In business, we compete around customer value but that is not yesterday’s value. It’s not what everyone else delivered yesterday, it must be where value will lie tomorrow. And a value that will outcompete everyone else. The catalysts of change will come from a clear purpose, the right motive, an attitude to outcompete all others, a customer-first culture and a strategy designed to make the business competitively fit. It is through these actions that change will be achieved.
Who Does My Business Need To Be To Excel?
Over this season of December 2020 and January 2021, we are pausing and reflecting on the question of ‘Whom your business needs to be to excel – to outperform all others in your chosen marketplace’?. In this four-part series, we will highlight key articles that will support you to reimagine, and rebuild, your business to be competitively stronger than ever before.
Part Four – Catalysts
Remake your business during 2021 into an elite athlete. A business filled with every person delivering their best every day, fueled by a motive to outcompete everyone else, with a focus on purpose and understanding that profit it merely an outcome of being competitively fit. Here are three articles that will assist you develop the competitiveness of your business:
1. Mental Toughness In Business
Winning in business requires capability and commitment. Capability is a skill that can be built, but it alone will not deliver the win. Mental toughness, the way people within your business think and act, is the factor that makes the difference. And that mental toughness has nothing to do with doggedly chasing that extra dollar of profit.
Active Knowledge Question: Does your business have the right mental attitude that will enable it to win?
2. Customer Value – Today’s Competitive Domain
In today’s competitive marketplace, businesses and organisations of all types compete around the value that they are able to deliver to their customers. Recognising how customers perceive that value can be challenging as that value can constantly be shifting as customers’ needs evolve. Viewing value from the internal lens of the products and services offered is flawed and effective strategy requires that you seek to stand in the shoes of your future customer and their needs.
Active Knowledge Question: How do you know if the value you deliver to your customers will outcompete all others in your chosen market?
3. Strategy Requires An Objective
Often there is much activity within a business that results in no forward movement; in fact, it takes the business backwards. Activity described as strategy is futile without the presence of a coherent objective. Vague statements of growth, new markets and improved profit are no substitute for a succinct vision of what is being pursued and created through strategy. In today’s challenging and uncertain markets, strategy is more critical than ever.
Active Knowledge Question: Is your strategy pinpointed on a compelling outcome, one which everyone in your business understands and buys into?
Set your change program for 2021. Strengthen firstly who you are as a business, and then hone-in on who your customer is and how their needs are evolving and place their value at the centre of all decisions. Then craft a business strategy that will empower these changes and activate the competitive engine in your business.
Previous Parts:
An entirely new level of performance.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
