on price…	1 2 3 4 5
4.	Your organization has a Strategic Game Plan that is driven by financial goals and is clear about WHO you intend to SERVE and HOW you intend to WIN…	1 2 3 4 5
5.	Your strategy has a detailed implementation plan with accountabilities assigned to carry out each activity necessary to deliver the strategy…	1 2 3 4 5
6.	Your implementation plan portfolio consists of a relatively small number of key projects to achieve your Game Plan…	1 2 3 4 5
7.	You have a process in place to regularly review the progress of your strategy and take the required corrective action…	1 2 3 4 5
8.	You have appointed a Strategy Hawk responsible to ensure people meet their implementation commitments…	1 2 3 4 5
9.	You have assigned a cut the crap executive to eliminate all non-strategic activity…	1 2 3 4 5

10.	Your organization is moving from a pure product focus to a customer focus, where the emphasis is on providing integrated offers of products and services to the customers you have chosen to serve…	1 2 3 4 5
11.	You segment your market using multiple variables in order to deepen your understanding of each customer in each segment…	1 2 3 4 5
12.	Your customer learning process uses a mix of the ask the customer and understanding customer behavior methods of achieving a detailed understanding of the customer and what that customer wants…	1 2 3 4 5
13.	You have institutionalized customer learning in your organization by making it a regular part of your normal business process…	1 2 3 4 5
14.	Your customer learning process is focused on discovering customer secrets in addition to their needs…	1 2 3 4 5
15.	Your marketing efforts are geared to creating holistic offers based on the needs plus secrets of the customer groups you have chosen to serve…	1 2 3 4 5
16.	You use customer share or share of wallet as the primary indicator of success…	1 2 3 4 5
17.	You have introduced the customer marketing function in your organization to augment a purely product focus…	1 2 3 4 5
18.	You have created a database marketing capability, and use it to define your Information Technology support requirements…	1 2 3 4 5

19.	Your organization has a serve the customer orientation rather than a customer service one…	1 2 3 4 5
20.	You have developed your Service Strategy with the two components of Core Service and the Service Experience…	1 2 3 4 5
21.	You have re-invented your Core Service processes from the customer's point of view with input from your frontline employees…	1 2 3 4 5
22.	You provide differentiated levels of service based on the unique requirements of your high value customers…	1 2 3 4 5
23.	You have a frontline recruitment process that tests candidates on their innate love for humans…	1 2 3 4 5
24.	You empower your frontline employees to break a rule in favor of serving a customer, and your organization rewards them for doing so…	1 2 3 4 5
25.	You have taken action on the dumb rules in your organization that upset your customers; a senior leader is the champion of the cause…	1 2 3 4 5
26.	You have a coach and serve rather than a command and control leadership philosophy…	1 2 3 4 5
27.	Serving customer objectives are established and results are measured regularly…	1 2 3 4 5
28.	You use some type of internal report card to measure how well internal customers are served…	1 2 3 4 5
29.	Objectives for serving customers are included in all leadership compensation plans and carry a significant weight…	1 2 3 4 5
30.	The people programs in your organization have been developed to encourage the behaviors required by your Service Strategy…	1 2 3 4 5
31.	Your organization has customerized its language to rid it of internal techno speak and make it more customer-inspired…	1 2 3 4 5

32.	Your sales function is focused on developing customer relationships as opposed to flogging products…	1 2 3 4 5
33.	You have created your Sales brand and it is an integral part of your go-to-market strategy…	1 2 3 4 5
34.	Your organization's Sales performance plans target relationship-building outcomes…	1 2 3 4 5
35.	Sales compensation in your business is driven by relationship-building behaviors…	1 2 3 4 5
36.	Customer perception feedback is the main measure of how well sales demonstrate relationship-building behaviors…	1 2 3 4 5
37.	Sales and Marketing use an internal report card to measure the quality of service they provide to one another…	1 2 3 4 5
38.	Sales are held accountable for secret gathering and are recognized by their marketing colleagues for their efforts…	1 2 3 4 5
39.	Sales have explicit recovery accountabilities in their performance plans…	1 2 3 4 5
40.	Sales uses some type of customer report card to gather customer feedback on Sales performance…	1 2 3 4 5