April 18, 2022

The 5 most important decisions a leader must make

Source: Unsplash

The 5 most important decisions a leader must make.

As a leader, you do have a choice as to how you spend your decision-making time; there are numerous possibilities when it comes to which decisions to make yourself and those that you leave for others.

How do you determine the ‘my decision’ areas?

The criteria I used was payback. Where could I add the greatest value to the organization? 

It’s not about what you enjoy doing or where your strengths are; it’s about where others will realize the maximum benefit if you focus your decision-making time there.

You may be amazing at financial analysis and enjoy dabbling in numbers, but if marketing is a critical element of the organization’s strategic plan, for example, you need to leave financials to someone else and re-vector your decision making efforts.

Make the call on these strategic issues; they must be owned by the leader and no one else.

#1. The business plan

The strategic game plan for the organization.

Leadership value starts with deciding on the organization’s future.
And it should be created by the leader and not chosen from a number of options submitted by management.

What business you intend to be in and how you intend to differentiate yourself from your competition can only be decided by the leader who is directly accountable to ownership. It’s not something that can be delegated to business development folks.

#2. Values

The values that shape culture.

Values describe how employees behave with each other on the inside of the organization and externally with customers.

The leader must decide on the values critical to their strategic success and they must make the call on eliminating the traditional values that are no longer appropriate.

#3. The talent in the organization

The talent that gets recruited.

Strategy and values are the determinants of the people you recruit.
The leader must have their fingerprints on the people strategy. They must decide if it will do the job; it can’t be delegated to human resources.

The wrong people in critical roles will drive your strategy to fail. I used to participate in candidate interviews; a great way to monitor how your expectations are being met, as well as a great learning experience for the other managers in the room.

4. Architecting the customer ‘moment’

The customer moment architecture.

If the leader isn’t personally involved in defining what the customer transaction with the organization looks like, dysfunction results; everyone does their own thing and offers up their own version of serving the customer in an exemplary manner.

The truly great leaders don’t delegate the architecting of the customer moment; they own how customers are to be served.

The leader must decide what the moment looks like at the frontline level where customer perception is controlled. Leaders generally don’t like to engage at this level of detail, but this micromanaging is essential.

5. Aligning activities to strategy

Aligning activities to the strategic game plan of the organization.

This is where most things go wrong. The strategy says one thing but the people in the various functions behave in a manner inconsistent with the chosen direction.

The leader must decide on an alignment plan developed by every department in the organization; it’s the only way synergy is guaranteed.

Strategy, values, people, customers and organizational synergy. What could be more important to decide on for a leader?

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

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 4.18.22 at 04:11 am by Roy Osing
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April 4, 2022

How your great new idea can avoid becoming a loser

Source: Pexels

How your great new idea can avoid becoming a loser.

How many times have you heard someone say ‘right idea!’ when there is an execution blip that nullifies success and an otherwise brilliant notion bites the dust.

You hear it in kids’ sports all the time, particularly soccer, where an attempt to pass the ball to a mate is intercepted by an opposition player. The right intent was there but execution fell short of an awesome outcome. ‘Right idea’ is intended to support the right behavior and encourage the player to try it again and again until it works.

But it’s deflating. You can see they have a picture in their mind of what the result should be, but it’s shattered when it doesn’t play out the way it was envisioned.

The situation has a parallel in the startup world.

Startups have a ‘Right idea!’ when they develop their strategic game plan. It represents their solution to a common customer problem which should on paper be a raging success.

Right ideas are plentiful; new business ideas are constantly streaming from brilliant entrepreneurs. The thing is, the percentage of right ideas that make it through the successful implementation funnel are few and far between — as I’ve said before, roughly half of startups fail in the first 5 years.

The failure to execute on a great idea is beyond disappointing, it hurts.

In my experience people just don’t spend enough time determining exactly what has to be done to bring the new idea to life. The idea may be borne in an instant but more time is required on what to do with it to see it to a successful conclusion.

If you can’t implement, you’re done. It’s the end of your story.

These four essentials will increase the odds of your amazing idea crossing the finish line.

#1. Double down on implementation

Be prepared to dive deep on determining how to execute your idea and spend an overwhelming amount of time to figure out the details of making this sucker live.
Unfortunately the idea has no life on its own; it’s a figment of your imagination; a mere possibility. It needs to be transformed into something practical before it has any value.

The idea to prevent a driver of a vehicle from using their mobile device while driving is an easily understood solution to the distracted driving problem, but unless it can be delivered to the market it remains on the entrepreneur’s wish list.
The idea emerged 24 months ago in an insightful moment; implementation is 2+ years in and counting. It’s not a simple process and it’s certainly not easy.

Be overly disciplined in thinking about your implementation plan; the devil’s in the details so you want it to be as complete as possible, covering all possible actions that are necessary to get this puppy to market.

#2. Focus on a couple of really important things

Don’t try to boil the ocean; focus on a handful of actions that you believe will result in successfully seeing your idea come to fruition.
There are many actions you could take to implement your idea — usually a result of brainstorming — but the challenge is to define the few critical moves you should make.

You don’t have sufficient time or money to pursue numerous approaches at the same time; narrow them down to one or two that you believe are essential to moving the implementation yardsticks fast.

In business, one effective way of achieving this is to select one target market to attack rather than spraying your efforts across several potential ones.

Rather than focusing on a consumer segment, for example, which is complicated and often expensive to penetrate, target a specific business application which is more easily reached.

Or, go after a confined geographic area — a province or state —rather than a broader one like a country.

#3. Don’t chase cars

I talk a lot about ‘Yummy’, but it’s worth repeating here because I see too many startups held back due to their meandering. Stay focused; resist the temptation to stray from your action plan when new possibilities descend on you.

It’s all very well to be open to new avenues to explore but it can end up with you chasing anything that comes along. Chasing makes you busy, but is unlikely to achieve the results you want.

Every entrepreneur faces this issue. They no sooner lock their launch plan down and a new possibility comes over-the-transom and hits them — an application, a partner, a technology change.

Yummy might satisfy your immediate hunger but it won’t quell your appetite.

Yes, this Yummy incoming should be considered and examined thoughtfully, but not chased. Thoughtful consideration of these new possibilities must be given and should have overwhelming benefits before you decide to give up your initial execution plan.

#4. Change on the fly

Make changes on the run in the face of setbacks that question your idea.

It is a rare event when your original implementation plan plays out the way you had intended — not because of Yummy, but due to your planned actions not achieving the results you expected and because of unpredicted events — like COVID, sales channel failure, pricing problems, revenue shortfall — that slam you.

Be in touch with how implementation is progressing and be alert to any deviations from your game plan that require you to modify your direction.

Make the required tweaks and keep going.

Having a brilliant idea is a great place to start, but unless you put on your execution hat, it will never see the light of day.

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

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 4.4.22 at 05:56 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

March 27, 2022

Is my new book really audacious in this reader’s view?

Review of ‘Be Different or Be Dead

‘The Audacious Unheard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES’ by Roy Osing, Morgan James Publishing, New York, New York, 2022.

Full disclosure, I am a retired TELUS team member who, from time to time, reported through to the author, Roy Osing.

First off, I can tell you this book describes the actual field-tested and unique approaches that Roy and his team successfully employed. I witnessed many of these methods deployed.

They all were absolute game-changers.

Secondly, this is the ‘how-to book’ you need to create an exceptional business and have an exceptional career. I once read the 2013 book “The Three Rules – How Exceptional Companies Think” by Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed.

That book reported results from a massive analysis across all industries of over 50 years of company performances exactly WHAT decision approaches (rules) make a company exceptionally profitable.

Roy’s book answers the next logical question, HOW do you implement this? Both books advocate the same approach, but Roy packs his book with hundreds of implementation recommendations.

‘The Audacious Unheard-of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES’ is the latest in a series of seven ‘Be Different or Be Dead’ books.
It pulls together Roy’s valuable advice on how to propel an enterprise to be more than resilien; to stand out, despite super fast-changing business environments (such as COVID recently provided).

‘Audacious Ways’ provides unique and innovative approaches to strategic planning, marketing, sales, and customer service. This book is perfect for individuals starting a career, team leaders, or entrepreneurs running any enterprise.

The book contains six sections that permit easy revisiting the task at hand. Each section contains twelve to fifteen whole chapters devoted to detailed implementation approaches supported with clear rationale. Here are the six sections and a quotation as a taste of the content.

Leadership — How leaders can get results in today’s environment…
“It’s not that those textbooks on leadership are wrong, it’s just that they’re not good enough to make a standout leader.”

Careers — How you can have a fantastic career and make lots of money…
“In school, you do well when you follow rules and fit in; in business, you succeed when you’re different from everyone else.”

Business Success — How to make your business wildly successful…
“Long-lasting advantage comes from being the ONLY ones that do what you do.”

Marketing — How to make your marketing powerful and not boring…
“Brilliant marketing is delivering what people CRAVE in a way that is DIFFERENT than anyone else.”

Sales — How the sales team can deliver unbelievably significant revenues…
“The role of sales must change from the flogger of products and services to the ‘gatherer of friends.’”

Customer Service — How to create breathtaking and memorable customer service…
“You service cars: you SERVE people – dazzle ‘em and take their breath away.”

Descriptors from this book to describe the ideas, the approaches, the results are:

Simple. Inspire. Be Contrary. Explain. Stay Humble. Be Loving. Logical. Brave. Face Reality. Helpful. ONLY. Innovate. Empower. Listen. Build a Team. Hire People Lovers. Befriend Clients. Be Proactive. Shed Crap. Kill Dumb Rules. Forget Perfection. Recover Fast. Lead by Example. Hands-on. Learn Customer Secrets. Trust. Amaze. Have fun. Challenging. Practical. Proven. Long-term.

You will find this book gets you on the right path and prepares you for the real world, and with so many successful implementations to choose from, you will return to this book again and again.

Well worth reading, but please don’t stop there. Start implementing this book tomorrow.

— Cam Anderson is a Retired Web Operations Manager at TELUS Digital and Founder of FutureLegacies.ca and MyArtClub.Com

The ebook—‘e-Audacious’— was published Feb 1, 2022 and the print version will be available May 31, 2022 with the audio version later.