Being First
Our image this month is a composite of drama I saw play out in the sky over a local lake. The bald eagle was sitting in her tree waiting for lunch when the osprey flew past with a black crappie in her talons, intended to be lunch for her brood. The eagle took to the air, thinking she could grab a quick free lunch, but the osprey was having none of it! She left with the crappie and the eagle returned to wait for easier pickings.
Eagles are notorious for stealing prey, they eat mostly fish, from other birds and from each other. Not unlike some businesses we likely know that take the good ideas and hard work of others and attempt to make hay with it. But I don’t advise firms to spend a lot of time looking over their shoulders. Even though better resourced, the eagle is almost half again as big as the osprey, the late comer is seldom well positioned. Particularly if the osprey, in this case the first business to market, has been paying attention to its customers. Lacking this critical homework, the copycat will likely never catch up and get the fish.
Customer experience measurement, engaging directly with customers via sales, product research and testing and in-the-field product/service exposures provide the critical head start and momentum required to stay ahead of the eagles.
Hot Among Our Clients
Over the last two years, it would be hard to miss the significant changes and chaos that has been introduced to our businesses. I heard someone recently comment that the pandemic was years ago, without being ironic. In fact, it’s only just coming up on the first year anniversary of the ending of many of the pandemic era interventions. …and so while we feel sort of normal again, the truth is, our businesses have been left with wounds that need to be healed. Our executive and management ranks were decimated, either due to reductions in force (RIFs) we were forced to undertake or to reckonings many had that lead to their leaving long held beliefs about employment and their relationships with their employers.
In addition, many businesses are finding that now is a good time to go acquisitive and to implement other majors initiatives like ERP. A lot of my lunches with owners are spent discussing these initiatives, their risks and challenges.
So MANY businesses are facing the challenge of reordering the business around a partially or mostly new leadership team. In response to their needs we have added the Rapid Leadership Assessment to our arsenal of rapid business assessments to help clients quickly, without a lot of agony, align the leadership team to speed communication, aid in hitting targets and reduce rancor in the process. Of course, like all of our work, it’s based on deep university research and like all the “Rapid” line of assessments, it’s impactful on a tight budget with a proven impact on earnings and business value.
Get Your Plan On
As we get ready to enter Q4, Strategic Planning should be somewhere if not top-of-mind. About this time, if you are not already engaged in budget/plan development for 2024, you should engage now. Begin by taking stock of where you are relative to the 2023 plan, last fiscal year performance (YOY) and the instantaneous trend. Is September going to make that picture better or worse. Of course, institute any course correction to amplify the good and extinguish the bad, but also determine what these trends and metrics suggest should be your stance heading into 2024.
Schedule your Q4 planning session with the leadership team and any communication rollout so that come January 1, the entire team will understand their role in the business’ success and what they would be doing on January 3rd, 2024.
Call To Action
I hope you found something to apply to your business in this MBR. Let me know either way.
See us here on LinkedIn.