How Configurable Products/Services Become Profitable

 

 

Companies with configurable products or services often live with the severe operational pain and gridlock. Many see the pain and low margins as a cost of doing business. Here are some questions to ponder:

• Which of the great companies of the world want to offer more personalized solutions but can’t because the technology doesn’t yet exist within their firewall to efficiently support personalized solutions? Is your company one of them?

• How many companies are stuck in the mass production paradigm as technology doesn’t exist to support a mass customization business paradigm? Is your company one of them?

• Which of the great companies of the world won’t embark upon an effort to better support customized products due to perceived business and technical risks? Is your company one of them?

• How many CIOs would step up to lead the development of a holistic, end-to-end solution? I don’t know of any. Is your company one of them?

What if a company offered a plug and play solution that, with minimal customization, would take the pain and complexity out of offering configurable products from quote to cash collection? How valuable would that be?

This is my Dawn Wall Project I wrote about a few weeks ago. It’s about making the complex simple.

Is your company in need of this solution? Call me.

Thought for the week:

“Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.” -Sir Richard Branson

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2015 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Progress Depends On Being Unreasonable

 

I recently watched a video from Robin Sharma that is, as usual, quite inspirational. Here are some notes I took as I listened:

• Become unreasonable in every aspect of life: what I expect, what I want, etc.
• Be unreasonable about levels of mastery and avoiding mediocrity.
• Be unreasonable about levels of health and fitness I’ll develop these next 12 months–you can’t become legendary if you have no energy.
• Be unreasonable about the goals I will pursue and the dreams I will realize.
• Be unreasonable about my integrity and the values I will live by.
• Be unreasonable about the people I will influence and the lives I will uplift.
• Be unreasonable about the courage you will model and the passion you will share.
• Be unreasonable in the results I will deliver and the projects I will complete.
• Be unreasonable in the happiness I will experience.

Who is one of the most unreasonable leaders I know of? Steve Jobs. Look at the results he created.

The ideas above will help you thrive.

Photo Credit: Michael Seely, Flickr

A Recent Blog Post You Might Enjoy

Vishal Sikka Leading Change

Thought for the week:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” – George Bernard Shaw

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2015 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

The Winner’s Mindset

The San Francisco 49ers football team has had a rough year, missing the playoffs for the first time after 3 consecutive years. A reporter asked a 49er player, “What’s it like to have two meaningless games left on the schedule?”

“I’ve been in that situation before,” Joe Staley said. “It sucks. This is not fun. This is my life. This is what I put all my work into. I don’t show up on Sunday and hope it goes well.”

This is the mindset of a winner, the mindset of an entrepreneur. Winning is the raison d’etre. The temporary pain of losing won’t overshadow and the dominate the desire for winning.

Here’s to accelerating your growth through change.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Photo Courtesy of Kevin Dooley on Flickr

Thought for the week:

“Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.” – Bruce Lee

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Getting Configurable Product Orders Right

A reader wrote: “My company has configurable products and we are having problems getting the right parts delivered to support installation of the customers’ orders. What ideas do you have to resolve this?”

The first question I would ask is did the process for shipping custom, configurable orders ever work well? If you answer “yes,” then you need to ask yourself “what changed?” If you answer “no,” then it would be clear you never had a working process and that is your starting point.

If something in the process changed, you need to take action to bring the process back into compliance so it works properly and is repeatable.

If nothing changed, you need to create and follow a process that ensures you are shipping the right parts to complete the order.

If the answer you receive is, “it’s too hard to do it right,” then I encourage you to look at the problem through the eyes of your customers and/or dealers. If your customers and/or dealers are experiencing challenges satisfying the customer the first time, that negatively impacts your brand reputation.

When order execution goes poorly, people talk about it. If you don’t believe that, just look at Yelp, Facebook or Twitter to see how brand reputations become tarnished. Companies delivering a poor customer experience aren’t long for this world.

Finally, you may need to innovate your current process to meet the needs of your business if variety and complexity has gone beyond the capabilities of your current systems and processes. This is how you accelerate growth.

Photo Courtesy of John Hritz on Flickr

Thought for the week:

Heard through @coryedwards

81: The % of US consumers that say that it is important that brands make my life easier.#DigitalDopamine from @razorfish

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Consultants: Alan Weiss Hosting Convention For You!

Alan Weiss is without question the most successful independent consultant on planet earth. I know him well. Alan Weiss has been my personal mentor since the 1990’s.

Alan is always looking for new and engaging ways to share his intellectual property and pragmatism with people like you and me.

You have the opportunity to attend his inaugural Million Dollar Consulting Conference in Atlanta, March 11-13, 2015.

You’ll hear from Alan and other people just like you who have worked with him to grow their businesses beyond their wildest imaginations.

Alan is offering a $200 discount if you sign up and pay before the end of 2014. This discount vanishes as of January 1, 2015–you snooze, you lose. [Note: This event is a tremendous value even without the discount!]

Alan is the real deal. I urge you to take advantage not only of this terrific opportunity but also to capture your discount by booking this before the end of 2014. Tell Alan “Dave Gardner sent you.”

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

Photo Courtesy of Steve Hardy on Flickr

Landing The Rosetta Philae On A Comet

Landing a jet on an aircraft carrier has to be an absolutely phenomenal experience. The aircraft carrier, simultaneously moving both horizontally and vertically in a three-dimensional space, must feel like a postage stamp in the middle of a vast ocean. The vast ocean is a metaphor for outer space.

This week, we learned of an improbable 10-year, 310-million-mile journey for the first ever space vehicle to make a soft landing on a comet about two miles in diameter.

We immediately began receiving data from the space vehicle, Rosetta’s Philae. And, while there’s concern that the Philae probe may have ended its mission prematurely as it landed in a spot where it’s batteries can’t be recharged, let us acknowledge what a remarkable achievement this is.

What are you going to do this week that is spectacular? How can you or your company disrupt an industry in one, two, five or ten years? What can you envision that is this big?

Photo Courtesy of myriam di maio on Flickr

 

Thought for the week:

“When the soul of the business leaves the building, it’s only a matter of time before the money walks away was well.” – Lisa Earle McLeod

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

The Dropbox Box Expands

I’m at Dell World 2014 this week in Austin, Texas. As I was walking the exhibition floor, Daniel Bernard from Dropbox asked if I was familiar with Dropbox for Business. Reflexively, I answered “yes.”

In the fog of the all the visual and auditory input of the show, I missed the context. I thought he was asking about me “using Dropbox for business,” not a product named “Dropbox for Business.” I soon realized he meant something different and acknowledged I wasn’t familiar with “Dropbox for Business.”

Why? Dropbox has been known as being more for consumer and small business use due to it’s ease of use. It has not been known for being “enterprise-ready.” Here’s the box I put Box and Dropbox in:

• Box for enterprise and small business
• Dropbox for consumer and very small business

I’m sure Box would enjoy the positioning I’ve ascribed to their solutions. Yet, Daniel was really wanting to speak to me about a more robust set of features and functions suitable for small business and the enterprise. He went on to show me features and functions that convinced me they’ve grown, they’ve evolved, and they want to play at a different level than they were able to 2 or 3 years ago. This highlights a point I made previously in a post called  Are You Boxed In? In that blog post, I wrote:

When you or your company becomes known for something, the marketplace draws lines around what you represent to the world effectively boxing you in. Over time, you may grow the size of your box many times as you add new products and services. However, be aware — it is harder for the marketplace to grasp that your box has really grown and evolved, particularly if you have name recognition and are known for being in a particular space or area. Getting the marketplace to understand your company’s new box versus the original box is a pretty steep hill to climb.

Dell has a similar challenge as it moves to be an end-to-end solution provider. Dell World is one of the actions Dell is taking to show CIOs how much its box has grown. I’m happy to report, Dell is doing a terrific job in the transformation.

If you are boxed in, it takes a lot of energy of help those who know you or your company to see you as something different. I’m glad I spent a few minutes learning how Dropbox is evolving.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Dave Gardner

Crowdsourcing Best Practices

Crowdsourcing is about obtaining input or ideas by asking for input from a group of people.

My favorite example of crowdsourcing is Waze, a GPS tool I rely on for driving and getting up- to-date feedback from other “Wazers” to tell me when traffic slows, when I will encounter delays due to a traffic accident, where there is a road hazard, where a policeman is parked on the side of the road perhaps using a radar gun, etc.

Waze, a Google company, also tells me how many miles I have left and the anticipated remaining time to arrive at my destination given what Waze knows about the route ahead. Waze also re-routes me if needed to avoid travel delays.

It’s best to trust Waze–it will occasionally make recommendations that make you shake you head but Waze is right. The brilliance of Waze is its reliance on real-time input via crowdsourcing.

How can you take the metaphor Waze provides to take your company to the next level? Waze’s tagline is “Outsmarting traffic, together.” Does this give you any ideas?

If you don’t consider crowdsourcing, you may find you are breathing your own exhaust which won’t help you accelerate growth.

Photo Courtesy of  Alexander Baxevanis on Flickr

 

Thought for the week:

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.” – Anais Nin

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

HP Splits Into 2 Companies–Who Wins?

I’ve written a number of articles about HP.  You can find them here on this blog by searching for HP.

Here’s my latest article here.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

 

 

Non-Conformity In College Education

I went through a traditional college education earning a B.A. at San Jose State University followed by a M.B.A. at Santa Clara University. Today, students and parents alike are questioning the value and cost of a traditional education, particularly given the lackluster job market new college graduates face.

This weekend, Dell invited me to an event where I learned about two different post-high school educational programs, Uncollege and the Minerva Project. These programs attract very bright young adults from all over the globe. These institutions are innovating how education can be delivered and how students can be prepared to deal with the realities of the 21st century. They seem to be more focused on entrepreneurship, something we didn’t discuss when I was in college.

It’s easy to duplicate what others have done in the education space. Challenges to the sacred cow beliefs about how an education needs to be delivered are long overdue. Let’s not miss the broader lessons:

• What sacred cows can your company or industry challenge to create new value in the marketplace?
• What paradigms are up for disruption?
• Is there a growth opportunity by moving in a different direction from the pack?
• Is there a way to serve an unserved or underserved market?

These are questions I’m sure these students are asking. Shouldn’t you be asking and addressing them as well? After all, aren’t these young people your future competition?

Photo Courtesy of  Sean MacEntee on Flickr

Thought for the week:

 “Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.” – Herodotus

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

What if you could save 1 hour per day?

Saving an hour per day probably sounds like hyperbole.  But, it’s not, particularly if you’re in Sales, Customer Service or Human Resources AND you have access to WittyParrot, an enterprise application. Here are some benefits just in Sales:

• Respond to customers and prospects faster by not having to search through documents, old emails, and repositories to find answers

• Differentiate from the competition – not just by responding fast – but by responding with relevant, targeted content that customers and prospect will actually consume

• Ramp up new hires much faster by helping them become self-sufficient sooner

• Reduce the burden on subject matter experts (SMEs) and “information owners” who are normally besieged by questions from all sides

• Ensure sellers and channel partners are speaking with one voice instead of making up their own answers and content

• Allows teams to quickly and easily create personalized emails, documents, and  presentations leveraging previously-created content

• Enables efficient sharing of previously created content amongst team members

• Works with all standard file types for documents, images and videos

• Alllows users to save up to an hour a day or more at a cost of less than $1 per day

If this sounds even remotely interesting to you, please contact me at info (at) gardnerandassoc.com. I’m a WittyParrot Certified Reseller and Implementation Partner.​

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting  http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Dave Gardner

 

The Earthquake Effect

At 3:20 am PDT yesterday, Napa, California, suffered a 6.0 magnitude earthquake, the largest quake in Northern California since the 1989 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17th at 5:04 pm.

The threat of earthquakes is omnipresent in California. There is no earthquake forecasting system yet though there is one under development. Additionally, we never know if an earthquake is a precursor–a foreshock–to a larger earthquake or the main event itself for months afterward.

Business owners should contemplate what unforecasted events can impact their business.

• What contingency plans need to be put in place for events–weather-related, earthquakes, power outages, bridge collapses, supply chain issues, etc., that might impact business for an extended period of time.

• Attention should also be given to disruptions that can occur because of competitors, both known and unknown. It is possible your world can be jolted overnight.

I’d bet Boeing–who at one point enjoyed nearly 100% market share for commercial aircraft–didn’t believe that Airbus would amount to much when they first started selling aircraft. And, now there are even more competitors like Embraer and Bombardier in the market.

Big jolts can be an important wake-up call. Make sure you don’t miss the sign and your opportunity to accelerate your growth.

Photo Courtesy of Martin Luff on Flickr

Thought for the week:

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as being stuck where you don’t belong.” – Unknown

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Lessons from Blackberry & John Chen

John Chen, a turnaround artist and current CEO of Blackberry, has a formidable task ahead of him: Make Blackberry a viable firm once again now that the luster has long since worn off. In an article in the San Jose Mercury News, Michelle Quinn provides thoughtful insights:

Silicon Valley has a predictable cycle: Companies experience periods of rapid growth and then, for most of them, a maturation period of flatter growth. For others, contracting revenues can start a tailspin of contracting ambition. Not many survive as independent companies. BlackBerry may not be a survivor. Even Chen compares BlackBerry to a patient in critical condition.

John Chen’s offers his turn-around formula:

“The first thing you do is stabilization,” he said, “which means in business getting the financials in order.” Then, “you examine what is driving you to disconnect with customers. If you weren’t disconnecting from customers, then you wouldn’t need me.”

Quinn offers, “For now, BlackBerry is focused on its core customers in government and industries like finance, banking and health care who value security and long battery life.” Here’s another take:

“I don’t envy the guy,” said Mike Levin, partner and co-founder of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, which pegs BlackBerry’s U.S. consumer market penetration as rounding down to 0 percent. “Smartphones are more than a consumer product now. The challenge is going to be to find something distinctive that competitors don’t have or won’t be able to copy within a year.”

The world has innovated around Blackberry. Blackberry, like so many firms before it, was caught flat-footed watching its market share erode quarter after quarter for a number of years now.

Once a firm loses its luster, it’s nearly impossible to become highly desirable again. Best case, Blackberry can be niche player if John Chen can connect Blackberry as being the preferred smartphone in one or more niches.

How is your business trending? Are you growing? If you aren’t growing, you’re on the decline. That’s no way to thrive. If customers turn off and tune out–as they have at Blackberry–it’s nearly impossible to win them back.

Photo Credit: Flickr, Ian Lamont  “In 30 Minutes guides“

Thought for the week:

“The middle of creating anything new can be messy & miserable. Keep moving, step at a time, & suddenly see finish line.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive! To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Why You Need An Executive Coach Today

The best athletes in the world rely on coaches to make them better and to help them raise the bar to new levels of performance. The athlete and the coach collaborate to produce a far better outcome than the athlete can produce on his/her own. Why should executives be any different?

In a Fast Company blog post called “To Move Forward, First Let Go,” I offered “the toughest business to consult on is your own.” The same is true for executives. It’s hard to consult about (or coach) yourself. You are too close to your situation, you greatly benefit from different ideas and perspectives, and, as my mentor, Alan Weiss, offers, “you don’t want to breathe your own exhaust.”

When an individual engages with a coach, they acknowledge they can benefit from an outside perspective. They acknowledge they can’t possibly see everything the coach can. And, they acknowledge that candid input is needed to make them more effective. Let me give you an example.

I helped coach an executive about his content and how to deliver a presentation at an all-important global sales conference. The year prior, he had been ranked the worst speaker at the event. He didn’t want a repeat. I was able to help him better connect his message to his audience. The outcome? He was the highest-ranked speaker, a complete reversal of fortune for this terrific guy.

Could he have done it on his own? It’s doubtful. He didn’t know what to do differently. He didn’t know where to start. He only felt the pain and embarrassment of his prior presentation being the worst ranked.

Why do executives believe they can do it on their own? Is it to show how tough they are? Is it to prove how self-sufficient they can be? Is it to save money? If it’s to save money, ask yourself at the expense of what?

To make my business work, I mentored with some of the best people in the world. It took me a while to learn that getting another perspective was essential if I was going to make my business work. For over a year, my ego wouldn’t allow me to admit that I couldn’t do it alone—that I needed help. I reached a point where I knew I could not help myself as effectively as a coach could.

I had had to learn the hard way that being good at something didn’t translate into executives leaping for their checkbooks so we could do business together. That required different strategies and tactics than I had knew. I had to learn a lot. And, I needed my coaches pointing out how I could be more effective and what I needed to do differently.

If you are an executive and you aren’t getting the coaching, where will you be in 6 months, a year, 2 years, 5 years? Do you think you can raise your own bar? How will you take your personal performance and value-add to the next level?

Let me help you accelerate your growth—personal, professional, company, etc.–through change.

Dave Gardner

© 2014 Dave Gardner

Vishal Sikka Departs SAP

Sunday evening, May 4th, I learned Vishal Sikka, CTO and an executive board member of SAP, had resigned for “personal reasons.” News of his departure is shocking to me. Earlier this year, I met him to learn about the transformation he was leading. Vishal is a very impressive individual.

• About 25,000 employees reported to Vishal. SAP has some 70,000 employees total to give you some perspective.
• People in Vishal’s organization are in shock and traumatized by his departure. They won’t have definitive answers about what his departure means for some time yet. Vishal’s vision was clearly instantiated in the product roadmap; it can’t turn on a dime.
• Vishal’s story seemed almost too good to be true and, perhaps in the end, it was. He was leading SAP and its SAP customers to a new and, in my opinion, better place. However, those who lead enterprise-wide transformations scare those who are reliant on and nervous about changing the status quo. There is always friction and resistance to change. SAP’s status quo won last night.
• He seemed to enjoy a very cordial relationship with his team. He knew people in Palo Alto by their first names, something that surprised me. After all, an important guy like Vishal doesn’t have time for such trivialities, right? Wrong.
• In a streaming media event, Vishal appeared to be a rock star at SAP. He had the ability to advocate for non-traditional development issues, e.g., pricing products and services. His ability to influence and make change had to scare some people in leadership roles, people who didn’t hold back voicing their concerns.

My friend and colleague, Ray Wang of Constellation Research, noted that Vishal’s departure boiled down to 3 issues:

• Vishal advocated for building platforms as opposed to applications
• Vishal was enabling customers to build versus buy applications and solutions
• Vishal was enabling customers to innovate versus simply executing what SAP defined

Who was most concerned about this paradigm shift that Vishal was leading? Sales and the board of directors. The board took action to alter the path Vishal was putting the company on.

Big companies do what they have to to protect revenue streams. Ultimately, I surmise SAP had real fear that Vishal was going to upset revenue streams.

When SAP tried to cage an innovator like Vishal, he had little choice but to flee the building. Change is hard even for a smart, engaging, charismatic professional like Vishal. And, change is even harder for SAP, a company that has seen a number of executives leave the company.

I hope Vishal, his team and SAP find a compelling way to thrive.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Dave Gardner

When An Owner Doesn’t Care About Customer Experience

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: customer experience

My wife needed quilting supplies and decided to support a non-chain, small business here in San Jose. They were out of a product and promised to call when the supplies arrived.

They called on a Thursday stating the item was in. My wife told them she’d stop by on Friday. The next day she drove 25 minutes (16 miles in city traffic) and was surprised they had closed at 2:00 p.m. for Good Friday. There was no mention of the early closing during the call the day before.

She called the following Monday and a store clerk agreed to ship the item and waive the shipping fee for her time and trouble the prior week. That was the right thing to do!

When the item arrived a few days later, my wife had been charged for shipping. She called the store and the same clerk refused to acknowledge the commitment for free shipping–her boss was standing next to her and eventually jumped on the call.

After a tedious conversation, the store owner agreed to refund the shipping but only after my wife committed to never do business with them again.

• Who would want to do business with an outfit that doesn’t do what it says it will do?
• Why would the owner expect my wife to be willing to overlook how she is being treated in this transaction?
• What is the potential lost lifetime value of my wife’s business for $5.00?
• Doesn’t the business owner realize there are many alternatives to doing business with his store?

Yelp confirms a number of missteps like the one she encountered. Negative customer experiences combined with the ability to easily discover customer experience information about a business via Yelp and other services mean business owners can’t hide their missteps. It’s 2014, not 1980.

The question for my readers this week is what missteps are you subjecting your customers to? You can’t accelerate growth if missteps are impacting your customer’s experiences.

Photo Credit: Flickr.com, Melissa O’Donohue

 

Thought for the week:

“The very purpose of our life is happiness, which is sustained by hope. We have no guarantee about the future, but we exist in the hope of something better. Hope means keeping going, thinking, ‘I can do this.’ It brings inner strength, self-confidence, the ability to do what you do honestly, truthfully and transparently.” – His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Impenetrable Cultures

 

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: culture

Fourteen of us joined a manufacturing company as vice presidents with a new CEO as part of a significant transformation effort with major growth initiatives:

• increase our market share in North America
• increase global market presence and penetration
• implement mass customization to promote efficiencies across the enterprise and into our dealer channel
• implement a lean kaizen process

There were issues that never surfaced during the interview process:

• the company had a long history of turning over its entire executive team every 18-24 months
• the employees demonstrated repeatedly that, if they could stall or delay change initiatives, those initiatives would soon pass with the departure of the executive team–it was as predictable as the sun rising every day

No one seemed responsible for addressing the culture issues. And, without a culture shift, we had little hope of creating sustainable and dramatic change. Most of us were gone in the normal cycle of executive turnover.

As my mentor, Dr. Alan Weiss offers:

“Culture is merely a set of beliefs which governs behavior. Change the core belief systems and you change the culture. Simple (or as difficult) as that.”

He’s right. Culture is a key ingredient in accelerating growth that is too easily overlooked. It need not be.

 Photo Credit: Tony Bowden, Flickr, Ivangorod Fortress on the Russian side of the border from Estonia Ivangorod Fortress

Thought for the week:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”  -Peter Drucker

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

 

Finding Eternal Year Over Year Business Growth

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: accelerating growth

Just as Ponce de Leon sought an eternal fountain of youth, business leaders have sought a key to year over year success. Let’s try this on for size:

“We all know that ideas are the currency of success these days. To win in your marketplace, it’s mission-critical to out-think, out-innovate, and out-create your competition. The person with the biggest ideas then blended with the best execution will lead the field.” -Robin Sharma, Little Black Book for Stunning Success, Page 25

Sound simple? It’s not. If it were, every person and company would be doing it. This is how you accelerate growth.

Thought for the week:

“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” – Peter Drucker

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

 

Driving Better Execution of Strategy

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: strategy versus execution

What’s more important: strategy or execution? They are equally important. Here’s what we know anecdotally:

• Too many companies have poor execution of their strategy.
• We seldom hear about companies with great execution and a poor strategy.

Many top executives see their role as setting strategy. Yet, they are too trusting that their strategy will be properly executed by their teams.

The problem stems from not aligning the teams with the strategy and holding people accountable for executing their portion of the strategy. Poor execution of a great strategy leads to disappointment or worse.

The business world is littered with executives who had great strategic intentions but could not drive actual execution. This is an age-old business problem.

Are you interested in accelerating your growth? Call me so we have a discussion about a process and tools that can help you and your company thrive at strategy execution.

Thought for the week:

“The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing”  – Seth Godin

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2013 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

No Ordinary Business

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” that helps you and your company thrive!

This week’s focus: no ordinary business

As I headed to a Dell media event in San Francisco, I stumbled across a furniture store:

H.D. Buttercup
This is no ordinary furniture store

I love the tag line. It’s got attitude. It beckons one to, “Come in and find out why we are no ordinary furniture store.”

I entered to find out what makes the store not ordinary. I found a very eclectic collection of art, tables, furniture, chairs, couches, end tables, etc. With the exception of the price tags, it was more like a gallery than a store. It was fun.

If you are going to be in any business, why would you want to be ordinary? Why would you want to be differentiated only by price, location, variety, etc. How exciting is that?

I don’t know about you, but, I prefer things that aren’t ordinary. Ordinary is pretty boring. I don’t crave an ordinary bank, airline, hotel, car rental agency, doctor, hotel chain, etc. I don’t offer what you can get from an ordinary consulting firm.

If your business is ordinary, it’s time to make it stand out. If there are functions within your business that are ordinary or not up to par, it’s time to attend to those gaps. How else can you expect to accelerate growth?

Thought for the week:

“If you’re not solving a problem in a new or interesting way, then what’s the point of your product or service?” – Sean D’Souza, The Brain Audit 

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What do you think? I welcome your comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2014 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.