A “value proposition” is simply the answer to the question – “Why should I choose you?”
Every business / company / organization has four fundamental value propositions it needs to develop and protect to be sustainable. “Why should customers choose them?” “Why should people choose to hire in and choose to stay?” “Why should their local community support their continued presence?” And, “Why should investors and banks choose to entrust their money with them?”
The answers to these four questions (the company’s actions as it interacts with customers, associates, community, and investors) are in most instances cynically perceived in the eye of the beholder as flailing against one another. Without strong “rudders”, businesses morph into a reality that more often than not nobody wants. At best, the collective “they” enter into a state of benign tolerance until something better comes along.
Is it possible anymore to have a business that dominates customer satisfaction in its market; that is a great place to work; that produces outstanding financial results; and is a credit and an icon of business in their community?
Is it possible anymore to simultaneously satisfy all four of a company’s strategic value propositions in all of its “actions”?
Can a startup company ever dream of achieving it – or is “almost good” the new norm?
Has the phrase “Good Company” become oxymoronic?
September 29th, 2007Déjà vu all over again . . .
August 15th, 2007Analogy is a powerful way of getting out of a mental logjam and seeing and understanding things more clearly. I use a number of analogies to help business leaders and owners come to grips with the issues they face.
Many leaders and owners struggle understanding the difference between working “in a business” and working “on a business.” Working in a business is tactical in nature. It deals with the ongoing issues of what is. Working on a business deals with the issues of what could be or better yet what should be.
If you think of the business you are in as a clothes washing machine it might be clearer. Every day you get up at 0-dark-thirty, do your thing and get into work. Working in the business is imagining yourself every day opening the washing machine lid, hitting the on button, hopping in and closing the lid after you. During the day getting through a normal cycle is oxymoronic. Someone is always opening the lid and throwing in more dirty wash, just when you should be ready for the rinse cycle.
At some point, way later in the day than what you planned, someone comes along, opens the lid and extracts you (usually a call from home about a promise you made). And out you climb, still wet and grimy with all the things you just left behind, you go home, do your thing until the alarm clock signals it is 0-dark-thirty, and you get up and do it all over again.
If you feel like your business life is stuck on the spin cycle, you are working in the business.
Working on the business is staying outside of the washing machine – actually operating it rather than it operating on you. It is looking to the future, deciding what your clothes washer will be and do and working on things that will make that happen so that what you imagine will become a reality some time down the road.
What causes owners and leaders to stay in the washing machine? Even though it’s seemingly crazy, it is comfortable. When you are in the “machine” you are dealing with the known, stuff you are good at. It is easier to stay in the “machine” than deal with the future, the uncertainties, and the risks of the unknown.
If you are living in the washing machine – get out! Make getting out a habit. How? Schedule it on your calendar, PDA, or tell your support staff to fish you out at a predetermined hour!
Just do it!
Invention versus Innovation
July 9th, 2007Many people use these words interchangeably – and so do most dictionaries.
There is a big difference between these two words. Inventions cost money – Innovations make money. Inventions are more commonly the output of the intelligence of one person or a small group of people.
Innovations are the result of a much larger group of people getting their arms around the intelligence of an invention, and making something happen.
Inventions don’t generally have a significant impact on the competitive business environment.
Innovations cause a competitor to change, and innovations sometimes change the “rules of the game”.
Every business is in the business of selling intelligence, whether it packaged in the form of a “fast food burger” or the guidance control system for an aircraft. Developing the core intelligence through “invention” is a necessary and essential task. But doing something about it, innovating by introducing something new that takes hold in the market is a critical task.
Both invention and innovation connote radical. But in business, small incremental innovation always keeps raising the bar, and staying a step a head of the competition. Using a baseball analogy, homeruns are fun and exciting to watch, but more often than not a consistent series of base hits win games.
Innovation ideas don’t necessarily come from R&D or the lab. They are typically not found under a microscope. They are mostly commonly found in everyday conversations and discussions.
You just have to learn to listen with the desire to change. If you do, you’ll find innovative ideas all around you.
What makes a Business go?
July 9th, 2007Metaphors are used from time to time to better understand a business. Breakthroughs in science are often accomplished through use of a metaphor. The most publicized was the metaphor of a snake holding it’s tail in unraveling the mystery of the benzene ring (albeit some say the good German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé was having a bit of fun at the expense of his collegues in describing his mental breakthrough). Mentally chew on this metaphor:
The beliefs of a business are its DNA; and hope is its life-force. What a business holds to be true, its beliefs, and uses to control its decisions and actions, are the building blocks of its DNA. A business’s DNA is a bit more complex than human DNA. Instead of two intertwined helixes it has four. But whether human or business, DNA serves the same purpose of carrying the hereditary message. On the plus side business DNA is much easier to see and understand and adjust as facts replace beliefs over time. The downside is that a business’s DNA is very easily altered by not respecting it and allowing degradation through careless acts of both omission and commission.
Hope is the life-force of a business. We cannot see the future. But hope is what drives us towards it. Too often businesses sit and wait for the future to happen. If a business sits, waits and watches for the future to happen, its life force is false hope. Without good portions of luck nothing good will come of it.
A business must get its collective arms around the future it hopes for and make it happen by developing its strategies, plans and tactics and executing them well.
If you are defending your problems, you’re probably . . .
July 9th, 2007Business owners and leaders are no strangers to the grieving process and its debatable five stages (Denial, Anger, Negotiation, Depression, and Acceptance). Businesses have to maintain a continuum of change to sustain themselves against the ever increasing intensity and speed of market innovation and entrepreneurial impact
Denial and anger are easy to spot. They occur with the initial feedback and then confirmation that your business just got juked by a competitor.
Negotiation is a weird duck. It is usually internal. In some cases, particularly in micro businesses, God gets pulled into it. The most common form is negotiating with the messenger that things really aren’t as bad as they look (truth is they are many times worse).
Depression is characterized by inaction with outward manifestations of doom and gloom.
The acceptance stage is earmarked with the emergence of a leader you gets the commitment back and builds the concentration to get up and start moving.
The gatekeeper to acceptance is “defending the problem”. The “yeah but . . .” and “everyone has this . . .” and “we can’t do anything about it” are the voice of the gatekeeper. The most ludicrous was a VP of Marketing/Sales who was quick to proclaim “We can’t make them buy from us!” They probably hadn’t read their job description lately.
While denial is a comfortable stage in the change process, getting past the gatekeeper of acceptance is often the most difficult challenge. Defense of the problems is faulty logic. It usually takes a second party (like a customer) or some third party to get one past it by adding undeniable facts that cannot be denied or ignored. So if you find yourself defending a problem, you are stuck in neutral. Get HELP! Otherwise a savvy turnaround specialist will recognize it and walk away with all that you have worked so hard to build for a song.
