Be Different or be dead

August 7, 2021

Why forecasting is for businesses that really can’t live in the moment

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Why forecasting is for businesses that really can’t live in the moment.

Forecasting has long been standard practice for businesses across all industries and sectors.
Every business-related publication, including the likes of well-respected blogs like Harvard Business Review, has dedicated thousands of words to explaining exactly why proper forecasting is necessary—and indeed crucial—to the financial and operational success of your company.

Traditional business strategies claim to provide us with the ideal tools and methodologies to build the perfect, airtight plan. They offer us analysis in demand and forecasting models, structured SWOT analysis, decision-making frameworks, and a host of other seemingly essential approaches.

I agree that these are mature and logical strategies that can assist businesses to chart their future paths. But unfortunately, that’s as far as my support for forecasting reaches.
Even Harvard Business Review has admitted in one of its effective forecasting guides that prediction is only possible in a world in which actions have been preordained.

This world-leading business publication states outright that no amount of present action can influence future outcomes, as the future unfolds in significant and usually quite unexpected ways. The occurrence of the Covid-19 pandemic is a perfect example.

Considering this, I believe that while forecasting can be a mildly helpful tool in charting future courses for growing businesses, it’s definitely not a useful approach for predicting or adapting to the future.

In short, forecasting is for businesses that can’t live in the moment, and instead spend their team fruitlessly attempting to predict the future. All while forsaking current opportunities and advantages in their paths.

Here’s why.

Reaction to the unexpected is an ideal business plan

According to Roy Osing, the traditional approach to forecasting doesn’t touch on the principle of responding to the unexpected —and that doesn’t work to your advantage.
Successful companies are those who can adapt rapidly to surprise events they weren’t anticipating at all. Companies that die are the ones that fail to adapt, regardless of how proficient they were at drafting forecasts.
Chances are you’ve never seen a plan unfold in exactly the way you expected it to. This simply isn’t possible, nor is it realistic. Instead of forecasting, try Osing’s planning on the run model — Plan, Execute, Learn, Respond, Execute — with the present instead of banking on an uncertain future.

Quick reactions trump planned reactions

The world of business is fluid, imperfect, and ever-changing. It can’t be predicted or even explained by trend analyzes, which is why even your best-made plans will hardly ever work.

Businesses that are always trying to live in the future instead of in the moment will simply never be able to keep up.

The ability to react quickly and proactively to change will fare better for your business than trying to make the ‘perfect’ moves based on shaky forecasts. As long as you’re making many imperfect moves at a rapid pace, you’re setting yourself up for growth. Or at least progress in a positive direction.

Failure is a valuable teacher — and forecasting can’t prevent it anyway

Let’s face it. Businesses research the future and constantly create forecasts in a desperate bid to evade the risk of failure. It’s completely understandable that every entrepreneur wants to achieve success. But at the same time, success only encourages you to stay within your current boundaries and parameters.

If you’re achieving success in the present, you may feel the temptation to rest on your laurels. You may assume that you can achieve the same level of success in the future by doing exactly the same thing.

In most cases, nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that no amount of forecasting can prevent failure, so it seems fruitless to avoid it.

Forecasting is prone to all sorts of corrupting influences anyway, including bad data, excessive optimism, and a general lack of transparency.
Failure forces you out of your comfort zone and prompts you to devise innovative and often unexpected solutions to challenges and crises.

I’m sure you can imagine which scenario promotes faster, more sustainable growth in the long run. Live in the moment, try your best to adapt to current challenges, and remain willing to learn from your failures at all times.

Accept uncertainty and live in the present

So, what’s a business to do in the face of uncertainty if they have no control over predicting the future?

According to Forbes the only way forward is to be better prepared for disasters and unexpected developments. Statistical modeling can give you a general idea of what to expect in the coming weeks and months. But don’t get carried away. It really is just a general idea and nothing more.

Businesses are better off accepting that the world is uncertain, learning how to use data to assess the current levels of uncertainty they face, and augmenting this uncertainty range. This can be done using innovative and time-appropriate solutions.

The rest, as they say, is up to fate.

— Addisson Shaw is a passionate writer with a background in data science. Her writing focuses on the wonders of technology in marketing and business management. During her free time, Addisson loves exploring the outdoors and enjoys going on hikes with her friends.

• Posted 8.7.21 at 06:51 am by Roy Osing
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June 28, 2021

Why customer loyalty is not determined by what the organization sells

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Why customer loyalty is not determined by what the organization sells.

Why do people buy from one organization over and over again?

Is it because they:
▪️‘love’ the business?
▪️love their commitment to sustainability and the environment?
▪️love the way they support the communities in which they operate?
▪️love the products and services they offer?
▪️deliver consistent high levels of financial return to investors?

In a generic sense, the question really is: “Are customers loyal to an organization because of what they deliver — i.e. output related— or because of the way they deliver it — i.e. process related?

Output or process: which is the determinant of customer loyalty?

I don’t see much differentiation among businesses in terms of what they produce. If you’re in the communications business, you’re going to have internet and home phone service in your product portfolio.

If you’re in the financial business you’re likely to offer essentially the same financial products such as basic savings, retirement savings, and education savings accounts as well as other products such as term deposits and investment vehicles.

I’ve written much about the fact that even though competition is fierce and growing relentlessly in global markets, differences among competitors that are both meaningful and compelling to customers are shrinking and are becoming less and less obvious.

Increasing competition is ironically resulting in less meaningful differences among combatants.

It’s a surprising result.

You would think that as competitive forces escalate, a business would get better at creating a sustainable competitive advantage in the markets they compete in.

But they’re not. My observation is that every participant basically looks the same and they all exist to produce something for the masses, using price to attempt to separate themselves from the crowded mob around them.

And generally, production-oriented, mass motivated and price focused organizations tend not to be a huge loyalty magnet; customers come and go based on short term satisfaction.

Sustainable loyalty actually has little to do with what is produced by a business; rather it is a process-based phenomenon with people as the nucleus.

People buy when they’re happy; when the engagement they have with an organization ‘feels good’ and they feel their cravings are being addressed.

And warm feelings are not likely to be continuously produced by a product or service which turns into old or used eventually when the lustre of ‘the new’ wears off.

These are the process and people things that, in my experience, create warm experiences for people and make them coming back:

1. Easy-to-do-business-with processes

There are two principles that are critical in terms of having ‘customer friendly’ processes.

First, build systems to enable customers to engage with the organization the way they want rather than force them to comply with processes designed with company efficiency as the main design criteria;

What percentage of customers that use a company’s website are ever asked if they like the navigation and buying experience? How many of them are asked to pass judgment on the artificial intelligence technologies used?

I doubt it ever happens.

Organizations build systems with scale and productivity in mind not with customer satisfaction as a key driving factor.
Furthermore, they serve as a factory to the ‘normal’ masses who are content to comply with whatever business processes they use and not the outlier ‘weird’ ones who require special handling — a group by the way growing larger and more powerful everyday and sometime soon will eclipse ‘the normal ones’.

Second, ensure that internal rules and policies serve the same customer purpose: to enable not restrict, to ‘say yes’ not ‘say no’, to empower not control and to please not disappoint.

Ever heard of a company asking their customers to participate in a panel to evaluate whether or not the policies of the company made any sense to customers? Whether they made it easy to engage with the company? Whether they were understandable or just plain dumb?

Unfortunately, I’ve never seen an organization enlightened enough to take such a risk and welcome their customers in to help manage their business.

2. People who like to serve

The majority of warm feelings that customers experience are induced by human beings. Technology might impress you, but people can delight you, blow you away, mesmerize you, dazzle you, surprise you, shock you and astonish you — all symptoms of loyalty building.

So it follows that organizations need to hire the type of person who can cause these types of feelings to exude from other people. Yes, they have to be intellectually competent to qualify for a customer server role,  but beyond that they must possess the innate hunger to care for another person and be driven to satisfy whatever craving the customer has at the moment.

Most businesses aspire to provide memorable experiences for their customers, but the quality of the engagement process doesn’t back up the claim. Their customer contact repair folks may be great at troubleshooting an internet problem sitting in a call Center in the Philippines, but the engagement moment with the customer falls short of being warm and caring. It’s often frustrating, cold and harsh.

It’s absolutely true that delighting a customer time and time again will deepen the affection the customer has for the organization and will lead to sustaining loyalty. The catch though is to have the type of ’human being lovers’ in place to pull it off.

Let me crystallize the loyalty takeaways for you:

— Customer loyalty has more to do with HOW you conduct your business than it has to do with what your business produces.
— Loyalty is created when business processes are created in the image of making it easy for the customer to do business with an organization.
— Loyalty grows from customer affection which is earned by having caring customer servers who are the natural architects of warm moments customers experience.

Businesses don’t create customer loyalty; processes and people do.

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

• Posted 6.28.21 at 01:45 am by Roy Osing
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May 3, 2021

Why great brands are not made by the organization’s leaders

Source: Pexels

Why great brands are not made by the organization’s leaders.

I’ve sat in board meetings as the EVP of marketing listening to board members pronounce their views on the company’s brand and how it should change to meet changing market conditions.
From the 21st floor, they declare what brand position best serves the organization in terms of the current business plan and the environment as they see it.

Yes, board members should have influence on brand positioning, as should people further down the line in marketing, advertising and public relations — not to mention a plethora of others in the organization who want to join the brand party because it’s fun to be involved.

But let’s be clear: the brand work done by these folks is at best aspirational and bears little resemblance to the impact felt by the brand when implemented and experienced by customers and other stakeholders.

The brand developed by marketing, for example, represents the value proposition that they want communicated in order to meet the marketing objectives involving competitive differentiation and customer value considerations. 

Whether it’s declared by the board or marketing, it’s a paper brand position at this stage — a brave brand only.

Because at the end of the day, if an organization can’t deliver on its brand promise, the promise is useless and and is seen as a lie by all who witness it.

The brand stays in the ‘dream’ stage until it’s edited, filtered and tested by all of the practical, operational factors that impact the brand’s efficacy.

In my experience, these are the factors that either reinforce the brand dream or kill it.

▪️The frontline of the organization who engage with demanding customers day-in and day-out with aggressive competitors must believe the brand promise.
They must feel that they can deliver on the promise 24X7, because if they don’t believe, the dream dies.

▪️Operating processes that impact the way customers engage with the organization must support the brand promise. If, for example, the brand promises a friendly future but the internal policies make it cumbersome and difficult for customers to transact with the organization, the promise and delivery collide and the brand lie is borne over and over again. And the dream dies.

▪️Internal rules and policies affecting the customer experience must be in harmony with the brand promise. If the brand promises amazing customer experiences but internal rules force the customer through hoops they don’t like, customers are pissed off, they tell their friends what horrific service is being delivered and the dream dies.

▪️Frontline people must have the personal attitude, life experience and competence to deliver the brand promise day-in and day-out. Rude and uncaring treatment of a customer renders an organization as self-serving and narcissistic with utter disregard for the needs and wants of the people they serve. And the dream dies.

▪️The organization must be cleansed if the grunge and CRAP that gets in the way of employees delivering the brand promise. If frontline people are constantly fighting unnecessary internal roadblocks that get in the way of delivering what customers crave, again, the customer experience suffers and once loyal customers leave for a more friendly environment. And the dream dies.

▪️Frontline emotion and proclivity to serve others must be a huge component in the engagement process if the organization is to maximize the value of the customer experience, and this requires that people with a high EQ - emotional quotient - are recruited into frontline positions. If frontliners don’t illicit goosebumps during the interview process then the wrong person is being hired. And the dream dies.

▪️There are many organizations that decide to rebrand themselves without addressing the alignment factors discussed in the previous points — and nothing changes. They create a new identity with a flashy new logo and tag line but the essence of the organization carries on the way it always has. For these organizations, leadership seems to believe that the new logo will miraculously change their performance, but it doesn’t.

They overhaul their web sites with a new look and feel. Advertising messages change stressing an aspect of the organization they feel is now important and nothing changes.

The same operations problems persist; the same employee morale issues remain and competitive vulnerabilities continue despite the fact that how the organization is visually presented to the market has been morphed into something different. And the dream dies.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

A brand begins as a dream, conjured up by people intent on finding the best solution to the market challenge they face in a crazy changing environment. And it stays as a dream until leadership creates the infrastructure — the support systems — that makes the brand real.

If they’re not up to the task, the dream dies.

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

• Posted 5.3.21 at 04:36 am by Roy Osing
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May 1, 2021

An amazing business plan can be created with you in just 2 days!

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Together, we can create a business plan that will not only help you through the pandemic, it will also position you for a successful long term future.

And we can do it virtually in just 2 days so you don’t have to take unnecessary time away from your business.

This is how you and your team can build a winning business plan for your organization in just two days and start executing it on the third!

— Do you have a strategy for your organization that recognizes the dramatic changes that have taken place in the markets you serve?
— Have you successfully carved out a distinctive and unique competitive position to guarantee success?
— Do have the resources and time to spend creating a plan to guide your business into an uncertain future?
— Are you prepared to pivot to a new direction when an unexpected crisis hits you?

If you have answered ‘no’ to these questions, talk to me about my strategic game plan method which I developed over my 30+ year career and used it successfully in a variety of businesses.

I am the only business advisor that offers this approach to creating a strategy fast and economically for any type of organization

A strategy:
— that focuses on execution rather than pontificating on lofty goals that are rarely achieved;
— that is based on proven and practical practices I successfully employed over my career;
— will inspire your employees and colleagues;
— that is like no other in the markets you serve;
— based on simplicity: if it ain’t simple it probably wont get implemented;
— that leverages what you know about your business, rather than requiring copious amounts of study and unnecessary analysis (no paralysis by analysis here!)

Thanks again for leading us through your strategic game plan process for each of our business units with us this week; you made my job relatively easy. I think we now have a clear overall very challenging strategic plan to implement over the next 24 months, and as we both know what really matters now is the implementation and execution. I enjoyed working with you and look forward the reviewing our progress with you on a quarterly basis — Tom Rose, President and CEO, Layfield Group of Companies, Richmond BC

Here’s what you can expect from my strategic game plan (SGP) workshop:

— learn my BE DiFFERENT practices which are used as a guide to building your SGP;
— determine your growth goals;
— strategically choose the customers you want to allocate your scarce resources to;
— develop your competitive strategy — your ONLY statement — that separates your from your competition;
— set the critical objectives necessary to deliver your SGP;
— assign accountabilities and time-frames for each objective: who does what by when to complete each objective;
— have fun! in the 2-day experience.
 
In short, after ONLY 2 days, you will have a strategy that can be executed as soon as you leave the Workshop. And you will have the confidence that the plan will work because I have successfully used the BE DiFFERENT Practices I espouse and the SGP process successfully not only in his career but also with other businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

For a personal consultation on how a strategic game plan can help you and your organization, please connect with me.

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

• Posted 5.1.21 at 03:09 am by Roy Osing
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