Be Different or be dead

February 10, 2020

3 proven ways to make an easy and affordable business plan

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3 proven ways to make an easy and affordable business plan.

If you can answer 3 questions, your business plan will beat all others.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t develop a strategy to guide them into an unpredictable future; they rationalize the current planning process to be too complicated, time consuming and expensive.

And they’re right.

Numerous people gather in a room for a strategic planning session. Subject matter experts descend of the group and try to impress everyone with their detailed knowledge of the many governing factors that need consideration in the strategy building process, and many days are consumed — in my experience wasted — to get the strategy perfect.

Normally the services of a third party firm are used to both facilitate the session and provide expert content to the plan direction and efficacy. This is a clever way of avoiding having the people responsible for the strategy’s success taking ownership of the direction taken by applying their own opinions and good judgement.

The planning team is presented with material, they ask questions about various aspects of it and in the end most of the time they agree with the results of the analysis and direction proposed.

But at the end of the day, the traditional planning process takes so much time and energy, there is insufficient time left to develop how the plan will be executed in the trenches by real people. And the planning team is left with a strategy that may make sense on paper, but can’t be executed effectively because there was insufficient time devoted to implementation.

Get insanely focused on execution

Given that eventually any strategy or plan must result in action, the best planning process is predicated on the premise: keep it simple, get to the gut issues quickly and ACT.

Minimize the strategy direction setting time; maximize the implementation action planning time.

Loosen up on strategy development; tighten up on execution.

The strategy-building process I developed was necessary because although the field of experts who could help me develop a theoretically pristine direction was wide and deep, the number who actually could help in plan execution was close to zero.

The process I developed was simple, fast and time efficient. And unlike its brethren, it used the knowledge and experience of the planning team members rather than going with a third party planning expert — added benefit was the team building that went on during the process.

My process — the strategic game plan — was based on discovering the answers to 3 questions; the answers defined the strategy.

Growth — HOW BIG do you want to be?

Most planning processes end with financial results. They calculate the growth results of executing the strategic direction chosen.
My process starts with your growth intentions, and builds the strategy from HOW BIG you want to be. The reason is simple: more aggressive growth goals require a more aggressive — and risky — strategy, and more moderate growth goals need a more incremental — and less risky — strategy.

The traditional planning approach forgets that there is an extremely tight relationship between revenue growth and strategic intent; my strategic game plan doesn’t and that’s what makes my approach DiFFERENT than others.

Customers — WHO do you want to SERVE?

You have a goal to grow revenue 25% annually over the next 36 months. The next question is where are you going to get it? Where are you going to invest your scarce resources of time and money.

It boils down to selecting a group of customers who collectively have the potential to generate the revenue you have decided to go after.
To get the right answer to this question requires an intimate understanding of the various customers you serve.

You can’t choose the customer group to generate the revenue you covet if you don’t understand the propensity of your various customer segments to buy from you — discover their secrets and success will follow.

Competitors — HOW will you compete and WIN?

It would be nice if you were the only provider of products and services to the customer group you’ve chosen, but that’s not likely to be the case. There is likely to be healthy aggressive competitors targeting the same customers you want to target, so the challenge you face is to determine how you will differentiate your organization from all others you will be competing with.

Why should people choose your organization when they have other choices available?

What makes your team special in view of the alternatives available?
HOW will you compete is intended to explore the competencies of your organization that you can exploit to gain competitive advantage, with emphasis on how you can be positioned in the customer group you’ve chosen as the ONLY one that does what you do.

By answering these 3 questions using the expertise of those in the room you will have your business plan quickly (less than 3 days) and inexpensively (a personalized experience for your team). And it will be owned by every person who has contributed to it which means execution will follow.

if you want your business plan to be easy and affordable, this is the way to do it.

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

• Posted 2.10.20 at 02:06 am by Roy Osing
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January 20, 2020

How a service mistake can turn into to a colossal service delight

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How a service mistake can turn into to a colossal service delight.

An astonishing source of customer amazement — and customer loyalty — is how service breakdowns are handled.

Typically service breakdowns include such things as a broken promise made to a customer, a product or service that doesn’t work the way the manual says it should, billing mistakes or service repairs that need to be redone because they weren’t completed right the first time.

The solution to these missteps is called service recovery and it’s formula is simple:

Service recovery = fix the screw-up and do the unexpected.

Let’s face it when you screw a customer over, they expect you to fix it. But they’re not particularly blown away when you correct your error; they don’t say ‘WOW I can’t believe you actually remedied what you screwed up!’

This is where most companies fall short. They actually believe that by merely fixing their mistake the customer will be satisfied and their obligations will have been fulfilled.

The rule of recovery: fix the mistake fast and then blow the customer away by surprising them with something they don’t expect.

If your goal is merely to satisfy a customer, you may be content with having a fix it capability that is incredibly efficient. But if you want to create the ability to consistently build customer loyalty and earn their lifelong trust you need to go further.

You need to move from a positive response to ‘Were you satisfied with what we did to fix our service screw up?’ to ‘Did we blow you away with what we did to recover from our mistake?’

The surprise factor

If you choose the path of wanting to delight your customers and create memorable service experiences for them, you need to understand that the source of of an amazing experience is doing what the customer doesn’t expect.

The challenge, therefore is to discover exactly what that little bit extra is and for them to do it in a way that makes their eyes bulge out with amazement.

And the key is that the surprise act must be relevant to the customer. Providing something extra for the customer that doesn’t resonate with their needs, wants and desires will leave them scratching their head.

And it’s not about coming up with a boilerplate trash-and-trinket program that provides the same bland response to every customer — you’re wasting your money.
The surprise must have personal meaning to the customer otherwise it will be ineffective — in fact could make matters worse!

The surprise must also be extremely compelling to the customer; it must be a high priority with them if you want to impress them.
This is the emotional component of recovery. A compelling act will stir the emotions and make the customer believe you actually care about them.

Customer secrets and speed

The successful surprise requires that you need to understand what makes the person screwed over tick; what turns them on and what action on your part would most likely trigger an emphatic emotional response. You need to know their secrets — reread the ‘How to build an amazing marketing machine’.

You can be relevant and compelling in your recovery act, but if you take a week to get it done, forget it. Your investment will be worthless.
Studies have found that you have about 24 hours to get it done; after that, the ability to capitalize on the screwup and build stronger customer loyalty goes down the tube.

If you make a mistake and recover in a dazzling way, the customer is more loyal to the organization than they were prior to the screw up.

If recovery is such a critical element in building customer loyalty, why are there very few organizations that have a recovery service strategy? I suspect it’s because no one likes to admit that they will have a service OOPS! from time to time; they pride themselves on trying to get it right the first time.

But if you know that mistakes will happen from time to time — and they will — and that there is tremendous strategic value in recovering well — and there is — why wouldn’t you have a plan on the actions to take when the event happens?

In my past role as Business Services VP with a major telecommunications company, one of the elements of our service strategy was: ‘If we fail, Recovery will be our #1 priority’.

We had a specific recovery plan that, for each customer segment, provided the range of recovery actions that could be considered to respond to an OOPS! and the level of recovery investment necessary given the value customers represented to the company — the higher the value, the more robust the recovery actions requiring greater investments.

And substantial training was given to all employees to ensure they understood the power of the strategy and what to do when a screwup occurred.

5 key takeaways

▪️Recovery = fix it and do the unexpected.
▪️Do something personal; make it relevant and compelling.
▪️Know your customers’ secrets.
▪️Execute the recovery process in less than 24 hours.
▪️Build a detailed recovery strategy.

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

• Posted 1.20.20 at 12:29 am by Roy Osing
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January 13, 2020

Why business process change should come before spending more money

Why business process change should come before spending more money.

Politicians are the most egregious offenders of believing a problem can be solved by simply throwing more money at it.

Their strategy is to capture the hearts of voters by promising to throw billions at a problem they feel is important. If the number one voter priority is health care, for example, the candidate-in-waiting promises to double spending on it as the solution.
Obviously, if you double down on health care spending you’re going to make epic improvements, right?

Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

Most difficult problems can rarely be solved by more spending; they’re systemic issues at play that need to be fixed before deciding how much resource to apply.

Throwing $250 billion at health care for example, without changing the way it is practiced and delivered, won’t solve the essential problems.
Nor will doubling the annual budget on billing eradicate the errors made on customers’ bills — in fact it will only multiply the number of mistakes made.

Rewarding ineffectiveness with additional resources is crazy — may as well put your money into a boat.

And the craziness isn’t limited to the world of politics; most organizations have a tough time avoiding the trap of trying to spend their way out of a problem.

Rather than creating a new system for some reason some people think that increasing intensity or muscle power will somehow make things right.

It won’t.

A current system that doesn’t deliver what is expected must be replaced with one that does and should never be the recipient of lavish spending.

Re-creation, rather than making incremental changes to an existing system, is vital and is the only real solution when it comes to problems that have persisted for many years.

The process involves these seven steps.

1. Dedicate ONE person to be accountable

System problems are not solved by committee; there must be single finger accountability assigned and it should be to a senior leader in the organization who has a reputation of getting tough things done.

Far too often a mid-level process or systems manager is charged with the role of making the required changes and they fail because they don’t have the influence and currency in the organization that’s needed to sell the change to all the people with a vested interest in not seeing any change through.

2. Ask the customer how THEY want it to look

What? What do they know about systems re-engineering; about what an efficient system looks like?

Well, they may not have specific academic credentials, but they definitely know how they want to be engaged with an organization.

THEY know how the systems should “feel” so if you care about making it easy to engage with customers, listen up.
Informal focus groups are great ways to get input to help shape your approach to reinventing systems and processes.

Ask the customer how they want to be treated and follow their answer — keep the systems analysts away until you have squeezed out all the customer advice that you can.

3. Define the desired outcomes

What does “perfection” look like in terms of the results that the system must produce? Define the key outputs — a hip surgery in 2 weeks; a product delivery in 24 hours; same day service repair.

Start anew and build the system with no preconceived notions that come from the way things are currently done.

And be cautious about benchmarking best in class and copying their solution to the problem you are experiencing.

Whereas their approach might have some applicability and thus redeeming value, make sure you are responding to what your customers are telling you and not a best practise that worked for someone else.

4. Flow chart it in a simple form

What is needed is an extremely dumbed down version of the new system; simple is good, simpler is better.

And the main criteria to follow is to minimize the number of handoffs as possible.

Obviously, the greater the number of handoffs, the greater the likelihood that mistakes will happen and desired outcomes jeopardized.
Systems experts sometimes overly complicate their work, so be prepared to hold them back.

5. Examine how components of the current system could play into the new one

Even though you are starting with a clean slate and building something new, look to salvage pieces of the existing system(s) that can be integrated and not lose sight of what your customer wants.

Where you can avoid reinventing the wheel do it. But be careful to not be guided by the way things are currently done; replicating components of the current system that may not be particularly effective wont solve your overall problem.

6. Create a ‘straw dog’ version of the new system

Synthesize the brand new elements you have created for the new system with the keeper elements of the current one to produce a draft version of the new system.

Rigorously evaluate what you have created. Beat it up and try to expose weaknesses using customer input and the desired outcomes as criteria.
If the customer satisfaction criteria is less than 10/10, go back to the drawing board to make system revisions until it’s 100% perfect.

7. Get customer approval

Finally, when you think you’ve got it right, take the new system back first to your frontline teams and to the customer for their sign-off and approval.

How many organizations would even think to get customer acceptance? Right. Very few if any.

Internal stakeholders are usually consulted as the system acceptors and are expected to speak on behalf of customers, and whereas they might have a useful opinion on whether customer expectations would be satisfied by the new design, there is only one way to know for sure.

Engage them in the decision making process and ask them point blank if they approve the work; if it’s a “NO!” go back and revise it again.

Systems that don’t work should never be candidates for additional funding, they should be put on the chopping block and axed in favour of new vibrant approaches with a heavy dose of customer input and control of the outcome.

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

• Posted 1.13.20 at 04:09 am by Roy Osing
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January 6, 2020

6 proven ways to make a unique successful culture

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6 proven ways to make a unique successful culture.

Successful and sustaining organizations invest heavily in creating a culture that constantly renews itself in the face of unpredictability and chaotic change.

This adaptive organization is built to not only succeed in the short term by absorbing and successfully responding to unexpected market forces, it relies on being different to survive in the long run.

It’s one thing to have a product or service that is unmatched by the competition, or provide customer service that is a level above others, but it’s quite another to have an entire organizational culture that is build on being different than everyone else.

An organization that strives to achieve a be different culture, and use it as their strategic advantage, is known for their competencies and capabilities in these key areas.

1. Execution outranks planning

The strategic game plan of the different organization places greater emphasis on execution rather than the perfection of the plan itself.

This leadership team understands that it’s not the business plan developed in the image of the academics and planning experts that produces wins in the marketplace; rather it’s how well business planning initiatives are implemented that determines success.

Planning sessions here apply 20% of the time available to developing a strategy that best meets the challenges foreseen over a 36-month planning horizon; 80% of the attention goes to creating the implementation plan to bring the plan to life.

The intent is to get the plan just about right; detailed attention is applied to execution — who does what by when to make it happen.
Get it done and change it on the run describes the priority of this organization.

2. Every employee knows their role

Standout organizations invest heavily in ensuring that every employee has a direct line of sight in executing the organization’s game plan.

If, for example, you’re in customer service, leadership conducts workshops to define precisely what new priorities you need to adopt in the way you serve customers. And what specific behaviours you must display during every customer interaction. In the call centre environment, is the emphasis to be on processing as many calls as you can, or dazzling the customer once they have reached you?

This is different than the way other organizations deal with the implementation of their business plan.

Most leaders declare the intent of their game plan to employees and expect them somehow to know what actions they need to take to successfully execute it — never works; results in dysfunction and inconsistency.

3. Their leaders serve

Different cultures are led by individuals who ask “How can I help?” constantly. They see their role to make it easy for people to do their job.

They bash barriers and eliminate the rules, policies and procedures that get in the way of effective performance.

These leaders serve rather than command; they understand that high performance is a function of how well people behave and what they produce day in and day out.

Taking care of people is the key to capturing their hearts and minds and this can only be achieved through servant leadership.

4. They are unique

Most organizations’ describe their competitive advantage by using words like “best”, “number 1” and “market leader” — “We are the number 1 provider of quality internet service in Canada” is an example of the type of declaration that is often used.

These types of claims are aspirational at best; they are difficult to easily prove and therefore lack the credibility to be effective. People generally don’t believe these types of statements; they are viewed as hollow and are mostly ignored.

Unique cultures search for how they can be the ONLY ones that do what they do.

They strive to claim a position in their market that is unmatched by others. The ONLY Statement — “We are the ONLY ones that…” — is the expression they use, backed up by evidence to prove their point.

5. Their sales people don’t sell

In fact they don’t push their products and services at people; flogging is what other organizations do.

The special organizations spend 99% of their time with a customer determining the problem they need solving and the remaining 1% actually offering a solution. 

Incomparable sales organizations are all about building deep relationships with their customers realizing that sales and revenue come from intimacy without having to overtly sell anything.

6. They live in the be different moment

They treat every moment as an opportunity to be different; it’s the lens through which they that govern what they do and how they do it.
In these organizations, being different is more than a mantra, it’s an operational and planning trigger for every employee.

And people are measured on how they apply the concept; it’s integral to the performance planning process. Individuals must display the desire to be different; the more they achieve from this directive the more successful they are.

What about benchmarking and adopting best practices? These concepts are persona non grata in be different organizations. They may be employed to make operational improvements but are never used to achieve strategic advantage.

By being different, amazing teams strive to BE best in class.

Cultures built to be different don’t do normal things; they practice what they preach.

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

• Posted 1.6.20 at 04:03 am by Roy Osing
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