by Joe Callowaym
In this summary...
·
Master the one essential strategy for business leaders,
entrepreneurs, and those who aspire to lead.
·
Understand how to create results, growth, and profit by
being so good at the basics that you outperform your competition.
·
Discover how to constantly improve on just a few things
that create the greatest value for your customer.
·
Leverage every single resource at your disposal by using
the force multipliers of simplicity and focus.
·
Grasp how the Top 10 Most Trusted Brands win by meeting
their customers' high expectations and being the best at what matters most.
Be the Best at What Matters
Most
What if you, your team, or your
entire organization had absolute clarity about what was most important, and
that's where all of your energy was focused? Imagine the force multiplier
of that kind of shared sense of direction, purpose, and priorities.
Be the Best at What Matters
Most, by
Joe Calloway, reveals the one essential strategy for business leaders,
entrepreneurs, and those who aspire to lead.
Calloway is the author of five
books and a leading performance expert who has helped hundreds of companies and
entrepreneurs create and sustain success through his unique interactive keynote
presentations that challenge people to take action on what matters most in
their businesses.
In this summary, you'll learn
how to simplify the way you think about your business. It will show you
how to create results, growth, and profit by being so good at the basics that
you outperform your competition. More important, it will help you to
discover how to constantly improve on just a few things that create the
greatest value for your customer.
The Only Strategy You Will Ever
Need
Success isn't about doing everything; it's
about doing the most important things.
Too many business leaders and
entrepreneurs believe that the way to grow sales and profits is to use social
media to create a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—and they think
they need to do things that amaze and delight their customers.
Consider an entrepreneur named
Bill, who owns a hamburger restaurant. Looking for ways to build his
business, Bill creates a blog, posts videos of babies with hamburgers, and
tweets his thoughts about his restaurant.
To create a "wow"
factor for his business, he gives every customer a tiny chocolate
hamburger. He also hires a magician to perform magic tricks because none
of his competitors offer such entertainment, and he's heard that he needs to
differentiate his business.
Will any of these ideas improve
Bill's business? It's possible, but the results will be far less
impressive than they would be if he took a different approach that flies in the
face of much of what you read and hear today about what it takes to succeed in
business.
Instead of distracting himself,
his employees, and his customers with tweets, videos, and magic tricks, Bill
should find out what matters most to his customers, focus there, and be the
best at that. Maybe it's really all about just making better hamburgers.
The same is true of your
business. If you do the handful of things that matter most, whatever
those things may be, and you do them better than your competition, then you
will win. Be the best at what matters most, and you will succeed.
You may be thinking, "But
surely there must be more to it than that." No, that's it. The
very simplicity of the idea is what makes it so powerful.
Most of us make the plan too
complex. We do it because it's much easier to make things complex.
It takes a lot of hard work to, as Steve Jobs once said, "get your
thinking clean enough to make things simple."
But it's worth all the hard
work, because if you re able to make things simple, you can move mountains.
Focusing on what matters most
helps you maximize your effectiveness. It helps you avoid the painful
truth of the old saying, "You did a great job. But you did the wrong job."
Sometimes people say, "I'm
doing everything I can think of to improve my business, but it's not
working." That's the problem. The winners in business aren't
the ones who do the most things. The winners are the ones who do the most
important things.
Whether they are large or
small, in manufacturing, hospitality, or health care, providing cutting-edge
technology or the most basic of products or services, all businesses that
create and sustain success do so by incorporating what matters most to the
customer into their core strategy.
What keeps many people awake at
night is that they know that their business should be doing a lot better than
it is, or that their own individual performance should be creating greater
results than it is. Leaders may know that they have great people and a
great product or service, but they're not producing the results that they
should be producing with the resources they have.
Assuming you have the right
people on board and you're good at the basics of your business, you probably
have the same problem that many highly competitive individuals and
organizations have: You're spread too thin. You're trying to do too
much. You need to focus.
It's frustrating, stressful,
and exhausting to try to do the 1,000 things you think you have to do to
succeed. It's also counterproductive. There are probably no more
than three or four things you need to focus on as long as you do them exceptionally
well.
If you do an extraordinary job
on the three or four things that matter the most, not only will you succeed,
you will likely succeed far beyond your expectations.
The reason people get sucked
into the tornado of trying to do a thousand things each day is that they aren't
focused on those core activities that can actually advance their
strategies. Because you're not focused, you aren't winning on the
basics. That's when people start looking for gimmicks, shortcuts, or
"silver bullets" to try to improve their results.
The cold, hard truth is that
there are no shortcuts. There are no silver bullets. There are no
gimmicks that can replace the reality of the marketplace—that, ultimately,
quality wins.
Let's get clear on what creates
business success today. Many people foolishly believe that it's not
enough to be the best anymore; you have to have a "wow" factor to set
yourself apart.
Here's the reality: If
the marketplace decides that you are the best, that's the biggest
"wow" factor there is. Only those who are far from being the
best would ever say that it's not enough.
If you truly are the best, you
don't need gimmicks. But if you are not able to compete on the basics,
then you quite naturally look for gimmicks as wow factors, instead of letting quality
and consistency be your "wow" factors.
If you truly are the best at
what you do, are competitively priced (which may mean that you are the highest
priced, as long as the value justifies it), and you are easy to do business
with, you win. Every shred of evidence in the marketplace is telling us
that now, more than ever, quality performance is the one sure factor that
drives success.
Look at who leads markets over
a period of years and is able to sustain that lead through changing markets and
economic conditions; then study how they do it. They don't do it with
contrived wow factors.
They do it by dominating with
quality and value. They do it with constant, relentless improvement and
innovation. They do it by winning at the basics. That's how they
wow, as in, "Wow, these guys are so good, and they're good every single
time."
You goal should be to be so
good at the basics that you are cutting edge.
Note that we're not talking
about just being good. We're talking about being so good at the basics that
you are extraordinary. We're talking about not just being competitive,
but actually winning on the basics. Here's the
reality: If you win on the basics, you win it all.
Before we move on, think about
the Bill's Hamburgers story and consider these questions with your team:
·
What's
your equivalent of hamburgers? What's your core value offering?
·
What's
the main thing that draws customers to you?
·
What if
you were 20 percent better at that main thing?
·
What if
you had a different main thing?
·
What if
Bill made hamburgers so amazingly good that people practically knocked down his
door to buy them?
·
What's
your version of that?
So Good at the Basics that
You’re Cutting Edge
Cutting edge, as used here, means being
at the very front edge of creating value through innovation. It doesn't
mean trendy or "all the rage," unless that rage is able to produce
and sustain a profit.
A cutting-edge company is one
that people talk about and study because it is able to win customers and keep
them. Its success is based on substance, not flash.
One of the most talked-about
companies in the past few years has been Zappos.com. Zappos started out
selling shoes on the Internet, but it now sells a lot more than shoes.
Not only do people talk about Zappos, but business leaders go to Las Vegas
(where the company is located) to study it for ideas they can take back home
and use. It's a profitable company with a following of devoted customers
and fans.
If you ask customers,
"What do you think Zappos does particularly well?" you'll hear these
four responses most often:
1.
Selection: Customers say that Zappos has a wonderful
selection of shoes and any of the other products that they shop for.
2.
Delivery: The company's delivery is very, very fast.
3.
Customer service: The Zappos customer service call center
employees are legendary. They do whatever it takes to make the customer
happy.
4.
Return policy: Zappos has a 365-day 100 percent
satisfaction return policy. You have up to one year to return any product
for any reason whatsoever. And Zappos pays for the shipping.
Here's the lesson. Zappos
is considered one of the most progressive, most forward-thinking, and
innovative companies in the world. It is a case study for excellence,
especially in creating amazing customer experiences. So how does Zappos
do it? What rocket science does its leaders tap into to be so
extraordinary? What's the outside-the-box thinking that makes them so
effective?
Selection, delivery, customer
service, and return policy. That's it. Zappos is a poster company
for being the best at what matters most. It brings innovative,
outside-the-box thinking to inside-the-box issues. It has mastered those
basics so well that it has created incredibly loyal, raving fans by winning in
the place where all business is won or lost: inside the box.
Zappos is so good at the basics
that it is cutting edge. Now, consider your business:
·
Are you
cutting edge?
·
If so,
how will you stay at that cutting edge?
·
If not,
what do you need to work on right now to start to get there?
Deciding What Matters Most
How do you know what matters
most? It's important to know that there simply is no one template or
formula to figure out what is most important in your business and your work.
Here are seven approaches to
what matters most. Think about which of these are a good fit with you and
your business.
1.
Maximize Profit: For some, profit can be the focus that
drives the machine. For others, profit can simply be the by-product if
they are successful at doing what matters most to them.
2.
Make a Positive Difference in the World: There are many people,
in every kind of business imaginable, whose primary motivation is to make the
world a better place. To them, the profit is necessary and welcome, but
it’s not the point. Profit is secondary in terms of their own motivation
to make a positive difference in the lives of their customers or the community.
3.
Satisfy the Customer: For many, this is it. The idea is
that if we take care of our customers, they will take care of us. For
some companies, making customer satisfaction what matters most is the most
effective driver of strategy.
4.
Quality: The greatest way to create loyalty with
customers is to do a great job every single time. Quality creates that
most powerful of all marketing forces: word of mouth. In the age of
the Internet, word of mouth, especially through social media, has become the
great marketing ally of any business that brings true value to the market.
5.
Growth: Many successful start-ups have chosen
growth-focused strategies, and others believe that growth through acquisitions
is of primary importance at a particular point in their company's
existence. Growth is good.
6.
Consistency of Performance: For many businesses, the
greatest performance and profit booster of all is to concentrate on
consistency. Consistency of performance is the great brand builder.
Inconsistency is the great brand killer. Consider coming up with a list
of four things that will ensure your success if you get them right every single
time.
7.
Continuous Improvement: If you are constantly improving, you will,
by definition, always be innovating and you'll be anticipating and responding
to customers' needs in an effective way.
For some people, what matters
most isn't a thinking thing; it’s a matter of the heart. You may want to
go with what brings you joy and bliss. Do what you love, and maybe the money will
follow. Just know that if your competition is better at it than you are,
or if there aren't enough customers willing to pay you to do what brings you
joy, then you don't have a business.
For some, the whole love thing
is irrelevant to their business. To them, business is business.
It's not a love or a passion thing; it's an income thing, and they're in it to
make a living. They'll do fun stuff after work and on the weekends.
That's fine, too.
Your motivation is whatever it
is. Your approach to business may be getting eyebrow deep in data or
focusing on nothing but heart and soul. You may be a joy person or a
nose-to-the-grindstone person.
The important thing is to think
about it, talk about it, stake a claim on what's the most important thing, and
get to work on it. Or, as has been said by countless business
consultants: The main thing is to make sure the main thing is the main
thing. Until you figure out what matters most, it's going to be difficult
to know how to organize your time, develop a strategy, and execute tactically.
Let's simplify some versions of
what matters most for some companies.
For a local plumbing firm, what
matters most are three things:
1.
Be on
time.
2.
Clean
everything up.
3.
Do
great work.
Those three things are
important to their customers, and to the success of the business. For an
advertising agency, the most important things are:
1.
Do
great work.
2.
Have
fun.
3.
Make
money.
4.
Don't
work with people you can't stand.
For Southwest Airlines, the most
important things are:
1.
Great
value.
2.
Excellent
service.
3.
Love
and fun.
Southwest Airlines has
absolutely nailed the concept of being the best at what matters the most.
First and foremost, the people at Southwest want to provide great value.
They want to keep fares low. Bags fly free. And they want to give
great service, including getting the basics right, such as being on time
and having your bags go to the same place you're going.
They also have fun because they
hire fun people and it's part of their culture. Having fun is in their
DNA, and they don't know any other way to do it. But don't let the fun
aspect of Southwest Airlines take away from the fact that these people are
laser-focused on creating value and executing with quality and
consistency. They know what matters most.
Your list of what matters most
has to strike an emotional chord with you, not with anyone else. You
might have a pocket protector full of pens and markers, and what turns you on
would be something like "We solve the toughest physics problems in the
world."
For someone else, what matters
most could be "We absolutely rock at making doughnuts." Say it
the way you think it. The way you say it should matter to you.
You're not doing this for a grade. You're doing it to make the right
things happen. This is about effectiveness, not etiquette.
So there you have it—some food
for thought. Now the hard work is to determine for yourself what matters
most to you. Don't get hung up on getting it exactly right or avoid
starting because you can't pick from the 30 or 40 things that you think could
all qualify for the list. Pick three or four. Better yet, pick one,
such as "satisfy the customer" or "maximize profit."
Before we move on, think about
what is most important in your business:
·
Consider
the preceding examples and how each company approaches what matters most.
What do you like and not like about each? There is no right or wrong
here. But use the examples to start a discussion about what three or four
things matter most to you and your team.
·
As a
starting point for discussion, look at the seven approaches to what matters
most that we discussed earlier. Think about and discuss each one and how
it relates to you and your business.
·
Of
course, it could be that none of the examples resonates with you, which is also
fine. If they don't, why don't they? What would resonate more?
Relevance, Innovation, and
Constant Improvement
Being the best is a moving
target. If you think being the best means getting really great at
something and stopping, then you will have been the best yesterday, but today
you'll be out of business.
There is no need to waste a lot
of time discussing why we all have to constantly change, innovate, and
improve. Everyone agrees that they have to improve every single day if
they are to survive, much less grow their businesses.
No idea gets more lip service
than the idea of constant improvement. But if you buy into this idea of
being the best at what matters most, it's not an option. You cannot be
considered the best at anything and you can't say that you are doing your best
unless you are relevant. And to be relevant, you have to continually
improve, not as occasional improvement projects, but as an integral part of how
you do what you do every single day.
To actually win, you have to
get better at the things that create the greatest value for the customer.
You should constantly innovate and improve on those three or four things that
matter the most. If you do that, your product or service will be
continually evolving and you'll be leaving your competitors in your dust.
Now consider these questions:
·
What
are you doing in your business today that will be irrelevant two years from
now?
·
What
are the three things that you have to do now to stay relevant to your
customers?
·
What
are the three things that you have to do now to become relevant to the
customers that you wish you were doing business with?
Winning and Losing Inside the
Box
For years, we've all talked
about the need to think "outside the box"—to be open to new ideas,
new ways of doing things, innovation, and creative thinking.
The trap that many have fallen
into, however, is being so enamored of the idea of thinking outside the
box. They've started spending so much time "outside the box"
that they're losing the battle where it's being fought, which is squarely
"inside the box."
What does this mean? You
want to constantly innovate and improve for one purpose: to win
"inside the box," which means those things that matter most to the
marketplace. These are the basic expectations of your customers.
These are the things that your customers value most. If you can clearly
win on those basics, you win it all. It's how every market leader
succeeds.
It's time to challenge the idea
that the more out there the idea is, the better it is. It's not about how
outside the box your idea is; it's about how useful and effective your idea
is. Sometimes that can be something you come up with that's radically
different and edgy. Great. Go for it. The test, however, is
how your idea affects the bottom line.
In many ways, this idea is
radically contrarian. The conventional wisdom in business today is that
you must be unique, and that to compete and win you should focus your efforts
on being different and doing things that absolutely none of your competitors is
doing.
However, based on the facts of
who is winning and who is losing in the marketplace, you win not by being the
most unique but by being the best. So beware of anyone who says that the
key to winning in this market is to focus on being different through
over-the-top acts of uniqueness. It will throw you off course.
The best way to be different is
to be demonstrably better than your competition at the basics, at what matters
the most to customers. The evidence today is overwhelmingly on the side
of quality performance as the only sustainable success strategy.
What this means is that you
should take another look at the basics of your business, and be sure that you
are hitting 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 inside the box before you start thinking
about how you can surprise your customers.
Before we move on, here are
some questions to consider:
·
What
are your customers' three or four most basic expectations?
·
What do
your customers value most from you?
·
Are you
better on the basics than your competition?
·
What
would you have to do to improve your performance on those basics by 10 percent?
·
Thinking
outside the box is essential, but what is your purpose for doing so?
·
On a
scale of 1 to 10, how useful are you to your customers?
Simplicity and the Blue-Tip
Flame
Simple is more powerful and
more effective than complicated. As mentioned earlier, Steve Jobs said
his philosophy was that you have to work hard to get your thinking clean enough
to make things simple but that it's worth the effort, because if you can make
things simple, you can move mountains.
The more complicated you've
made your business, the less effective you will be. Complication freezes
you into uncertainty and inaction. Simplicity enables you to get everyone
focused on a shared vision, goal, or priorities and move forward. It's
extremely hard for anyone, much less an entire organization, to focus on
anything that's complicated. There is incredible power in simplicity.
You don't have all the time in
the world, nor do you have unlimited money or people. To win with finite
resources requires that you leverage every single resource at your
disposal. What you need is a force multiplier.
Force multiplier is a military term that
means the effect produced by a capability that, when added to and employed by a
combat force, significantly increases the combat potential of that force and
thus enhances the probability of the mission being successfully accomplished.
Colin Powell said,
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." Optimism comes from
success, and success comes from simplicity and focus.
Simplicity and focus are your
force multipliers.
The great challenge is, as
Steve Jobs said, to "get your thinking clean enough to make things
simple." It's so much easier to come up with 20 priorities than it is
to come up with 3 priorities. The obvious problem with 20 priorities is
that you can't focus on everything. Having 20 priorities means having no
priorities.
A perfect analogy is the
difference between a flamethrower versus the blue-tip flame from an acetylene
torch. If you blast a steel wall with the relatively large flame of a
flamethrower, you'll create a lot of heat but you won't get through the
wall. If, however, you use the blue-tip flame from an acetylene torch,
you can cut through the steel like it is butter.
Some people immediately reject
the blue-tip flame philosophy. They will refuse to believe that the
success of extraordinary companies and top performers is driven by a mindset
and strategy of clarity and focus.
Remember, top performers aren't
the people who do the most things. Top performers are the people who do
the most important things.
Think about these questions:
·
Where
have you made your business too complicated?
·
What is
something you can do immediately, right now, to simplify things?
·
What do
you need to stop doing?
·
Where
do you need to apply a blue-tip flame?
The Trap
How can you make your business
better? Maybe the best answer to that question is to not look for
something else to do, but to do a better job on what you're already
doing.
We get so caught up in the idea
that more is better that we lose sight of the absolute truth that better is
better. Looking for more extras to add and cherries to put on top can
actually be counterproductive.
For example, a hospital had
achieved phenomenal success in improving its patient satisfaction. Over a
period of three years, it had improved its patient satisfaction scores from the
low 40 percent mark to the middle 90 percent range, placing it not only in the
top quartile but in the top 10 percent of high scores in the country.
So the hospital's leaders set a
goal to achieve the top patient satisfaction scores in the country. More
specifically, they wanted to score above 97 percent in all areas of patient
satisfaction.
Once they focused on the goal
of being the best, a strange thing happened. Their scores started
dropping. All of a sudden their scores dropped to the low 70s, and
nothing they seemed to do could help them reverse the trend.
What had happened? The
organization had lost sight of "what matters most."
The goal of achieving the
highest patient satisfaction scores caused its focus to shift. The focus
shifted to reducing the negative rather than growing the positive.
Any negative comment or
less-than-perfect patient experience required an immediate and
"calibrated" response. And before long, the development and
implementation of these calibrated responses replaced all the basic activities
of creating positive patient experiences.
As soon as the hospital
returned its focus to concentrating on the basics of its tried-and-true
approach to creating positive patient satisfaction experiences, its scores
returned to the low to middle 90 percent range.
It never has achieved the best
overall patient satisfaction scores in the country, but its consistent
continuing focus on growing the positive has resulted in consistently high patient
satisfaction scores ever since. In other words, it figured how to do the
best in regard to what mattered most.
This story raises a vitally
important point. The core idea here isn't to be the best. It's to
be the best at what matters most. Sometimes there's a critically
important difference between those two ideas. One thing's for sure:
You will never achieve the position of being the best unless you take care of
what matters most.
Don't be distracted by being
best at what's ultimately unimportant. Consider these questions:
·
What
are three ways that you can immediately improve your performance on the basics?
·
What do
you do well that you take for granted?
·
What do
your customers care about that you don't give enough thought or attention to?
·
How will
you find out what those things are?
What Matters Most to Your Team
To be the best at what matters
most, it's essential to get buy-in from your team. It's therefore
essential to know what matters most to the people on your team.
It's one thing for you to want
your team to have the same goals and objectives that you have. It's quite
another to assume that they're motivated to reach those goals the same way you
are.
Just like you have to
understand your customers and what matters most to them, you have to understand
your employees and coworkers and what matters most to them, too. In these
days of multiple generations working together under one company roof, it's easy
to fall into the trap of thinking that "they" are wrong in what they
want, how they want it, and why they want it.
They're usually not wrong about
those things any more than you are; they’re just different. Most of us
have business relationships with people who live completely different
lifestyles than we do. What's it worth to you, and to the strength and
effectiveness of your relationships, if those other people feel that you
"get them"? It's worth quite a bit.
Think about the answers to the
following questions:
·
How
well do you know your employees, colleagues, and customers in terms of what
matters in their lives?
·
How can
you learn more about them?
·
Do you
expect everyone around you to be motivated by the same things and in the same
ways as you are?
·
If so,
how's that working out for you?
How Brands Win
Let's look at some of the Top
10 Most Trusted Brands, as determined in a survey by Entrepreneur magazine
and the Values Institute. Did these brands win with exotic marketing and
"wow" factor? Or did they win by being the best at what matters
most?
Is their advantage that they
are distinctly unique through being different? Or are they different
because they are consistently better at the basics?
·
Amazon wins with low prices, free shipping on orders over a
minimum total, an endless selection of almost any product you can think of,
knowledge of customers through their past purchases (that enables Amazon to
recommend products that they like), quick-shipping options, one-click
purchasing, and ease of doing business. All of these basics lock people
in as loyal customers.
·
Coca-Cola wins by being everywhere, thus easy to do business
with, and through consistency of product. Coca-Cola is always the
same. There are no surprises. If you look at the performance of
every company on this list, and every company that you love to do business
with, one of their attributes is that you can depend on them. They
deliver quality every single time. Consistency of performance is the
great brand builder.
·
FedEx wins with consistency of performance and personal
connections with customers. Not surprisingly, the company received its
strongest ratings for being able to achieve what it promises and for the
efficiency of its operations. The key competitive issue is simple:
Do you deliver the package on time? If FedEx starts to lose there, then
it's game over. FedEx delivery drivers are always courteous and friendly
and are a pleasure to do business with. Smiling faces wouldn't make up
for late deliveries, though. Get the basics right, or you don't get to
play.
·
Apple is innovative right smack in the middle of what
customers value most, from products that are so easy to use that they don't
need instruction manuals to retail stores that are easy to do business
with. Apple innovates inside the box on what matters most to its
customers.
·
Target wins with clean stores, competitive pricing, attractive
merchandise, trendy clothing at great prices, friendly employees, and enough
employees in the store to serve customers well.
·
Ford wins with a refocus on what matters most, including
stability, dependability, and "behaving responsibly."
·
Starbucks wins with its core product of coffee, incredible
selection, and an environment that invites people to stay.
·
Southwest Airlines wins with an extremely efficient operation
that gets people and their luggage from point A to point B in a low-cost,
efficient manner, and it does so better than anyone else.
·
Nordstrom wins with a culture of customer service. It is
famous for going above and beyond for customers. It has a very liberal
return policy, often sends thank-you notes, and through actions like these, has
won undying loyalty from legions of customers.
The message from these winners
in the Most Trusted Brand survey is unmistakable. Each of them wins in
meeting their customers' high expectations on dependability, customer service,
competitive pricing, and being easy to do business with. Thus they
establish and sustain their positions as market leaders.
Focus on what matters the most.
It works.
Apply this lesson to your
business by considering these questions:
·
On a
scale of 1 to 10, how easy are you to do business with?
·
What
are the three areas you need to improve to be easier to do business with?
·
Do your
customers have to think too much to do business with you?
·
Do you
make your value proposition so clear that they immediately get it?
·
Do you
have to explain what you do and the value of it more than you should have to?
·
How can
you make doing business with you simpler for your customers?
·
Does
the value your company offers make you the logical first choice for customers?
How the Internet Is Killing
Hype
The Internet is killing hype.
A Cisco Systems advertisement
said it perfectly: "Old Days: You bought the chutney because
you liked the jar. New Days: You bought the chutney because
everyone likes the chutney."
Some would say that we are in
the age of flash and attention getting, and that it's all about the
"jar," meaning the shiny package of marketing that we wrap around our
business to attract customers.
In fact, the exact opposite is
true. The days of winning in the market through your ability to glitz up
your business through wildly imaginative marketing and promotion are
gone. Forever.
If you buy chutney today
because you loved the look of the jar it was in and upon tasting that chutney
you really don't like it, your next stop is the Internet. You go online
and tell the world that the chutney stinks. As more people taste the
stinky chutney in the fabulous jar, they also go online and tell the world.
It doesn't take long before the
chutney company is out of business. In the old days, word-of-mouth
reviews took quite a while to get around. You told your neighbor that the
movie you saw was terrible, that the hotel your family stayed in during
vacation had mold in the room, or that the chutney you bought was stinky.
Now it takes you less than a
minute online to tell hundreds of people. They repost your comments to
reach thousands. Then those thousands spread the word to reach the rest
of the world.
Hype is dead. Long live
quality! If you don't deliver the goods in today's world, you're out of
business.
It's not just about retail
customers either. Today's business-to-business customer goes straight to
the Internet to get feedback on every business-to-business service and product
imaginable. Beyond online platforms, they also utilize user conferences,
product seminars, and other live events to exchange information on satisfaction
and dissatisfaction with their business-to-business transactions and
relationships.
Your customers are talking
about you right now behind your back. Customer comments like these flood
the Internet through Web sites such as Yelp.com, Facebook, TripAdvisor.com, and
blogs:
·
"Your
ads are catchy but your service is just average."
·
"I
should have listened to my friends who said, 'don’t shop there!' but I fell for
the hype. Other stores have a better selection and more helpful
employees."
·
"Their
Web site promised great consulting services, but all they did was give us a
report on what we already knew. What a colossal waste of money."
The real problem is that all of
these businesses that were slammed in customer reviews probably believe that
they're doing just fine on the basics. It's the great illusion that we're
all beyond the idea of winning business through consistent quality. We're
looking for the "wow" factor.
So, instead of being so
innovative and so amazing at the basics that we are cutting edge, we focus on
the extras, and in doing so, we neglect the basics.
So when there's a contradiction
between what your business Web site says versus what your customers say, who
wins? It’s not a fair fight. Today, customers can tear down a company's
reputation in the blink of an eye. This is how the Internet is killing
hype.
If you are not providing good
value at what matters most to customers, you will not be long for the
marketplace. You have to keep the promises that you make. You have
to do what you say you'll do. Your customers talk about you behind your
back, and everyone listens.
Consider these questions:
·
What
promise do you make that you need to do a better job of keeping, every time,
with every customer?
·
In your
company, who is responsible for your social media engagement with customers?
·
Who is
responsible for monitoring what customers are saying about you on the Internet?
·
Do you
actively seek out negative feedback from customers so that you know what they
really think, or do you try to get only positive feedback?
·
On a
scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your response to a dissatisfied
customer?
·
What is
your process for engaging with unhappy customers?
The Rules You Can Break
Which rules can you
break? All of them.
Keep the rules that work for
you, and break the rest. Make up new ones. Your goal shouldn't be
to run your business the way experts say you have to. Your goal should be
to run your business in the way that works best.
But doesn't every business have
to have vision and mission statements? Lots of them do, and it works well
for them. But if it doesn't work for you, you can replace your vision and
mission statements with, for example, a simple list of what matters most to you
if that is more effective.
You can go with one sentence,
or one word, or three words. There are companies that thrive, grow, and
make money hand over fist, and have never written the first word of a vision or
mission statement. Vision and mission statements are perfectly good ways to
organize your thoughts around what matters most, but you don't have to do it
that way.
The point is that one size does
not fit all. There are other approaches to creating focus and purpose
that could work better for you. One of the best examples of a nontraditional
approach was mentioned earlier. It's the advertising agency that focused
on the four things that were most important to the owners:
1.
Do
great work.
2.
Have
fun.
3.
Make
money.
4.
Don't
work with people you can't stand.
This might be the worst approach
in the world for you, but these owners decided to forego the vision, mission,
and values approach and simply make a list of the four things that mattered
most to them.
Note something else about the
advertising agency's list. It doesn't include anything that most people
would consider particularly inspiring. There's no higher purpose or lofty
goal. There isn't a word about changing the world or making people's
lives better. Without a really meaningful vision that gives them
something bigger than themselves to work for, can they succeed?
Of course they can. But
in the past few years, you'd be really challenged to find a book about business
or a motivational speaker who didn't say something about the requirement that
you and all of your employees simply must have a higher cause to work for, or
your business won't succeed.
That's ridiculous.
Everywhere you see inspiring, creative stories about companies and people in
business that sound wonderful and lead us to great thoughts about how world
changing our businesses can be. But back in the real world, there are
employees who may not be inspired or motivated by the same things that get the
senior leadership team all excited.
The concept of what matters
most has got to be very personal to you and your people. This statement
of focus and purpose should reach people on an emotional level, which could
mean "We save the world," or it could mean, "We make great
carburetors."
Don't get hung up on thinking
that you have to include "We also want to be healthy, protect the
environment, and contribute to the well-being of the world"—unless, of
course, it really rings true.
How you determine what matters
most, and the way you make that work for you and your business, aren't supposed
to be anything except one thing: effective. Give yourself
permission to let go of any "rules" that you think you have to follow
even if you know they aren't a good fit for you.
Of course, this doesn't mean
you should ignore the rules of good business practices or ethics or the reality
of making the numbers work. But don't feel tied to visions or missions or
anything else that doesn't fit who you are and how you work most
effectively.
Remember, being the best at
what matters most means what matters most to you, your team, and your
customers. It's not about what matters most to any other company, and
it's certainly not what matters most to any business "expert."
You are the expert. Do it
your way.
Look at whatever statement you
presently have of what matters most. Whether it is a vision statement, a
mission statement, values, or so on, look at it and answer these
questions:
·
On a
scale of 1 to 10, how effective is it?
·
What do
you need to do to make it more effective?
·
Do you
need to completely rethink your approach?
·
Should
you change the wording of it?
·
Should
you simply tweak it?
·
Should
you leave it as is?
·
Do you
need to throw it all out and start over?
·
Would
changing it reenergize your organization or just prove distracting?
·
Does
your statement of what matters most reach people on an emotional level, or is
it written according to how you think it is supposed to sound?
Focus 3 Ninety
It's easy to get stuck in the
trap of overthinking things. That trap becomes especially dangerous when
we're thinking about "big" questions like what matters most.
The problem with those
three-day strategic planning retreats where everyone uses up dozens of pages of
flip chart paper as they attempt to come up with the big answers to the big
questions such as "What are our highest, greatest aspirations?" is
that most of them produce less-than-optimal results.
The pressures of time and just
wanting to get something down on paper so people can say they succeeded often
end up resulting in grand statements that just don't ring true on a gut level.
There's nothing wrong with
grand and glorious statements. There's also nothing wrong with sometimes
just saying, "Let's make great carburetors," and getting on with
it. You might be best serviced by whittling things down to size for now
so that you can take action and start creating better results.
Let's shift the question from
what matters most in our universe to what matters most right now for our
company and our customers.
One of the great benefits of
taking an intentional and focused approach to what we need to improve right now
is that the process can begin to reveal what matters most in a big-picture
way. Taking action always produces new information and insights, and
doing something is usually more productive than just thinking about doing
something.
As noted earlier, many
companies experience great success using the traditional model of vision,
mission, and strategy. That's great, and if it works for you, then you
should continue defining what matters most using that model. For others,
however, a new approach can prove to be more productive.
This technique takes a
short-term approach to creating permanent improvements in performance.
The program is called Focus 3 Ninety. It is powerful in part because it
is so simple.
To use this approach,
ask: What three things do we need to improve in the next 90 days?
It should take you and the right people in your organization no more than half
a day to come up with the three things that you should improve, all related to
what matters most to your business.
One great advantage of this
short-term approach is that no one feels locked in, or that any permanent
decisions are being made. Just three things to improve in 90 days.
Don't waste time on quick-fix
improvements that simply entail a temporary rush of activity. Think in
terms of improvements you can make in processes over the next 90 days.
For example, don't have the
sales force do 90 days of temporarily making more sales calls. Instead,
look at your selling process for places where you can make permanent
improvements. Improve the way you research prospects and prepare for
calls so that you permanently improve your conversion rate going forward.
The key to making this work
will be to have absolute clarity in terms of:
·
The
specific improvements you want to make
·
How you
will measure your success
·
Who is
accountable for each of the three areas of improvement
·
The
support that each of those people is given
·
The
schedule and checkpoints along the way
It simply does not have to be
more complicated than that. This exercise isn't about painstakingly
wordsmithing any statements of any kind. You just sit down and make a
list of three things to improve in 90 days.
By the way, it doesn't have to
be three things. It can be two or four, or possibly five. The point
is to create focus.
As you go through the process
of identifying and implementing the improvements, you may glean valuable
insight into what truly does matter most to you and your customers. At
the end of the 90 days, do an assessment of what's been accomplished, then move
forward with a new set of three things to improve, or keep the ones in place
that you feel need more focus and attention.
Think about the following
questions:
·
What
specific improvements do you want to make?
·
How
will you measure your success?
·
Who is
accountable for each of the three areas of improvement?
·
What
support or resources will each of those people need?
·
What
are the schedule and checkpoints along the way?
Ten Ideas that Matter Most
Let's conclude this summary
with a quick review of the 10 ideas that matter most:
1.
Get
your thinking clean enough to make things simple.
2.
Be so
good at the basics that you're cutting edge.
3.
Be the
best at what matters most, and you will succeed.
4.
The
winners aren't the ones who do the most things. The winners are the ones
who do the most important things.
5.
Don’t
use a flamethrower when you should be using a blue-tip flame from an acetylene
torch.
6.
Don't
worry about "wowing" your customers with gimmicks.
"Wow" them with the basics. Make a better car or a better
hamburger.
7.
The
important thing is to find out what's the most important thing and get to work
on it.
8.
Being
the best is a moving target. You have to constantly improve and innovate.
9.
Simplicity
and focus are your force multipliers.
10.
More
isn't better. Better is better.
It takes real determination and
perseverance to simplify your business, get focused on what matters the most,
and be the best. It's not easy. The fact is that most people can't
do it or won't do it. It's much easier, albeit much less profitable, to
pursue the glitz of gimmicks that will supposedly set you apart.
But the huge payoff for your
effort comes when you begin to make being the best at what matters most your
natural way of doing things. Then it does make work and life
easier. You'll reach the point where you look at your business and think,
"Why didn't I always do it this way?"
About
the Author
Joe Calloway is a leading performance
expert who has helped hundreds of companies and entrepreneurs create and sustain
success through his unique interactive keynote presentations that challenge
people to take actions on what matters most in their businesses.
He helps organizations focus on
what is truly important, inspires constant improvement, and motivates people to
immediate action. Joe has been a business author, coach, and speaker for
30 years and his client list reads like an international Who's Who in business,
ranging from companies like Coca Cola and IBM to Saks Fifth Avenue and American
Express.
Joe is the author of four other
ground-breaking business books including Becoming A Category of One:
How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity And Defy Comparison, which
received rave reviews from The New York Times, Retailing Today,
Publishers Weeklyand many others.
Learn more about the author's
unique approach to sustainable business success at:
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