Be Different or be dead

December 1, 2014

Why business plans are given high priority but they’re really not very important

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Why business plans are given high priority but they’re really not very important.

Your business case has been approved. Yes!  All your hard work has paid off.

Your business plan is approved! The hours of research and analysis. The days of lobbying spent gaining for support for your proposal throughout the organization.

Make no mistake about it though.

All you have done is make the ‘paper case’ that your proposal will succeed and deliver the benefits you have postulated. The paper case is merely a theoretical construct that shows a result given a number of assumptions. There is absolutely no guarantee that the results you expect will materialize.

The most egregious example of this that I have seen is acquisition proposals. The accretive benefits of acquiring a company look great on paper but are rarely realized because the plan wasn’t implemented that way it was intended.

The critical work happens after your business plan has been approved

Execution brings your case to life. If execution is flawed, results miss the mark regardless how pristine and theoretically pure the paper case is.

Whatever the number of hours invested in developing your business case, invest 3 times more effort in creating and fulfilling a detailed execution plan.

Your execution plan should contain these elements:

▪️The specific steps that must be taken - The WHAT

▪️The individuals who are accountable for each step - The WHO

▪️The expected completion date for each step - The WHEN

▪️A schedule of meetings to review progress. Which steps have been accomplished; which are behind. And what is the action needed to get back on track.

▪️Contingencies for when things go off track (and they will). Plan B work is extremely critical to success yet it is rarely done.
For some reason people think that the business case will actually come off as originally planned. That the assumptions will all prove to be correct. I have never seen this happen. Be good at anticipating; be great at responding when things go wrong.

▪️A post-implementation review 12 months after investments were made to see if the business case benefits were realized. Did results = expectations? If not, what actions (with WHO and WHEN) need to be taken to remedy the situation?

Your business plan has given you the right to commit resources to a given course. Don’t assume that it will deliver the results you expect.

Success comes only from post approval discipline and hard labor.

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

• Posted 12.1.14 at 04:42 am by Roy Osing
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November 17, 2014

Why customer policies should always be made with saying yes! in mind

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Why customer policies should always be made with saying yes! in mind.

‘Dumb rules’ have an extremely negative impact on your customers and your brand; they make you say NO!

Dumb rules are rules and policies that are internally focused, serve an internal purpose and make no sense to customers.

They infuriate people and can make them leave, screaming to their friends about the terrible customer service they have experienced.

Rules, policies and procedures are necessary in any organization. The question is for what purpose? Most rule systems in organizations today, however, exist for management control purposes.

The need to ensure consistent behavior. The need to satisfy Internal Audit that costs are being controlled. The need to ensure that the internal standards are being observed.

The problem is, people don’t really care about the rules. They just want to be served in an effective manner to get their wants satisfied. The rules are the organization’s problem.

What if we created YES! rules for customers?

▪️Rules that are built to allow customers to get what they want in the manner they want.

▪️Rules that empower frontline employees to Say Yes! to whatever reasonable request the customer makes.

▪️Rules that allow frontline employees to create a dazzling service experiences for their customers.

▪️Rules that recognize that every person is different and unique in some special way.

▪️Rules that recognize that your brand is ultimately controlled by customers and the conversation they have about an organization.

Sure, rules to control are necessary to ensure the business is run effectively. Financial reporting and cost management require a degree of oversight to meet specific external requirements.

But these control rules are so prevalent in organizations today that they can drown the customer experience and leave customers angry and frustrated.

The rules evolve to take precedence over the customer.

The rules suck the humanity out of many organizations. The internal rule dominates.

Why not engage the customer in designing The rule? Ask them if your approach would dazzle them or annoy them. Ask for their input.

Open your organization to them. Expose your humanity.

Get to YES!. Your customers will return the favour.

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

• Posted 11.17.14 at 04:57 am by Roy Osing
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November 10, 2014

Why having pain is important to have a winning business plan

Why having pain is important to have a winning business plan.

Simply stated: a brilliant business plan on paper will be a dud unless it is surrounded by flawless execution.

What does flawless execution look like?

◾️It is messy and inelegant;

◾️It suffers a multitude of roadblocks along the way; 

◾️It rarely works out the way you planned; alternative approaches are employed on the run;

◾️It burns people out; tons of energy is expended to move an inch forward;

◾️“I told you it wouldn’t work” is a persistent din in your face from some people;

◾️You rarely hear a thanks! for your efforts. You need to be able to work in a thankless world;

◾️Your family forgets your name because you are rarely home.

One word describes a successful execution track. PAIN. You have to endure it if forward progress is to be achieved.

If a successful business plan without execution is worthless. And successful execution without pain is impossible. It follows, then, that a successful business plan without pain is impossible.

I can’t think of a more relevant business planning concept.

Do you recruit people that have a high pain tolerance?

Demonstrated ability to move forward in the face of it? A psychological profile that actually thrives on it?

The ability to teach others how to work effectively with it in their face?

PAIN LOVERS

They will make you successful. Hire them. Worship them. Hold them up in regard to others who hopefully will emulate them.

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

• Posted 11.10.14 at 04:30 am by Roy Osing
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October 13, 2014

Why benchmarking makes you a disgusting follower not a leader

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Why benchmarking makes you a disgusting follower not a leader.

Benchmarking is effective at keeping you in the boring herd. Here’s why…

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 can be problematic on several levels:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 10.13.14 at 05:41 am by Roy Osing
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