Be Different or be dead

March 11, 2019

Why deleting old stuff is better than creating new stuff

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Why deleting old stuff is better than creating new stuff.

Innovation is always associated with coming up with new solutions to existing problems; the definition of the word confirms it: innovation is described as ‘the introduction of something new; a new idea, method, or device’.

If you are successful creating and introducing newness, you are a respected member of the creativity crowd, and the rewards follow your achievements.
Adding stuff and consuming additional resources gets the attention, and enhancing value is defined by introducing new products and services and adding new technical functionality.
And in fact many organizations reinforce this bias by having entire teams dedicated to new product and service development.

The flip side of the coin, however, ‘gets no respect’. This is the side of the coin that seeks to removes stuff — takes stuff away, cuts, and deletes. The flip side of the coin has DNA based on the need to subtract not add.

We should start to recognize the importance of deleting the no-longer-relevant by changing the old school definition of innovation.

New school innovation

New school innovation definition: ”The introduction of something new or the elimination of something deemed no longer relevant; a new or obsolete idea, method, or device.”

This new definition of innovation is based on the principle of creating additional value in whatever fashion is appropriate at the time.

And deleting the no-longer-relevant adds HUGE value and yet it’s not on a par with its add-the-new cousin.

Take a look at your own personal life. How much junk do you have in your closet? How much stuff do you have that you never use but can’t part with? And how good do you feel — and how much more effective are you at using the space you have available — when you have a purge day and open up all that room that you can use for today’s prized possessions?

Managers of irrelevance

In organizations, procedures, practices, systems, products and services all fall victim sooner or later to irrelevance. Markets change, customer needs change and priorities change, leaving irrelevance in their wake.

The problem is no one pays attention to this lack of usefulness because the people who perform the irrelevant tasks never pony up.

They are the LAST people who will admit that what they are doing should be axed.

And leadership doesn’t spot irrelevance easily because they have more lofty strategic goals to pursue. It’s no wonder that a small group of employees maintaining a system that has lost its usefulness is missed while leadership is paying attention to guiding the actions necessary to complete a strategic partnership transaction or enter a new market.

If only organizations could delete the stuff they no longer need and observe the added value they could produce.

In government, absolutely zero resources are assigned to mining out the no-longer-needed. When’s the last time you remember a social program of any sort being phased out? Talk about health care — budgets go up and feed a system that needs deletion and resurrection.

We no longer have the luxury to treat the new as an add-on. We can’t afford it. The new must ride on the back of the delete function.
Delete something and then add something new. We need the capability to create space for the new to enter; without deletion it can’t happen.

#CutTheCRAP

We need to start a Cut the CRAP movement — #CutTheCRAP — to seek out and cut things no longer relevant to our personal lives, organizations and governments.

The environment will benefit because the crap that no longer serves a useful purpose is identified and recycled; customers benefit because their service providers are more efficient and able to offer new services and potentially lower prices; and citizens benefit because governments are able to deliver new services more efficiently and hold taxes down as much as possible.

#DeleteIT

The point is, we need a relentless focus on hitting the delete button in our world of limited resources. Consumption must be linked with (and in many cases dependant on) deletion — delete something if you want to earn the right to consume something else.

But as long as sexy and success is associated with #AddIT it won’t happen.

In organizations we need to make hitting the delete button a top priority and assign a new role — Chief CRAP Officer (CCO) — to expunge the stuff throughout the organization that sucks resources and detracts from doing the new progressive initiatives dictated by their strategic game plan.

The CCO’s performance plan should be based on the value created from the savings realized by removing no-longer-relevant activities and hence the capability created to take on new initiatives without adding resources to do so.

In addition to a focus on new product development, the CCO should be held accountable for the old product deletion role.
How many sku’s do organizations offer with minimal sales? These are obvious candidates for #DeleteIT.

Innovation and creativity should no longer only be associated with #AddIT activities in a world that is relentlessly and inexorably moving towards a lack of resources.

‘Give up to get’ must find a way into our teachings if we are to avoid the consequences of too much output and too little capacity.

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

• Posted 3.11.19 at 04:02 am by Roy Osing
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March 4, 2019

5 reasons why the most popular things are wrong

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Popular ideas, popular gadgets and popular people have always been the objects of our affection; thriving industries have been built around attracting people to popularity niches — the tabloids are obvious examples of businesses targeted at people who “worship” celebrities from all walks of life and who are prepared to pay to read about their exploits regardless of their truth.

Everyone looks for what’s trendy; trendiness is cool and if you jump on the “What’s Trending” bandwagon, you get identified with the trend — YOU are cool.

But there is a dark side to popularism that rarely is talked about; popularity results in behaviour that is inconsistent with developing creative and innovative individuals and organizations — and taken to the extreme, society as a whole.

Popularity is bordering on being toxic notion; here are 5 reasons why:

Popularity fashions crowd formation

Anything popular builds a crowd. Whatever’s trending sucks people in and it’s value is measured by how many views the video gets or how many Retweets and Likes the post gets.

What individual value is created by being in a crowd? Other than sporting a Rolling Stones T-Shirt that a million other people have, what exactly does the crowd inspire in me to exercise my personal identity — the unique characteristics that make me “special”?

When you are in a crowd there is no motivation to be yourself; the “rub-off factor” from what is popular is a stimulant to share a view held by the many rather than express your own personal perspective.

Popularity grows the crowd of common thinking; it espouses the same ideas and the result is a larger herd whose members all think the same.
We don’t need more crowds formed by popularism; we desperately need stimuli that encourages individualism.

Popularity feeds sameness

Under the guise of being cool, popularity encourages people to adopt the behaviour and views of others whether it be a rock star, celebrity model or fringe ideology group.
This adoption breeds a culture of people who seek likeness; who feel more comfortable sharing someone else’s DNA rather than living their own.

A successful product idea captures the imagination of other marketers; an amazing wardrobe ensemble smites the collective adulation of young people and an innovative operating system model is a magnet for engineers regardless of the business they’re in.

Crowd members are captured by a force they must capitulate to rather than seek their own way.

Cultivating sameness has no long term value; it breeds a population of lookalikes who operate within boundaries established by others. Value for ourselves and for people around us is delivered by spirits who are different and who shine by being special.

Popularity prevents risk taking

When a person imitates what’s popular they tend to feel that their risk exposure is minimized; in fact many populist followers think they have no risk at all.
They believe any personal risk they do incur is spread out among everyone else who shares the same idea, so their share is minimal.
And even if the populist notion is a bust they can always take comfort in the fact that many others have gone down with them.

Populist conformity not only mitigates personal risk, it has an even darker downside — it mutes innovation and creativity. Amazing thinks happen when people assume risk; conversely, mediocrity results when risk is avoided.

Ergo, behaviour which bows down to popularity and subordinates individual thought and expression results in nothing interesting at all and that’s a HUGE risk to it only the individual but also to society.

Popularity kills originality

Following a popular anything removes any incentive to look, say or do anything different from the trend. In fact while in the popular herd, stepping out and doing anything that is not a aligned with the trend isn’t even a thought — there is zero motivation to do so when you are caught up in the energy of the movement.

Crowd members fall easily into the copycat mentality and they copy everything that is associated with their popular infatuation. And they think they’re being original; doing or thinking things that people outside the popular circle don’t.

Copying is the enemy of innovation and creativity; it serves no purpose other than to #metoo someone else.

We don’t need copycats in today’s world of intense competition for everything; we need people who hate the notion and find it repugnant because it’s an easy way out of the tough job of doing something truly original.

Popularity steals your future

The opportunity costs associated with following what is popular are higher than anyone can imagine.
While you are coveting what is popular, you are losing the precious energy and time you need to do something special; something that will define your unique signature in the world.

If you are devoted to chasing what is “in” at the moment, you need to be comfortable with the prospects of an unexciting future; one that is defined by finding someone else’s way rather than your own.

And the irony is you don’t even know the people behind the popular movement that controls you — crazy!
Successful individuals devote themselves to exploring the art of the impossible.

It’s ok to dabble in popularity; trends have a habit of embracing us, capturing our imagination and imprinting our opinions and behaviour.

But at the end of the day, popular things should be treated as a temporal aberration — a fling that doesn’t detract you from your ultimate goal of creating your own personal and unique value for the world.

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

• Posted 3.4.19 at 03:16 am by Roy Osing
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November 12, 2018

Powerful ways to step away from the crowd in your life, career and job

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Powerful ways to step away from the crowd in your life, career and job.

It has been several years since I wrote the original book BE DiFFERENT or be dead;  since then, at the request of my readers, I have written a number of ebooks taking a deep dive on several of the specific topics in my original work with particular emphasis on how to implement my ideas.

Being different; standing out from the crowd has amazing long lasting value. It attracts attention — people are generally used to blandness where everyone and everything blends in and conforms to accepted norms.
And when attention is garnered, magic can happen if mixed with what is relevant to people and what they care about.

Being different in a relevant way is truly the way to achieve sustainable advantage in whatever theatre you are in — life, career or in an organization.

The most common question I’m asked is “How do I get started?”

A basic precept: accept that there are no silver bullets in the journey to be distinctive and unique; no one single action that will carve you out of the herd and confer upon you the specialness that will last forever.

It’s a journey; a series of acts that collectively over time will slowly give you the centrifugal force needed to move you away from others who find comfort in compliance and plurality.

DiFFERENT in your life

If you want to be different in your life, your challenge is to pick something you value — your life brand — and separate yourself from everyone else.

It starts with an intimate understanding of who you are and what you value the most in your personal life.
— Are you a lover of animals?
— A passionate advocate of protecting the environment?
— A fiscally prudent aficionado who insists that budgets must be balanced?
— A grandparent who wants themselves to be indelibly etched into the memories of their grandkids?
— A world traveler who thinks about their foreign-place bucket list more than anything else?
— An immigration zealot who believes further influxes of people should be curtailed?

Being different in life doesn’t necessarily mean that you take an extreme or “pole” position on your life view; that you choose a contrarian 180-degree view to the commonly held perspective.

The pole position on any topic is often a difficult place to be as your personal ideals and beliefs can easily be seen to be extremely negative to many. The risk of being in this position is that, in your attempt or be different in a valued way, you are seen as a crusader of a minority cause which attracts only extremist attention.

And so you get people who advocate radical immigration or environmental policies viewed as a bit out of touch and insensitive by a large portion of the population.
It’s not likely that if you chose to be different as a ‘save the environment at any expense’ person you would be seen as someone special to look closely at — as a matter of fact you would only identify yourself with the left environmental herd.

Rather than picking a pole position, being different means that you address your passion in a way no one else does; your angle is like no other so it is noticed by those around you.

Your different narrative is the result of having a broad and deep understanding of your life topic; you have studied and thought about it extensively and therefore have a unique perspective on the matter — your views on what it takes to be an amazing grandparent, for example, are based on years of practical experience creating memories for your treasures.

Decide what’s important to you. Create a compelling narrative that stands out because it is skillfully crafted from a deep understanding of your topic. Have a unique perspective. Don’t get sucked into the poles but avoid complying with the blandness of the herd.

DiFFERENT in your career

If you want to be different in your career, the first thing you have to do is have a career game plan that is highly tuned to execution in the short term.

Aspiring to be a sales executive — full stop! — doesn’t really provide a call to action that will move you relentlessly towards your goal. With this type of objective you can meander for years without knowing whether or not you are taking the actions that will (might) yield success.

Your game plan must be much more precise if it is to define the steps you need to take to move in the right direction.
“I intend to be the sales VP of XYZ company in 36 months” is a declaration that is much more meaningful; it will open up the specific steps that you need to take to achieve your goal.

It is targeted — the VP position in the XYZ organization — and it is time bound — a 36 month window. These three variables provide the focus necessary to create an action plan that can me measured and tweaked along the way.

The final element of your game plan is to decide on what your personal brand should be — and it must be unique to make any difference.

Without defining how you are unique and incomparable in the crowd, your career path will be an uphill climb

“Why should you be given the opportunities for the VP sales position over everyone else who want the same opportunity?” is the question your brand must answer and if you can’t define your persona so that you separate yourself you won’t be able to answer the question.

Have a short term game plan that defines your distinctiveness and is granular enough to drive you to execute. Don’t get sucked in to lofty helium-filled goal setting.

DiFFERENT in your job

If you want to be different in the role you have been assigned, challenge yourself every moment of every day to be different — you must look at everything in front of you through a BE DiFFERENT lens.

“How can I do this differently?” must dominate your mindset and guide your actions, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Stopping to ask yourself this question is a great way to start applying the concept. It keeps the desire to be different first and foremost in your mind and deeds and will become automatic once you get into the rhythm.

This approach REALLY worked for me! Every project I did, every presentation I gave and every leadership act I took was premeditated; I designed everything I did to be different than the way the herd approached things.

It’s not difficult to do; most people tend to adopt a common approach employed by the masses — a best practise or a principle espoused by academia or a subject matter expert.  And, people tend to do the minimum amount required to get the job done.

Knowing this, I first, focused on the practise I thought others would use and then decide on another way to do it with overkill as my guide.

Ask your self the ‘different’ question every moment of your day to embed it in your thinking and actions. Don’t get sucked into copying best practices or a herd mentality.

There’s no end point in this journey; it’s a process of doing stuff; learning from the actions you took and adjusting your way forward.

But it won’t happen unless you take steps now to start.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 11.12.18 at 04:43 am by Roy Osing
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February 27, 2017

7 easy ways leaders can think creatively to achieve their goals

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It’s not good enough to rely on traditional methods; leaders must think differently to create value for their organizations.

The “silver bullet” for leaders is to loosen up on the process for setting business goals and tighten up on execution required to achieve them.

Organizations are trapped in the traditional business planning process of lengthy analysis, subject matter expert presentations and application of theoretical strategy-building precepts promulgated by consultants and academics.

What theoretically makes sense rarely works in the real world where people, technology, changing priorities, regulations and the unpredictable all collide in a “perfect storm”.

I come from the practical side of business.

I believe that if you can’t execute the strategy in a world of imperfection, the strategy is useless. After all, results are more interesting than the theoretical brilliance of the plan and the extent to which it conforms to pedantic norms.

Here are 7 ways leaders can think differently to achieve their strategic goals.

▪️Spend 20% of your time on WHAT you want to achieve; 80% on how you intend to achieve it. Execution detail is generally given the short shrift.

For some reason leaders assume they can pronounce a new strategy to the organization and miraculously it will get implemented. Nonsense. The granularity of your implementation plan will determine your success.

▪️Get comfortable with not getting it exactly right. We have this phobia about getting the business plan perfect. We spend an additional 4 weeks of planning time trying to make it more perfect.

It’s a ridiculous notion for two reasons: first there is no such thing as a perfect anything so stop trying to chase the illusion; second, as soon as your strategy is put to bed, it’s obsolete as unpredicted environmental events are felt.

▪️A strategy really understood is one that can be broken down into a handful of objectives intended to successfully execute it.

An action plan with 25 things to do suggests that the team that created the strategy doesn’t clearly understand it well enough to focus on the critical few actions necessary as opposed to the many possible actions that could be taken.

Focus on the must not the possible.

▪️Beware of the yummy incoming. Yummy is my way of describing over-the-transom demand that might be fun to chase, but it’s off strategy.

Ignore off-strategy demands on your time and resources, you can’t afford them. Stay on strategy and have the guts to turn away opportunities that suck you dry.

▪️Establish role clarity for everyone in the organization in terms of what they have to do execute flawlessly.
Dysfunction occurs when direct line of sight for people hasn’t been defined and included in performance plans.

▪️Cut the Crap! Stop doing the unnecessary so you can execute the necessary. It’s impossible to take on the new stuff when you won’t let go of the old stuff.

You don’t need more resources, you need to get rid of stuff that may have had relevance yesterday but not today.

▪️Kill the stupid policies that make your customers and employees go nuts. Customers won’t engage with dumb rules in their face which frustrate them when they engage with you.

Cleanse your inside with policies made to control customers; free them to transact with you on their terms.

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

• Posted 2.27.17 at 05:31 am by Roy Osing
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