Be Different or be dead

February 24, 2020

6 simple ways ‘CRAP’ can be cut from your organization

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6 simple ways ‘CRAP’ can be cut from your organization.

The world is a noisy and cluttered place to live; so many choices and so many people exercising them.

Resources available are scarce and limited but demand continues to grow.

How can organizations — and governments for that matter — achieve their growth objectives with limits on the available time and money necessary to achieve them? And in some cases, not just holding the line on resources but reducing their availability?

Obviously productivity gains will offset the need to add some resources.
If the organization can realize a 10% increase in productivity, and growth requires a 5% increase in operations expenses, growth goals can be more than achieved assuming the targeted productivity savings are realized and are allocated to growth projects — spending productivity gains elsewhere is a waste and results in added costs being necessary.

But there are limits on how much should be mined out of expenses from productivity to fund growth.

Doing things more efficiently has its limits and it’s trade offs

Changing operational processes to drive cost out can impact customer service.
Costs of a re-engineered process might decrease but customers could be dissatisfied with the resulting way they have to engage with the organization — it’s less customer friendly.

And they express their dissatisfaction by buying less or by moving to another supplier.

Outsourcing call centers to remote regions of the world, for example, may reduce costs but could also reduce customer loyalty due to the new experience that customers have to endure.

And of course when productivity benefits are calculated, the opportunity costs associated with impaired service and lost revenue are rarely part of the analysis.

In my experience, the bigger play is not to focus on how to do things right — seek more efficiency — but rather to do the right things — be more effective.

Effectiveness is achieved when the right set of new programs is selected and is flawlessly executed to achieve the long term strategic intent of the organization.

Effectiveness is not just deciding on the new things you need to do

A huge part of effectiveness is not what additional to take on, but what you decide to give up — the current activities in motion you decide to stop.

It’s forced obsolescence — productivity applied on a macro scale (large projects or blocks of activity) as opposed to eliminating smaller pieces of the operations (a call center or product fulfillment process).

Forced obsolescence — cut the CRAP — is consciously eliminating yesterday’s relevance for tomorrow’s necessity.

Examples of forced obsolescence initiatives could include marketing programs established in the past to enhance a product line that are no longer in the crosshairs of the strategy. Or a planned HR system built to support acquiring skills and competencies that are no longer considered essential.

This is my step-by-step process to force obsolescence out.

1. Assign a senior champion

Appoint a respected and trusted senior person with a high tolerance for ‘pain’ and whose compensation is based on how much savings is actually realized by the cut the crap activity.

Avoid the mistake that most organizations make by assigning a mid level manager to the task. This communicates that forcing obsolescence out isn’t really all that important and like many other corporate programs, “it too shall pass”.

2. Take inventory

Inventory all current initiatives in the organization. It’s important that the list be complete in order to capture all of the activity consuming resources. I suggest that you set an annual expense threshold — say, $100K — and identify only activity that exceeds this amount.

The point is to isolate activity that consumes a material amount of resources and a threshold criteria is a meaningful way of doing it.

>3. Create a ‘keep’ list

Create a list of those initiatives that should remain because they all directly support the organization’s strategy.
Make keep list short, as there is a tendency to try and justify everything that is currently going on as vital to the future of the company.

This, of course, is hogwash and is merely an attempt for people to protect their position in the organization. If you end up with 100 major initiatives on the list, walk away. You are wasting your time.

4. Create a ‘cut’ list

Create a list of yesterday’s work that is no longer needed because it is not relevant to the strategy the organization has chosen.
Make the cut list long; make it tough to keep doing activities of yesterday.

As a guideline, you should have at least 3 cut activities for every keep activity; on a threshold of $100K that means you are cutting $300K in expenses for every $100K you keep — a 3:1 payback; not a bad place to start.

5. Finalize keep and cut lists

With both lists in hand, the senior leader must present and get input on both lists throughout the organization to get as much buy-in as possible.

Forced obsolescence will never get 100% support so don’t bother fretting over it. This is a challenging step as no one wants to give up what they’re doing. They have too much emotional equity in what they’re busy with.

So debate and listen then make the call on what needs to stay and what needs to go.

6. Prepare the CRAP execution plan

Develop a 6 month action plan to execute the cut list initiatives. Include firming up the annual savings and the organizational units that will realize them.

THE key step — close the loop by reducing their operating expense budgets and place savings in a special account that can be used to fund new initiatives.

This fund should be available to anyone responsible for introducing a new strategic program that is a priority.

And beware of those who possess the CRAP.

These ‘custodians of the past’ are people who are comfortable handling past activities; they enjoy them and they don’t want to change.

They are managers of irrelevance and are critical to the CRAP elimination process. If they are permitted to continue to do their thing they will infect others in your organization and prevent them from taking on the new direction.

Identify these folks and manage them: either reassign them or, if they are unwilling to move to the future, exit them with dignity from your organization.

Cut the CRAP will save the world. If we don’t expunge today’s unproductive and wasteful activity, we won’t have the resources to take on the new initiatives necessary to advance organizations and societies.

Taken to its ultimate conclusion, the obsolete will rob the world of growth and limit our possibilities.

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

• Posted 2.24.20 at 06:33 am by Roy Osing
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February 22, 2020

10 simple business lessons from women leaders in beauty

10 simple business lessons from women leaders in beauty.

The beauty industry isn’t the same anymore.

Marketing in beauty and cosmetics is constantly changing. It went from advertisements typically appearing on traditional media like billboards and newspapers, to now, influencer marketing.

The multi-billion-dollar beauty industry that has been created into what it is today, due to several revolutionary women.

From Elizabeth Arden to Kylie Jenner, the principles established in the past still remain consistent in new beauty companies.

The team at FragranceX has created a list of impactful women in the beauty industry, and from that, here are a few women that changed the game:

Elizabeth Arden

Elizabeth Arden started her business in the early 1900s and believed in the idea that familiarity is key. Her line hosts a wide range of products from anti-aging cream, moisturizing lipstick, and her famous red door perfume.

Her success comes from the idea that repetition and frequency allow people to be familiar with your brand, leading to trustworthiness. It’s the “oh, I’ve heard of that brand!” concept. The more you engrave something into the consumer’s mind, the better.

Kylie Jenner

Kylie Jenner is not only a business owner but a celebrity as well. With the rise of social media and more ways to be vocal, she discusses the scrutiny she has faced. As long as you push through the negative and focus on the people who are supportive, you and your brand will flourish.

The beauty industry is constantly evolving, as well as the marketing tactics that come along with it. It would be impossible to list out every powerful woman in the field, but the image below highlights some revolutionary women that should be noted.

— Leanna Serras is the in-house writer and perfume expert at FragranceX. She has extensive experience writing for a variety of subjects including fragrance, beauty, skincare and wellness. In her free time she enjoys taking on DIY projects and spending time with her pets.

• Posted 2.22.20 at 06:33 am by Roy Osing
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February 17, 2020

5 simple ways to keep your cool

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Everyone’s looking for ways to chill out these days in the face of increasing stress and chaotic unpredictable times.

“ Don’t worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing gonna be alright.”  — Bob Marley, is the mantra that underscores the importance of not taking stuff too seriously.

I’ve never really been a person who has been obsessed with elimination of stress.

As an ok boomer I believed that pressure and stress was just an expected part of doing my job and living my life. In any event, I had no choice to deal with it alone, because my employer didn’t offer the stress management programs offered by some organizations today.

But for those of you who want to reduce the level of stress in your lives here are a few simple things that took me to a more chilled place even though I wasn’t looking for it.

Breathe in the moment

The pause is the most important piece of the chill-out puzzle; and it’s the most difficult to do.
You have to resist the impulse to react to and strike back at the stimulus that has you poised to be uncool.

It’s really as simple as literally stepping back and taking a big deep back breath. The breath itself will force you to pause because you will automatically focus on the breath rather than the stimulus that is pressing your button.
Try it. You’ll be surprised how it will help.

Stop chasing cars

Look at whatever you call your to-do list. How long is it? If it’s more than 5 items, it’s way too long and you are entering stress-out city.

The irony is that no one is good enough at multitasking to do an effective job at many tasks simultaneously and something has to give.

When you multitask, the quality of any single task is low and the stress is high. Yup, you’re busy but the cost is out of proportion to the performance achieved.

Get control of your stress levels by purging your activity list of the tasks that have lower payback. Focus on the critical few things that MUST get done and not the 20 things that COULD be done.

Chasing the art of the possible only pumps up your stress levels.

No two tasks create the same value. Find the 2 or 3 that are amazing value creators and do them well.

Worry about what you can control

I get it. Today there are many variables that affect us; the issues are plentiful and complex.

Climate change, the environment, economic growth, gender identity, minority rights, carbon reduction, housing costs, education costs, career expectations, transportation costs and job availability are but a few of the factors that plummet the minds of young folks these days.
And no wonder the cumulative affect of these causes stress.

The question I have is: “What can you personally do about these issues?” — I can hear an “ok boomer” out there already: “Just because I can’t make a significant impact personally on climate change, you’re saying I shouldn’t be concerned about it, right Roy?”.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I AM saying is that if you are really serious about reducing your stress you absolutely MUST reduce the stressors in your life.
And for me, stressing over what I actually influence in the short term was an effective way of reducing my stress levels (btw, getting stressed out over an issue with a decade-long time horizon — or longer — may stroke your ego, but it extracts it’s stress toll on you TODAY with serious results).

I just think that too many people take on too many issues. It’s nice to see but it takes a personal toll which I believe is unnecessary.

And btw millennials and gen Z’ers: why do you think you’re the only generations who are faced with a confluence of difficult issues? NEWSFLASH! You’re not; those who came before you had their own as will those who will come after you — can I hear another “ok boomer”?

You have nothing to lose — but stress. Try and focus on stuff you can influence; invest your emotional time on those issues and let the rest go by having opinions but minimize your emotional investment in them.

Segue to my next point…

Leave your ego at the door

My takeaway from conversations with many millennials is that they feel obligated to dive into the controversial issues of the day; that it’s their mandate to try and fix things that have been screwed up by the “ok boomers”.

And so we get the Extinction Rebellion promulgating a doomsday narrative because past generations have mismanaged the environment so badly.

Notwithstanding that the need for climate change remediation is real, I really think these activists want to strike fear in the heart of people; this stirs their juices and feeds their egos.

How else can you explain shutting down traffic in major cities in the world because they say carbon emissions have to be reduced to zero in two years or there will an armageddon-like disaster?

Of course it’s a bogus claim that science doesn’t support so why are they making the claim? Must be because they feel good getting heard and the media attention soothes their “ok extremist” ego.

Ego feeds that stress cycle because it pumps the adrenaline and the body gets ready (fight or flight).

Maintain ego equilibrium and your stress will be assuaged.

Stay the course

Stay with your cool regimen. It will be almost impossible at times to hold back and do the healthy thing, but be confident that if you “stay with the program” you will survive the cool boot camp for the long term.

Stress isn’t a new concept; it’s not something that strikes any one demographic or societal group more than any other. The stressors may be different but that’s about it.

How to deal with stressors hasn’t changed much over time. The stuff that worked for the boomer crowd will work for millennials and Z’ers because cool remedies address human behaviour at the most fundamental level.

It’s about breath not technology; focus not multitasking; selection not chasing and honesty & respect not ego.

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

• Posted 2.17.20 at 03:08 am by Roy Osing
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February 10, 2020

3 proven ways to make an easy and affordable business plan

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3 proven ways to make an easy and affordable business plan.

If you can answer 3 questions, your business plan will beat all others.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t develop a strategy to guide them into an unpredictable future; they rationalize the current planning process to be too complicated, time consuming and expensive.

And they’re right.

Numerous people gather in a room for a strategic planning session. Subject matter experts descend of the group and try to impress everyone with their detailed knowledge of the many governing factors that need consideration in the strategy building process, and many days are consumed — in my experience wasted — to get the strategy perfect.

Normally the services of a third party firm are used to both facilitate the session and provide expert content to the plan direction and efficacy. This is a clever way of avoiding having the people responsible for the strategy’s success taking ownership of the direction taken by applying their own opinions and good judgement.

The planning team is presented with material, they ask questions about various aspects of it and in the end most of the time they agree with the results of the analysis and direction proposed.

But at the end of the day, the traditional planning process takes so much time and energy, there is insufficient time left to develop how the plan will be executed in the trenches by real people. And the planning team is left with a strategy that may make sense on paper, but can’t be executed effectively because there was insufficient time devoted to implementation.

Get insanely focused on execution

Given that eventually any strategy or plan must result in action, the best planning process is predicated on the premise: keep it simple, get to the gut issues quickly and ACT.

Minimize the strategy direction setting time; maximize the implementation action planning time.

Loosen up on strategy development; tighten up on execution.

The strategy-building process I developed was necessary because although the field of experts who could help me develop a theoretically pristine direction was wide and deep, the number who actually could help in plan execution was close to zero.

The process I developed was simple, fast and time efficient. And unlike its brethren, it used the knowledge and experience of the planning team members rather than going with a third party planning expert — added benefit was the team building that went on during the process.

My process — the strategic game plan — was based on discovering the answers to 3 questions; the answers defined the strategy.

Growth — HOW BIG do you want to be?

Most planning processes end with financial results. They calculate the growth results of executing the strategic direction chosen.
My process starts with your growth intentions, and builds the strategy from HOW BIG you want to be. The reason is simple: more aggressive growth goals require a more aggressive — and risky — strategy, and more moderate growth goals need a more incremental — and less risky — strategy.

The traditional planning approach forgets that there is an extremely tight relationship between revenue growth and strategic intent; my strategic game plan doesn’t and that’s what makes my approach DiFFERENT than others.

Customers — WHO do you want to SERVE?

You have a goal to grow revenue 25% annually over the next 36 months. The next question is where are you going to get it? Where are you going to invest your scarce resources of time and money.

It boils down to selecting a group of customers who collectively have the potential to generate the revenue you have decided to go after.
To get the right answer to this question requires an intimate understanding of the various customers you serve.

You can’t choose the customer group to generate the revenue you covet if you don’t understand the propensity of your various customer segments to buy from you — discover their secrets and success will follow.

Competitors — HOW will you compete and WIN?

It would be nice if you were the only provider of products and services to the customer group you’ve chosen, but that’s not likely to be the case. There is likely to be healthy aggressive competitors targeting the same customers you want to target, so the challenge you face is to determine how you will differentiate your organization from all others you will be competing with.

Why should people choose your organization when they have other choices available?

What makes your team special in view of the alternatives available?
HOW will you compete is intended to explore the competencies of your organization that you can exploit to gain competitive advantage, with emphasis on how you can be positioned in the customer group you’ve chosen as the ONLY one that does what you do.

By answering these 3 questions using the expertise of those in the room you will have your business plan quickly (less than 3 days) and inexpensively (a personalized experience for your team). And it will be owned by every person who has contributed to it which means execution will follow.

if you want your business plan to be easy and affordable, this is the way to do it.

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

• Posted 2.10.20 at 02:06 am by Roy Osing
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