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 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.
Oct 28, 2020 | Governance, Leadership
Over 25 years of consulting, the second most common problem I see being faced by SME’s, after managing their cash, is to attract and retain talented people.
Many managers do not put enough time, thought and energy into their personnel roster, as they do not have the time to do so.
So they think.
The hidden costs of just keeping a seat warm by substandard recruiting outcomes are huge. Not only does recruiting consume time and money, you then have to train and manage a series of new employees as the poor decisions come home to roost. As with a customer, spend the effort to ensure they are the one you want, invest in them to ensure they stay with you, and over time the investment will deliver a great return.
Some of the things I have seen work over my 45 years of commercial life are as follows:
Pay over the odds.
This is not to encourage a culture of greed or entitlement, it is simply to make sure that really good people do not have remuneration as a reason to go elsewhere. You will always lose employees from time to time, but ensuring good pay removes one reason for them to leave. It is also a great way to ensure former employees have nothing bad to say about you, which in turn, makes recruiting easier.
Recognition.
People love to be recognised for doing a good job, for delivering over and above. Recognition of a good employee makes them want to come to work. Some just want the one on one recognition, others need the public affirmation of their good job by the boss. Be sensitive to which an individual might prefer, and deliver as appropriate. I have never yet seen a situation where someone was uncomfortable because they were recognised too much!
Have a clear strategic framework.
Employees like to know why they are there, other than to pay the rent and feed the kids, and what roles they play in achieving an outcome for the enterprise. Having in place a robust and transparent strategic framework not only provides the foundation of decision making at all levels, it enables people to articulate the role they play in success.
Do not micro-manage.
Micro-managing someone implies that you do not have the confidence in them to let them do the job they were hired to do. The usual outcome is that they do not do it, and they go elsewhere, or are at best, are disinterested and therefore sub-optimal employees.
Manage good people by the outcomes they achieve, not by the detail of the means by which they are achieved.
Play to the strengths of good people
Nobody is perfect, and no one person is perfect for any specific job. When you have someone good, rather than try and change them to address the gaps they leave, find ways to fill in around them so that their strengths can be developed and leveraged.
Have a significant ‘onboarding’ process
First impressions count, and you can only make them once. Making a new employee feel welcome, valued, important to the whole group is easy if you think about it. Rather than just having them turn up, almost unannounced, to a desk covered with the detritus of the previous incumbent, make a show of welcoming them, ensure they are introduced to everyone, specifically including the big bosses. A drowning person can often drag others under in their efforts to swim. It is no different with a new employee, far better to spend a bit of time and effort teaching them to swim than to deal with the consequences of discovering they cannot, or that they do breaststroke when freestyle is required.
Role clarity
Every person needs to understand their own role, and that of those around them, particularly those that are impacted by their performance.
Treat people as people, not resources.
Total transparency will go a long way towards this outcome. Good people react very positively to honesty, and non-judgmental feedback on their performance.
As a reminder, the biggest problem most businesses have, and particularly SME’s is cash. Generating, collecting and managing it.
When you need an old experienced hand, give me a call.
Oct 21, 2020 | Branding, Communication
Almost every ‘About us’ dropdown on websites is, as expected, about the owner of the website.
Who started the company, where they went to school, how they came to be in Sydney, Seattle, or Bullamakanka, how great you are, and some soppy stuff about your story. How you pulled yourself out of adversity, and became successful, all meant to build empathy.
Well, mostly it fails badly.
Why?
People are not really interested in your story. They may listen, may even feel for you, but what they are really interested in is what you can do for them, what useful information you can provide, what problem you solve, and the impact of that solution on their lives.
Why else would they be on your website?
When they arrive for a look, you have only a few seconds to engage them, wasting those precious seconds by talking about yourself does not seem to me to be too smart!
So, make your ‘About Us’ page really about them
How you can solve the problem they have, how and why working with you and your product will deliver them success.
Go through the bio’s of employees you may have on the page and do the same thing. What is it that each person brings to the table that solves the problem the potential customer.
Focussing on yourself might create a little empathy, but that is well short of genuine interest and a willingness to give you money to solve a problem they have.
Call me assistance thinking about this stuff.
Oct 5, 2020 | Leadership, Strategy
Over 45 years I have seen all sorts of strategies. Some work, some fail, some are elegant articulations of a vision and mission, some are a few words on a sheet of paper. Some are data driven, some full of a breathless accounting of what they will make the world look like, and everything in between.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
The common denominator of those that are successful is none of these.
That common success element is that they have been driven by someone who has a bias to action.
They implement.
While others look for more information, watch what their competitors are doing, lobby the government, spend more on developing the next iteration of that great product, the action oriented leader implements.
It will never go completely to plan, there will be mistakes, uncertainty and anxious regret that more care was not taken, and sometimes hordes of naysayers. Nevertheless, the only strategy that has a chance of delivering is the one that gets implemented.
A strategy document that sits on the shelf, gathering dust as information and consensus is accumulated, is the one that never works, because it is not a strategy. It is an excuse for surrendering to the status quo, to the concern about being seen as being wrong, and therefore excluded from the herd.
Oh, by the way, this works not only for a strategy, but in microcosm, at the smallest detail level.
When someone on a production line sees something that could be made to work better that is within their scope of power to change, they take action and change it, observe the results and adjust when necessary. For the leading hands on a line responsible for the running of the line, having a culture in place that encourages and rewards this bias to action, is like having manna from heaven.
Stop talking and start doing!
Header cartoon courtesy of Scott Adams, and the wisdom of Dilbert
