Be Different or be dead

February 4, 2013

How people can be better at getting things done

How people can be better at getting things done.

Bre Pettis understands that success is all about shipping stuff.

Getting it done. Executing rather than over-intellectualizing.

Doing it rather than talking about it. Producing not pondering.

Here is his Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion;

2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done;

3. There is no editing stage;

4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it;

5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it;

6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done;

7. Once you’re done you can throw it away;

8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done;

9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right;

10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes;

11. Destruction is a variant of done;

12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done;

13. Done is the engine of more.

I’m done…

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

• Posted 2.4.13 at 10:22 am by Roy Osing
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January 12, 2013

Why the ONLY statement must be about what really matters to people

Source: Unsplash

Why the ONLY statement must be about what really matters to people.

“We are the ONLY ones that .... “ is the claim that will distinguish your organization from everyone else.

It’s not about being better, best, number 1, leading or the top at anything.

It’s about being the ONLY one that does what you do>.

But your ONLY must be relevant (it must address something people care about) and it must be true (you must deliver it consistently, all day, every day)

A local radio station in Vancouver proudly states the following as their ONLY statement.

“CKWX is the ONLY radio station offering traffic and weather every 10 minutes on the 1’s.”

Interpretation: every 10 minutes they update their listeners on local traffic and weather conditions, and they claim that they are the only station that does it.

Let’s test it. Is it true? Yes it is. They deliver updates every 10 minutes as they claim.

Is it relevant? This is where I have an issue. Another radio station in the area provides continuous traffic and weather information. AM730 only provides traffic and weather. They do nothing else.

Why claim uniqueness on something that is clearly inferior to what someone else does?

People who care about getting traffic updates, for example, when they need it wouldn’t value waiting every 10 minutes to get it on CKWX when they can tune in to AM730 and get it instantly.

Make sure your ONLY talks to a capability that you have, a product or service you deliver that really matters to people.

Getting a traffic update every 10 minutes when I can get updates all the time clearly is inferior and lacks the relevance criteria of being a good ONLY.

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

• Posted 1.12.13 at 10:32 am by Roy Osing
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January 7, 2013

5 simple ways to make your organization awesome for customers

Source: Pexels

5 simple ways to make your organization awesome for customers.

Organizations are challenged to define what makes them special in the marketplace; to provide a compelling reason why people should buy from them and only them

Here are 5 ways you can find your way to uniqueness that your customers will honour.

◾️Declare and live the screaming imperative to stand-out NOT fit-in. Common, copycat, follower organizations are invisible to consumers and are ignored. They are dying or dead.

◾️Success starts and ends with your fans. The people who care about what you do, talk to others about you and are forever loyal to you. Never forsake them.
Always give them the best deals.

Don’t insult them by offering only non-customers special incentives to switch to you from their current supplier.
Trust that if you invest your resources in them, they will spend more with you and enable your organization to grow.

◾️Create value, don’t flog products. Seek to inspire your fans. Do whatever you can to leave ‘em feeling breathless, happy, honored, amazed, surprised and delighted.

It’s not about your product and the gee-wiz things it can do. It’s about the feelings it arouses when it is consumed in your organizational context.
PS. if you think you can survive in the long run by offering low prices, you’re so wrong!

◾️Be relevant to your customers. Know what their burning issues are. Play to them. If the value you offer doesn’t address their top wants and desires, who will care about you? Right. No one.

◾️Be unique. BE the ONLY one that does what you do. Create the ONLY Statement for your organization.

“We are The ONLY ones that….” is the only meaningful ultimate expression of distinctiveness

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

• Posted 1.7.13 at 09:06 am by Roy Osing
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December 31, 2012

What is the best way to measure the quality of your service?

Source: Pexels

What gets measured gets done. And it’s exceedingly important to measure how well you are serving your loyal customers.

Decide what metric you need to monitor your progress to your goals. Measure regularly. Take action on what you learn from measuring your results.

And never be put off by the argument that you can’t measure what you want to — anything can be measured.

I have seen some measurement systems rely on a formula to derive the service result; it’s not a good idea. I have rarely seen this approach work.

A service objective like X (overall customer satisfaction) = 2Y (where Y could represent how long it takes for a call center rep to answer an incoming call) + 9Z (where Z could represent how long the rep was on the customer call to deal with their request) won’t motivate people to achieve X.

They won’t understand it — how do they know the formula is right? — and won’t have much control over producing the result.

You don’t need a complicated algorithm to drive measurement.

Keep measurement simple. It needn’t require heavy lifting systems technology and records processing. In fact the simpler the better.

Use customer perception surveys as the basis to measure the quality of your customer service.

Declare 3 service elements that are critical to you and ask a customer on a regular basis how you’re doing.

Ask them if their service experience with you was memorable — were they dazzled?

And act on what they say.

Some organizations use internal statistics as the basis of service measurement. For example, the length of time to fulfil an order as determined by the statistics produced by their internal systems.

Although this measure has value, the real question to ask is “How did the customer enjoy the experience of placing their order and receiving the product?”
The order fulfilment time may very well be a good diagnostic tool for unsatisfactory answers to the question.

Be cautious of relying on internal measures as your measurement focus.

Use the customer perception measure — an expression from the market is worth listening to.

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

• Posted 12.31.12 at 10:23 am by Roy Osing
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