BIZBUZZ: Gary Hamel: Competing For The Future

Hi, I’m Gary Brown a FocalPoint business coach.

Welcome to episode 13 of BIZBUZZ.

I stimulate conversations in order to challenge business owners to Be Different and to Act Boldly.

The following video highlights some content from Competing For The Future, written by Gary Hamel. I enjoyed reading this book and it offers some interesting observations on the subject of differentiation, which is one of my favourite topics.

http://youtu.be/8MCbRuKBEgI

I am going to highlight three of Hamel’s suggestions that I find particularly noteworthy.

The first one deals with return on investment (our return/our investment). Hamel contends that we spend too much time obsessing over the denominator (the amount invested). In an environment where our competitors are growing, denominator reduction with steady revenue is simply a way to profitably sell market share. Hmm. Do we know how well our competitors are performing?  Are we paying sufficient attention to what is happening with the numerator?

Secondly, Hamel suggests that tomorrow’s competitive advantages must necessarily be different from today’s. Companies must be capable of getting different. He further states that laggards follow the path of least resistance.  However, challengers follow the path of greatest opportunity. Which are we?

There are numerous other interesting tidbits in this book but I’m going to end on Hamel’s assertion that it is not necessary to be a seer to discover the future but it is absolutely vital that you be unorthodox. Now if that isn’t a call for differentiation, what is?

Well, that’s it for Competing For The Future.

Thanks for watching.

Your comments are always welcome.

Stay tuned for more BIZ BUZZ.

Action Planning 2014

I recently conducted a webinar for Small Business Solver entitled Action Planning.   It was the middle of January and an excellent time to give some thought to 2014 goals.

I used the opportunity to describe a process that includes goal setting, action planning, implementation, measurement and re-assessment.  Not surprisingly, this process is an iterative one.  Whether we set personal goals or business goals, we’ve likely all encountered the situation that frequently  follows as we begin the implementation process.  We hit an obstacle.  Something, or perhaps someone, presents us with a challenge that must be resolved if we are to continue towards our stated goal.  Our ability to devise strategies that enable us to overcome the challenges that we will encounter is a good predictor of our ability to succeed.

At the end of my presentation there was a Q&A session and one of the participants asked the following interesting question: “how do you know when it is time to give up on a goal?”  What a great question!

In my mind, this is a ‘one size does not fit all’ question.  Obviously, in order to have a return on our investment, we must first make an investment.  But when do we say ‘enough is enough’?  Pride and stubbornness might cause us to hang in too long.  But, fear and uncertainty might have the opposite affect.  My thoughts are captured in the audio presentation that you’ll find here: