Be Different or be dead

September 7, 2015

How a small business can easily create a winning business plan

Source: Pexels

How a small business can easily create a winning business plan.

If you own or operate a small business, how much time do you spend developing your business strategy? If you’re like most small business owners, not much.
Every small business leader is busy working IN their business; they don’t necessarily spend enough time working ON their business.

I often hear “I don’t have time to plan, I’m too busy running my business”, or “Everything is so unpredictable these days I don’t see the point.” They are consumed by day-to-day priorities and crises and have little time and energy left to develop a strategy for their business.

In addition, developing a strategic plan is often viewed as an expensive, complicated and time consuming activity that is an interruption to the “normal” flow of business.

The truth is that every business needs a strategy; otherwise progress can’t be measured and success never achieved.

Building your strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated time consuming exercise; I have developed an approach that results in having your strategy in not more than three days, and you can begin executing it on the fourth.

To not have a plan is to aimlessly bump and grind along, accepting whatever performance you can deliver.

My strategic game plan — SGP — makes it easy for you to plot your future. It can be created in less than 2 days with your small business leadership team in an informal and fun setting.

It’s called a ‘game plan’ because the focus is to build a just about right direction that can be executed rather than waste time trying to create the perfect plan which looks good on paper but no more.

My process is based on discovering the answers to 3 questions; the answers define the strategy.

#1. Growth — HOW BIG do you want to be?

Do you want $1 million in revenue within 24 months or do you want to be more aggressive and go for $5 million?

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.

#2. 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?

You have a choice here; customers are not all created equal and you need to focus on those who have the potential of satisfying your growth goals and that leverage the core competencies of your business.

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.

#3. 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?

If you can’t give your chosen customers relevant, compelling and unique reasons why they should buy from you and not your competitors then unfortunately you have no other option but to compete by offering lower prices than everyone else, which is rarely a viable long term strategy for a small business with limited economies of scale and scope.

HOW to WIN is intended to explore the competencies of your organization that you can exploit to gain a sustainable competitive advantage over others who compete with you for the customers you’ve chosen to serve — the WHO.

My method is to create the ONLY statement that defines precisely what you and only you provide the customers you are targeting.

SGP soundbite — The final step in my process is to integrate the answers to all three questions as the high level summary of the strategic intent you’ve chosen.

“We will (HOW BIG) by focusing our scarce resources on (WHO to SERVE). We will compete by (HOW to WIN).”

Here’s an example:

“We will grow sales revenue by 25% over the next 36 months by serving the needs of four seasons vacationers in Washington State. We will compete and win by being the only organization creating personalized experience packages that incorporate the many activities that Whistler has to offer.”

The traditional business planning process has its limitations for small business. It generally requires more time than the small business leader has to devote to the task, and it costs more than most small businesses are prepared to pay.

3 questions; 3 answers that will define an effective strategy for your small business because it recognizes the special challenges that small businesses face.

Give it a try.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 9.7.15 at 05:05 am by Roy Osing
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July 16, 2015

5 proven reasons copying sucks creativity from an organization

Source: Pexels

5 proven reasons copying sucks creativity from an organization.

Benchmarking is viewed as a necessary process for most organizations. There are benchmarking consultant experts and courses you can take to learn how to benchmark proficiently and gain the maximum benefit.

In my view, benchmarking is a simple concept as is its process:

▪️Identify the organization that excels in some aspect of your operations that you believe requires improvement — customer service, business planning, customer engagement, sales management, accounts receivable, advertising planning and so on;

▪️Map (understand deeply) their system or process to understand exactly how they perform the operation;

▪️Define the actions you must take to incorporate their operating system into your operation with the objective of replicating their level of efficiency.

Benchmarking might help you improve your operations efficiency but it won’t make you stand-out from your competition.

Benchmarking doesn’t work for these reasons:

1. Benchmarking is copying

It’s ‘sucking up’ to an organization or individual recognized (by someone presumed to be the thought leader) to be the best at performing a particular function and is therefore the organization you should aspire to be.

It doesn’t make you special. It may help you improve your position in the crowd of hungry competitors by being more efficient at something, but it won’t help you stand out from them by being more relevant or unique.

Copying is the enemy of being different. The maximum benefit you can achieve by copying is best in class levels of performance which may return better operating results than previously obtained but unless you vault beyond these levels true differentiation won’t happen.

2. Benchmarking keeps you in the herd

The herd is a place where organizations go to blend in with others; to conform with what others do and to lose the DNA attributes that make them special.

Even if you are the ‘best of breed’ you’re still in the herd. It’s just that you execute a process better than any other herd member; you’re still rubbing shoulders with your sameness brethren.

And because you’re tagged ‘the best’, you have no motivation to break away from the herd; you find consolation in it.

The world is becoming a home for best practice addicts and as a result it’s boring and benign.

3. Benchmarking robs you of your individuality

Benchmarking results in conformance; it sucks any unique thinking you may have out of your system and replaces it with the need to capitulate to the leader of the herd.

Rather than look for a unique solution to your problem, you look for another herd member that has put in the work to create a solution that works for them and you assume you can boilerplate it and it will work for you.

When you copy someone or something, you relegate — subordinate — yourself to them. You roll over, put your ‘paws in the air’ and subsume yourself to the leadership of someone else. Looking up when you’re lying on the ground isn’t a very liberating place to be.

4. Benchmarking won’t make you special and differentiate you from your competitors

It has no strategic value in moving the organization to a position in the marketplace that ONLY you occupy.

“What are our competitors doing?” is often asked when organizations are thinking about improving how they conduct business, and the benchmarking process ensues — adding zero space between them and their competitors.

And, of course, if you’re chasing another organization, you’re adding nothing to the kitbag of things that make you ‘special’ in the eyes of your customers and encouraging them to spread your word to others and attract new business.

If you copy someone, all you do is lower the bar.

5. Benchmarking is the enemy of innovation

If you’re a copycat, you’re not an innovator. Benchmarking does little or nothing to stimulate innovation and creativity which seem to be values organizations covet in today’s world of uncertainty and constant change.

In fact benchmarking kills real innovation because it has performance improvement using the standard of another as its end game as opposed to revolutionary changes that determine new strategic outcomes.

We need to get our thinking straight.

Few organizations today stand out, which is sad; few are deemed to be really special by their customers.
Being remarkable isn’t a strategy on the radar of most, or if it is, it’s an elusive goal because leaders allow people to use traditional tools — like benchmarking best of class — to do their jobs.

Uniqueness, remarkability and being special come from being different than your competitors, not copying what they and others do, even if they perform certain functions more efficiently than you do.

We need to change our ways and stick copying where it belongs.

Let’s:
— Start thinking about being different than best in class, not copying best of breed;
— Covet being ‘different than breed’, not best of breed;
— Think about doing what others are not doing, not looking to other’s successes;
— Go in the opposite direction that others are going, not following in their footsteps.
— Define best in class to be the highest bar to be different from, not emulate;
— Purge boilerplates from our toolbox and break new ground (and maybe be the author of a new boilerplate).

Copying is the enemy of being special and remarkable.

And as leaders, let’s change the conversation in our organizations; purging the notion of benchmarking and copying as ways of achieving strategic progress by asking these types of questions of our teams:

▪️”What can we do to be different from the crowd of competitors?”;
▪️“How does what you’re proposing make us stand out from the competition and be special to our customers?”.
▪️“What crazy ‘insane’ thing is a different business to ours doing and how can we use the basics of the idea to morph it into a special idea for us?”

Benchmarking is absolutely the wrong thing to do when the end game for most organizations seems to be uniqueness and remarkability, but there are ways to ‘bend the curve’ and go in the right direction.

Start the change now, though, because time is not your friend.

Cheers
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 7.16.15 at 05:39 am by Roy Osing
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June 8, 2015

Why playful organizations actually have a competitive advantage

Source: Unsplash

Why do organizations that ‘play’ have a competitive advantage?

Most organizations search for ways to differentiate themselves from their competition at a very high level: operational excellence, technology and products. Some actually believe price is a differentiator but I won’t spend nanosecond on the subject.

There is one dimension that rarely gets included in the conversation - playfulness.

It seems that organizations that are playful and have fun seem to do well against their ‘tight’ competitors.

Playful businesses allow their employees to express themselves as individuals; to talk to their customers in an informal way as opposed to following a script crafted by someone in a staff group somewhere in head office.

They expose the office fun to their customers. The banter that goes on among employees ‘when no one is watching’ is presented to their customers with no hesitation.

On Westjet all of the flight attendants are introduced, and ‘the lovely Marsha’ in the mid-cabin section always gets a deserved round of applause.

Employees of playful organizations step out of their formal role and do something unexpected of them.

I recall the pilot of a Westjet flight introducing himself to the passengers before stepping into the cockpit and giving us the details of the upcoming flight in person as well as their plan to introduce new streaming video technology to replace the traditional way of viewing movies.

He said he liked to do things differently than others.

Very unexpected and memorable. I have never seen any pilot from any other airline do this (and I don’t expect I ever will).

Playful organizations inject humour in carrying out their official tasks. Ever hear a Westjet flight boss give pre-flight safety instructions? Their speech covers the required details but it is laced with a casual humour that makes the process of seeing once again how to fasten a seat belt more interesting and enjoyable.

Playful organizations seem more human than others, and are rewarded with customers who care about them and stay with them through thick and thin.

Sounds like a #CompetitiveAdvantage to me…

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

• Posted 6.8.15 at 04:10 am by Roy Osing
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May 5, 2015

25 proven ways to be different in business and win

Source: Pexels

25 proven ways to be different in business and win.

Success in business as well as career success are based on the ability to standout from the crowd and deliver value that is unmatched by others.

These 25 proven tactics are critical to creating an organization that is special in the eyes of customers and unmatched by any other in the marketplace.

— If you’re not DiFFERENT you’re dead (or soon will be).

— Stand out = Provide VALUE (an experience, meaning to life) that is RELEVANT (something people CARE about) - and UNIQUE (something that ONLY you provide).

— In school you do well when you follow the rules and fit-in; in business you succeed when you separate yourself from everyone else and stand-out.

— Benchmarking keeps you from being remarkable.

— Stand-out from the best; don’t copy them.

— Create a just about right business plan and execute it flawlessly.

— You don’t want merely to be the best of the best. You want to be the ONLY one that does what you do.

— Execute first; plan second.

— Forget about perfection ; it doesn’t exist.

— Cut the Crap that prevents stuff from getting done.

— Lose the sale, but never lose the relationship with the customer.

— Focus on the critical few things that will achieve 80% of what you want to do; avoid the possible many.

— Amazing customer service means serving people not servicing them.

—The best plan is built on the back of execution; that’s called planning on the run.

—Be good at anticipating; be great at responding.

— Discover customer secrets; customer needs needs are not enough.

— Create experiences for people, don’t flog products at them.

— Service recovery = Screw someone over + Fix it Fast +++ surprise them with what they don’t expect.

— Kill the dumb rules and policies that infuriate your customers.

— Hire people that give you goosebumps; the individuals who tell their story and leave you breathless.

— As a leader, you must serve around, not walk around.

— Stay loose on creating your business plan but be tight and disciplined on implementation.

— (Success) = (Doing) (lots of) (imperfect) (stuff) (fast).

— Great leaders micro-manage “customer moments” - touch points where customer meets organization.

— Spend 80% of your time on execution; the perfect plan is an illusion.

— BE CoNTRARIAN; look for opportunities to do a 180 on what others do.

— Brilliant execution requires not chasing things that could be done, but delivering things that must be done.

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

• Posted 5.5.15 at 12:45 am by Roy Osing
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