Set Your Business Position Right in the Market Mind to Achieve a Sustainable and Scalable Growth through a Unique Value Proposition.

 

Micro and Small Businesses are losing their market share in excessive competition in any segment. More competitors – less market share. Competitors bite off your clients. One of the tactics is the businesses scarify the price for competitive advantage. Businesses are pushed to the point when they are lowering the prices because the competitors are doing so, even if the product/service value is higher. In addition, the businesses think the marketing equals advertising, but most often they face with low return on marketing advertisement investment. On top of it, clients are exposed to similar products/services from different competitors and are curious to try.

 

Most of the current businesses growth is similar to the rectangular pulse-shaping (getting one project or work order after another one) which is not sustainable & Scalable over the long run.

However, the fundamental question is How are Micro or Small businesses supposed to achieve a strategic goal in their market and then how to maintain the achievement and grow from there for a sustainable & Scalable business model that is both profitable and defendable to retain a profitable position in the market?

 

The short answer can be a Strategic Innovation that should be aligned with a Strategic Positioning in the market over a time to have a Sustainable & Scalable business growth that is both profitable and defendable.

 

Strategy, Innovation, Marketing & Operation are core members of a small business family. The businesses are mostly good at technical execution but mostly are inadequate or behind Strategy, Innovation & Marketing elements such as having a Unique Value Proposition for each target audience segment to deliver it as a promise, not a slogan.

 

The Four Core Business Family Members are:

• Operation delivers the Unique Value Proposition for each customer segment in a Value Chain.
• Innovation creates the Unique Value Proposition for each customer segment.
• Marketing aligns the market demand of each customer segment with the Unique Value Proposition.
• Strategy creates efficiency and effectiveness by organising activities and aligning decisions to deliver the Unique Value Proposition in the market segment to generate superior economic value in a market in a form of
1. Strategy as Plan (Analysis) - A set of organised and objective actions toward a desirable outcome. Critical Thinking, Analytical, logical, Linear, Rational driven, Preserve and improve the existing business model, product or service. key tools are SWOT, PESTEL, Value Chain, Five-Factors
2. Strategy as Innovation (Synthesis) - Strategic Innovation is a unique change with a scalable impact on the business on purpose. Creative Thinking, Creative & disruptive, nonlinear, Passion driven, develop & experiment a new business model, product or service. Key tools are Business model canvas, Strategic Innovation Canvas, the Innovation Pyramid, Disruptive Innovation, The Play-to-Win Strategy Canvas,…
3. Strategy as Pattern (Past Actions) - Strategy can emerge from a pattern in a stream of past business actions, decisions and behaviours. Rather than being an intentional choice, a consistent and successful way of doing business can develop into a strategy. Key tools are business achievement timeline, lesson-learned, 5 Ps, patterns of team success & failures, USP Analysis and Core Competence Analysis.
4. Strategy as Perspective (Internal Perception) - Strategic Thinking, the strategy is formulated as per the business culture, and the way business views itself, and it's about the ‘character’ of the business to the individuals. As patterns of behaviour can emerge as strategy, patterns of thinking will shape a business' perspective and the things that it can do well. Strategy as a perspective is not just of a chosen position but of an ingrained way of perceiving the world and building internal business ideology to create a culture to respond to external demands. The business driver is internal business people mindset in taking an approach in solving problems, identify opportunities, encourages risk-taking and innovation, designing the business model and leading the operation. Key tools are the Cultural Web, Deal and Kennedy's Cultural Model, and the Congruence Model. 
5. Strategy as Position (External Perception) - Human Centred Thinking, defines the overall position of the business in the market. Strategic positioning establishes a focus of delivering value direction that resonates with your customers. It creates a clear position of a unique value that is different but right in the customer and consumer's minds. That's how you decide to position yourself in the marketplace and it helps you develop a sustainable competitive advantage. Key tools are PEST Analysis, Porter's Diamond, and Porter's Five Forces.

 

My new view of the business strategy about Marketing and Innovation is the "Strategy as Position" (Strategic Positioning).

Strategy as Position" in Who, Why, What, How, When and Where.

  

Who: Business Owners with businesses in thrive phase.

 

Why: 

 

Strategic Positioning outcome is about to Make a sustainable and scalable business that is profitable and defendable in the market segment in contract to Market Positioning which is more about meeting a Market Position target for competitive advantage with no/weak plan to make it sustainable and scalable plan over time.

 

What: 

 

“Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.” - Jack Trout and Al Ries, authors of “Positioning, The Battle For Your Mind.”

Positioning is all about creating a clear and compelling position in your customer and consumer mind, so they chose your product/service for their needs.

"Strategy should reflect a distinctive value chain that configures all key business processes and operations (operations, HRM, marketing, service delivery, etc.) in a unique way that is difficult for competitors to imitate (Porter, 2001)."

A. Strategic Positioning Vs Market Positioning

A market position (also called a “Competitive Advantage”) can be achieved through differentiated but relevant values and a distinctive operational model with Unfair competitive advantage to deliver the values (value chain) to the target market segment. However, strategic positioning is a process to continually adjust the perception of your business’s products and services in the minds of your target customers and consumers.

B. Key Strategic positioning Elements:

• Unique Value  Proposition: The first and critical step to strategically position your business is to develop a Unique Value proposition through Innovation to set your business position different but relevant to customer's demands. By offering differentiated, relevant & distinctive value to customer's needs.

• Customers & Consumer Decision making drivers:
  • People Decision Drivers in general:
  • Perception: Intuitive, cognitive biases, assumptions, internal or external influence factors, imagination, personal or public beliefs, 
  • Facts: Analysis, Synthesis, validated data & information, comparisons, evaluation, critical judgement,
  • Situation: Chaotic,  Complex, Complicated and Simple situations to make a decision which is connected to the urgency in time and level of known information in a context
  • Customer Decision Drivers:
  • Constrains: Time, Budget, Quality, Requirements, ROI, Support, Relationship level
  • Facts: Analysis, Synthesis, validated data & information, comparisons, evaluation, critical  judgement,
  • Unique Value Proposition bases: Make it different but right to fit a Market 
  • Consumer Decision Drivers:
    • Perception: Intuitive, cognitive biases, assumptions, internal or external influence factors, imagination, personal or public beliefs,
    • Adoption stage: Before adoption, Early adoption, late adoption, Laggards, Overuse.
    • Productivity and Performance: Fast in response, Easy to use, Get things down, User for different purposes, 
• Price Leadership: A premium price or lower costs for the business to stay in the market. Whether to have a lower price (not lower costs) below competitors or increasing our product/service value perception in the mind of customers and consumers. By lowering the price continually, it becomes a challenge to stay in a profitable and defensible position in a marketplace over the long run.
• Market Segments: Classify customers and split the market into segments that mostly have common characteristics that make them approachable through the same value chain.
• Target markets: Select a market segment that the business delivers the Unique Value Proposition as a promise.

C. Key Strategic positioning Principles:

  

Safety Punch Card Idea

Building a safety habit during Covid-19 in organisations in 2 months.

A behaviour or action becomes a habit when it goes and stays in our subconscious mind not only be conscious about it. One of the ways to build a habit in our subconscious mind is repetition, and it can take an average of 66 days for a person to form a new habit (Atomic Habits by James Clear https://jamesclear.com, New York Times bestselling book). For example, we are changing gears in a manual car without thinking much about it. For change a behaviour, James is saying we should answer these four questions.

• How can I make it obvious?
• How can I make it attractive?
• How can I make it easy?
• How can I make it satisfying?

My Idea: Writing is more effective than speaking, and the idea responds to the above changing habit four questions.

Safety Punch Card - Building a habit of Covid-19 safety in 2 months

This is only for people who have to be physically at offices or sites. The idea comes from Clock card machine or punch clock when we arrive and leave an office. It is now "Safety Habit Recorder" for Covid-19 where everyone writes a post note on a whiteboard/office board when they arrive and leave office/site by answering 4 questions that record the start and end times of everyone Covid-19 safety Habit during a day for 2 months.

Write on post note (Your name + date + Question No + Your response to each question on a whiteboard or an office board every day.

At the start of a Day:

1. What am I going to do today to keep myself and others safe? For example, follow 1.5 distance, Telling others out loud, using a Rubberband to remind me

At the End of a Day:

2. What have I done today to stay safe?

3. How many time did I notify or remind others to stay safe?

4. What else could we do together to keep safe?

The action of an organiser of each site/office in Every day:

• Take a photo of the board 
• Post the photo on the Workplace group every day from different sites
• Reward/endorse the most useful and interesting idea or action or answer

It can start with only question 1 then and gradually adding the questions 2,3,4 over days to improve it.

 We all know Innovation matters, but... 

The top challenge is the innovation has been a top priority and a top frustration for many organisations, businesses and leaders. According to McKinsey, 84% of global executives believe innovation is extremely important to their business survival and growth but only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance and result. Most people would agree that the vast majority of innovations fall far short of ambitions.

One of the fundamental problems is, most of the masses of customer data companies create is structured to show correlations such as this customer looks like that one, or 68% of customers say they prefer product A to product B. While it’s great to identify patterns across the data, they don’t mean that one thing actually caused another. Also, it’s no surprise that correlation isn’t causality, we believe most managers have gone through basing decisions on correlations or leave it to a chance to innovate.

LIFE OF BUSINESS believes the innovation success happens in the Art & Science of Idea Transformation through mindset, strategy, practice and system together over time. Finding a novel solution comprises up to two-third of the total cost, time, and effort of new development.  

However, every business has an army of potential creators and innovators at its disposal, not only its staff but customers, suppliers, partners, professional networks such as business communities, social networks such as fans and beyond especially in today's interconnected world.

LIFE OF BUSINESS is a Micro Digital Innovation Factory as a Service to enable individuals and businesses to innovate a new solution, concept, product, service, system or business model together through the Art & Science of Idea Transformation in a systematic way that can not be found anywhere else. 

Maybe this is the time to think laterally and reinvent yourself and the business to do something smarter that matters the most in a systematic way.  

Let's discuss to see how can we turn your challenge to an opportunity that matters the most.

IT is the Business - No Back-Office anymore…

It is not just I.T. it's "Information and Technology" (I&T)How IT should respond in today's VUCA world? An IT department shouldn't only maintain the service level agreement, IT must deliver end-to-end across the business value chain as more and more businesses depend on IT without realising how deep and broad IT role and impact can be on their business future of Survive, Thrive, Transform models. The IT Enterprise Operational Model should be transformed from a reactive service operational model to a proactive business value delivery model. It requires an End-to-End IT operating model in a complex business situation with business value delivery focus in a shorter lifecycle as businesses evolve and IT underpins every aspect of almost any business model. 

The main drivers of such an operational mode transformation are

• Higher Business dependency on IT in complex situations
• Speed of delivery from IT to respond to rapid business changes.
• Emerging and Disruptive technology demand
• Businesses are transforming to Digital model more and more

The IT operational model should be designed from "Start at the End" by Dave Lavinsky approach, focus on Business Outcomes to deliver end to end Business Solution, not IT Solutions. 

Enterprise IT Operational Model

• Approach: Business Delivery Oriented model
• Purpose: Focus on Business outcomes to increase the speed of delivery and respond to business requests while maintaining the current SLA more efficient and effective

IT Governance (Core):

Aim: Manage and Develop IT Department

Team: IT Managers

Elements:

• IT Strategy (Direction & Focus Area, Past. Now. Future)
• IT Governance in Macro & Micro levels (Principles, Rules, Roles & Responsibilities)
• IT Operational Management (Business Reporting, IT Finance, IT Legal...)
• IT Operational Development (IT Process Development, IT Capability Development)

IT Service Management (Reactive):

Aim: Manage Demands and Events (ITIL)

Team: Service Desk Team

Elements:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement (CSI)
• Supplier Management

IT Change Management (Proactive):

Aim: IT Change Delivery

Team: Project Managers, Business Analysts, Solution Architectures

Elements:

• PM Office (Predictable Change)
• Innovation Lab (Experimental Change)
• Adoption Office (Transitional Change) (Awareness/Getting Started/Achieve More, Training/Mentoring/Coaching, Process Change/Transition/Migration, Evaluation)
• Digital Transformation Office (Transformational Change)

IT Business Management Function (Proactive):

Aim: Business Relationship Management & IT Collaboration

Team: Business Partners

Elements:

• Business Domain Knowledge Expert
• Business Analysis (Needs, Plan, Evaluation)

Technical Management Function (Reactive):

Aim: Maintain SLA and Technical Knowledge Delivery

Team: IT Specialists

Elements:

• Business Systems - Vertical, Horizontal, Cloud
• Software - Desktop, Enterprise, Apps, Programming
• Network
• Hardware
• Security
• Integration

Ref: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/no/Documents/technology/uk-con-the-next-generation.pdf