Tag Archives: Strategy

Adapt and achieve

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The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc divx Adaptability is the best skill you can have. Basketball is a game of rhythm, you set the pace at which you want to play and force the other team to adapt. If your familiar with basketball drills, in basketball practice we have what’s called rolling waves where the goal is to score the most times to stay on the court, the challenge is to play teams that constantly change players so you never face the same team twice. The game is continuous and doesn’t stop until your team loses and then the winner keeps playing.

 

This makes it very interesting because not only does your team have to adapt but your opponent also has to adapt to their new members. It forces you to play everyone differently as opposed to accepting how the game should be played, you change the game by modifying the rhythm and never showing the same play over and over again.

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Improvisation is your best weapon.

 

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The point is you don’t want to fall into predictable patterns of play, never using the same play again because it worked before but rather make it difficult for your opponent to read you by changing your approach continuously.

 

The ability to play outside other’s experience is THE supreme skill in any strategists arsenal because your opponent will never know what you’ll do next. Change your approach continuously and accept that .

 

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Adapt or die

A few days ago I found myself reading one of the many posts out there about X reasons why brands refuse to embrace social media. The truth is many companies are already irrelevant because they fail to see the world as continuously evolving.

First it’s important to understand that as humans we are taught to see everything as a phase because it makes it easier for us to make sense of things by being able to separate one event from the others. The problem with this way of thinking is it tries to make everything predictable in the short term by not focusing on the long term consequences.

Win today and don’t worry about tomorrow.

Adaptability requires a you to see events as continuous, not linear. For an adaptable company change is always happening, not just between events. The objective of being adaptable is to be able to win as many times as possible but not worry about winning every single battle.

Stories abound of companies that became irrelevant because they , choosing to follow a predictable death. Most of these companies waited until chaos arrived to make adjustments and others clinged to the past. Why wait until chaos comes knocking on your door, and it should be part of your strategy because if you don’t adapt you’re already irrelevant.

Action step:

An exercise that always works wonders is showing people a vision where they no longer exist because they failed to adapt. Try it yourself, grab a few people from your office and ask them about the challenges facing your business:

  • What they’re most afraid of?
  • What keeps them up at night?

If they don’t have a clear answer for both, you’re already in trouble because you’re sitting in a very comfortable position and nothing is challenging your business.

What do you think? What actions do you take to make your business adaptable?

What leads to innovation?

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The worlds most recognizable brands where born out of some innovative product or service that created new value for consumers. But what lead them to that specific innovation? Why not check out this custom interior signage here for more info!

The Branding Strategy Insider came up with a short list of factors that lead to innovation:

 

•    A penchant for experimentation and action over analysis

•    The realization that in many industries, approximately 70% of innovations are developed by users, not the firm bringing the product to market (from research done by Professor Eric von Hippel at MIT)

•    The importance of connectivity. An enterprise has a much higher success rate if it is interconnected with the widest variety of potential idea sources, suppliers, business partners, customers, universities, governmental agencies, etc.

•    Build on your strengths, don’t waste your efforts on hiding or compensating for your weaknesses. Identify your assets and amplify them.

•    Envision the positive outcome that you seek.

•    Be optimistic and constantly work until your optimism is justified.

This is by no means a complete list but in my opinion it’s quite simple. If we were to trace these factors back and look for patterns these would show up in one way or the other.

 

What other factors lead to innovation?

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Must read innovation stories of the week: Everything you need to know about innovation

Innovation is difficult to do. There are numerous books out there about innovation that teach you a certain aspect on how to innovate yet are clearly written for experts.

Richard Watson put together a well written comprehensive article about innovation that any person can understand. Read it, share it with your team, discuss it and accept that if you want to create anything new you’re bound to fail more than a few times.

There is no magic formula!

 

 

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What is strategy?

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So many definitions, so much complexity. Nobody really knows what strategy really is.

So, what is strategy?

To me strategy is not pursuing a detailed plan step by step, it is finding or creating options that give me an advantage at any moment.

Let me explain why:

The world is full of people looking for a secret formula to success and power. They don’t want to think on their own; they just want the recipe to follow. For this very reason they are attracted to the idea of strategy.

In their minds strategy is a series of steps to be followed toward a goal. They want these steps spelled out for them by some expert or guru. Believing in the power of imitation, they want to know what others have done before. Their maneuvers in life are as mechanical as their thinking. They are predictable.

The essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than everyone else. Instead of going for A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B or C depending on the situation.

Our society values people who have the right answer but in reality there is no single right answer, there are many. At any moment one approach can be better than the other, being aware of this is what separates true strategists from the one’s following a game plan.

Do you agree? What’s your definition of strategy? This is an important topic, let’s get a discussion going!

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What a cave diver can teach us about leapfrogging the competition

 

I was looking at some very last week and one in particular caught my attention not because of the picture itself but because of the story behind it:

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The diver in this photo has descended about 20 feet into the opening of Devil’s Eye Spring. Without carrying breathing gas, free divers can usually swim down only about 40 to 45 feet, but Heinerth says that a few brave souls venture further. “In Russia, I met a guy who they nicknamed ‘Aqua Man,’” she said. “In water temperature just above freezing, Aqua Man would put on a wetsuit, enter the cave, and swim a couple of hundred feet before surfacing to sip from an air pocket on the ceiling of the cave. Then he’d free dive even further in, eventually getting 300 feet into the cave with no air. He was free diving by leap-frogging from air pocket to air pocket inside the cave.” Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

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Obviously there’s no such thing as Aqua Man but clearly this person is called such for the feat he accomplishes. Any skilled diver can stay underwater longer by swimming from air pocket to air pocket, but because of the uncertainty of the unknown (as well as the chill) nobody is likely to try it in a cave.

What separates Aqua Man from the rest is his mental preparation. How do I know this?

Because Aqua Man has the same abilities that the other divers have, mainly to be a competent swimmer and have great control of respiration.

The ability to stay underwater and dive to depths both you and I can’t go isn’t a talent. It’s preparing your body, your mind through constant practice and then being curious as to what he might find inside the cave,

What the other divers overlooked was that there might be air pockets inside the cave. They just couldn’t see beyond their own fear!

 

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Key takeaway: You don’t leapfrogg the competition by beating them at their own game, . Sometimes what they ‘can’t do’ is a fear and most of the time it’s something they’re overlooking. Exploit it!

Don’t out compete your rivals, change the rules of the game

On his way to becoming the greatest military genius to set foot on Earth, Napoleon Bonaparte broke the rules on how military campaigns were waged. From a young age he was always overlooked, to get the respect of his peers he understood he had to fight differently. In doing so he went on to rewrite the rules of military history.

Just like Napoleon we too can learn to fight ‘differently’ than our opponents, because doing so is the only way you’ll ever stand out in a world full of ‘me too thinking’.

Here are a few ways that can help you to start thinking about how to change the game in your industry:

  • Do what others are unwilling to do. Established companies have a strong incentive to maintain the status quo, it’s to their advantage to keep doing ‘what’s working’. Don’t compete on their terms, do what they’re unwilling to do and define your own rules.
  • Look where your competition is not. Go out to the fringe, where’s things are changing. Stepping out of the mainstream is the only place where you’ll get unconventional insights. What’s happening in another part of the world that you could adopt and adapt in your environment?
  • Challenge industry orthodoxies. Time and again, the strategy innovations that radically change customer expectations, competitive rules and industry structures come from questioning beliefs that everyone else has taken for granted. What drives success in your industry? Could you imagine alternative ways of doing things?
  • Collaborate. Innovations that matter arise from cross-boundary perspectives.