Be Different or be dead

June 12, 2023

It makes absolutely no sense to seek ‘inclusion’; here’s why

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It makes absolutely no sense to seek ‘inclusion’; here’s why…

Why would you want to fight to be included in the herd with everyone else?

The current raging narratives on the topic of ‘inclusion’ are baffling to me.

To me, inclusion is just another way of saying you want to be a recognized member of the common herd.

You want the same rights as other herd members.

You want the same protection the herd offers to others.

You want to be accepted by others in the herd.

You feel ‘marginalized’ by a crowd so you want to be a part of it.

Be included in the herd and you will be lost.

This incessant drive by some to ‘break into the crowd’ has more potential negative consequences than it does opportunities for the inclusion members.

Being absorbed by copycats, sameness, common thinking, average performance, ‘acceptable’ norms, standard behaviors, and bland personas doesn’t provide the inclusionist any comfort at all.

Rather it creates an environment ripe with personal risk.

My reader won’t be surprised when I say that successful people strive to separate themselves from the crowd NOT be a part of it.

They look to be different from others in a way people CARE about.

So I find it rather ironic that even though the widespread yearning to be included actually has a huge downside for its advocates, there is screaming demand for it.

Rejoice if you’re already outside the box of sameness.

Look for ways to leverage your unique faction position into an opportunity to further distance yourself from the herd and morph yourself into something even more special than you already are.

Longing to be part of the masses may seem to be a desirable endgame.

But be careful what you wish for.

Cheers,
Roy
My 50+ Podcast Shows that will change your life.

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• Posted 6.12.23 at 04:51 am by Roy Osing
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May 8, 2023

4 exciting breakaway moves to leave ‘the herd of sameness’

4 exciting breakaway moves to leave ‘the herd of sameness’.

The herd of sameness.
The undifferentiated mass where everyone’s the same.
Where compliance rules.
Where conformity reigns supreme.
Where risks are avoided.
Where no one stands out.
Where commonness and average describe its constituents.
Where momentum from the past defines its direction.
Where innovation is missing in action.

What I mean by ‘breakaway’.

▪️divergence.
▪️radical change,
▪️sudden attack or movement,
▪️’violent’ exit away from the herd.

For those of you who have followed my work—books, blogs, podcasts—you know that I advocate choosing a journey that others don’t.

Finding a way forward that serves others in ways that others don’t.
Discovering your ‘sweet spot’ in a world where copying runs rampant and originality is a lost art.

Some might say that’s what ‘pivoting’ is all about.

No it’s not.

A pivot is a change of direction from the past. It’s an incremental move away from past momentum. It’s a shift making use of the competencies that have been developed in the past.

A breakaway move is disruptive.

It reinvents the playing field by virtue of the move you make. It dismisses the past in terms of reliance and usefulness; it isn’t used to inform the future.

I took a startup to A BILLION IN SALES by creating these 4 breakaway moves intended to create something NEW that could drive miraculous performance.

Move #1. BE DiFFERENT!

▪️Don’t COPY.
Copying what others do keeps you in The herd of sameness. Look for ways to CREATE, not copy. Purge ‘best in class’ from your vault of business tools.

▪️Avoid CLAPTRAP.
Stop thinking of yourself as faster, better, best, leader or #1.

“We provide the best customer service.” is pure conjecture offered by the company spewing the words.

Start thinking of how you can become The ONLY One that does what you do in satisfying what is compelling and relevant for people.

▪️Shed ASPIRATIONS.
Ground yourself when it comes to defining what makes you special. A helium-filled 10,000-foot aspirational declaration doesn’t help convince people to do business with you.

“We are in business to save our home planet” may make the organization feel good about itself, but it does little to make it perfectly clear why they, and no one else, should have your business.

The ONLY Statement puts precision to your promise. It’s clear, measurable and understandable. It’s your Ground Zero.

Move #2. EXECUTE!

Academics and other so-called ‘experts’ have convinced us that the strategy is the critical element of high performing organizations.
They preach that the Plan must be elegant—by using their quantitative toolset—and it must be ‘perfect’—by accurately predicting the outcome of the Plan.

As a result, we spend 80% of our time trying to get the Plan absolutely ‘right’ in an imperfect world with stochastic events relentlessly bombarding us.

Stop! My experience in marching to A BILLION is that EXECUTION is the planning element that needs more attention than the Plan itself.

Get the Plan ‘just about right’ and execute it flawlessly is the real prescription for unbelievable performance.

My Strategic Game Plan is based on the view that a perfectly workable Plan is to ‘head west’.

Start executing. Learn from how well you’re executing. Learn from any unpredictable events—‘body blows’—that have rocked you. Adjust the Plan. Keep executing.

Move #3. SERVE!

Actually, the leadership herd of sameness is large and growing.

Most leaders are rote practitioners. They follow the leadership pedagogy promulgated by theorist academics and HR pundits who all espouse the same fundamentals.

Tactics of leadership are encouraged as the things leaders should do in order to transform themselves into ‘great’ leaders.

And so, tactics dealing with communications, delegation, team building, planning and others rain down on the leadership crowd with everyone getting washed with the same soap.

This is a BIG problem in my view.

Tactics should always be informed by strategy; tactics without strategic context serve no productive purpose other than satisfying the ‘expert’ pushing the tactics under their definition of ‘the right thing to do’.

My leadership guide was always to enhance the ability of the organization to EXECUTE! our Strategic Game Plan pristinely and hence improve performance and results ever higher.

My prime focus was to embed myself in the workplace—I call it ‘Leadership by SERVING Around (LBSA)—asking one simple question: “How can I help?”

The ‘gold’ I discovered from my breakaway move for the most part was what had to be done to remove the mud and grunge in the organization that was preventing effective execution: ‘dumb’ rules, policies, processes, systems and procedures that didn’t enable strategy execution, they prevented it.

Drawing a direct Line of Sight for people between their specific job responsibilities and the strategy was another SERVING Leadership role I played. Simple reason why it was important: if people understood exactly what they had to do to effectively execute the strategy, chances are their actions would deliver the strategic outcomes expected.

LBSA didn’t make me a ‘better’ leader, it made me a DiFFerENT leader from everyone else in ways which were required to drive performance through the roof as we marched to A BILLION IN SALES.

Move #4. DO-IT-YOURSELF!

There are certain tasks that should be delegated, but there are also some things the leader should do themselves regardless of what the books say.

’Strategic Micromanagement’ is my way of describing the fact that certain tasks associated with the execution of the organization’s strategic imperatives should be owned by the leader. No delegation. Period!

Audacious breakaway leaders NEVER delegate the stuff relating to the execution of their strategy.

These are some of the actions I took personally.

▪️ I ‘put my fingerprints’ on architecting ‘The Customer Moment’, the customer engagement process required to deliver amazing service experiences. Defining the behaviors required to ‘dazzle’ a customer were led by me. I took on the job of ensuring the organization knew what ‘Moments’ looked like, and trained everyone to deliver them.

▪️ Selling the organization’s Strategic Game Plan to employees was MY responsibility. I didn’t delegate it to anyone. It was my way of hearing first hand what people thought of the journey we decided to take and what they needed to fulfill it.
I had to answer the tough questions about why we chose the path we were on and how we were going to be successful.

▪️ I took on the role of ‘Strategy Hawk’ for my organization. It was my personal responsibility to monitor how effectively our strategy was being implemented and what remedial actions had to be taken to get us back on track when our results strayed from objectives.

▪️ I personally participated in the recruitment process for frontline managers and, on occasion, frontline employees as well. Panel interviews were held with potential candidates and I played an active role asking questions and selecting who got the job.

My objectives were twofold: first, to ensure that people in positions ‘close to customers’—I consider the frontline manager to be one of the most important positions in any organization—had the right Leadership By Serving Around skills and attributes and, second, to model the interview dynamics—questions and probing—for the other managers in the room.

Frontline people are key to executing a strategy; I wanted my fingerprints on the frontline recruitment and selection process.

Conclusion

Inertia plagues the ability of organizations and individuals to achieve superlative levels of performance which can only be achieved by a desire to breakaway from the momentum of the past.

My breakaway roadmap worked for me, and I guarantee it will work for you if you trust it.

✔️ BE DiFFERENT!
✔️ EXECUTE!
✔️ SERVE!
✔️ DO-IT-YOURSELF!

Cheers,
Roy
My 50+ Podcast Shows that will change your life.

Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 5.8.23 at 07:00 am by Roy Osing
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January 2, 2023

3 bold ways to turn your resolution into unexpected results

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3 simple ways to turn your resolution into amazing results.

Resolutions rarely are achieved because they are aspirations at best.

Think about your challenge as creating a game plan NOT declaring a resolution.

A game plan to achieve your goal by the end of the year. A declaration with sufficient granularity to define specifically WHAT needs to be done to get to where you want to get to.

I am not a fan of resolutions.

“I resolve to…” is merely an aspiration; a dream that more often than not lacks the precision to achieve it

You may have the will; but unless you define the steps to achieve it, it is unlikely to happen.

My resolution is to get physically fit this year fit isn’t particularly helpful in terms of actually doing it; “I intend to join a gym by Feb 1st and workout at least twice a week.” Is much better because it’s operational.

Here are 3 suggestions that might help move you forward in terms of having a Resolution that actually yield results:

1. Keep it simple — What’s complicated doesn’t get done. Try for the binary thing: on or off; do it or not. Easy to measure.

You either want to get a new job or not. “Doing better” is a non-objective. Clap trap goals are meaningless. Too wishy-washy. Too vague.
“I intend to go on a vacation to Tahiti by September”. Nice. Simple.

2. Keep it focused — on your most pressing priorities. Just because the herd wants to go gluten-free you don’t have to.

And only include something if you are serious about doing it. What do you “itch for”? What do you crave? Ignore the rest of the universe. What do YOU want?

3. Keep it to three —Many scattered complicated declarations don’t work. Few promises get kept. Frustration creeps in. Your personal plan isn’t a To Do List. It’s not a list of possibilities.

What 3 things would make your life so much better? Travel? Education? Health? Career? Family?

Pick your top 3 and get on with it.

Good luck…

Cheers,
Roy
45+ Podcast Shows I’ve done that unpack my work.

Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 1.2.23 at 05:43 am by Roy Osing
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December 20, 2022

4 simple ways to impress ‘the fox’ and have an amazing career

4 simple ways to impress ‘the fox’ and have an amazing career.

The fox in any organization is the key manager or executive that has the greatest amount of influence on a particular career or business decision to be made.

In sales it could be the key individual in the customer’s organization that would make the buying decision. If you are to win the sale, you need to figure out a way to make it stand out above your competitor’s in the eyes of the fox.

Your career challenge is no different. You represent a solution to a hiring manager’s problem and you must clearly differentiate yourself from your competition so that they conclude that you are the ONLY one who should be afforded the opportunity.

Here are 4 practices to covet the fox and win the competition for a job and push your career forward to succeed:

1. Identify the right leaders who represent a fox.

Identify the leaders in the organization who are making the key business and people decisions. Think about the individuals who are always consulted on matters affecting the strategy of the organization and the people who shoukd be considered for leadership positions.

Think about the fox as a target market—WHO to SERVE—just as you would if you were deciding on who to target in a new marketing program.

You will be allocating a significant amount of your time and energy on them and you need to be sure that they have the potential to deliver significant career benefits to you.

2. Discover their ‘secrets’.

Discover the expectations and ’secrets’ of the foxes you’ve identified. If you have a deep intimate understanding of the fox, you are in a position to impress them in a way none other can hope to do, and be successful in moving forward.

Here are a few secret gathering questions to answer on each fox.

— What history do they have in hiring people? What do they typically look for?

— What do they typically look for in a candidate to fill a particular position?

— What questions do they ask? What has their career path been? What positions have they held?

— What are they famous for? What strengths do they possess that have made them successful?

— What do they do outside of their job?

— Do they have any outside interests they spend their time on?

3. Market yourself as a package.

Don’t project yourself as a person having a narrow set of competencies.

Market yourself as someone who has a broad a range of skills and expertise that the organization values.

Think about yourself as a package of value that the organization needs to be successful and talk about how your package is more compelling than those who are competing with you.

Select the competencies you have that address the key issues and challenges facing the organization, which could include:

✔️ audacious leadership.
✔️ marketing expertise.
✔️ demonstrated achievement in developing winning business strategies.
✔️ cultural change.
✔️ increasing market share in competitive markets.
✔️ improving customer service results dramatically.
✔️ public speaking.
✔️ building strong teams and consultative selling skills.

4. Be proactive.

Be proactive in discovering the opportunities that will be coming up in the organization. Be intimately familiar with the business plan that is guiding critical activities.

If you have a good relationship with the foxes this will aid the process. In addition, stay tuned into the informal communications network in your organization as it is often very effective in knowing when change is in the wind.

With an informed outlook of the possibilities, you can take whatever action you feel appropriate to take advantage of them should they arise.

Follow these 4 simple ways to take advantage of the foxes that are in your organization and build a winning career.

Cheers,
Roy
My 50+ Podcast Shows that will change your life.

Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 12.20.22 at 12:00 am by Roy Osing
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