Game On - Fight Your Competition

How do you manage your competition? This is the money question. If you are clever enough to manage, fight, and fight back your competition that is the success mantra to survive in the modern environment. There are many theories around how you fight offensive warfare against your competition. 

This post contemplates on revealing this accepted theories. Most of the theories have evolved with the evolution military strategy. Military strategies have been cleverly adapted in a corporate environment in fighting competition.

a. Frontal Attack

Frontal Attack focuses on direct attack, Head-on attack with your competition. You go ahead with same products fighting on functional benefits, similar prices tightening for cost advantage and fighting head on with promotional tactics. This strategy attacks competition in all 7 P's tactics. Adaptation of a Frontal Attack has so many risks associate with it since with this strategy they are competing with strengths. Hence Frontal attack is not the most advised strategy in competing.

In a Sri Lankan Context Munchee biscuits adapted a frontal attack on the "Cracker Market Segment", Malliban was the market leader in the cracker market with its superior Maliban Cream Cracker product. Munchee went with a frontal attack with an improved product (Heavy Investment on Manufacturing Methodology), in par pricing with a huge investment in promotions Munchee was able to attract the market in an accelerated rate. And now Munchee is the market leader in the Cracker market. 

2. Flanking Attack

Flanking attack is direct adaptation of military strategy. In war attack is first done on the weakest point the competitor. In a corporate environment too the same strategy is adapted companies attack on a weakness. A weakness could be an untapped market, Product benefit not offered.

This was inevitable in the Dialog and Mobitel (Sri Lankan Communications Service Providers) battle grounds. Mobilte launched this huge marketing campaign targeting the governmental sector, state employees. Dialog is the market leader in the communications market in Sri Lanka. Although Dialog had an excellent product portfolio catering to a wider spectrum market segments. But this state sector market segment was un-touched. Mobitel Acquired this market segment with their "Upahara" Package and was successfully able to strengthen the Mobitel brand with many values in positioning the brand as a brand which serves the community. 

3. Encirclements Attack

This is a multi-pronged attack aimed at Diluting the defender's ability to leverage on its strengths. In this strategy the competitor is ready with to head on the defender in any aspect. The attacker is one step ahead all the time and is has the flexibility to adapt to any action which is taken by the competitor. 

4. Bypass Attack

Adapting this strategy attempts to avoid confrontation with the competition by moving into new and as yet contested field. This might be developing new products, diversifying into new Geographies. This strategy attempts to avoid competition and seek to capture market through by passing. 

5. Guerilla Warfare 

With this strategy the attacker attempts to do as much as damage in a limited time frame. Involves in small attacks in different locations. In applying this in the hospitality industry a Guerilla Strategy would be 5 star hotel which has less market share announcing a significantly reduced price for a buffet for a short period of time. This will surprise the market leader keeping him in question whether to retaliate, whether to wait, whether to attack. 

Choose your battlegrounds wisely and adapt these well practiced and accepted strategies.

Gen Y and Motivation

Over the reason past we could see that there is significant urge for career development from the youth employee segment. Youth which represent the Gen Y have different levels of aspirations in lives and are more concentrated on fast evolving careers. Being motivated by challenge, Gen Y constantly seeks opportunities to progress in their careers and this continuously challenges the traditional human resource management approaches in motivating employees. 

I always thought how motivation tactics should evolve with the significant differences in Gen Y behavior and attitude to work. 

Hierarchies are important?

Some companies are re-considering to restructure the flat hierarchical structures  which were implemented earlier to increase decision making speed. Restructuring into multiple hierarchic will ensure  more levels of vertical career growth opportunities.  Is it growth that the Gen Y is after?

Fun Filled Culture

This is the new trend where companies focus on implementing a fun filled culture. This radical shift from process orientation to a fun filled culture is mainly taken with an Assumption that Gen Y is motivated with Fun. There are many schools of thoughts on this tactic. Gen Y has its own way of having fun, whether the company culture is fun or not, they ensure to have loads of fun through parties. 

Money - Always work

Whatever said and done, money does play a major role in employee retention. We have seen numerous instances where Gen Y reconsidering resignation due to monetary rewards the company is willing to have. 
But to what extent can money motivate the Gen Y.

Challenge

Gen Y's make it a habit to prove a point. They always want to prove something. This psychological characteristic is utilized by companies and tend to challenge Gen Ys. Challenging working environments does motivate Gen Ys


In near future Gen Ys will take a higher proportion of the working staff. Thus companies need to adapt different strategies to motivate Gen Y's

AVK - You know him?

Know him before building rapport 

There have been so many schools of thoughts in defining a correct method in defining the best ways of building rapport. In all those methods the key starting point of building rapport is identifying your target market or the person that you want to build rapport with. There are so many different methodologies in identifying or categorizing the person that you want to build rapport with. I learnt this method in one of the training that I attended which aimed on improving communication skills. I have been using this since the day I learnt this and this has given me good results. 

According to this method there are mainly three types of people.

1. Auditory 

Auditory person is a person who gives importance to auditory messages. The key sense which drives decisions is through sounds. Auditory people will have a nice voice, and likes to associate people similar voices confirming to the importance of "likability" concept in building rapport. When you are talking to Auditory people they will use worlds like "Sounds Great", "Nice to hear", "Heard that the company is doing well". 

I am sure you might have met numerous people using this types of words while they speak. If you further observe you could see that they have nice voices, they listen to music. In your next powerpoint presentation that you do to an Auditory category person make sure you speak out the message clearly. No matter how lucrative your powerpoint slides be the auditory person will grasp what you communicate from your voice. Using a correct blend of Vocal variations will help you to ace a power point presentation to an auditory person.

2. Visualistic

Visualistic sees the world through images. They are known to be imaginative, they remember things through images. Logic for them will be a link between two images. Visual people are easy to identify as they always wear nice clothes with matching colors. Ensure the clothes are ironed properly and comes with neat hear. For them the image that they create to the external world is very important. 

When communicating they will use phrases like "I See", "Nice to see", "Looks good". If you are doing a presentation to a visualistic it should be full of images. They grasp messages through images. A pie chart would makes much sense to a visualistic than taking him through a balance sheet.

3. Kinesthetic

Kinesthetic people are very difficult to understand. They take messages from the outer world couple with their emotions. You might have heard many instances people complaining "It just doesn't feel right", "I don't trust him". Kinesthetic are not totally driven on logic but they often go with the sixth sense. 

Managing a kinesthetic person is very difficult and the only way is to build trust. Trust could be build with delivering what is expected. Or sometimes they say multiple touch points will help in building rapport. 

Auditory, Visulistic and Kinesthetic

Each person may  not fall exactly into one of the mentioned categories. But will have some of the characteristics. Understanding and analyzing and categorizing helps to succeed in the process of building rapport. 

Make you Team the Best

Making your Team the Best

I was going through some videos on simple techniques to categorize corporate employees. I came up with Amazing concept of categorizing employees through a framework called BEST. 

B - Bold

E - Expressive

S - Sympathetic

T - Technician 

Know your BEST

Bold category of people are highly charismatic and are keen on decision making. They take bold decisions and are clever in driving to achieve goals and objectives. Their are likely to be perceived as constructively impatient or tireless. 

Expressive people are excellent communicators with excellent imagination skills. They are deep thinkers and does not take things for granted.  They walk the talk with in depth understanding. They have significant skill to effectively communicate their thoughts. And expressive are seen as visionary people

Sympathetic people are social workers. They are sensitive to others needs and wants and often are perceived as excellent team players. Technicians are high logical thinkers, they spend more time in mastering rationale and relationships between action and cause which makes them master technicians. They are often seen as a highly intellectual set of group.

BEST Sent for Shooting

One of the interesting ways of understanding this classification of people is defining them through a Pistol Shot training. A Technician would spend hours studying about the correct technique for shooting, they will know the correct angle of shooting, how to hold the gun correctly and all the correct techniques of shooting. 

While Expressive category will come to Pistol Shooting training without attempting they will talk about Pistol Shooting without trying as if they are already masters, and in no time everyone at the training will be listening to the expressive category following their views. Sympathetic category will come and try to help others on how to practice shooting skills. 

Bold category will come and start shooting and then they will start aiming. Bold category are action driven, always want to do something. Always keen on decision making. Bold category wants others to follow them, they want to drive the decisions. 

Correct Equation

If you are forming a team of four people and you put four Bold you will end up making it a battle field. You put four technicians together in the team you will end up with an accounting firm or an investment analysis firm. Thus you should understand the potential of each category in building up the BEST team. 

You should FIRE the Star Players

It is a given fact nowadays that people do not stay in one place quite unlike the Japanese Culture where people stay with a single employer for their lives and employers taking care of employees for their lives. Nowadays companies also ensure that their HR strategies are strong enough to absorb alarming attrition rates. 

A company can never run on star players it is always the average people that ensures the achievement of corporate goals and objectives. He went on explaining how demanding star players are and their increased bargaining powers due to attraction by competition.

What is the correct formula or the correct balance a company should keep between star players and average? 

The categorization of employees as star players and average is mainly done through a performance appraisal system. Performance appraisal systems have matured with significant evolution in the area where a new science exists to accurately measure performance of employees. This cumbersome process filters a percentage of people who are identified as key players/star players in achieving corporate goals. The rest are in a common category called average.

Companies nowadays have the hygiene benefits associated with the performance appraisal outcomes and these benefits ensures lower level of dissatisfaction among employees. I always had the question why companies are not matured enough to understand the difference between motivation and reducing dissatisfaction. Their could be different motivational desires for star players like recognition,  challenge. Instead companies tend to overload the star players with good perks, where they could anyway get from any other company.

But the average, they get less paid, get less attention and further demotivated. This average accounts to about 90% of the company. A company can't achieve anything without the significant contribution from this less concerned group of employees. Even the so called star players perform well with the contribution from the average. 

If the money invested on retaining the star players are utilized on the average it will give a better ROI. 

I am of the view point that if companies cannot identify the difference between motivation and reducing dissatisfaction companies should fire the star players. 

 

A different perspective to performance management

A different perspective to performance management

Numerous researches have been conducted by numerous people in developing a science to define a framework for accurate performance management. Performance management is seen as a key tactical tool in identifying gaps in a tactical plan which ultimately drives organizations to a successful strategy.

Recently I was asked a question at an interview as to what advantage a good performance management framework, would give to a Chief Operating Officer. Theoretically it provides a clear view of deviations from the desired position.  The wise gentleman replied a good performance management framework would give a competitive advantage to the CEO.

Giving a second thought on this response, a performance management framework is actually the first step in the cognitive decision making process of humans, which is the information search process. A performance management system will actually enable managers to make informed decisions.

Thus the question I am now facing is why should a performance management system be aligned with the tactical plan? The initial test in a sound performance management framework is to identify the strategy, have a tactical plan in line with the strategy, and to make the tactics measurable. These measurable KPIs are the key building blocks for an effective performance management system.

But in reality if it is a tool to take informed effective decision, why shouldn’t we start from what are the decisions that we should make. I think the modern trend in performance management leads to an information over load, whether it is dash board concept or a simple employee performance report.

What are your views on this? Should it be a reverse engineering approach where we should start from what decision needs to be made?

The Value Proposition

In delivering superior value to customers, as an organization, the organization needs have a well positioned value proposition. In my research on what this value proposition really contemplates on, I came across this interesting definition put forward by Aaker & McLaughlin (2007).

A customer Value proposition is the perceived functional, emotional, social or self expressive benefit that is provided by the organization offering. And the most important attribute of a good value proposition is that the proposition should be sustainable overtime to differentiate the offering from its competition to support the organizations long term strategy.

This definition signifies the importance on customer perception, which is molded external, internal factors which has a unique moral definition for each person. A company should be very careful in mingling with the psychological transaction between the customer and the seller since once perceived as distrustful will lead to cascaded social perception.

For instance, Volvo positioning the brand as the worlds safest car brand could tarnished if proven otherwise. Most of the companies find it difficult to understand the level of match between the presented value proposition VS the perceived value proposition.

Hence it is always vital that as a company conscious efforts are put to understand this gap. And also critical aspect would be to benchmark against the competition which targets the same consumer segments and focus on the tangible KPIs like money spent on the transaction.