Category: Strategy

Actionable insight matters more than big data.

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Strategy

Don’t worry how big your data is. Focus on how actionable your insights are.

The only thing that delivers business value is turning insights into effective action. Big data can deliver new insights but they will only drive your business when they are put into action to create new sales, save money or create other ways delivering better value in line with your strategy.

Many companies forget to leverage the insights in their existing customer systems. Do your people remember to make a birthday call to a key client using data in your customer relationship management system? Do referrals, leads & other opportunities identified always get executed effectively? Are anniversaries, expiry dates and other retention triggers well managed? Before you launch into new insights make sure you have captured the low hanging fruit.

Big data is often celebrated with examples of counterintuitive insights. Counterintuitive insights are hard to predict and equally hard to action. People doubt the strategies that come from black boxes. Doubt is not a great enabler of action. Organizations often lack the capability to execute the counterintuitive strategy. For example, knowing that left handed plumbers are more likely to watch opera is not much use unless your opera company has a hardware partnership.

Big data is often sold as a source of new strategy. It is rare that a company changes strategy on one insight. Usually, insights enable you to better execute your current strategy. These insights will confirm the hypotheses you used to create the strategy and translate general plans into the right actions with specific customers. Start your focus on better insights with what you need to do to drive your current strategy and leverage your existing capabilities.

Before you boil the ocean in a battle of data completeness, decide what you need to know and can use to create value. Invest in the capabilities to better action insights. You might be surprised by the insights you already have that are opportunities. Focus your insights on driving your business, not the size of your data bill.

Your customers are collaborating

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Strategy

Many businesses panic at the thought that their customers might start to collaborate. Often the concern arises because their business models are based around atomizing customers to diffuse their power, lack of transparency or arbitrary differences in value. Some times the concern can be as simple as having to watch customers discover ways to create value with your product or service with little power in that conversation.

Strong businesses embrace collaboration with and between their customers. It is going to happen and it will drive real value. The tools to enable your customers to collaborate are everywhere around your business. Social media makes the buyers of your product more obvious to each other. The many other services of the Internet makes every business well aware of the increased transparency and pressure on arbitrary rules or processes. At its most basic customers write reviews, share information about your business and answer service queries of other customers

At its most powerful, your customers should be the heart of your process of value creation. How can they share their insights with you? How can they guide your roadmaps, customer experiences and innovation? How can they help each other to maximize the value from use of your products and services? How can they become advocates for a business that delivers greater value by engaging their views?

Collaboration is already happening in your customer base. Start leveraging that value. If you are not involved, you are just not a part of the conversation.

Adaptability – Purpose, Context and Enablement

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Strategy

The traditional models of leadership focus on clear instructions and measurement of specific actions. Hierarchical command and control was developed in military organisations intent on bring order to the disorder of large numbers of people on complex battlefields. In a rapidly changing world, there’s a danger that this command and control model completely breaks down – too slow, too rigid and too ineffective to achieve its goals. In many cases, the first people to change their thinking have been the military

Years ago, I heard a talk by Lieutenant Colonel James McMahon who was at one time commander of the Australian SAS forces in Afghanistan. His advice to a group of aspiring business leaders was always explain what was known of the situation and be clear on the purpose, but never dictate how the mission should be achieved. Highly engaged, skillful and creative teams will find ways to deal with complexity and change that will achieve the mission and surprise you. His stories of the resourcefulness of Australian troops in a complex and changing environment were remarkable.

The role of leaders is to set a purpose and a context and to enable people to act fast and effectively on their own decisions to achieve success. US Air Force Col John Boyd described the concept of the OODA loop. The OODA loop highlights that there is strategic advantage in being faster than competitors at observing, orienting, deciding and then acting. Organisations that are quicker round this loop will be harder for their competitors to predict, have a better view of competitor’s actions & intentions and be better at execution.

Clarifying purpose and context accelerates teams through the Observe and Orient stages of the OODA loop. Activities like briefings, induction, Scenarios and role plays are great to help people to build understanding and skills in anticipating what might be encountered. They know faster where they are and where they want to go.

Building enablement will accelerate the ability to Decide and Act. However, you need to choose and skill people for their ability to decide and act to achieve success on their own. You also need to leave decision making in the hands of the individual to act and respond to the changing circumstances that they see.

There are always trade offs. Maybe the observation and orientation won’t be perfect on the ground, but it is rarely better at a distance. Maybe the decision making and action won’t be as sophisticated as it could be, but speed and adaptability is usually more important than perfection.

Give up a little command and control. Focus instead on providing purpose and context. Then enable your teams to adapt with maximum speed and effectiveness.

Why do your customers buy?

Posted on by simongterry in Strategy

Great comment from Maria Ogneva in this overview of collaboration with customers:  

Your customers don’t buy your product for the sake of buying your product; they buy it because it makes them feel or be in a certain way.

My experience is that this comment is spot on.  Get to the heart of what feelings or solutions your product enable for a customer and your business will thrive.