Be Different or be dead

March 21, 2016

Why amazing strategies result from making bold and courageous ‘tries’

Source: Pexels

Why amazing strategies result from making bold and courageous ‘tries’.

Making tries is about all you can do in a complicated environment where making progress is exceedingly difficult.
There are no silver bullets in the business toolbox that produce a high probability that any given action you take will succeed and that you will see your plans progress.

The world simply won’t let that happen. There are too many competitors, too many regulations, too many fickle customers, too many unpredictable events and too many advancing technologies all happening at once to allow a single tactic, strategy or project to work the way you want it to.

I think COVID-19 illustrates the point that surviving in the face of this disastrous pandemic was impossible for some and plausible for others. Some organizations made it; others did not.

What is clear, however, is that those that did make it had to try and try and try different approaches to keep their business afloat; they didn’t get it right the first time.

Here’s the thing. Because we live in a world of constant and unpredictable change with so many factors affecting an organization, it’s virtually impossible to create a strategy that addresses and accommodates each and every variable perfectly — we will never ‘figure it all out’.

Innovation today is not a single one-shot event; it’s the end result of a number of successive small nano-wins.

The assumptions that are made to develop any strategy are always flawed — we assume no regulatory intervention and then it happens, or that current technologies will remain stable for the next 12 months and suddenly a new one appears in our markets and completely disrupts our business model, or that demand for our products will increase 8% but it comes in at 4%.

No sooner have we put our business plan to bed, some assumption we made changes, and we are forced back to the drawing board to shift our strategy.

This is permanent; it’s not a temporary phenomenon that will go away. This is organizational life from now on that will only intensify in terms of the number of random forces that will impact us and the weight that each will impose on our success.

Traditional business planning can’t successfully play out in this scenario.

The application of the standard analytical tool set won’t help thwart the unexpected missiles that will strike us; hours of debate over strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats won’t decrease the probability that we will likely have to take a random punch at some point.

And the quest for a perfect plan is time consuming, costly and is doomed to fail — there’s no such thing as a perfect anything.

Survival and success depends on the willingness to try new things constantly; if you’re feet aren’t moving you’re dead

So what’s the answer? How do we prepare our organization to succeed in the face of pandemic market forces?
If the original strategy can’t be depended on to deliver intended results, we need to loosen up on the process employed to create it, focus our efforts on plan execution and on trying new things imposed by the chaos that engulfs it.

Source: Pexels

Progress is a function of the number of tries we make.

The more tries, the more successes and the more progress; the fewer the tries — relying on one approach and not changing it in the face of crazy market forces — the less successes and the less likely the organization will survive.

How do you create a ‘tries’ culture? — First of all, ‘trying’ must be included in the organization’s set of values that describes the way that work is done.

Making more tries than the other guy is the way to achieve competitive advantage and to grow your business

For example the ‘tries’ modus operandi is focussed on skinny business cases — back of a napkin in many instances — and then quickly having a go to discover if something will work. And if changes are required because something doesn’t work, it’s changed on the run.

Contrast this with the traditional approach to undertaking something new: a robust 100-page business case is developed and is circulated to all 10 stakeholders for comment; it’s then modified to incorporate stakeholder input; it’s then re-circulated for final approval; an implementation committee is struck which prepares an action plan to implement the final proposal; the action plan is passed to the stakeholder group for comment and approval; and when approval is given action begins. Whew!

Clearly the ‘try’ culture is necessary to survive the times we’re in now and will be in going forward.

And a critical element of creating a ‘try’ culture is to incorporate the concept into the performance planning system of the organization (as an aside, this holds true regardless of the size of the organization.
A 10-person small business and a 10,000 employee company should have a ‘tries’ value guide it’s performance planning).

Set 30-day ‘tries’ targets throughout the organization. For example, you might want marketing to execute 5 tries for a new product launch process and sales to try 10 times to build a more effective training program. The point is to hold people accountable for the trying activity with the belief that the more activity, the more progress.

Track and monitor the trying results to ensure the trend is growing. Keep a funnel to make sure there is sufficient ‘tries’ activity going on to ensure there is a high likelihood that progress will be eventually made.

And make sure that something is learned from every try; you never want to repeat a try the same way if it didn’t produce the desired results. Each try must be different in some way so that a new possibility can be explored with every try.

In the new normal, progressive organizations will create a ‘try’ culture where progress is measured in baby steps not giant leaps

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

• Posted 3.21.16 at 05:53 am by Roy Osing
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February 29, 2016

Why biting the dog is the key to leader success

Source: Unsplash

When a dog bites a man, the world doesn’t suddenly sit up and take notice. After all, dogs unfortunately are known to occasionally bite people.

But when a man bites a dog that’s different. It surprises people. No one expects it. It creates shock value.

It gets noticed and talked about as a bizarre incident.

Organizations today have difficulty carving out a unique and remarkable place for what they do in people’s minds.

They are more common than stand-out.

Their value propositions could be interchanged with their competitors and few would notice any difference.

They all market more to the masses and give little attention to the special needs of the individual.

The majority compete by trying to offer lower prices than their competition because they can’t talk about value differences.

And, driven by the coolness of what technology can do, they push products and services at the market hoping they will resonate with someone.

Winning doesn’t come from being the same as others. It doesn’t result from copying best practices. It doesn’t result from being in the herd.

Success in the face of stiff competition and an unpredictable environment comes from biting the dog — providing value that people want coupled with surprise, outrageousness and noticeability.

Here are 6 ways you can bite the dog.

▪️ Refuse the temptation to go along the path travelled by the crowd;

▪️ Go in the opposite direction to the established practice of the day;

▪️ Do something outrageous that draws an “OMG!” from observers and a disdainful smirk of admiration from traditional pundits;

▪️ Attack order of magnitude change rather than try to achieve modest incremental steps of progress. Go big or go home applies here. Small steps yield unnoticeable acts;

▪️ Invite mountains of criticism from your bite the dog act. The more negative remarks the more free advertising benefits you receive. If no one reacts negatively, you have to wonder if your move was bold enough;

▪️ Study contrarians: those individuals who have a track record of introducing weird creations in the market.

If you want mentors to copy, follow the outlandish ones.

It’s all about attitude.

If you are content to be a member of the herd, so be it.

But if you want to be special and do remarkable things, you have to bite the dog and live with the consequences.

There’s no other way.

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

• Posted 2.29.16 at 07:16 am by Roy Osing
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February 15, 2016

Why the most amazing mentors are super good at failing

Source: Pexels

Why the most amazing mentors are super good at failing.

Why does everyone seem to look for a mentor who is just smart, who has an impressive academic pedigree?

There are so many people willing to offer career guidance. The airwaves are cluttered with opinions and advice.

Everyone’s an expert on something.

Who do you listen to? Who do you believe? Who do you trust? Who do you follow?

And how do you recognize when someone is blowing smoke at you and feeding their own ego?

My advice to you is to be guided by individuals who have had a rich and long career actually doing stuff; lots of stuff.

▪️ People who have demonstrated achievements in the areas that intrigue you;

▪️ People who have implemented successful strategies in an environment of unpredictable and chaotic change;

▪️ People who have failed their way to success in unpredictable market conditions such as the pandemic.

Be wary of those who merely postulate what should be done based on text book doctrine alone.

Theory is not always a trustworthy beacon for what works and what doesn’t work in the real world.

Just because theory says it is the right thing to do doesn’t mean it is. There are too many variables that can never be explained by theoretical doctrine.

Look to people who have been there/done that for guidance; people who have a blemished record of trying things that didn’t always pan out the way they expected them to.

These are people who have learned that a minor portion of theory with a major dose of practicality is the formula for success.

Look for those who have a track record of failure.

Don’t get mesmerized by blue oceans which sound cool on paper and in theory but rarely exist in reality (or if they do, they’re discovered to have been blue after the fact).

They are ‘sorta blue-grey’ or ‘dirty blue-green’ in reality. And they need to be treated as such.

Find someone who is guided by practicality not theory or a cool blue idea.

Find someone who has a stellar record of achievement in a vague world with murky and turbulent coloured oceans.

Who exudes trust.

Who speaks passionately.

Who has winning and failing stories to tell.

Who is a teacher looking for a student willing to learn.

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

• Posted 2.15.16 at 04:37 am by Roy Osing
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January 25, 2016

5 proven ways to stay organized in a world of chaos

Source: Pexels

Many young professionals I mentor ask me “How do you stay organized?”

So many things to do.

So many people to satisfy.

So many demands on your time.

So many distractions.

In this milieu you can stay organized only if you start organized.

Here are 5 proven ways to get you going on the right track.

▪️Understand the objectives you’ve been asked to achieve.
If they are vague ask for clarification. Chasing unclear objectives is a waste of your precious time and energy and will prevent you from being a high performance individual. All it does is increase your anxiety level.

▪️Determine 3 priorities that will get you 80% there.
Forget the to-do list; you can’t juggle 10 projects in the air and hope to accomplish anything brilliant in any one of them. Organization is all about being focused on a few things that really matter.

▪️Eliminate the activities that don’t relate to your priorities.
This is your to-don’t list. If it’s not related to your main agenda, kill it. Or it will kill you.

▪️Don’t get sucked in with ‘yummy incoming’.
Once you have set your priorities there will be new temptations that try and pull you off your course. Don’t go there. Yummy will force you back into the run around mode.

▪️Stay in touch with your the results and adjust as you go.
Plans rarely turn out the way you intend. Be prepared to modify what you are doing or completely change direction and go Plan “B”.

If you can be calm and still in the moment when the world swirls around you; if you can maintain your focus when there are so many other possibilities to chase, you will not only be organized you will stand apart from everyone else.

You will be noticed.

You will be successful.

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

• Posted 1.25.16 at 04:09 am by Roy Osing
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