Be Different or be dead

March 19, 2017

How the useless clutter in your business can be taken out

Source: Unsplash

How the useless clutter in your business can be taken out.

If your new strategy development process does not deal with the CRAP you need to eliminate, it will surely fail.

Strategy is just as much about what you’re NOT going to do as it is about what you are going to do, but less attention is paid to the CRAP elimination activity.

CRAP is the enemy of progress. It’s the stuff that may have been a priority at one point, but is now no longer relevant to achieving our strategic goals.

If it isn’t expunged from your organization the ‘old’ will continue to have a significant role and the ‘new’ will be hampered. The major source of bandwidth for taking on new activities is the time currently being spent on thinks that really don’t matter.

CRAP will keep you stuck and prevent you from moving forward.

How to eliminate the CRAP?

▪️ Assign a Cut the CRAP Champion to be responsible for inventorying ALL projects and activities going on in your organization;

▪️ From this inventory, create a KEEP category. Make it short. Bear down on the projects to make sure each one of them is 100% aligned with your new direction;

▪️ Create a CUT category. Make it long. Gather all questionable projects. These will be the eventual source of bandwidth for new activity;

▪️ For each CUT project, note the person who is currently working on it. — the project prime. At the end of the day, people will have to be re-assigned to the ‘new’;

▪️ Have a CRAP critical assessment meeting. Involve the senior team responsible for the execution of your new strategy. Trot each CUT Project Prime into the room and have them explain in detail how their project relates 100% to the new strategy. Side benefit: you will see how well they really understand your new strategy;

▪️ Decide which CUT projects will be terminated and the resource savings that will result;

▪️ Develop a resource re-assignment plan. Be prepared to exit people who either don’t have the skills to take on a KEEP project or who don’t want to support your new direction;

▪️ Communicate the results of your work. KEEP Projects and CUT Projects and why certain projects were terminated. A great opportunity to talk about your new strategy. Involve the team accountable for executing your new course.

CUT projects have momentum. They need to give way for the keepers.

Tough work. Critical to your success. Get on it today!

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

• Posted 3.19.17 at 06:18 am by Roy Osing
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January 23, 2017

7 proven ways to keep your competitive advantage

Source: Pexels

A competitive advantage is hard enough to create; it’s even more difficult to keep.

It’s inevitable. Once you carve out your uniqueness in the market, the ‘competitive hordes’ see it and copy what they like.

Everyone loves benchmarking the best, so once you step out and lead the pack, expect others to dissect what you’ve done and pick out their favourite morsel.

There is no preventing this. It’s one of the few things in business that can be predicted with certainty.

Once you’ve done your work, it’s not over. You have to keep your feet moving.

You need to put in motion actions that will sustain your market position.

These 7 tactics will help.

▪️Monitor the execution of your strategy monthly. Be obsessed with your performance. Dig into the revenue numbers. If you fall short, determine exactly why. And then take immediate action to resolve (and monitor that).

▪️Assess the value you provide. Is your value proposition still relevant? Are you continuing to address a real compelling need your target customer group has expressed?

Many companies have died by becoming complacent and assuming they continue to be relevant. They see margins decline and see it as a cost problem. It rarely is. It’s a revenue problem. They slash and burn their organization but spend no time assessing relevance.
They often cut out service and marketing capabilities that are sorely needed to rebound.

▪️Create a strong social media presence to monitor what people are saying. Act immediately on any concerns raised over your performance.

▪️Test your competitive claim with both customers and employees. Successful organizations have a clear statement of how they are different than their competitors. They answer the question “Why should I buy from YOU and not your competition?” in a compelling way.

Your positioning statement must meet the test of “Is it relevant?” (does it continue to address the high priority needs of the target group) and “Is it true?” (do you actually do what you claim?).

▪️Stay close to your main competitors. Their actions in the market are useful in assessing if there are actions you need to take to sustain your momentum. Look for any activity they have had with your customers.

▪️Continue to bear down on delivering memorable experiences for your customers. Competitive advantage is more about how people FEEL about you than the cleverness of your product.
Emotional experiences produce unforgettable memories which translate into your customers never wanting the exit door to find someone better.

▪️Review your marketing plans and programs to ensure you are moving inexorably to ’ME’ and away from flogging to the masses. A focus on the individual drives you to create unique solutions for them personally. Catering to the masses dilutes your customer attention rate and your brand; heroes for people earns the right to do business with them for a long time.

Keep the move to ME going!

Driving your competitive stake in the ground is merely the beginning of a never ending journey of continual renewal.

Stay with it.

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

• Posted 1.23.17 at 04:49 am by Roy Osing
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January 6, 2017

Why survival is threatened by being the same as others

Source: Unsplash

Why survival is threatened by being the same as others.

Does ‘sameness’ threaten the survival of an organization?

BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

The implication is that if you’re NOT DiFFERENT, sooner or later you will be irrelevant and you will die.

Sameness kills.

The path to organizational death is predictable.

Sales revenue declines because the value proposition of the organization is limp; it has no distinctive substance.

People stop buying because the company’s offerings are no longer relevant; they no longer serve a compelling need. They lose their edge that was the original reason people bought from them and not their competition. Their product portfolio is now common and indistinguishable from that offered by others.

Customers migrate away, looking for more value for their money; to get their specific needs satisfied.

Price cutting is invoked as the salvation, believing that lower prices will increase sales volumes. Footnote: with a limp value proposition, driving prices down also drives revenue down. Most products in the commodity category are price elastic folks!

With revenues going south, management decrees that costs be reduced to preserve operating margins. Across-the-board cost cutting is ordered as a ‘balanced’ approach which means customer serving functions get whacked; fewer frontline people are expected to handle increased volumes of calls (from the price reductions).

Customer service suffers

Customers look for alternative suppliers. Degenerating customer service creates an immediate disloyalty response. Customers find it easy to switch suppliers since so many alternatives are in their faces; they are coveted by many other providers.

Revenues spiral downward; margins are squeezed; more costs are sliced from company operations; customers are casualties.

It’s a relentless cycle.

Leadership looks for a short term strategy to reverse the trend; they are forced to abandon a longer term growth view.

The organization looks to acquisitions as a “fast and easy” way to expand their customer base and bolster their revenue line. This process burns valuable time and people resources and is limited by financial capabilities due to shrinking margins and an unhealthy balance sheet.

Acquisition activities shift priorities away from fixing the @home value proposition issues to assessing potential acquisition candidates and determine how to integrate the winner into the buyer’s overall operations and culture.

Revenues continue to decline; confidence erodes.

The cycle becomes entrenched; the organization explores selling off assets to improve financial results.

No investments are made in solving the endemic value proposition issue they face.

It’s not a matter if they will die; it’s a question of when it will happen - how long can they hang on.

When customers start to leave, they are telling you that you are becoming irrelevant; that you don’t have any uniqueness relative to your competitors.

You are the same as them.

Fix that problem and the revenue line will take care of itself.

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

• Posted 1.6.17 at 06:15 am by Roy Osing
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October 3, 2016

Why certain low value customers should be totally ignored

Source: Pexels

Why certain low value customers should be totally ignored.

This is why it’s really important to ignore selected customers. Who you ignore is just as important as who you pay attention to.

Peter Drucker said of leadership: “Most leaders don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”

The same can be said of building an effective business plan.

It’s not just about what you take on as a new direction, its more about what you do to terminate your old ways that are no longer relevant.

And that includes deciding the customers you intend to serve — the WHO — and those you choose not to serve - ‘the Non-WHO’.

Whereas the WHO represent high revenue potential, the Non-WHO are those customer groups that don’t represent significant economic opportunity for the organization.

And as a result, they warrant minimal investment.

Choosing customer groups you want to invest your valuable scarce resources in is a critical matter. You don’t have an endless stream of time and money to be all things to all people; you need to target your efforts with a minimum amount of interference that can dilute your efforts.

The Non-WHO is the enemy that can attract your attention, take you away from your game, suck you dry and give you no strategic return.

Often the Non-WHO are existing customers who no longer warrant attention. They may have been attractive at some point in the past, but no longer should command strategic focus.

These customers need to be managed out of the organization. They need to be cut loose in a manner that doesn’t create any collateral damage.

Take concrete measured action to remove them from your investment portfolio.

As well, the Non-WHO can be represented in over-the-transom business that you end up chasing because of the urgency of the moment or because you feel you have no choice but to give chase.

This yummy incoming activity can be devastating for an organized and can impede any progress towards achieving its strategic goals.

Choose WHO to serve and stick to it.

Avoid the execution leakage that forces you off strategy.

Like a selfish lover, The Non-WHO will have their way with you, rob you blind and leave you high and dry.

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

• Posted 10.3.16 at 05:25 am by Roy Osing
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