A Wake Up Call For Business

Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth – Mark W. Johnson – (Harvard Business Review)

Try as I might, I could not think of any industry or business sector that has not been impacted by digital transformation. Now more than ever businesses need to be nimble and be able to act both proactively and re-actively to competitive challenges and disruption.

The flat out failure of so many businesses who either could not or would not change their business model should be a wake up call that is loud and clear. Tick of the list: Sears, Kmart, Bonton, Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Blackberry and many others. That clarion call, while not new, should have you asking if you are prepared to take action and if you have the structure in place to transform your business for growth.

Strategy and innovation consultant Mark W. Johnson has been championing for businesses to be ready to take this kind of action since his 2009 book Seizing the White Space. Johnson has revised and updated the book and the title in Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth to account for the blisteringly rapid pace of change that has occurred in the interim.

In the book, Johnson lays out a great, workable framework for business to embrace dynamic change and put it into practice right out of the box. If your scratching your head and wondering where to even start a transition, Johnson provides a road map to reinvention. I have never been a fan of reinventing the wheel, but reinvention may be a misnomer here; this is more of guide path to retooling the way you do business that gives you a leg up on the process by identifying the tools you need for success.

You will likely have more than a few AHA! Moments, as Johnson identifies not only what companies have done successfully, but also illustrates with examples those that failed to act in in turn failed outright. The advice offered up here is useful to both existing businesses to make the transformation or startups to put the framework in place from the start to be nimble from the get go.  

You Can't Shrink Your Way to Success

Growth IQ - Tiffani Bova - (Portfolio)

I remember it clearly...the first time I told a CEO "you can't shrink your way to success. The. Line seemed to hit him like a sledgehammer, jarring him from another cloudy discussion about layoffs, cost cutting, and delaying facility repairs. This was not the first discussion of this type; and while similar cost cutting had resulted in short lived bumps, this was not going to work much longer.

The fact that the concept of growth seemed somehow shocking spoke volumes about this particular executives mindset. I laid out a growth strategy and once the ball got rolling my line about shrinking to success moved from me being credited to the CEO assuming credit for it in a very short term when it started to work. I love it when a plan comes together. Growth can comes in many forms, in fact business growth strategist Tiffani Bova clearly defines ten growth strategies in her excellent new book, Growth IQ.

Ten Growth Paths

This really isn't brain surgery and Bova boils it down to ten pretty clear paths to growth:

1. Customer Experience - Inspire additional purchases and customer advocacy 
2. Customer Base Penetration - Sell more existing products to existing           customers
3. Market Acceleration - Expand into new markets with existing products
4. Product Expansion - Sell new products to existing customers
5. Customer and Product Diversification - Sell new products to new customers 
6. Optimize Sales- Streamline the sales process to increase productivity
7. Churn - Retain more customers
8. Partnerships - Leverage third-party alliances and channels
9. Co-optition - Cooperate with market or industry competitor 
10. Unconventional Strategies - Disruption of current thinking/process

Bova does a nice job of illustrating and detailing each of these growth paths with real world examples that are specific, without becoming esoteric or overly white-papery. The examples add substance to the action steps that you can put into play to get the ball rolling quickly. While each of these growth paths can be stand alone, she also makes the case that you can run on more than one of these paths at a time with the proper synchronization, so they don't bump not each other during execution. Timing is everything.

While I am not sure that Bova put the growth paths in any particular order, I am a big fan customer experience being great path to growth. Customer experience can be a huge differentiator and engendering loyalty can result in dynamic growth; with a great reduction in customer acquisition cost. The basic rule of business is it's cheaper to sell something to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer.

Bova also spells out the factors you should weigh when determining which growth path(s) you should choose. This is critical information because making the wrong choice can cause more damage to your business than a lack of growth. Growth IQ offers a phenomenal knowledge base from which to work on your growth evolution. 

Missed Opportunity

How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation's Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education - Arne Duncan - (Simon and Schuster)

I've got to be honest, I don't quite know what to make of, How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation's Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education, by Obama Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Named the ninth Secretary of Education in 2009, Duncan oversaw the turmoil that public education has become in the United States trough 2015.

With How Schools Work, Duncan ha the opportunity to shine a first hand knowledge spotlight on those school's that are working well and what they do to successfully navigate the roadblocks and issues that stop so many schools from delivering on their primary charge; educating kids.

Those issues are legion; ranging from disinterested or impaired parents, infrastructure failures, teacher's and their unions, forced social engineering, school violence, funding issues, and on and on. Rather than citing those schools who manage to overcome these hurdles, Duncan instead serves up an odd mishmash; part memoir of his journey in education, part recap of the challenges facing educators,  part liberal boilerplate screed and all topped off with his thoughts on gun violence. Oh, and as the cherry on top there is the seemingly obligatory eight point plan too fix the problems.

While the story of his journey to and through the education ranks is interesting and he clearly displays a demonstrable passion for educating, I was left short by the missed opportunity that I felt this book presented. The opportunity comes in the form of addressing an increase in accountability and an effort to refocus on actually providing a useful education that prepares students for a better future, whatever direction that might lead them. Instead of focusing on social engineering and how Johnny feels about himself, why not give Johnny the tools he needs to be successful or even break the cycle that has often hampered generations. Instead of viewing parents as adversaries, why not engage them to participate in the process of educating their kids. Instead of whining about a layoff funds why not offer a ground up overhaul of how schools can work better by how they are managed. Like I said, missed opportunity.      

What You Should Stop Doing

Detonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginners mind) to Survive - Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach - (Wiley)

"If it's not broke don't fix it," became a popular business axiom, that later became "If it's not broke, break it." If you find that your business, in whole or in part, is stuck in a rut because your business operating principle has become "because that's the way we've always done it," then it's probably time to give some thought to bringing a little disruption to your game.

A pair of Deloitte business consultants, Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach are out with a new book  Detonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices, that advocates bringing disruption, almost for the sake of disruption. I think there is a need for careful delineation to be put into play, before you take a sledgehammer to your business practices.  

First you have to account for the specifics of your business and industry. In some business sectors, best practices are actually rewarded. Take healthcare for example; where so-called core measures, a set of industry recognized best practices for treatment protocols. These standards of care get monitored and measured and can result in higher reimbursements, notably from government payers. It would not only be silly to detonate these best practices, but counter productive to the bottom line.

Certainly there are a myriad of opportunities to disrupt healthcare delivery, that could positively improve the bottom line and should be explored to improve not only patient outcomes, but also patient experience.

One of my all time favorite business questions is "what should we stop doing?" We spend so much time looking for opportunities that involve expanding what we do, that we miss the opportunities that lie in stopping doing things that aren't working or aren't contributing to our business in a meaningful way. This is where the lessons distilled in Detonate can have the greatest impact on your business.  

Let Go of the Coconut

Mastering Fear - A Navy SEAL's Guide - Brandon Webb and John David Mann (Portfolio)

I work with folks all the time who have great ideas, the ideal entrpreneurial skill set, and the desire to branch out and run their own shop. Many put the pieces in place, business plans, market research, working with consultants to bullet proof (as much as you can) the process and some even get the financing lined up. Just when you think they are ready to pull the trigger, they back away and leav everything on the table.

So what stops them? More often than not, the only thing stopping you, is you. And what stops you? Fear. Maybe it's the great uncertainty, the great unknown; the lingering doubt of "what if" this doesn't work out? For is the great equalizer that levels the playing field and often level great ideas.

In Mastering Fear: A Navy SEAL's Guide, retired Navy SEAL and bestselling author Branddon Webb, along with John David Mann (The Go-Giver series) offer up on of the best fear analogies ever with the story of the monkey and the coconut. Webb describes how a friend in the Philipines explained how they trap monkeys. "They dig a hole, place a coconut in it; the monkey reaches in and grabs the coconut, and his fist is now too big to pull out. He's trapped. All he has to do is let go of the coconut. But he won't do it. Why not? What keeps the monkey;s fist clenched? Fear. H's afraid of losing what he has, so he keeps the coconut and loses his freedom.

You want to take the leap and do your own thing, but for keeps your fist clenched on your coconut.

Webb draws on his vast experience in battle and business to craft, along with Mann, a playbook of five steps you can take to overcome your fears in business and in life. No you don't have to have survived the arduous Navy SEAL's BUD/S training course to apply these strategies to make marked improvements in your life.

I loved the chapter on knowing what matters. This seems like it should. Be pretty basic, common sense stuff, but I have found it's what often trips people up. Sometimes it real. Is as simple as knowing when to let go of the coconut.

Powered By Ideas

Breakthrough: How To Harness the Aha! Moments That Spark Success - Scott Duffy - (Enrepreneur Press)

"Don't be afraid of new ideas. Be afraid of old ideas. They keep you where you are an stop you from growing and moving forward. Concentrate on where you want to go, not on what you fear," - Anthony Robbins

As I considered Scott Duffy's new book, Breakthrough: How to Harness the Aha! Moments That Spark Success, for some reason on got locked in on a quote about ideas with out action, that I had heard or read at one time, but remained just out of my mental grasp. A quick Google search and I came across the Anthony Robbins quote above and thought that it was a good fit, when you consider that Duffy was once in the employ of the Robbins organization.

The quote is also fitting in that Duffy is offering a substantial primer on not only how to seize on great ideas, but how to shift into execution/action mode. As you progress through the process, he also demonstrates the action steps to grow and scale you business.

Duffy hits all the marks, delivering easily digestible chunks on leadership, making smart, informed choices for the next steps in you business development cycle, including; transitions, culture and building sustainability. He takes this beyond the theoretical by illustrating many of the. Steps with interviews and example from successful entrepreneurs including Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Daymond John among others.

While I tend to chafe at the shelf full of books that seemingly endorse failure as a business option everybody should take a swing at, I fully endorse not fearing failure from limiting your business decisions and learning from failure; I appreciated Duffy's clear illustrations about some of the potential issues that come with scaling and how you can avoid them with poor planning.