Be Different or be dead

July 16, 2015

5 proven reasons copying sucks creativity from an organization

Source: Pexels

5 proven reasons copying sucks creativity from an organization.

Benchmarking is viewed as a necessary process for most organizations. There are benchmarking consultant experts and courses you can take to learn how to benchmark proficiently and gain the maximum benefit.

In my view, benchmarking is a simple concept as is its process:

▪️Identify the organization that excels in some aspect of your operations that you believe requires improvement — customer service, business planning, customer engagement, sales management, accounts receivable, advertising planning and so on;

▪️Map (understand deeply) their system or process to understand exactly how they perform the operation;

▪️Define the actions you must take to incorporate their operating system into your operation with the objective of replicating their level of efficiency.

Benchmarking might help you improve your operations efficiency but it won’t make you stand-out from your competition.

Benchmarking doesn’t work for these reasons:

1. Benchmarking is copying

It’s ‘sucking up’ to an organization or individual recognized (by someone presumed to be the thought leader) to be the best at performing a particular function and is therefore the organization you should aspire to be.

It doesn’t make you special. It may help you improve your position in the crowd of hungry competitors by being more efficient at something, but it won’t help you stand out from them by being more relevant or unique.

Copying is the enemy of being different. The maximum benefit you can achieve by copying is best in class levels of performance which may return better operating results than previously obtained but unless you vault beyond these levels true differentiation won’t happen.

2. Benchmarking keeps you in the herd

The herd is a place where organizations go to blend in with others; to conform with what others do and to lose the DNA attributes that make them special.

Even if you are the ‘best of breed’ you’re still in the herd. It’s just that you execute a process better than any other herd member; you’re still rubbing shoulders with your sameness brethren.

And because you’re tagged ‘the best’, you have no motivation to break away from the herd; you find consolation in it.

The world is becoming a home for best practice addicts and as a result it’s boring and benign.

3. Benchmarking robs you of your individuality

Benchmarking results in conformance; it sucks any unique thinking you may have out of your system and replaces it with the need to capitulate to the leader of the herd.

Rather than look for a unique solution to your problem, you look for another herd member that has put in the work to create a solution that works for them and you assume you can boilerplate it and it will work for you.

When you copy someone or something, you relegate — subordinate — yourself to them. You roll over, put your ‘paws in the air’ and subsume yourself to the leadership of someone else. Looking up when you’re lying on the ground isn’t a very liberating place to be.

4. Benchmarking won’t make you special and differentiate you from your competitors

It has no strategic value in moving the organization to a position in the marketplace that ONLY you occupy.

“What are our competitors doing?” is often asked when organizations are thinking about improving how they conduct business, and the benchmarking process ensues — adding zero space between them and their competitors.

And, of course, if you’re chasing another organization, you’re adding nothing to the kitbag of things that make you ‘special’ in the eyes of your customers and encouraging them to spread your word to others and attract new business.

If you copy someone, all you do is lower the bar.

5. Benchmarking is the enemy of innovation

If you’re a copycat, you’re not an innovator. Benchmarking does little or nothing to stimulate innovation and creativity which seem to be values organizations covet in today’s world of uncertainty and constant change.

In fact benchmarking kills real innovation because it has performance improvement using the standard of another as its end game as opposed to revolutionary changes that determine new strategic outcomes.

We need to get our thinking straight.

Few organizations today stand out, which is sad; few are deemed to be really special by their customers.
Being remarkable isn’t a strategy on the radar of most, or if it is, it’s an elusive goal because leaders allow people to use traditional tools — like benchmarking best of class — to do their jobs.

Uniqueness, remarkability and being special come from being different than your competitors, not copying what they and others do, even if they perform certain functions more efficiently than you do.

We need to change our ways and stick copying where it belongs.

Let’s:
— Start thinking about being different than best in class, not copying best of breed;
— Covet being ‘different than breed’, not best of breed;
— Think about doing what others are not doing, not looking to other’s successes;
— Go in the opposite direction that others are going, not following in their footsteps.
— Define best in class to be the highest bar to be different from, not emulate;
— Purge boilerplates from our toolbox and break new ground (and maybe be the author of a new boilerplate).

Copying is the enemy of being special and remarkable.

And as leaders, let’s change the conversation in our organizations; purging the notion of benchmarking and copying as ways of achieving strategic progress by asking these types of questions of our teams:

▪️”What can we do to be different from the crowd of competitors?”;
▪️“How does what you’re proposing make us stand out from the competition and be special to our customers?”.
▪️“What crazy ‘insane’ thing is a different business to ours doing and how can we use the basics of the idea to morph it into a special idea for us?”

Benchmarking is absolutely the wrong thing to do when the end game for most organizations seems to be uniqueness and remarkability, but there are ways to ‘bend the curve’ and go in the right direction.

Start the change now, though, because time is not your friend.

Cheers
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 7.16.15 at 05:39 am by Roy Osing
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July 13, 2015

3 simple ways that great leaders develop successful people

Winners aren’t born, they are created by a leader in their lives.

Someone who creates an environment where others are able to grow and have the opportunity to do great things. It could be a parent, grandparent, friend, teacher, mentor or a boss.

In fact it is normally a combination of “all of the above” where an individual is influenced by a number of other people in different ways.

But regardless of the origin of the influencing leader, they all share three common traits.

Emotion

The leader approaches relationships on an emotional level first; intellectually second. Their actions come from caring as opposed to any other motive. Productivity gains are important, but winners don’t come from influence aimed at enhancing output. The ulterior motive is to help another person, not to use them.

Safety net

The leader provides a safety net for risk taking and experimentation. They encourage trying new ideas without fear of
punishment. They believe that the more tries you make the more success you achieve.

Imperfection

The leader encourages imperfection. They don’t expect perfection. They know it doesn’t exist. Is more concerned with getting stuff done and honing it along the way.

They care.

They commit to others.

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

• Posted 7.13.15 at 05:09 am by Roy Osing
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July 6, 2015

Why people thank you when you’ve really screwed them over

Source: Pexels

How to screw people over and have them thank you for the experience.

You’ve just screwed over one of your customers.

You missed the delivery time you promised.

The product you sold them doesn’t work the way it should.

Whatever happened, you blew it.

What do you do?

This simple recovery process will actually turn an angry customer into a more loyal one who is prepared to spread your word to others more than if the service mishap never happened.

1. Apologize

Take responsibility for what happened and apologize regardless of whether you’re at fault in your mind or not. Failure to do this step and you can forget about the rest of the process.

2. Fix it fast

Fix the screw-up fast. This is critical. A leisurely response will kill you. Whatever the problem, bring all of your resources to bear to get it done (and make sure the customer knows you are doing it).

3. Surprise your victim

Do the unexpected. This is the key step. Everyone expects you to fix your screw up, but generally what they don’t expect is a little something extra to “atone for your sins”. Going the extra mile.

Doing something special that the customer isn’t looking for. But make it personal because if you merely throw your ‘trash and trinkets’ at them it will be perceived as cheap and in-genuine.

Find out something personal about the customer and play to that. If she loves going to the movies go there. If he is a cabernet sauvignon nut go there.

The critical thing is that the customer feels like you have gone out of your way to make them feel special after the way you have treated them.

If you commit to taking these 3 actions, they’ll say “Thanks so much for pissing me off. I really enjoyed it.”

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

• Posted 7.6.15 at 04:33 am by Roy Osing
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June 8, 2015

Why playful organizations actually have a competitive advantage

Source: Unsplash

Why do organizations that ‘play’ have a competitive advantage?

Most organizations search for ways to differentiate themselves from their competition at a very high level: operational excellence, technology and products. Some actually believe price is a differentiator but I won’t spend nanosecond on the subject.

There is one dimension that rarely gets included in the conversation - playfulness.

It seems that organizations that are playful and have fun seem to do well against their ‘tight’ competitors.

Playful businesses allow their employees to express themselves as individuals; to talk to their customers in an informal way as opposed to following a script crafted by someone in a staff group somewhere in head office.

They expose the office fun to their customers. The banter that goes on among employees ‘when no one is watching’ is presented to their customers with no hesitation.

On Westjet all of the flight attendants are introduced, and ‘the lovely Marsha’ in the mid-cabin section always gets a deserved round of applause.

Employees of playful organizations step out of their formal role and do something unexpected of them.

I recall the pilot of a Westjet flight introducing himself to the passengers before stepping into the cockpit and giving us the details of the upcoming flight in person as well as their plan to introduce new streaming video technology to replace the traditional way of viewing movies.

He said he liked to do things differently than others.

Very unexpected and memorable. I have never seen any pilot from any other airline do this (and I don’t expect I ever will).

Playful organizations inject humour in carrying out their official tasks. Ever hear a Westjet flight boss give pre-flight safety instructions? Their speech covers the required details but it is laced with a casual humour that makes the process of seeing once again how to fasten a seat belt more interesting and enjoyable.

Playful organizations seem more human than others, and are rewarded with customers who care about them and stay with them through thick and thin.

Sounds like a #CompetitiveAdvantage to me…

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

• Posted 6.8.15 at 04:10 am by Roy Osing
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