Be Different or be dead

April 6, 2020

Why do great leaders come out in a crisis like COVID?

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Why do great leaders come out in a crisis like COVID?

The current COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that there are two categories of leaders in the organizational world: those who strut their their academic credentials to the world and who pride themselves on understanding business and leadership theory, and then there are those who have the credentials and theory as a base, but who focus on achieving results by harnessing the purpose and emotion in people.

The ones who think

Intellectual leaders believe that if their solution is based on sound business theory it will be successfully implemented in the field.
And the actions they take to arrive at a solution tend to be analytical in nature: defining potential alternatives, assessing each one of them within a predetermined criteria, and selecting the one that best satisfies the stated objectives and intended outcomes.

Intellectual leaders generally take considerable time in coming up with a solution; the process of pondering, exploration, analysis and decision-making can take copious amounts of time as the leader wants desperately to come up with the “perfect” solution and avoid making a mistake.
Their infatuation with using the tools of analysis chews up so much time that implementation occurs several days/weeks/months after the need for a solution showed itself.

The ones who feel

Emotional leaders salute accepted business principles but place primary importance on how a solution fits the emotional needs of the people who are impacted by it.
Their priority is to find a solution that is “just about right” in terms of applying good business principles, and bear down on the one that appeals to how people feel about it and how the solution will make their job and personal life better today.

Emotional leaders recognize that people are mildly interested in the long term impacts a solution has on the organization but are passionately concerned about how a solution affects the organization and employees TODAY.

The need for immediacy is what enables the emotional leader to rise above their intellectual colleagues and achieve greatness.

Emotional leaders thrive in a moment of crisis.

Crisis circumstances separate the boilerplate leader from the great one for these reasons:

Weekly plans

▪️a crisis forces the leader to think about what action is required over the next 24 hours and upcoming weeks not what’s needed over a longer term planning horizon.

“What needs to be done in the next 14 days?” dominates the conversation, not what should be done to maximize profits over the next three years.
They recognize that if the short term isn’t successfully dealt with, the long term never “shows up”.
24-hour planning forces this leader into action and out of the traditional planning mindset.

Reaction

▪️a crisis forces the leader into a responsive mode; they simply don’t have the luxury of time to carefully plan out what they should do in the face of the unforeseen events.
In a crisis, traditional leadership training is really not helpful except to evaluate the potential actions one could take in the moment.

It’s ironic, really, that more often than not great leadership is defined by the leader’s ability to develop a strategy for their organization as opposed to how well they are able to react to unpredicted body blowssuffered and yet it’s the latter competence that separates the mediocre from the great ones.

People focus

▪️a crisis forces the leader to consider what individuals must have to survive; the needs of the organization are temporarily put on hold.
The leader places each and every individual employee in their organization as the focus of their attention and energy; they under that the broader requirements to grow shareholder value will come once the crisis is successfully dealt with — if the crisis isn’t survived, the longer term is an irrelevant consideration.

Risk taking

▪️a crisis forces the leader to make decisions without having complete information. Making a call that meets the needs of individuals today may in fact have long term negative consequences for shareholders, for example.
Continuing to pay employees while your business is shut down for COVID 19 will reduce profitability for the firm, yet that’s what a great leader does.

Frontline focus

▪️a crisis forces the leader to take care of frontline people; those amazing folks who actually serve the critical needs of others who are threatened by the crisis — hospital workers, first responders, service representatives and delivery drivers.
Getting products and services to the people who need them is the leader’s priority and finding ways to make the frontline job easier in the moment takes all the leader’s energy.
Great leaders do this normally but a crisis brings this action element into focus.

A crisis forces the leader to ACT. NOW. FOR PEOPLE.

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

• Posted 4.6.20 at 04:31 am by Roy Osing
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March 30, 2020

Be a good copycat by making these 2 practical moves

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Be a good copycat by making these 2 practical moves.

Benchmarking others can be a good thing when you’re trying to be more productive.

For my regular reader, you’re undoubtedly sick over my relentless chant about the folly of copying others; following in someone else’s footsteps with the hopes that you will reap untold benefits.

Copying to gain a strategic advantage is NOT ok

I’ve said repeatedly that copying best in class is for the weak and lazy; that it’s an easy disguise for innovation and that as long as you’re in the hunt to benchmark someone else you give yourself permission not to be creative and innovate.

Copying is the antithesis of strategic innovation. Period.

I guess it’s due to my current state of chronological impairment, that I now offer somewhat of a contrarian view to my previous thesis. It doesn’t supplant my anti-copying rants, however, it merely defines an exception to the rule.

Copying to improve operations efficiency IS ok

The exception is: copying for operations improvements is ok as long as you realize they are not contributing to a strategic advantage in any way whatsoever

This is a critical piece of thinking. If you are looking for efficiency gains than go ahead and find a best practices organization that has top notch returns from their processes and copy them.

But don’t for a moment think you’re going to improve your competitive position because that’s not on.

How can you gain any advantage strategically by doing what someone else does? You can’t, regardless of what anyone says.

But you can improve your operating margins within the strategy you have, and that’s a good thing. A ho-hum strategy with improved margins is better than one with skinny ones (but don’t kid yourself, you’re only putting off the inevitable if you’re not the ONLY ones that do what you do).

These 2 practical moves will allow you to use the copycat strategy the RIGHT way:

1. Create a business plan that sets you apart — First, develop a strategic game plan that will separate you from the herd of competitors you face and make you unmatchable in the markets you serve;

2. Efficiently execute the plan — Second, adopt as many best practices you can that will enable you to execute your business plan with maximum efficiency.

Success is a healthy blend of strategic wisdom + operating efficiency that yields a higher level of performance than your peers.

If you are a copycat to try and dominate your competition, DON’T.

But if you apply copycat methods to HOW you get the strategic job done, DO.

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

• Posted 3.30.20 at 07:02 am by Roy Osing
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March 16, 2020

Why the most important ingredient to a successful career is ‘doing it’

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Why the most important ingredient to a successful career is ‘doing it’.

There has been much written about how to be successful; how to build a résumé that will knock the socks off a prospective employer, how to manage conflict, how to “dress for success”, how to develop amazing interpersonal skills, and how to make yourself indispensable are examples of the angles the experts present as the ingredients to a rewarding future.

The problem is there are too many slices of success advocated by too many pundits; an individual looking for help and guidance doesn’t know which expert to listen to one and how to prioritize the many opportunities to improve they have in front of them.

And they’re all looking for that ONE slice that will make them successful; the silver bullet that explains why one person succeeds and another doesn’t.

The other problem I see is that everyone wants to spend a lot of time studying the slices of the success pie. They want to be absolutely sure that when they decide to act on any specific course of action, it is the right course of action for them in terms of their future.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “How do I know this opportunity is consistent with my long term career goals?” from a young professional asking for career guidance.

They want a guarantee that if they take a particular action that it will end up being the exact ingredient they need to be successful in the long term.

And of course while they ponder the answer to the question, precious time passes and others take the opportunity.

In my experience, there is one thing that has a major influence on whether someone succeeds or not, and it’s pretty simple.

Do something, learn from it, do something else (and repeat).

1. Do something

First of all, pondering and intellectualizing the possibilities in front of you doesn’t accomplish anything other than burn precious time and energy cycles that you can ill afford to waste.

Performing detailed analyses and trade-off assessments on the number of options you have available may make you feel like you’re making progress, but you’re not.

All you’re doing is trying to make a perfect decision which is pretty well impossible in today’s environment of rapid change, uncertainty and unpredictability.

The best way to see if a course of action is right for you is to take it (if it feels right for you) and find out.

If, for example, it seems right to take a lateral move into sales for the experience, then do it. Sooner or later you’ll discover if it was the right call — you will never be able to predict the outcome if you don’t.

Or, if you’re wondering whether or not taking a course in the environmental sciences will help you, take it; eventually the wisdom of your decision will reveal itself to you.

2. Learn from it

If you don’t learn from every experience you have, you’re depriving yourself of what is needed to move forward.

I have observed throughout my career many people who were exposed to opportunities never learned from them.

They accepted a temporary assignment as a member of a new product introduction team, for example, and failed to take away any new insights on how to manage conflict.

Or they were enrolled against their will in a finance course (as part of their personal development plan) and got buried in how to construct an income statement rather than see how the elements of it could be used to diagnose organizational problems and therefore help improve performance.

In my experience I have never found an adventure that didn’t teach me something; there is always some redeeming value in anything we are exposed to.
We just need to be open to the possibilities and absorb them when you discover them.

3. Do something else

Learning must inform action.

The secret is to figure out what the new found knowledge means in terms of the next step you take.
To be meaningful learning must either reinforce that you are on the right track, or cause you to change your course in some way.

But learning needs to force something to happen, not linger as an emotion and then evaporate leaving no trace that it occurred — learning must leave a trail; an imprint on your journey’s pathway.

“What are the implications of what I have learned in terms of my next steps?” must be asked at the end of every new adventure if learning is to have a productive role to play in your success.

Do something, learn from it, do something else (and repeat) — the one thing you need to know about success.

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

• Posted 3.16.20 at 06:47 am by Roy Osing
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March 9, 2020

4 great ways to be different and easily beat your ruthless competitors

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4 great ways to be different and easily beat your ruthless competitors.

If you’re looking to be unmatched in the marketplace, follow these simple proven tactics…

1. Be relevant and unique — in the business plan for your organization.

Dumb your strategic game plan down and answer the three fundamental questions to capture the essence of what you have to do to WIN. Create your ONLY statement around requirements that both matter to your target customers and which you and only you provide.

And, focus on execution recognizing that a plan that can’t be implemented is worthless.

2. Be holistic in your approach to customer opportunities — to create value in your marketing function.

Provide value-based packages for your chosen customer groups based on a customer learning competency your organization adopts.

Look at the total customer in terms of their broad attributes and requirements and not a thin slice of their product needs. Discover the secrets of your customers and use them as the driver of your marketing strategy.

3. Be dazzling — in how you serve your customers.

Treat creating memorable customer experiences as a critical priority. Vary how you treat your customers to enhance their loyalty.

Adopt the elements of a dazzling service experience plan:
▪️hire human being lovers
▪️empower frontliners to say yes
▪️kill dumb rules that make no sense to your customers
▪️ recover from your service blunders —  fix the problem and do the unexpected by leveraging the customer secrets you have discovered.

4. Be intimate — in your sales strategy building strong relationships with your customers.

Avoid product flogging that does nothing to generate loyalty and makes you the same as everyone else. Strong deep relationships encourage your customers to buy stuff over the long term; product flogging is short term thinking at best.

There you have it, the essential elements of establishing a winning strategy and healthy culture in your organization.

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

• Posted 3.9.20 at 07:46 am by Roy Osing
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