Tag Archives: strategy

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Differentiate or Die!

If you do not differentiate your business from your competitors, you are just another commodity! Being a commodity means that your products are no better than anyone else’s. This drives down your prices, erases profits, and eventually kills your business.

I wrote about what causes commoditization and how to avoid it in a post called Why Does Your Business Exist and Why Should We Care.

In this post Apple entered the MP3 market as a late comer. They were not the “first mover” and the market space already had a large number of competitors who competed on price. The market space was already commoditized.

Apple knew this but they understood that they could still dominate the space by clearly differentiating themselves from their competitors. They identified their key differentiators, measured themselves against their competitors, and realized that they were head and shoulders above the others. They entered the market and still dominate it today!

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How To Get Powerful Business Results

If I had to pick one activity, habit or tool that would be the most significant thing a business could implement to get powerful business results, I would say it would be the habit of goals. And, by “habit of goals”, I am not referring to the habit of setting goals.

I am talking about the habit of setting powerful, focused goals and implementing a system to monitor the progress and deliver on these goals.

This is why I use one page tools like the Strategy Summary to clearly define where my business is going and to measure progress against these targets. I have seen businesses and non-profits alike make stunning progress in their market space simply by focusing their leadership and their staff on their most important objectives and reinforcing these priorities each and every day.

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Why Business Dynasties Fail and How to Avoid It

What causes a highly successful business, that outperforms the stock market by 6.9 times for over a decade, to all of a sudden become irrelevant and fail?

Jim Collins’ book, “How the Mighty Fall” takes a detailed look at companies that were great companies as defined by Collins’ previous book “Good to Great” but fell to irrelevance. Collins defines a great company as one that had to significantly outperform the market for at least 15 years in a row. On average, the companies that Collins studied as great companies outperformed the general stock market by at least 6.9 times.

. . . And then, they failed!

There were quite a list of companies that were studied for this book but some of the more dramatic failures include:

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How to Decrease Costs, Drive Growth, and Increase Profits

As most years do, 2016 seemed to come and go rather quickly! It is probably safe to say that 2016 was filled with a lot more challenges than usual for many people . . . especially those who rely on the oil and gas market for their livelihood. Many people lost their jobs and many businesses were shuttered.

However, many business also thrived and grew in 2016. It’s not that these businesses were immune from the downturn but rather were nimble, efficient, and able to adjust and change their focus to find new markets for their products and services.