January 18, 2005

Put Common Sense Back In The Room

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

PUT COMMON SENSE BACK IN THE ROOM!

Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.

I hope it helps you create yours.

There’s something missing in too many organizations today.

Common sense.

We have more data. More technology. More policies. More processes. More AI.

And somehow, organizations still make ridiculously stupid decisions.

A customer has a simple problem, but the employee can’t solve it because “the policy doesn’t allow it.”

A process has 14 steps when three would do.

A rule created 10 years ago is still followed even though nobody remembers why it exists.

And when someone asks, “Why the hell are we doing this?”

The answer is usually:

“That’s the way we do it.”

🚨 People stop thinking and start complying

Organizations love structure.

Rules. Policies. Procedures. Approval levels. Technology.

Some are necessary.

But eventually the machinery takes over.

Instead of asking:

“What makes sense here?”

People ask:

“What does the process say I’m allowed to do?”

That’s when common sense disappears.

And customers pay the price.

💥 Build common sense into your Organizational Instinct™

The real test comes when a customer has a problem.

What does your organization instinctively do?

Does the employee reach for the policy manual?

Explain why something can’t be done?

Pass the customer to someone else?

Or do they immediately think:

“How can I solve this for them?”

That’s Organizational Instinct™ — the natural, habitual response an organization has when faced with a customer problem.

Extraordinary organizations instinctively solve problems rather than defend organizational policies.

That’s common sense turned into organizational behaviour.

You shouldn’t need a management meeting every time something unusual happens.

Your people should know what comes first:

Solve the customer’s problem.

Give them permission to think. Permission to challenge.

Permission to Say YES!™ when common sense says YES!

🎯 Apply The Common Sense Test™

Take every rule, policy, process and customer touch point and ask:

“Does this make sense for the customer?”

If the answer is NO, don’t defend it.

Fix it.

If a process creates unnecessary friction, simplify it.

If a rule gets in the way of solving a customer problem, kill it.

If employees need permission to do something obviously right, give them the authority to act.

Kill Dumb Rules™. Cut The CRAP™. Remove whatever prevents people from exercising good judgement for the customer.

🚀 The Audacious Move™

Put common sense back in the room.

And make it part of your Organizational Instinct™.

When a customer problem hits, your people shouldn’t instinctively ask:

“What does the policy say?”

They should ask:

“What makes sense for this customer?”

Then give them the freedom to do it.

Because common sense isn’t really missing.

Too many organizations have simply trained it out of their people.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business and having a remarkable career.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary careers aren’t built by ordinary decisions. They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.18.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

January 17, 2005

Disney Doesn’t Talk Service. It Bakes It In.

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

Disney Doesn’t Talk Service. It Bakes It In.

Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.

I hope it helps you create yours.

A couple of weeks ago, we interviewed Vance Morris on the popular Fast & Furious podcast.

Vance spent 10 years as a leader at Walt Disney World, so we were particularly interested in what he learned about The Disney Service Experience.

Disney has an extraordinary ability to create guest loyalty.

But here’s what struck me during our conversation:

The magic isn’t magic at all.

It’s the result of deliberate leadership and operating practices that are remarkably consistent with many of the principles I’ve developed over decades of building businesses.

Here are four that jumped out at me.

👀 Visibility With Purpose

Disney leaders don’t lead exclusively from offices.

They are visible where the work is being done.

But I don’t believe simply “walking around” accomplishes much. I call it Visibility With Purpose

The leader is there looking for ways to help people successfully execute the strategy.

The question is simple:

“How can I help?”

That’s precisely what I mean by Serving Around™.

Leadership isn’t about checking up on people. It’s about getting close enough to the action to remove barriers, solve problems and help people succeed.

❤️ Hire Nice People

Vance made another point that sounds ridiculously simple:

Disney hires nice people.

You can teach processes. You can teach procedures. You can teach someone how the business works.

It’s much harder to teach someone to genuinely care about another human being.

That’s why I’ve always believed in Hire for Goosebumps™.

Hire people who love humans. People who instinctively want to help. People who get emotional satisfaction from creating a great experience for someone else.

Then give them the tools to do it.

🎭 Your Purpose Is Bigger Than Your Job Description

At Disney, employees learn that their purpose goes far beyond performing the tasks written in their job description.

They are there to live what the organization stands for.

And leadership continually reinforces it until those behaviours become instinctive.

That distinction is important.

I talk about Line of Sight™—people understanding the direct connection between what they do every day and what the organization is trying to achieve.

But Disney takes it further.

I call it Organizational Instinct™.

Think of it as Line of Sight on steroids.

The objective is to create a culture where people don’t have to stop and consult a policy manual every time something unexpected happens.

They instinctively know how the organization expects them to respond.

At Disney, that instinct is built around creating the guest experience.

In my Code, Organizational Instinct™ is the natural, habitual response an organization has when faced with a customer situation.

It’s not simply:

“What does my job description tell me to do?”

It’s:

“What does this organization stand for—and what should I do right now to live it?”

That’s when values stop being words on a wall.

They become the way the organization behaves.

🔄 Design the Experience From the Customer In

Disney obsessively thinks about the guest journey.

I describe this through Cycles of Service™.

A Cycle of Service maps every touch point between a customer and the organization—from the customer’s point of view, not the organization’s.

Do it for every process involving customer engagement.

Then examine every touch point.

Where can we simplify it?

Where can we remove friction?

Where can we add value?

Where can we improve the flow of value to the customer?

This is Cleanse The Inside™ applied directly to the customer experience.

🚀 The Disney Lesson

Our conversation with Vance reinforced something I’ve believed for years:

Remarkable customer loyalty isn’t created by slogans, training programs or telling employees to “provide great service.”

It happens when leadership, hiring, culture and operating processes all reinforce the experience you intend to deliver.

Disney has been doing it for decades.

Different language perhaps.

Different context.

But remarkably similar disciplines.

The lesson for every business is simple:

Don’t leave customer loyalty to chance.

Bake it into the way your organization operates.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business and having a remarkable career.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary careers aren’t built by ordinary decisions. They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.17.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

January 16, 2005

Stop Chasing Market Share. Grow Customer Share™

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

Stop Chasing Market Share. Grow Customer Share™

Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.

I hope it helps you create yours.

🎯 Market Share Has You Looking in the Wrong Direction

Businesses love market share.

They measure it. Report it. Obsess over it.

I never did.

Because Market Share puts your attention on the market and your competitors.

How much do they have?

How much do we have?

How can we take some from them?

Wrong obsession.

Markets don’t buy anything. Customers do.

That’s why I use Customer Share™.

💰Forget the Market. Follow the Customer’s Money.

Customer Share™ isn’t simply selling more stuff to existing customers.

It’s the percentage of a targeted customer’s relevant spend—within the business domain defined by your Strategic Game Plan™—that you earn.

Suppose one of your targeted customers spends $1 million a year on data communications.

They spend $500,000 with you.

Your Customer Share™ is 50%.

Forget what your competitors’ overall market share is.

Your growth opportunity is staring you in the face.

There’s another $500,000 being spent somewhere else.

Strategic advantage and growth comes from serving chosen customers and maximizing share of their relevant spend rather than flogging products to the masses.

🔥Innovate Your Way™ to More

Now ask:

How do we move our Customer Share™ from 50% to 60%… 70%… 80%?

And here’s where it gets interesting.

You shouldn’t know the answer.

If all you need to do is sell more of the same stuff, you’re not innovating.

Set a Customer Share™ target that creates an “I don’t know how” gap.

Then Innovate Your Way™ across it.

Discover what the customer Craves™.

Find problems you’re not solving.

Discover opportunities you’re missing.

Create new, relevant value they’re prepared to reward.

That’s innovation with a purpose.

Not brainstorming.

Not innovation theatre.

It’s innovation directed at earning more of the customer’s relevant spend.

🚀Customer Share™ Changes the Growth Conversation

Market Share encourages you to look sideways at competitors.

Customer Share™ forces you to look deeply at customers.

Market Share asks:
“How much of the market do we own?”

Customer Share™ asks:
“How much of our chosen customer’s relevant spend do we earn?”

And then comes the money question:
“How do we Innovate Our Way™ to more?”

That’s where I’d put my energy.

Stop chasing markets.

Start growing Customer Share™.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business and having a remarkable career.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary careers aren’t built by ordinary decisions. They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.16.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

January 15, 2005

FEELINGS. FUEL. GROWTH.

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

FEELINGS. FUEL. GROWTH.

Great leadership demands more than strategic thinking to fuel employee engagement, customer loyalty and business growth.

Thinking builds the strategy. FEELING creates the competitive edge.

Businesses are drowning in thinkers.

Leaders obsessed with spreadsheets, strategic plans and quarterly projections.

They analyze everything. Measure everything. Rationalize everything.

And forget the one thing that actually makes their business come ALIVE.

PEOPLE.

In a market flooded with copycat strategies, thinking alone won’t make you successful.

FEELING will.

🧠❤️ Thinking builds the plan. Feeling brings it to life.

Don’t misunderstand me. Thinking matters.

You need a Strategic Game Plan™.

You need to know WHO you intend to serve and WHAT they CRAVE.

But a plan has never looked an employee in the eye and made them believe they matter.

A spreadsheet has never stayed late to help a frustrated customer.

PEOPLE do those things.

Thinking creates the possibility of winning. Feeling creates the DESIRE to win.

And leaders who genuinely CARE give people a reason to bring more than their job descriptions to work.

When employees feel valued, they’re more likely to value the people they serve.

CARING SPREADS.

Not through posters on the wall.
Through the way people behave when nobody is watching.

❤️ Customers remember how you made them FEEL.

Customers don’t give a damn about your planning process.

They care about THEIR desires. THEIR frustrations. THEIR aspirations.

And how you make them FEEL.

Customers may forget what you sold them.
They won’t forget how you treated them.

Make them feel ordinary and you’re just another supplier.

Make them feel special and you become someone they’d hate to lose.

That’s how loyalty starts to become something competitors can’t buy with a discount.

💥 Caring isn’t soft. It’s a competitive weapon.

Competitors can copy your products, match your prices and imitate your services.

But copying a company where caring is an instinct rather than a slogan?

Good luck with that.

It’s built in everyday moments: a leader who listens when it’s inconvenient; an employee empowered to fix a problem without begging permission; a team that says YES! instead of quoting policy.

That’s Organizational Instinct™ at work.

And here’s the kicker: customers can’t experience the caring you TALK about.

They can only experience the caring you DO.

A customer who feels genuinely understood doesn’t need another promotional offer to return.

They have something much more powerful.

A REASON TO BELIEVE IN YOU.

So stop treating empathy as a soft skill that looks nice in a leadership workshop.

Treat it as a strategic imperative.

Because if your people don’t FEEL that they matter, why would your customers?

THINK HARD. CARE HARDER.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary businesses aren’t built by ordinary decisions.

They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.15.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink