Roy's Blog: Audacious Moves
January 26, 2005
UNINSPIRED. NEEDS. MAKEOVER.
đ Audacious Move⢠of the Week
UNINSPIRED. NEEDS. MAKEOVER.
How The Roy Makeover⢠turns an uninspired workplace into a distinctive organization that excites employees and dazzles customers.
Thereâs a moment when the same old same old just doesnât excite us anymore.
Nothing is necessarily WRONG.
Nothing is necessarily BROKEN.
Weâre simply UNINSPIRED.
Same thinking. Same routines. Same experiences.
Thereâs an INSPIRATION VOID.
And THATâS when itâs time for a MAKEOVER.
Not to polish the ordinary.
BUT TO CREATE SOMETHING UNIQUE THAT EXCITES OTHER PEOPLE.
Something that makes them say:
âWOW! Iâve never experienced THAT before!â
So why donât we think about business the same way?
ENTER THE ROY MAKEOVERâ˘.
Challenge conventional thinking.
Attack the sacred cows. â 1819
Inject some audacity.
Create something DISTINCTIVE that gets people excited.
Letâs give workplace harmony The Roy Makeoverâ˘. â 1379
Because I donât want a workplace where everyone simply gets along.
I WANT ONE THAT GIVES PEOPLE GOOSEBUMPS.
Hereâs how.
đŻ 1. GIVE EVERYONE A LINE OF SIGHTâ˘.
People canât get excited about a destination they canât see.
Create your Strategic Game Planâ˘. â 1040
Make it audacious.
Then connect EVERY job to achieving it. â 1574
NO LINE OF SIGHT. NO FIRE IN THE BELLY.
â¤ď¸ 2. MAKE VALUES COME ALIVE.
Forget the posters.
Values arenât decoration.
Theyâre BEHAVIOUR.
Put customers first.
Challenge conventional thinking.
Help others WIN.
LIVE THEM. REWARD THEM. DEFEND THEM.
đ 3. LEAD BY SERVING AROUNDâ˘.
Stop commanding.
Start asking, âHow can I help?â â 1641
Kill Dumb Rulesâ˘.
Cut The CRAPâ˘.
Remove the obstacles preventing people from delivering something extraordinary.
GIVE PEOPLE THE FREEDOM TO DAZZLE.
đ¤ 4. REWARD PEOPLE WHO MAKE OTHERS SHINE.
Stop preaching teamwork while rewarding individual heroes.
Make collaboration a performance expectation. â 1629
Celebrate people who break down silos, solve customer problems and help colleagues WIN.
REWARD PEOPLE FOR PULLING TOGETHER.
đ 5. WALK IN SOMEONE ELSEâS SHOES.
Put marketing into sales.
Get operations talking to customers.
Get executives onto the front line. â 1558
Let people experience the challenges others face.
DESTROY THE SILOS. UNLEASH THE TEAM.
đĽ THE ROY MAKEOVER⢠TRUTH.
A united workplace isnât one where everyone agrees.
Itâs one where everyone is INSPIRED by the same destination.
Where people challenge one another.
Support one another.
And execute TOGETHER.
DIFFERENT OPINIONS. ONE DIRECTION.
But hereâs the ultimate test.
Are your people creating something UNIQUE?
Something customers CRAVE? â 1826
Something that gets other people genuinely EXCITED?
If not, youâve got an inspiration void.
GIVE IT THE ROY MAKEOVERâ˘.
Weâre not decorating the herd.
WEâRE ESCAPING IT.
đ Want more Audacious Movesâ˘?
đď¸ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION⢠for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.
âđť Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.
Extraordinary businesses arenât built by ordinary decisions.
Theyâre built one Audacious Move⢠at a time.
Now go make yours.
Cheers,
Roy
- Posted 1.26.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
- Permalink
January 25, 2005
LOYALTY. IS. EARNED.
đ Audacious Move⢠of the Week
LOYALTY. IS. EARNED.
Customer loyalty isnât created by points, programs or clever promotions. Itâs earned by how an organization treats the customers it already hasâevery damn day.
Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.
I hope it helps you create yours.
Stop trying to buy customer loyalty. EARN it.
Most organizations are obsessed with getting new customers.
More leads. More prospects. More acquisition campaigns.
Meanwhile, the people who already chose them are treated like yesterdayâs news.
Thatâs nuts.
Your existing customers have already done the difficult thing.
They chose you.
Now give them compelling reasons to keep choosing you.
Loyalty isnât something you own.
Itâs something you earn every damn day.
⥠7 Ways to Make Loyalty Happen
Hereâs how I did it.
đŻ #1 â Nail the basics.
Before you try to DAZZLE people, make damn sure your basic product or service works.
Every time.
Customers donât care about your fancy loyalty program if your core service is unreliable.
Deliver what you promised.
Reliability isnât sexy. But without it, everything else is lipstick.
𤊠#2 â Create Dazzling Momentsâ˘.
Good service isnât enough.
Create experiences people donât expect.
Something that makes them think:
âWOW! I didnât expect THAT.â
Thatâs a Dazzling Momentâ˘.
It doesnât have to be expensive.
It has to be personal, relevant and unexpected.
Thatâs what people rememberâand talk about.
đ #3 â Turn OOPS! into loyalty.
Things will go wrong.
Guaranteed.
What matters is what you do after you screw up.
Thatâs OOPS! Service Recovery.
Own it.
Apologize.
Fix it FAST.
Then do something unexpected to recover the customerâs trust.
Donât defend the mistake.
Recover the relationship.
â¤ď¸ #4 â Hire Human Being Lovers.
Stop hiring people simply because they have the right rĂŠsumĂŠ.
Hire people who love serving other human beings.
You can teach systems, processes and product knowledge.
Itâs a hell of a lot harder to teach someone to care.
People who got a charge out of helping someone.
Customers can FEEL the difference.
đ #5 â Build a Say YES!⢠culture.
Most organizations have accumulated rules designed to protect themselves.
And customers pay the price.
Build an Organizational Instinct⢠to solve customer problems rather than defend organizational policies.
Give your people permission to Say YES!â˘.
Start Killing Dumb Rules⢠that prevent them from doing it.
Customers shouldnât have to fight your organization to do business with you.
đ #6 â Lead by Serving Aroundâ˘.
Get out of the office.
Talk to the people actually serving customers.
Ask them:
Then remove the barriers preventing them from executing your Strategic Game Planâ˘.
Serve the people who serve the customer.
Thatâs leadership.
đ #7 â Reward loyalty BEFORE acquisition.
This one drives me crazy.
A company advertises a spectacular deal.
An existing customer wants it.
âSorry. New customers only.â
Really?
Youâll give a stranger a better deal than someone who has been paying you for years?
Backwards.
Give your loyal customers first shot at your best deals.
Make them feel special.
Because they ARE.
đĽ The takeaway.
Customer loyalty isnât a marketing program.
Itâs the consequence of how you behave.
Do the basics brilliantly. Surprise people. Recover when you screw up. Hire people who care. Say YES!â˘. Serve your people. Reward loyalty.
Give customers reasons to WANT to stay.
Stop chasing loyalty.
Start behaving in ways that deserve it.
đ Want more Audacious Movesâ˘?
đď¸ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION⢠for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.
âđť Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.
Extraordinary businesses arenât built by ordinary decisions.
Theyâre built one Audacious Move⢠at a time.
Now go make yours.
Cheers,
Roy
- Posted 1.25.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
- Permalink
January 24, 2005
STRATEGY. MUST. TRAVEL.
đ Audacious Move⢠of the Week
STRATEGY. MUST. TRAVEL.
A successful business strategy must be simple enough for employees to understand, remember and use every day to make decisions that drive growth and competitive advantage.
Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.
I hope it helps you create yours.
𧳠Most strategies donât travel
Most organizations have a strategy.
Few have one that can travel.
It sits in a deck.
Lives in a planning document.
Gets hauled out at the annual retreat.
And depends on a handful of executives to explain what it actually means.
Thatâs not a strategy that travels.
If your strategy canât move through your organization without you constantly interpreting it, you have a problem.
I learned this building a startup to more than $1 BILLION in annual sales.
Strategy has to leave the executive suite and get into the hands of the people doing the work.
đŻ Give people four answers
People need to know four things:
HOW BIG?
What is our 24 month revenue goal?
WHO to SERVE?
Which Customer Groups have the potential to get us there?
WHAT do they CRAVE?
What do those chosen customers care deeply about and desire?
HOW will we COMPETE and WIN?
What will make us The ONLY One⢠who delivers what they crave?
Thatâs the Strategic Game Planâ˘.
Simple enough to understand.
Specific enough to guide action.
đĽ Creating it isnât the Audacious Move
Making it travel is.
Baking it into the way the organization operates.
Hiring decisions.
Investment decisions.
Customer decisions.
Service decisions.
Priority decisions.
People should be able to look at an opportunity and ask:
Does this help us achieve HOW BIG?
Does it serve our WHO?
Does it deliver what they CRAVE?
Does it strengthen what makes us The ONLY One�
If the answer is NO, why are we doing it?
Thatâs when strategy stops being something leadership talks about and becomes something people actually use.
đ Give everyone Line of Sightâ˘
When strategy travels, something powerful happens.
Your people no longer need you standing beside them telling them what to do.
The strategy tells them.
It creates Line of Sight⢠between where the organization is going and what people do every day.
People can make decisions.
Set priorities.
Say NO to things that donât fit.
And act without waiting for someone higher up the organization to tell them what to do.
Thatâs when strategy becomes an operating discipline rather than an annual planning exercise.
âď¸ Can your strategy travel?
Hereâs my test.
Can someone three levels away from the CEO explain your strategy?
Can they use it to choose between competing priorities?
Can they act on it when leadership isnât in the room?
If not, simplify it until they can.
Because the purpose of strategy isnât to demonstrate how smart the people who created it are.
Itâs to help everyone else make smarter choices.
Build a strategy that can travel without you.
đ Want more Audacious Movesâ˘?
đď¸ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION⢠for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.
âđť Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.
Extraordinary businesses arenât built by ordinary decisions.
Theyâre built one Audacious Move⢠at a time.
Now go make yours.
Cheers,
Roy
- Posted 1.24.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
- Permalink
January 23, 2005
Stop Looking for a Blue Ocean. Learn to Win in a Red One.
đ Audacious Move⢠of the Week
Stop Looking for a Blue Ocean. Learn to Win in a Red One.
Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.
I hope it helps you create yours.
đ Blue Ocean Strategy got one thing right
Chan Kim and RenĂŠe Mauborgne gave us a powerful metaphor in Blue Ocean Strategy.
Existing markets are Red Oceansâbloody because competitors fight for the same demand.
Their answer?
Create a Blue Ocean.
Create uncontested market space. Create new demand. Make competition irrelevant.
Itâs compelling.
But most businesses still compete in the Red Ocean.
Price pressure. Copycats. Endless alternatives. Competitors trying to steal your customers.
Telling businesses how to escape the Red Ocean is one thing.
Teaching them how to win in it is another.
I spent my career competing in bloody markets.
I didnât have the luxury of making competition irrelevant.
I had to make us relevant when competition was everywhere.
đŻ Stop trying to be better
âBetterâ isnât a strategy.
Neither is âbest.â
Trying to outperform competitors incrementally keeps you playing their gameâthe Herd of Samenessâ˘.
Become The ONLY One⢠who delivers what your chosen customers crave in a way nobody else does.
Give customers a reason to choose you for what ONLY you do.
⥠Be Imperfect FASTâ˘
Organizations waste time polishing plans while competitors move.
Execute. Learn. Adjust.
Get your strategy just about right and execute the hell out of it.
A brilliant strategy trapped in a conference room never won anything.
â¤ď¸ Chase CRAVINGS, not needs
Needs qualify you to play.
Cravings give people a reason to choose you.
Discover what your WHO desperately wants, values and repeatedly rewards.
Build your business around delivering it.
𧚠Cleanse the Inside
Bureaucracy kills differentiation.
Dumb Rules. Complicated processes. Too many approvals and touch points.
Reduce friction. Simplify. Make it easier for people to deliver what customers crave.
đ Put decision-making where the customer is
Give employees a clear Strategic Game Plan⢠and the authority to act.
Build an Organizational Instinct⢠to solve customer problems rather than defend policies.
⨠Dazzle them
Deliver your core service brilliantly.
Create unexpected Dazzling Momentsâ˘.
And when you screw up, use OOPS! Service Recovery to surprise customers with how you recover.
đ Give them reasons to stay
Create Barriers to Customer Exit⢠based on accumulated value, relationships and experiences customers donât want to lose.
Retention isnât defensive.
Itâs a competitive weapon.
If you can create a Blue Ocean, go for it.
But donât build your strategy around competition disappearing.
Build an organization capable of winning when competition is everywhere.
Differentiate relentlessly. Discover what people CRAVE. Be Imperfect FASTâ˘. Simplify. Empower. Dazzle. Retain.
Most businesses donât need a strategy for a world without competitors.
They need a strategy for beating the competition they face today.
You donât have to escape the Red Ocean.
You have to learn how to win in it.
đ Want more Audacious Movesâ˘?
đď¸ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION⢠for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.
âđť Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.
Extraordinary businesses arenât built by ordinary decisions.
Theyâre built one Audacious Move⢠at a time.
Now go make yours.
Cheers,
Roy
- Posted 1.23.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
- Permalink
