Be Different or be dead

March 15, 2012

Why a wishful dream without a purpose isn’t terribly useful

Source: Unsplash

Why a wishful dream without a purpose isn’t terribly useful.

Dreams without purpose are really useless

Some people (and organizations) dream a lot. Individuals dream of getting that promotion or of going on a trip to Paris; organizations dream of being the market leader or of providing the best customer service.

A dream is aspirational. It is nebulous and lacks the precision necessary to execute the specific actions necessary to fulfil it.

It’s ill defined. It’s a cloud. A helium filled balloon. A wish.

A kluge of possibilities.

Hardly something that will guide you to realizing it without a ton of work. Translating what it requires you to do on ground zero. In the trenches where things get messy.

But if you must dream, dream fierce.

Dream in excruciating detail so you can see what you have to do to achieve it.

Dream with the precision necessary to see an implementation path.

Dream with the passion that you will need to stay your course through set-backs and disappointment.

Dream with the adrenalin rush that will make so tenacious in driving to results you will surprise yourself.

Dream with purpose.

Dream to execute.

Dream to get it done.

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

• Posted 3.15.12 at 10:31 am by Roy Osing
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February 27, 2012

6 mind-blowing lessons to learn from The Grateful Dead

6 mind-blowing lessons to learn from The Grateful Dead.

The Grateful Dead were unbelievably focused on their fans. these are six valuable lessons we can learn from them.

1. Mix it up — Constantly innovate. Give your Fans a different look (value packages, promotions, events, fun) as often as you can. The Dead decided what songs to play when they began each concert - songs on the run. Risky? Yes. Original? Yes. Did their Fans love them for it? YES!

2. Enable your customers to fulfil themselves — Do what THEY want. The key here is the serving mentality. Find out what they want and desire and take them there. The Dead created a bubble for their Fans and allowed them to reach emotional highs.

3. Focus on the experience not the product — The Dead did not try to sell records. They wanted to create mind-blowing experiences for their Fans. And guess what? (They sold lots of records).

4. Save the best deals for your best customers — Using special promotional deals to entice people away from their supplier is a fool’s game in any event. What makes you think that if someone takes your Special Offer they won’t leave you in a heartbeat if someone else gives them one as well?

You can’t grow your business by catering to the promiscuous crowd of constant switchers. Furthermore, what will your loyal customers say when they find out that you are not offering the special deal to them? (I can see their taillights already).

The Dead always saved the best ticket prices, seats and deals for their Fans. The result? The most successful touring band in history.

5. Do the opposite of what your competitors are doing — Observe ‘em and do a 180. You can’t stand-out if you copy. The Dead allowed their Fans to record their music in concert. No other band did. The 180 strategy created uniqueness and remark-ability that made them unforgettable.

6. Communicate with your Fans incessantly—and figure out how to make it easier for them to communicate with one another.

The Dead were fanatics when it came to having conversations with their Fans before Social Media arrived. Their Fans responded by not only attending concerts and other Dead Events, but also by talking up The Dead to their friends. The Dead virus spread…

You can learn a great deal about business from the most interesting and surprising sources.

Check out The Dead.

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

• Posted 2.27.12 at 08:10 am by Roy Osing
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February 6, 2012

3 simple ways to make your ONLY statement better

Source: Pexels

3 simple ways to make your ONLY statement better.

The ONLY Statement is the ultimate manifestation of your distinctiveness; of your uniqueness that will separate your organization from your competition.

If you can’t claim that “We are the ONLY ones that…” you’re part of the competitive herd awash with sameness and commodity suppliers

Jerry Garcia, of The Grateful Dead said it this way: You don’t want merely to be the best of the best. You want to be the only one’s who do what you do

If you’re not spending copious amounts of time creating your ONLY, you’re not using your time wisely.

And you’re falling deeper and deeper into the commodity herd.

You won’t be noticed. You will be ignored. You will be dead. It’s just a matter of time.

Follow these 3 steps to create your ONLY Statement.

Speak to what what people crave — Talk to the critical wants of the customers you have chosen to serve — your target market.
Remember it’s not about what you supply to the market; it’s about what your customers desire and want. Do you know the top three things they covet?

People today generally have what they “need”. The battle is over how to address what they “want” in a manner that ONLY you do.

Talk about value — What benefits, solutions, memories, joy, experiences and happiness are you creating? Pushing products and services has no role in The ONLY Statement. We are seeking to claim uniqueness in the way we impact the lives of those we are trying to serve.

And remember, price has no place in the ONLY Statement either. Price claims can never be distinctive. Easy to copy. Commodity behaviour.

Make it specific — At the end of the day, your ONLY has to be delivered by people. They need to clearly understand what it means in granular terms.

They need to be able to determine the appropriate behaviors necessary to “live” The ONLY. Leave helium-filled statements, vision-type claims and aspirations at the door.

“We provide the best customer service” is way off target. Means different things to different people. Probably is untrue. Can’t be measured.

If your ONLY can’t be translated into a detailed picture of what it looks like in the field. Trash it.

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

• Posted 2.6.12 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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January 30, 2012

Why you shouldn’t benchmark others if you want a great strategy

Source: Pexels

Why you shouldn’t benchmark others if you want a great strategy.

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:

#1. Benchmarking is copying not strategy

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 crowd, it doesn’t separate you from it

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 is the instrument of compliance

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 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 prevents 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 1.30.12 at 10:20 am by Roy Osing
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