Nov 16, 2020 | Branding, Marketing
What is the one word, perhaps two, that best defines and communicates the promise your product delivers.
This is not an easy thing to define, but when you do, it is a powerful ‘moat’ around your brand that insulates you from competitive pressure.
However, like any moat, it needs to be maintained, renewed, modernised, or it will fill with weeds, and be less effective at repelling invaders.
The best array of examples I can think of come from the auto market.
BMW: Performance. Volvo: Safety. Toyota: Reliability. Ferrari: Design. Rolls Royce: Luxury.
There are a few more from other domains that come easily to mind. Apple: Different. Coca Cola: Refreshment, and from my own experience, Ski yogurt: Fruit. Meadow Lea: Congratulations. These two Australian examples are both now eroded to zilch, through 25 years of marketing naivety, neglect, and commercial stupidity. They are a powerful reminder of the need for constant maintenance.
Once you have isolated the word, it can be used to drive all your communication, in all its forms, in all media, down to the way in which the livery on the delivery truck is designed, the way the phone is answered, and the detail at the bottom of an email.
In relation to StrategyAudit, I would like the word to be ‘Wisdom’ but that is probably for others to determine.
Header credit: Once again, I am indebted to Hugh MacLeod at www.gapingvoid.com
Nov 12, 2020 | Strategy
My daughter and wife do jigsaw puzzles together. The dining room table is often covered with a 5,000 piece puzzle in varying stages of completion.
I simply do not have the patience, but the process they use to piece together the puzzle is instructive.
First, they make sure the box is in a prominent place so they can see it easily. Ever tried doing a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the end result should look like?
Then they assemble the pieces into groups that seem to reflect some part or other of the puzzle. In the course of that process they separate out all the pieces with a flat side, being one of the perimeters of the puzzle. They are particularly focussed on finding the 4 corner pieces. Finding them, 4 pieces amongst 5,000 scattered around the table, enables the puzzle to start to take some sort of shape.
Over time, often a wet weekend, the picture evolves.
Pieces are fitted together, usually after several failures to get that exact fit. Often, pieces look like they go together, but are somehow, not quite right, so they try again, and again. Slowly, groups of pieces emerge, and together these groups make up the final picture.
Strategy is similar.
In the absence of a picture of the end result, the process is just about impossible in a complex environment.
Similarly, the role played by the corner pieces is far more important than just one of many pieces, they are the linchpin around which the construction of the strategy puzzle evolves.
Even a simple puzzle is hard to complete in the absence of the 4 corner pieces as reference points.
What are the corner pieces of your strategy?
What does the end result look like?
Nov 9, 2020 | Analytics, Sales
Getting people to change their minds is tough.
Just look at the divisions in the US over the last months in the lead up to the presidential (have you ever seen anything less presidential?) election.
Most set out to change somebody’s mind by telling them they are wrong, here is the right answer.
This rarely works well, as the natural reaction is pushback as people defend their existing position.
Instead, you have to find the things that they want that are consistent with the position you hold, and deliver those to them.
A former client had been successful for a long time selling the manufacture of large capital items to its natural Australian customer base. Over time, their market share had diminished as lower priced overseas competitors ate away at their base. Their focus was on price, and they cut corners in all sorts of little ways in an attempt to remain competitive, and the erosion continued. The turnaround came when they moved their focus from the procurement functions to engineering, giving the engineering staff of their customers the ammunition to argue the case that in fact, the more expensive invoice cost of their gear was better value than the ‘cheaper’ items sourced offshore. They created what they called ‘the TLC index’: Total Lifetime Cost. This was a calculation based on data and case studies over a considerable period that included scheduled maintenance and replacement parts, reliability data, the costs of downtime caused by offshore supply chain delays, ease of access to those who did the design and fabrication of the component parts, and several other items.
The invoice price on the purchase order was then shown in an entirely different light.
They did not tell their customers that the cheaper offshore item was an inferior product, they focussed on the things the engineering staff were concerned about, and gave them the ammunition to carry the argument based on the value of efficiency and reliability over the life of the items, rather than just focussing on the invoice price of the initial procurement.
It is easier in most cases to focus on price. However, demonstrating that price is only one part of the value equation delivers better results over time.
Dilbert again demonstrates insight: thanks to Scott Adams.
Nov 4, 2020 | Communication, Management
There is a lot of useful, standard advice about how to ensure meetings are productive. Have an agenda, a time limit, ensure only those who can contribute to the discussion attend, ensure there is agreement about what next, ensure everyone has the opportunity to speak, and so on. There is one more structural item not usually noted, that I have found to work well.
1/3, 1/3, 1/3.
The agenda is structured into thirds, as is the time allocated.
The first third is addressing the past. You cannot change it, but you must understand it, and absorb any lessons. This part of most discussions is often where the time is consumed, leaving inadequate time for the more important discussions about what next.
The second third is discussion about what is immediately in front of you. Depending on the meeting, this may be a day, week, month, and so on. There are decisions to be taken that impact the immediate future, take them.
The third is a discussion on the longer term items that will impact the group in the meeting. Depending again on the level of the meeting, this can be anything from how to fill a hole in the production team when Jim takes long service leave, to discussion of the potential risks of a long term threat to the enterprise.
The format works at all levels, offering a framework within which to manage the meetings, from a 10 minute stand-up at the beginning of the shift, to board meetings, and the three day strategy session held annually.
It is the responsibility of the meeting chairperson to manage the time and agenda coverage, but the general recognition that the 1/3 structure will be used, just makes that job a bit smoother.
Once again, with thanks to Scott Adams, I have called on the wisdom of Dilbert for the header.
Nov 2, 2020 | Leadership
The brutal reality of our current situation is that we are in a crisis of many shapes.
Significant parts of our economy have tanked as a partial consequence of the global Corona bug, our biggest trading partner is exercising their power in ways we should have, but did not expect, and the ‘world order’ is as brittle as it has been in my lifetime.
- The US has thrown away its leading economic and moral role, (I give them the benefit of the doubt on the latter)
- The EU has become a toothless bureaucracy unravelling slowly despite the economic power of Germany trying to hold it together as insurance against the loss of the Euros they have pumped into many of the stumbling members, and the clusterf**k that is Brexit continues
- China is actively and aggressively expanding economic and military control around the globe,
- Our readiness to cope with the Corona pandemic on a consistent basis globally has been shown as terrible. This is despite many warning signs that viral pandemics (MARS, SARS, Swine flue, Ebola, Spanish flue, et al) caused by species hopping viruses are becoming a part of our survival challenge,
- and the climate is emerging as the existential crisis that might just finish off our species within a few hundred years.
A dystopian scenario.
Meanwhile, back in the comfort of Canberra, we fiddle at the edges, apportioning blame, while mouthing hopeful jargon and clichés and pissing away resources in a short term race for the next shot at the largess delivered by a parliamentary majority.
We have lost our moral compass, the core values by which we live in communities, the commitment to recognising the reality of the current, and building the foundations that will enable us to survive and prosper in the long term.
To go back to where we started, Admiral James Stockdale, the most senior naval officer held for 8 years as a ‘guest’ of the Hanoi Hilton expressing why he survived when many others did not: ‘You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever that might be’
We should be listening to people like Stockdale, and acting on their hard won wisdom. Instead, we listen to idiotic social media ‘influencers’, industry czars with a position to protect, and sadly, politicians with an agenda that has little to do with the long term best interests of those that are supposed to be serving.
Header cartoon courtesy Tom Gauld at www.tomgauld.com
