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 23, 2020

4 hazardous problems leaders should know about digital speeches

Source: Pexels

4 hazardous problems leaders should know about digital speeches.

We live in digital space; we use digital technology in our personal life to practically do everything from telling time, listening to our favourite music and keeping a personal journal to controlling our home security through devices such as video cameras and motion sensors.

In business, digital technology is the heart of products and services, internal control processes and customer contact systems.

Digital pervades literally everything we do, but I believe the most profound impact it has had is on the way we communicate with one another.

Analog technology defined the boundaries and limitations on how the communications function was performed; digital technology completely rewrote the book and it has a profound effect on leadership and the way leaders talk to their tribe.

There are definite advantages to a leader communicating digitally. It’s a quick way to get a message out to the intended audience. It’s a voice conference call (in the old world) on steroids. And it’s an effective way to reach a large audience; the broadcast capabilities of digital allow the leader to communicate to virtually their entire organization if required.

Speed and coverage; significant benefits over the ways we used to communicate using analog technology.

But what about the challenges digital technology creates for today’s leader?

These are important shortfalls of digital communications leaders should consider.

#1. You become an avatar to your audience

Exclusive use of digital renders the leader in absentia with an avatar for their face. Employees receive emails, social media commentary and maybe even have an opportunity to participate in a ZOOM meeting, but they don’t have enough face time with the leader to decipher who they are and what makes them tick — interests, biases and philosophy.

An avatar is inanimate; a digital expression of who you are. It’s not real and that’s the problem. Organizations need real leaders with feelings, emotion and passion that can be communicated to employees to instil vision and gather support.

#2. You think your communications is effective (but it’s not)

Speed and coverage dominates the criteria for determining whether or not a communications channel is doing its job. The problem is speed and coverage are an insufficient criteria to determine effectiveness.
The real questions are:
— “Did people understand my message?”
— “Were they convinced?”
— “Are they prepared to go where I believe we should go?”

If the answer to these questions after a digital speech is “no” then the communications failed and the leader did as well.

Digital may have succeeded in getting the message out to everyone but if people didn’t understand it, were not convinced to change their views by it, were ok to not be able to ask a question of it, then it failed.

#3. You avoid the opportunity to be inclusive

A HUGE part of communications is the engagement process not just the content. Sending out a digital message doesn’t engage everyone; it informs them but doesn’t include them in the process which can only be done by tailoring the message and making it compelling and relevant to the various demographics in the audience.

A one-dimension email message will not satisfy everyone who has a stake in it and who look at the issues differently given their different backgrounds.
Being inclusive in business is to engage with people, listen to them and engage in healthy debate to decide on an outcome; old school analog has its advantages.

#4. You’re in the cloud

You have a virtual presence; your physical form is absent much of the time. Let’s face it, you can communicate digitally without ever having to leave your office or your home (or your bed) — in fact your “home” is the cloud.

Leaders must have a presence in the workplace, face-to-face with people if they are to be effective and digital, unfortunately, has redefined “get out of your office” to get off of your cloud as the imperative for leaders to leave their cave.

The one thing old school technology did was, because of its limitations, force leaders to talk to people as there was no other choice. The telephone and in-the-flesh meetings had to be used; and they were effective.

Great leaders spend time eye-to-eye with employees in their organization. It’s the only way they can get a complete picture of people and how they really feel about where the leader wants to go. And it’s the only forum where meaningful dialogue (complete with body language) can occur with the leader getting honest unfiltered feedback.

At the end of the day, the challenge for leaders is to balance the use of both analogue and digital tools to communicate with people in their organization; I suggest you consider more opportunities to ”do analog” and change the mix to include a more direct engagement approach.

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

• Posted 3.23.20 at 07:55 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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