Think with your hands

Challenging the Organisation's Role in Sales

The Challenger Sale is not a “read once and succeed tomorrow” model. The deeper, organisational level stuff is really where The Challenger Sale can add value. Without going into detail about what the model is and what it means to be a Challenger Rep, I thought I’d outline a few of my favourite high level concepts from the book.

I have just finished reading “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. There is a fair amount of hype around this book and while there is a heap of excellent content and food for thought within, the cynical part of me surmises that it’s possibly primarily designed to sell CEB's Sales & Service consultative offerings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; that’s clever marketing!

I’m not a huge fan of prescriptive sales methodology. “Open up with this statement; lead the client to the punch line; show this slide now and that slide then and hey-presto, you’ll double your closure rate, guaranteed!” For me, sales should be more intuitive than that, customers just aren’t that easily manipulated. For this reason I approach most sales teachings with a healthy scepticism.

While there was a little of that in the book, it didn’t prescribe to the notion that simply improving a sales rep’s script and sending them out with a new set of presentation slides would somehow turn them into a selling superstar. If you’re hoping for that sort of a quick fix, this book isn’t for you.

I won’t go into what “The Challenger Model” is as far as trying to describe the nature of the model and the stats behind the research. The book does a pretty good job of outlining that in detail, including case studies demonstrating how companies have introduced the model and are making it work for them.

Instead I’ll try and frame some of the messages in the book, because the real gold nuggets for me were not so much about “The Model” itself, but in some of the more high level concepts that the book contained.

The Challenger Sale advocates examining the sales process through a company-wide angle lens. It encourages companies to dig into their collective knowledge and collate insights that can add value to their customers, over and above the price tag and a feature/benefit analysis of their product.

It stresses the need for sales and marketing teams to work together. Rather than seeing their roles as disparate, sales and marketing should be intertwined and focused on the mining and delivery of insight to their customer base.

During those meetings that are aimed at closing a deal, there is immense power in a sales rep’s ability to deliver information – something that challenges a customer’s pre-conceived ideas about their business or their industry – but the weight of the insight should be driven at an organisational level, not simply left up to the rep to discover and disseminate.

The book outlines a set of behaviours that CEB’s research shows to be necessary for effective sales. It highlights the fact that without constructive, ongoing and personalised coaching, sales reps are often left to their own devices and results can be unpredictable, or worse, completely predictable.

Over and above training for skills and knowledge, coaching for the right behaviours is an essential ingredient. (It could be said that coaching for the right behaviours should extend far deeper into a company than simply at the sales-training level).

The other essential ingredient is innovation; looking at a sale with a view to doing things in new ways and taking the time to really prepare, research and understand the sale and the prospect, so that empirical innovation can occur.

The authors challenge companies to have a close look at their messaging. Is their marketing material full of buzzwords that focus on their company, their history, their solution, how unique they are? Does it talk about how customer focused they are, how innovative they are?

This book invites all marketing executives to revisit the material they are producing and ask two questions.

• Why should customers buy from us over our competition?
• What truly makes us different from everyone else?

 If you think it’s because you’re the unique, innovative leader in your industry (or if that’s what your marketing material is saying) check out your competitors. Are they all saying the same thing?

“Ironically, the more we try to play up our differences, the more things sound the same. The utter sameness of language…we simply end up sounding like everyone else.”

I don’t agree with a one size fits all, prescriptive model for sales success, nor do I think this book is advocating it, although the hype around the book in some ways makes out that's what this is.

To me, it's moreover promoting the concept of an organisational push to better understand core competencies and competitive advantage and then arming everyone with the tools necessary to deliver that message to the customer.

Human Biases

Developing a Strategic Mindset

Twitter; my personal account of “then vs now”

Firstly, let me frame this with a disclaimer; I’m aware that I’m not uncovering anything earth shattering or new here. Seasoned Tweeters will yawn and scoff at my naivety. “You’re only just working this out now? And you say you’re in marketing?? Huh!” 

Despite the danger of appearing ignorant, I’ll press on…

This little feathered beast called Twitter is quite compelling when you have a handle on getting the most out of it. Twitter’s charm revolves around being able to follow – and un-follow – whomever you like. You have the power to heavily tailor the type of information you see.
 
“Way to go Sherlock!” I hear you say.

I first tried Twitter back in 2008. The experience left me less than enthused; I could not see what the fuss was about. It felt predominately filled with 140 character batches of crud. Obviously I wasn’t following the right people. Perhaps I’d inadvertently wandered into the Twitter crèche. I understand the folly was probably mine; whatever the case, I dismissed it as more of a children’s toy than a valid social media platform.

My second attempt, having just set up a new account recently, has me far more committed to the experience.
 
I think the difference is due largely to the explosion of “content marketing” – there is now just so much information available online. People are putting enormous time and financial energy into generating “good content”.
 
Everyone is clamouring to make their voices heard and to be seen as a useful fountain of insightful information. Twitter first time around for me was uninspiring. Now it’s a go-to source of collated knowledge and viewpoint.
 
The other major difference is of course the devices available to interact with Twitter. 2008 for me was pre-Smartphone and pre-Tablet. Twitter lacks the all-important instant gratification component when you have to log onto a PC to get to your news feed.

 
Fast forward to 2013 and hello Flipboard! The moment I integrated my Twitter feed into Flipboard I “got it”. It turns a feed of 140 character posts garbled with #hashtags and TinyURLs into a glossy, pictorial adventure.

The caveat in all of this is the need to follow sources of material that matter most to you. Twitter is noisy. If you follow people who post a hundred retweets a day of information you find pointless the novelty of the experience will quickly wear thin. When you’re feeding on the good stuff though – following sources of relevant content – it can be very entertaining.

For anyone like me, who wrote Twitter off the first time they tried the platform, it’s perhaps worth giving it another go. Just be mindful to stay right out of the Twitter crèche…

Strategic Themes

Strategic themes are building blocks that provide structure, boundaries, context, objectives and metrics to leaders and team members. They take direction from and rise to challenges sparked by mission goals, while feeding results and value through differentiation and enablement. 

They span across all aspects of the business – financial, customer, internal process and organisational capacity. They are the elements that if excelled in, drive the success of the company.

Common strategic themes include concepts such as Growth, Excellence, Innovation, Sustainability; these high level concepts are most effective if they are further defined and distinguished to best serve the vision of the individual organisation.

High level roadmap concepts

Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are an excellent way of brainstorming, or note-taking when studying or reading something analytically. Because of their visual nature, they make it much easier to digest and recall information. They are also fantastic for enabling subjects to be viewed in different ways, from different angles and for new and insightful connections to be made.

Anyone with a creative streak will love mind maps, as they encourage the use of colour, pictures and the free-form flow of ideas. Free mind mapping apps are powerful tools to have on the iPad. Visio also has “brainstorming” templates that can be used to record ideas in this fashion.

Click to view larger image

For example, this very basic mind map was created using “SimpleMind+”. Far more engaging to record study notes using this method than creating simple lists of data!

 

 

Tips for Mind Mapping

• One central theme per map
• Branches equal singular idea threads
• Use words with impact; aim for short, strong phrases
• Use colour
• Add imagery if possible

Keeping KPIs relevant

“You can only manage what you can measure”, but if it doesn’t matter, why spend too much time and energy measuring it? KPIs that don’t relate to the goals of the business are like ingredients that don’t belong in the pot and muddle the taste of the dish.

Clearly outlining and understanding departmental goals is the first step in developing solid, meaningful KPIs. Knowing what is truly a measure of success means linking each metric to an organisational goal. Just like the theory that having too many goals makes it hard to focus, having too many KPIs also dilutes focus.

Tether KPIs very strongly to the organisation goals for each primary function of the business and look to industry and competitive benchmarks for guidance; if improving a process speed is your objective, what do other company’s success metrics look like?

A matrix that plots organisation goals, KPIs and benchmarks across the functions of the business (HR, Finance, Sales, Marketing, R&D, IT, Design, Administration, Operations etc) can help clarify what’s really important.

Once the business goals and objectives have been listed, research can be done into what sort of KPIs would best measure process improvements, and input/output activity directly relating to those objectives.

Review metrics regularly as to whether they still relate to company goals.  If a metric no longer matters, is there still a need to measuring it?

Intrapreneur; the creative Change Agent

Not everyone wants to start their own company. But creative, innovative change agents are everywhere, hungry and passionate about what they do, happy to wear multiple hats and dream big about their day jobs.
 
During a conversation I had recently about mentorship programs the term “Intrapreneur” was discussed. It’s not a new word, apparently the term Intrapreneur was first coined in 1982.  But I do love it, such an aspirational notion!

Meet the Intrapreneur...those self-educating, self-motivators who are willing to take risks, set goals and challenge their peers and superiors to think and act differently, for the good of a company that is not their own. 

Those inventors and departmental protagonists who think about solving problems or creating new revenue streams in the car on the way home, over dinner, in the shower.

During the course of their careers, these characters are from time to time asked “Why don’t you start something up on your own?” 

Mitigating risk and maintaining stability are both valid reasons why most don’t go it alone. And that’s okay, the world needs Intrapreneurs!

It’s worth investing some time into finding out more about this character profile, to either better understand yourself (if you are one) or better understand how to manage, grow and inspire them (if you have one working for you).

Are you an Intrapreneur? If you’re the business owner, do you have one working for you?

The Entourage

Today I read an article in StartupSmart about The Entourage; according to their website, Australia’s largest group of entrepreneurs and executives under 40.

“With an obsolete education system that was designed when the world was flat, we believe that people are better off learning from people with “been there, done that” experience in their chosen field.”

The Entourage are focused on providing opportunities for entrepreneurs and executives to network. They also appear to have a vision and mission that revolves around creating a better future.

“We believe that creative solutions to pressing problems will come from entrepreneurial endeavors. When you combine commerce with charity, you can begin to offer a hand up rather than a hand out. This is what is required if we are to overcome the challenges we face.”

If you’re a young entrepreneur you might want to check out their “Young Entrepreneurs’ Unconvention”. Sounds like it would be an eye-opener!

Anatomy of a Plan

The Third Wave; a book review

Every now and then you read a book that stays with you for while after you finish it.

"...It is ironic that we spend so much energy as a nation debating how to deal with refugees arriving illegally in leaky boats…migration laws cannot protect our jobs from keen workers who remain in their own countries..."

The Third Wave: Micro-globalism and the coming employment crisis in Australia is a compilation of Scott Linden Jones’ theories on the future of employment in a global community. 

Currently in Australia, with some of the highest living standards and wages in the global economy, big and small businesses alike are exploring ways to reduce labour costs. We have seen our manufacturing industry pummelled as business shifts operations to countries that allow them to reduce costs and maximise profits. Our leaders are well aware of this and are talking up policy around these issues.

Thanks to technology, the increasing ease of access to a large body of skilled and inexpensive offshore labour is an enticing proposition for any capitalist. The trend towards offshore labour is one far less heralded in the political debate as we head towards our election.  Government and educational institutions need to start paying more attention.
 
Jones writes of his predictions and the impact that the brave new world of “micro-globalism” is having on the Australian economy. It is a world of both huge threat and equally huge opportunity, but as a country we need to start being hyper-aware of the situation that is unfolding; switch gears and start preparing our young people for potentially a very different employment landscape in the not too distant future.

It is not all doom and gloom, although halfway through the book you’re beginning to wonder if Jones sees any light at the end of the tunnel. He makes some very insightful and humbling observations about our deservedness with respect to the current crop of political leaders, our expectations and feelings of entitlement as a nation and our comparative work ethic.

He also explores ethics themselves and the place they will have in an increasingly competitive business landscape. What power will ethics hold over simple and effective capitalism?
 
A must read for Australians seeking to understand the new global landscape of economics and anyone with a position of influence over the future of our young people.

Synergistic Business Modelling

The analysis and architecture of a business should drive a synergistic relationship between the three core pillars of the Business Model.

A basic Business Model is made up of three core pillars.

• Market model studies the market and strategies that outline success
• Products and services model centres on developing the company’s offering
• Operations model is concerned with delivering the offering

A cohesive business is one where the various units, functions and capabilities in each of these pillars are aligned with the overarching vision and strategy of the company.

A Business Architect will look at how they can engineer, or re-engineer the business to create better alignment. A Business Analyst will elicit from the business the reasons why such engineering may need to take place and what goals the business has; fundamental business problems and the future state a company aspires to.

Both disciplines – architecture and analysis – require an understanding of how each of the core pillars (Market Model, Products and Services Model and Operations Model) interact with one another.  Both disciplines drive the strategy for and the realisation of better business processes and capability development. 

Customer Experience meets the Buyer’s Cycle

Maximising the potential relationship with a customer – for both parties – involves aligning the company’s operation and procedures with their client’s buying cycle. If this alignment is focused on the customer’s needs it can create avid and loyal fans as well as successful and fulfilling sales cycles.

A sustainable relationship is one where both supplier and customer benefit from the partnership, sales are made ethically and the supplier looks for ways to continuously improve their processes and procedures with the customer’s needs in mind. 

In return, a customer with needs that are met is more likely to be an advocate, providing referrals and leads that assist in growing the supplier’s business.

Client Profiling

Client profiling can be a useful tool for evaluating who your clients are now and who you’d like them to be into the future. The resulting gap is essentially your target client. So how do you spot them?


Who is the perfect client? To understand that, it helps to profile your current clients.

Why are they your customer?  What is their attitude towards what you have to offer; is there little awareness of what you can do for their business, or does your relationship afford them a strategic and competitive advantage?

For IT Service Providers, an interesting exercise is to try and determine their Operational Maturity Level with regards to technology. It helps to introduce your service offering in line with their needs and ideas about how technology supports their business.

Consider OML as a scale – at one end sit immature processes; minimal monitoring, constant fire-fighting, aging infrastructure and frequent user complaints about systems. At the other end, mature processes; efficient resource allocation, innovation and improvement programmes, Service Level Agreements and an optimised relationship between business needs and the IT that supports them.

Where are they located? Have you established a methodology for attracting clients in locations that would suit you best? Is it largely irrelevant or could geographical concentrations of clients greatly assist scheduling your service delivery?

Who is the key decision maker? Are the majority of your current clients’ decisions made by the Owner or Director? Does the appointed General Manager call the shots? Is a C-Suite presiding over signing your purchase orders or is it that the Financial Controller happens to be the one pulling purse strings? Which of these decision makers is the best at facilitating your relationship?

What industry are they in? Do you already play to an existing vertical that you are strong in; perhaps you’re not even aware that you do! What's the average seat size of your client base? 

Profiling the existing client base helps to uncover trends and could provide insights into how to position yourself; which trade shows and networking events should you be prospecting, where do other like-minded businesses hang out?  How many seats constitutes a good client for your business?

How profitable are these companies to your business? How easy is it to deal with them and extract money out of them at bill paying time? Are there any traits common across industry verticals or OML, or do you find profitability and behaviour patterns to be random?

Client profiling does a few of things. Firstly, such an analysis of your current client base forces you to zoom out and look at the bigger picture of the market you are selling to. 

It also involves taking some time out to look at each client in more detail and perhaps uncover insights you hadn’t noticed about them before.  It requires an examination of the existing information you have about these clients and such an examination can highlight flaws or holes in your current system. Is the information you are looking at accurate? How can you validate this?

Once you have a clear picture of your existing client base – your current state – you can start setting some goals around what you’d like the future state of your client base to look like. How do you envisage your client profile in 3 – 5 years, what are the gaps you need to fill to get there?

Architecture Development Method

Study notes on Enterprise Architecture...
(From The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF))

TOGAF – a framework for long term strategic business planning that can be applied to the current state, future state and resulting gaps to map out what assets and capabilities an enterprise has and how they can be utilised to achieve optimised outcomes and differentiation.

The Architecture Development Method (ADM) is a set of phases that help to work through planning and architecture development at all levels of business; applying the method to the strategic or high level, abstract business plans will create a set of outputs that then create inputs for more detailed, segmented business planning. This creates unity in business planning; all departments or business segments are playing from the same song sheet.

The various phases of the Architecture Development Method include:

• PR – the preliminary phase, sets up framework and principles
• AV – Architecture vision and documentation phase; Statement of Architecture Work outlines the Scope, stakeholder expectations and validates the context with regards to business needs.
• BA – Business Architecture; current state, future state and gaps
• ISA – Information Systems Architecture; data and systems, current state, future state and gaps
• TA – Technology Architecture; infrastructure current state, future state and gaps
• O&S – Identify Opportunities and Solutions for implementing change
• MP – Migration and Planning; road mapping, cost analysis, risk assessment
• IG – Implementation Governance; projects should conform to the architecture plans
• ACM – Architecture Change Management; optimising phase, enabling changes in the business to be supported by the architecture
• AM – Architecture Management; requirements management, continuous throughout all the phases. Change should be validated by the requirements of the business.

ADM is a process for making iterations to business plans and architecture. During the entire process, as well as between phases and within phases, the scope, details and milestones are considered for

• Planning and Capabilities
• Development
• Transition
• Governance

PESTEL Analysis

 

A PESTEL Analysis examines the external or Macro Environmental factors that could potentially effect or influence the industry and the company; such as taxes, tariffs, business and consumer sentiment, demographics, changing technology landscapes, the environment and laws and regulations.

The BCG Matrix

BCG Matrix;
a tool to analyse business units, products or brands in a company's portfolio.

• Stars shine very brightly, but require heavy investment
• Cash cows should be milked
• Question marks are often hard to know quite what to do with, be selective about these investments
• Poor dogs perhaps should be liquidated.

Powerful attributes for B2B selling

Be Determined

Know the market and the competition. Sharply define your target customer. Research prospects; understand who the decision makers are. Sharpen skills consistently through learning and training.  Build a referral network.

Be Patient and Energetic

Listen more than you talk. Ask open ended questions. Be resilient and transparent; be your best enthusiastic and genuine self. Be warm and easy to spend time with. Be tenacious but not overbearing; know when to dig in and pursue and be equally mindful of when to walk away.

Be Focussed

Focus on outcomes and setting realistic expectations. Sell within scope, don't sell the client what they don't need.  Be attentive to details, take good notes, and communicate efficiently with both the client and your team. Be methodical about using the CRM; understand how to tightly manage and review the sales process regularly within the CRM system, it helps to move the sale along. 

These are areas commonly accepted as something sales people are not good at, I've heard a number of business owners say "Sales people are just no good at the admin stuff." Aim to defy this perception!

Challenge

Learn how to start relationships and ask for commitments. Challenge the clients thinking about their pain points; yes, this really is something they need and want to change. Be strategic; contest what you know about the client’s business and learn more. Contest what you know about your own business – and business in general – and learn more.  Challenge your understanding of the products and services you sell, ask hard questions about the customers perception of quality and value.  Be an agent of change if it needs improvement.

8 Influencer snippets on Life & Leadership

From Time's Top 100 Influencers for 2013, I picked a few names and went searching for inspiration...

Valerie Jarrett (Senior Adviser to Obama)

"Anytime I was hesitant about taking a chance, my grandmother would say, “Valerie, put yourself in the path of lightning.” You can have it all, just not at the same time and all in the proportions that you may want."

Elon Musk (American entrepreneur, founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal)

"You've got to communicate, particularly within the company, the true state of the company. When people really understand it's do or die but if we work hard and pull through, there's going to be a great outcome, people will give it everything they've got."

Kevin Systrom (CEO of Instagram)

"Work/life balance…Inherent in the term is an assumption that work and life are diametrically opposed. I actually think some of my best moments in life have been while I was with people from Instagram – whether it’s super late nights getting a release out or being able to travel to places I’d never visited and meeting some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met."

Ted Sarandos (Netflix Chief Content Officer)

"As if anything in life is not execution dependent. Breathing is execution-dependent. So yes, we have all the elements of a good show that lines up with the viewing data that we have. But it still has to be well executed."

Sheryl Sandberg (Businesswoman & Author; Chief Operating Officer of Facebook)

"I don’t believe there are stereotypical forms of male and female leadership. But I think there are things we’re encouraged to do as women that can be good for all leaders. Women are often very good listeners. They are often good consensus builders. They can make teams cohesive."

John Brennan (CIA Director)

"They really were trying to do what they thought was the right thing to do, based on their sense of morality. So who am I to judge them? Because they were operating on what they think. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they really believe this."

Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo!)

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. That feeling at the end of the day, where you're like, 'what have I gotten myself into?' - I realized that sometimes when you have that feeling and you push through it, something really great happens."

Mary Nichols (Environmentalist)

"I am committed to completing the work I am doing here, whenever that is. I've never had any desire to think of myself as a retired person. I will always be working; it is just a question of where. Whatever the job description is, I can't imagine not continuing to work on the issues and for the causes that I've cared about all of these years."

Kai-Fu Lee (Computer scientist)

"The size and scope of the organization is limited by two things. One is how many great people can you hire and mentor. And second, how many ideas can you generate."

IT Vendor & Partner; a tumultuous affiliation

CRN yesterday posted an article highlighting some of the “pet peeves” IT vendors have about their channel partners.  IT Solution Providers can see this list as a bit of a mini SWOT; it gives a pretty good overview of how vendors see Partners positioned as far as their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats go.  Those pet peeves birth ideas on how to do things differently.

Get ahead of the curve; adopt new business models, sell new technologies, understand core sales activities.  Only about 10 – 15% of partners are seen to be doing this.

Talk business, not tech; technology decisions are increasingly made by business influencers.  Talking tech to them means nothing; you need to get at the heart of what drives them.

Stop cuddling those boxes; with the changes happening in the industry the focus should be on developing and delivering more than just product and transitioning to services, content and IP.

Vendors love new business; learn to prospect and market to new business, not just existing customers.

Be trendy with transition; According to Microsoft, only 25% of their partners have expanded into Cloud computing.  Solution Providers that stagnate or hesitate to adopt new technologies are potentially losing significant opportunities.

Crack on with Certifications; a two way peeve, Partners find the certification process laborious and costly.  Vendors see it as the best way for Partners to promote their expertise.  There are advantages of certifications for instance getting bumped up Microsoft’s Pinpoint listing which in turn helps generate leads for new business.

Bleed vendor Marketing Funds dry; they are gagging for it, apparently.  IT Vendors allege that between 10% and up to 50% of the Marketing Development Funds they make available goes unspent every quarter.
 
Fill that sales funnel; explore marketing and proactive demand generation, don’t be satisfied with simply moving boxes.

Push the portfolio; sell outside the square.  Vendors feel they have a lot to offer over and above those one or two solutions their Partners are currently selling.  Have you offered the fries with that?

Often that of the Vendor and the Partner is a tumultuous affiliation, but like any dynamic relationship, one that can have a lot of mutual value if forces work together rather than in opposition.


Source: 10 solution provider habits that irk vendors

History of Management

When you review the history of management, you get an interesting perspective on current management techniques and trends.
 
American mechanical engineer Frederick Taylor (1856 – 1915), known as the father of Scientific Management, was one of the first “management consultants”.

The scientific approach to management is the art of gaining efficiencies by increasing the output volume of workers.  When you consider the era, this approach was born at a time when workers predominantly used their backs to produce results.

Frederick’s fundamental principle revolved around maximum gain for both employer and employee by effectively training each individual employee in a role that was most suited to their capabilities.  Of particular interest was investigating ways to increase output by reducing unnecessary movement.

German sociologist Max Weber (1864 – 1920) developed what is known as the bureaucratic approach to Management.  The principles of this style of management centre on job specialisation and clear job descriptions, where qualifications determined positions.  Clear hierarchy and control along with the uniformity of applied regulations created formal rules and performance indicators.  Clear pathways for career advancement were designed to promote long term employment with a single company.

Elton Mayo (1880 – 1949) approached management from a more social aspect.  Coined human relations management, the theory he developed was more concerned with employee motivation, team building, communication and leadership skills. He theorised that employee motivation stems from relational factors such as feedback and team dynamics more so than simply pay and environmental conditions.

French mining engineer Henri Fayol (1841 – 1925) took an administrative approach and developed six primary functions of management; Forecasting, Planning, Organising, Commanding, Coordinating, Controlling.  These are closely aligned with 14 principles of management that cover off the division of labour, authority, discipline, unity, remuneration, order, equity and initiative.

Management consultant, author and educator Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) was interested in the social ecology of man, exploring the way we organise ourselves and interact.  With an extensive body of work (39 books and countless articles) he was and remains incredibly influential when it comes to management by objectives; believing that by setting clear goals and with effective collaboration and communication, it is possible to allow staff to do a job in their own way.

A retrospective look at management evolution enables us to see how modern management borrows aspects from each of these theories.  Management today is a healthy mix of science, bureaucracy, administration, human relations and goal setting.
 
Good managers should be borrowing techniques and theories from all these approaches and applying them as best determined by the particular situation.

Choosing to be Great takes discipline.

The thing that struck me the most about Great by Choice – Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen’s handbook on choosing greatness over mediocrity – was the sheer weight of the research involved.  All good books undoubtedly require a lot of research, even those based purely on fictional characters and events require some level of research to build plausibility.

It was the minutiae of the research that impressed me; the dedication to trawling through years of corporate records for indications of luck, discipline, creativity, risk and reward.

The basic premise of the book entails taking two like coins and turning them over and over under a high wattage desk lamp, looking for irregularities and differences.  What is it that makes one coin infinitely more valuable than the other?  Why, when flipped, does one coin seem to come up heads, the other tails?  What dictates whether that was a lucky flip?

The coins are company comparison cases; two similar businesses in field and opportunity over a set timeframe – one experiencing extraordinary results of greatness, the other fading into mediocrity if not complete obscurity.

The research examines the key physiognomies of each company and why one rose to fly in the face of luck; maximising their returns regardless of events being fortuitously beneficial or unexpected calamity.  The insights that this research uncovered formed a set of characteristics that those who choose to be Great exemplify.

 

Key concepts that I took away from this reading:
 

• Choosing to be Great takes discipline and a consistent approach to vision, mission and execution.
• A leader’s job is to set out for their team firm guidelines about how far they need to travel each day; set boundaries and targets so they don’t overreach or underachieve, and make sure they have reserves for whatever the next day brings.
• The most effective creativity is that which is based on evidence and facts.  Research and pragmatic understanding of a situation helps with strong and sensible decision making. 
• Innovation must be timed so that it happens at the right point in the curve.  Innovation should meet market demand rather than pre-empt it; crest with the tide rather than after it.  Learn how to experiment so that riding a large wave of innovation is simply the culmination of many smaller test runs.
• Luck will find you; it is an absolute certainly in a chaotic business environment.  It’s what we do with our luck and how we prepare for that luck (good or bad) that counts.

Out of all of the concepts, this was the kicker; keep an eye open for the people who will be game changers for the company.  Out of all of the strategic and methodical plays a business can make, finding and keeping Great people is the single most important one.  

Porter's Five Forces

Originally developed by Michael E. Porter while working for the Harvard Business School and the Boston Consulting group, Porter’s Five Forces are five powerful forces seen to impact profitability and completive clout in a business situation.

The Five Forces:

• Industry Rivalry - How many competitors are in the market, who are they, what are their growth prospects? 
• Threat of new entrants - How easy is it for start-ups to muscle in on your turf, what are the factors that would encourage or discourage them?
• Threat of substitutes - How easy is it for clients find alternative ways of satisfying their needs?
• Bargaining power of suppliers - What is the relationship you have with your suppliers, how easy is it for them to drive up pricing?
• Bargaining power of customers - How sensitive are they to pricing, how transparent is the market, what is the value of the customer to the business, how unique is your product or service?

Reviewing each of these market forces in depth and determining whether the power or pressure of each is low, medium or high gives insights into the “micro environment” of the business.

Porter’s Five Forces can help understand both the strength of the current business position as well as assessing a situation you’re about to move into; it helps to determine the attractiveness of a market; how potentially profitable that market will be.

 

Marketing your core competencies

Firstly, what are core competencies? They are the essential ingredients that make a company what it is. They are those key abilities with which the company achieves great things; not just abilities they aspires to do well at, these are the literal foundations of the customer’s experience.

Understanding core competencies has a number of benefits. It sets out a clear list of strengths and inversely showcases areas that fall outside of these competencies. These insights potentially highlight areas that may be better off outsourced.

Focusing on core competencies means investing in and throwing resources at the areas of the business that are already proving to be the most profitable and influential. It can help decision making around whether to pursue ventures that fall outside of the core competencies of the business.

Identifying core competencies gives a business a set of pillars to start basing their marketing around. They paint a very clear picture of how the business should be positioning itself in a market, what the unique selling points are or if not quite “unique” qualities, they are abilities that a company excels at when pitched against their competition. Everyone can claim to have great technical capability, but if it’s your core competency, you’ll trump your competitors with your technical skill.

So how do you create a marketing campaign around competencies? The first step of course is to dig deep into the company’s psyche to determine exactly what they are. This may be an exercise that the directors or leaders of the business do either by themselves or with their entire team.

Once identified, the next step is to determine how your clients benefit from these competencies. For example, a consulting practice may identify that their core competencies are keynote speakers, consultants, coaches, project managers and educators.

How might each of these factors benefit their clients? Keynote speakers may instigate change, their consultants may improve processes, their coaches may challenge behaviours, project managers assist in achieving successful outcomes and educators enable skill sets to be mastered.

Entire campaigns could now be generated around these competency > benefit concepts, further strengthening the focus in these areas and giving potential clients clarity about what to expect the company will do for them.

Quick tips for Communication

Ask the following questions:

• Who is your message for?
• What is its purpose?
• How do you want it to sound?
• Will they find and understand the information they need?
• Will they know what you want them to do next?

 
Tips:
 
Remember communication is both verbal and non-verbal; be conscious and try to ensure that your non-verbal and verbal messages are saying the same thing.

Listen and hear what is being communicated. Much conflict results from poor listening. Repeat what you hear to confirm the accuracy of the information you have heard.

Ask questions and let others talk. Asking questions allows you to hear the information in a different way or just hear it again. Dominating a conversation becomes a monologue, not a conversation .

Engage in Difficult Conversations When necessary. Not saying something doesn't make a situation go away and can cause more stress in the long run. Write down the important points in order to feel comfortable about what you have to say. Try to use a tone that is open and non-confrontational in order to encourage feedback from the other person.