Be Different or be dead

November 29, 2010

Why competitor knowledge is really important to your career success

Source: Pexels

Why competitor knowledge is really important to your career success.

One of the critical components in developing a business plan for any organization is HOW you intend to compete and WIN given the competition in your space.

The challenge is to decide what its strategic uniqueness is relative to the competition that is targeting the same customers you have chosen to SERVE. A detailed assessment of your target customers’ critical priority needs and desires must be made along with the internal competencies that line up with satisfying them.

And you need to know your competition at a granular level - strengths, weaknesses, performance, value proposition and business strategy.

Know your competition at a granular level in order to build a winning career strategy.

The internal world of an organization where you are fighting for career success has similar competitive dynamics and it’s critical to understand the competition for the jobs you want.

Here are 7 questions to consider as you evaluate who you are up against for those few precious leadership opportunities:

1. Who are the players in the organization that are considered to be high potential and promotable now?

2. How would you rank them in terms of probability of success? Who are the top three and in what order? What skills do they have that you don’t? What strengths do you have that they don’t?

3. What currency does each of your competitors have in the organization? Currency describes the amount of influence you have on the decision making process in the organization. People with a high level of currency are typically asked for their opinion on matters of importance; they are consulted when exploring the pros and cons of various courses of action and are in on the final decisions.

Persons with lower currency are not regularly consulted on important matters and rarely are asked to participate in task force teams quickly assembled to address a critical issue.
You can observe high currency factor individuals in meetings. They are always engaged in the conversation going on and people look to them to voice their views; they are valued by the organization and represent intense competition for you.

4. What is your currency factor? Where do you rank relative to the top 3?

5. Do you have specific strategies to build your currency in your career game plan?

6. What is your competitors’ overall career strategy? How does it compare with yours?

7. Does your plan put you in a stand-out position relative to them or are you merely catching up to them? Beware of copying what others do, however, as benchmarking has pitfalls.

Knowing who else is in the game is critical to you developing your career strategy.

Do your homework.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.29.10 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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November 26, 2010

Why amazing cultures are not created by one thing

Source: Unsplash

There is no silver bullet in changing the culture of an organization, just as there is no single brilliant idea that will guarantee the survival of an organization in today’s world.

No single solution or idea that will suddenly, overnight, protect it from demise.

Rather, cultural change is a game of inches, where the objective is to get as many people in the organization trying as many different approaches as possible, and achieving fast increments of progress along the way.

What happens is that the passionate actions of a few individuals begin to infect the masses; more and more change activity is created and a new momentum begins.

This sustainable new momentum, in turn, defines the new culture of the organization: a culture that embraces creativity and innovation, and a business that can look forward to a long and prosperous life.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.26.10 at 08:00 pm by Roy Osing
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November 25, 2010

Why your business plan should focus on 3 limited things

Source: Unsplash

Why your business plan should focus on 3 limited things.

If you try to boil the ocean you’ll lose; if your business plan focuses on 3 limited things, success awaits.

So, here you are. You have completed your business plan for your new business and now you must determine the tactics you need to see your brave idea turn into reality.
You start with a clean sheet of paper and decide to brainstorm on all the things you need to do to implement your new plan.

Good idea? Well, it can be, or it can create a lot of activity but little movement forward.

It’s ok to create a list of possible actions that you feel should be taken, but then you must purge the list down to the critical few actions to focus on that you believe have an 80 percent chance of achieving the results you want.
You simply don’t have enough resources and bandwidth to do an effective job on 25 things you have on your brainstorming list.

Multitasking is deadly when you are trying to implement the game plan of your ‘new baby’

If you can’t define the critical few actions necessary to achieve progress towards your business plan goals, it indicates that you really don’t understand your strategy and the specific execution levers are necessary to get you going.
Spend time debating this issue because if you merely throw possibilities at the wall and then try to implement every one of them, your energies will be spread too thin and you will be unable to move forward.

Determine 3 things (or maybe 4 or 5, but not a dozen) that will produce 80% of your business plan results and get on with them — Roy’s Rule of 3

Spend time on Roy’s Rule; it will pay off handsomely for you.

Beware of Yummy

Once you’ve defined the few critical things that you believe will get your startup off the ground, be prepared for distractions that will pull you away from your game plan. This always happens as you learn more about what your strategy means, and when others find out what you’re up to and present you with added opportunities.

If you have more than three priorities then you don’t have any — Jim Collins, Author

For example, you’ve decided on the customer group you want to target and out-of-the-blue comes someone who is not a target customer reaching out to you to ask for your attention.

They want to explore adopting your product solution and of course they have questions that they need answers to which will take time and effort on your part to accommodate — they will drain your scarce resources.

This happens all the time. A client of mine decided to focus on the Vancouver market where access was easy and market growth was attractive. Then they received a call from an organization in South America who found out about their innovative solution and wanted to explore partnership opportunities with them. Clearly not on strategy. But oh so tempting to chase!

‘Yummy incoming’  is the over-the-transom stuff that comes up that we are tempted to chase

Another client developed an innovative wireless technology for a particular application in the security market segment. When other companies learned of their plans, they reached out and presented them with other potential applications for their technology.

The CEO was delighted with the additional interest and decided to evaluate these new opportunities but in doing so diffused the efforts of his team and reduced the focus on building the security solution. The end result after about a year of toiling over at least a half dozen applications was nothing advanced. The security opportunity faltered and investors pulled their funding. Yummy was the instrument of their demise.

What do you do when Yummy appears and has the potential of pushing your business plan off the rail?

How to beat Yummy

Here’s how to keep Yummy from diluting the effectiveness of your business plan:an action plan to consider.

— Give yourself one day — no more — to do a quick and dirty evaluation on whether or not Yummy has any potential. It’s important that you maintain the discipline to not burn endless resource cycles on the possibility that there could be a significant opportunity vis-a-vis your current focus but you have to make the call fast so the impact on your current momentum is minimized.

— If you decide to chase Yummy, go back and review your business plan. If Yummy looks like it has potential, change the focus of your business plan.
If you decide to try and have it both ways — trying to stay on your original path and also chase Yummy — you won’t succeed in execution your business plan and you probably won’t do a decent job chasing Yummy. 

You can’t have a handful of number one priorities as a fledgling company. Multitasking is bad news for most organizations but it’s deadly for startups. And don’t for even a moment think you have the luxury of taking on additional resources to implement Yummy. You don’t.

— Explore whether or not the organization representing Yummy is prepared to contribute resources to evaluate the potential of their idea and to help implement it if it turns out if it offers as much value as your current strategy. They may be willing to partner with you in the development of their idea and in the go-to-market action plan in return for a piece of the action.

Remember, every minute Yummy consumes your time is a minute less you have to spend on the focus you’ve decided on to execute your overall strategy so resist the temptation to deviate from it without compelling evidence that you will be better off doing so.

Chasing stuff is not healthy. Busyness may be comfort food, but remember that you created a game plan to avoid eating it

Successful businesses focus on limited priorities in their business plan and don’t chase things that are interesting and cool but are clearly off strategy.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.25.10 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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November 22, 2010

Why is learning about customers so damn important?

Source: Pexels

Traditional market research doesn’t go far enough.

Periodic studies can’t keep pace with the changing needs of your FANS and everyone uses it.

Customer learning, on the other hand, is a continuous process of learning what your customers want, desire and covet.

And it is a core competency of your business which should never be outsourced.

What’s the key to customer learning? It’s all about LISTENING; REALLY listening to what people have to say.

Pay attention to their words and the results are remarkable; give it lip service and you are doomed.

Here is a brief guide on how to be an effective Listener:

LOOK — them in the eye. Don’t Grin ‘em. Give them your undivided attention. Show that you CARE about what they have to say. Lean forward.

LISTEN — Really listen! Ask questions to clarify. Take copious amount of notes. Don’t interrupt them when they are speaking. It’s about them not you.

LEARN — This is a moment of strategic opportunity; don’t miss it. Discover a secret. Look for hidden VALUE that you can create for them; latent Happiness you can generate.

What’s the ROI on Customer Listening?

LOYALTY — Your FANS will stay with you and tell others how terrific you are. Advocates & addicted followers create annuity streams for you.

LEAP — Beyond the herd who still compete by incremental product feature creep. You will achieve Distinction; Remarkable.

LEAVE — ‘em in the dust. to achieve true separation from the herd. And a clear unique value proposition that others will simply not be able to replicate.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.22.10 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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