My son has dairy allergies and as such he occasionally enjoys a Silk Soy Yogurt. Lots of yogurt packaging I’ve seen includes a plastic lid that we simply take off and discard to reach the foil wrapper underneath. The Silk yogurt we got this week was missing the plastic lid and the foil wrapper stated:

Have we lost our lid?

Precisely.

Losing our lid saves over 100,000 pounds of plastic annually which is equivalent to planting 68 acres of trees every year!

Every loving spoonful of Silk Cultured Soy is powered by the wind!

Less Packaging = Less Cost

Not only is Silk saving plastic but since they don’t have to buy those lids, they make more money on every yogurt they sell. Even a slight reduction in packaging costs, when multiplied by a large volume, can equal some very nice savings for a company.

Reduced cost equals higher margins and thus increased profitability for your company. These great margins help ease future dips in your revenue and buffer you if other costs increase.

As I mentioned in the first part of this “Crash” course, I was the victim of a hit and run accident. When I say “run,” I mean literally. The driver who hit me got out of his car and took off on foot, leaving his car at the scene of the accident. Who was that guy?

You may very well ask yourself that same question when an upstart company starts eating away at your market share. A sudden attack to your business may come as a surprise. We’ve already reviewed how to be prepared and that you need to keep your eyes open to possible threats. Now, it is time to focus on who could be coming after you next.

Pre-Launch

Before you even start your new company or launch your new product you better understand the competitive landscape. Who are the big players? Who are the little guys with lots of momentum? Take a look at their strengths and weaknesses and how you compare side-by-side.

Don’t go into a market completely blind. First, do your homework.

Existing Enemies

With a competitive view of the marketplace, you’ll identify the various companies that directly compete with you. Put these on your list to watch. Odds are these established players have large market shares, revenues, and resources. They can not be ignored. Perhaps you can even learn something from them. Learn what mistakes they’ve made so you don’t have to repeat them.

Potential Enemies

Who could enter your market and compete with you? Are there companies out there that like to innovate in your product space? What if Google decided to jump into the fray with something out of their labs?

Potential enemies may have barriers to entry into your market. However, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t currently be working on overcoming those in secret. Be ready.

Unforeseen Enemies

You can’t predict every possible attacker that may arise. However, when they do strike, you need to immediately survey the situation. Don’t dismiss a new company on the map as a passing fad or of little concern. Investigate the rival business and how its efforts will affect your company’s products.

Take Action

Once you identify your enemy, you can form a strategy to successfully compete. We’ll talk more about how to recover from an attack in the upcoming fourth and last installment of this Business “Crash” Course.

Read previous parts of this series:

• Part 1: Be Prepared
• Part 2: Be Observant

This year’s NIWeek conference featured a keynote by Segway creator Dean Kamen. As a prolific inventor, Kamen shared several “Rude Realities” of innovation coupled with some helpful suggestions.

Reality

Great technology alone rarely constitutes innovation

Just because something is cool or never-been-seen-before, doesn’t mean it is innovation. Kamen told the story of the South Pointing Chariot that the ancient Chinese used to keep their heading in fog or on featureless terrain. It is a rather complex and amazing device but put in context that the Chinese also had the compass, the device seems a little unnecessary.

“Dark night of the innovator”

Innovation isn’t a straight path from project inception to completion. You ride a roller coaster between those two points and inevitably hit the “dark night of the innovator.” This is the point in the project where you think all it lost and you’ll never figure things out. This is indeed a major hurdle that you must overcome. Kamen quoted Winston Churchill, who said:

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Don’t give up when you reach that dark night. Keep trying new things, working, and persevering. Eventually, you’ll get that miracle you deserve.

Innovation has Risk

Make sure you fall behind your schedule early … The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

It is less painful and costly to catch delays and problems early. However, this is exactly the time when no one wants to admit problems. Overcome that natural tendency to wait until the last minute to announce problems. Early warning makes everyone’s life easier.

Don’t Invent

Invent as a last resort

Leverage the work of others. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Doing so adds extra problems, bugs, and complexity to your project.

Kamen defined invention as “the art of concealing your sources.”

Roadblock

Solving the solution not the problem.

Too many times people try to correct the exisiting solution to a problem in order to fix the problem. This is like slapping a Band-Aid on a large injury. It just doesn’t work. Go back to the root cause of the problem and create a solution to address it. This will often force you to take a step back and rethink the entire situation. Clearing roadblocks can be time-consuming, but ultimately the process is necessary so you can continue down your path.

Forget What You Know

It’s not what you don’t know that inhibits innovation. It’s what we do know that just ain’t so.

The technical truths we hold so dear are constantly changing. If you fail to embrace change, you will be left behind. History is littered with those that didn’t accept and leverage new technologies to their benefit. Keep your mind open to change.

Not for Spectators

Innovation is not a spectator sport. Projects require management. Innovation requires leadership. Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.

Management should be actively leading innovative initiatives and projects.

When to innovate?

It wasn’t raining when Noah started building the ark.

You’ve launched a great product that is a huge success, bringing in tons of money. Don’t be “dumb, fat, and happy”. Start working on the next product now. If you wait, you’ll be broadsided by a competitor and have to scramble to respond.

Who should innovate?

Innovators are two types of people: optimists and pessimists. The optimist will build the airplane. The pessimist will create the parachute.

Key to the Future

Continuously innovating new products and services will guarantee your business will grow well into the future. The time is now to get to work. Keep trying new things and don’t be afraid to fail.

I was recently investigating the new Saturn Sky convertible on their website and tried out their “build your own” application.

To my surprise I saw this screen:

As you can see, I had two options for the Sky: the base model and an “undefined” model. Today the site is corrected, but that doesn’t change the fact that a little programming or database error made it all the way to my browser.

Double Check Data

“Undefined” errors are usually exceptions that aren’t properly handled in the code. These can easily slip in when assumptions are made about the availability of a variable or data from a database.

Always check to make sure you really have the data you think you do before showing it to the customer. “Undefined” cases should be hidden if they are encountered or you should safely default to an appropriate value.

Error Pages

In the worst case, you can always direct a user to a generic error page that tells them you’re having technical difficulties. Explain how they can start over or how to contact you if needed.

Be Aware

You need to know when such errors are encountered so that you can correct your code with your next software release. When an error occurs, you can automatically email your programmer or log these types of errors for future analysis.

In Part 1 of this Business “Crash” Course, I talked about being prepared. Let’s suppose you took my advice and made big preparation plans. Did you follow through and turn those plans into reality? Plans stuck on paper will do you no good when disaster strikes.

Eyes Open

Part of your preparations should be to identify potential problems that may strike your company. You should be constantly vigilant of these possible attackers. When you notice the first sign of problems, kick your preparations into gear to avoid or mitigate the issue.

Symptoms

Your list of possible disasters or attacks isn’t complete. Unfortunately, you’ll never be able to foresee every possible future event. Sorry!

But you can look for patterns and characteristics in your potential trouble makers. A competing company may start stealing market share. Since you’ve probably not identified all possible competition you may overlook a particular company. If you are flexible and can find correlation between your “list” and a new threat, you’ll be much more likely to avoid major problems.

Keep your eyes on your list of potential problems while constantly monitoring for any similar issues that may appear.

Track Your Business

Natural disasters can quickly strike a blow to your company. Similarly, competition can start stealing your business, be it in a quick strike, or by slowly stealing away customers. How will you know you’re losing business if you aren’t tracking your current performance?

Put a system or person in place that can constantly monitor the health of your business.

Short-Term Outlook

With day-to-day operations of your business, you may be so swamped with work that your head is down and you’re oblivious to the future. You need to take breaks to step back and look ahead.

Short-term changes to your business environment must be handled swiftly and nimbly. Think about your current project or product. What could happen this week or next that would cause major delays or problems? How can you work around those or prevent those problems?

Long-Term Outlook

Your biggest long-term challenge may just be your competition. When your product is successful, you can bet you’ll have copycats and others trying to grab some of your fame and fortune. For tricks on overpowering your competition over the long haul, read How to Drive Your Competition Crazy.

Be a Detective

Turn over rocks. What will you find underneath? Not all the problems you may face are sitting right in front of you. Issues may be hidden, intentionally or not, from obvious view.

Get Out!

Never lose touch with your customers. The farther you are removed from your customer base, the less you’ll be able to meet their needs. When insulated by levels of bureaucracy, you’ll start to make decisions based on accounting results, misguided internal opinions, or other customer unfriendly ideas. These dangerous decisions will result in disgruntled employees, lost customers, and a steady deterioration of your business.

Be sure you get out of your office and observe the world in which you are doing business. Talk to customers, clients, suppliers, and even your competition. Listen with an open mind, allowing their feedback to break down your preconceived notions and opinions. The more you know about your environment, the more you’ll see potential problems and opportunities. Keep your eyes open!

Buy Kiss Theory Good Bye from Amazon

Bob Prosen’s new book Kiss Theory Good Bye delivers on it’s title by outlining practical steps you can take in your business to get the results you seek.

Crippling Habits

Prosen starts the book by highlighting the “five crippling habits that attack from within.” I guarantee you’ll see some of these problems in your company:

1. Absence of clear directives
2. Lack of accountability
3. Rationalizing inferior performance
4. Planning in lieu of action
5. Aversion to risk and change

These points often hit where it hurts and will show you how you may have problems and not even know it. Prosen details the symptoms of these crippling problems and how you can overcome them.

Highly Profitable Companies

After helping you identify the obvious problems in your business, Prosen jumps into the “five attributes of highly profitable companies.” These chapters are well worth the read:

1. Superior Leadership
2. Sales Effectiveness
3. Operational Excellence
4. Financial Management
5. Customer Loyalty

Prosen doesn’t write at a high theoretical level. He dives deep into the how-to steps required to better your business. Each chapter has thought-provoking questions to help you identify your situation and help you improve.

I particularly enjoyed Prosen’s points about rewarding results and not just activity. Too many times people seem busy and yet, nothing is completed. You can’t continue to give raises and praise to mediocre workers. The author encourages you to reward handsomely those who perform well. This will inspire the rest of the workforce to greatness.

Another disjoint Prosen highlights is the gulf between your company’s declared business goals and the line worker’s understanding of such. Do each of your employees understand the company goals and know how their work is affecting the overall company’s results? By helping your employees feel some ownership of the big puzzle, you’ll have an entire company of people aligned behind the same goals. This unity will lead to amazing accomplishments for your business.

Execution

The final section of the book discusses execution of the earlier topics. Overall, I thought this was a great read. Every manager at your company from the CEO down to the individual team lead should read this book. A lot of the material is tailored to upper management but the principles can be applied to any level of leadership.

Recommended

Kiss Theory Good Bye is an insightful read with concrete advice you can apply to your business today. Pick up a copy today.

Read more Kiss Theory Good Bye reviews on Amazon.com

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Have you read Kiss Theory Good Bye? Tell us what you thought of the book in the comments below.

A few weeks ago on my way home from work, another car ran a stop sign and broadsided me on the right side of my car. The other driver got out of his car, got on his cell phone, and left the scene on foot.

The result of this little accident is that my car is a total loss, I’m in physical therapy to correct my back pain, and the other driver is still unidentified.

Could a similar accident happen to you? Possibly. Could an accident like this happen to your business? You bet.

Surprise Attack

Unexpected attacks to your business may surprise you with a crippling blow. You need to be ready. Your business can overcome damaging surprises; it just requires some work. Overcoming attacks requires four keys:

1. Be prepared
2. Be observant
3. Identify your enemy
4. Recover

I’ll discuss each of these in a series of articles. Today, we’ll talk about the first:

Step 1: Be Prepared

You never know when something may go wrong with your business. Just thinking of the fury of Mother Nature that we’ve seen over the past year should tell you that you just never know what could happen.

Millions of things could go wrong. Take a moment to sit down and outline your contingency plan for the events that could be most damaging to your business. These may include some things you can’t always control:

• Acts of God (e.g. hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, etc.)
• Terrorist acts or war
• Loss of key employees to sickness, death, or resignation
• Malfunction of manufacturing facilities
• Power outage
• A spike in fuel costs
• Theft

While the aforementioned issues are often big and devastating, they don’t usually come about by your own negligence. You also need to be prepared for mistakes you or your company makes. How would you recover from one of these?

• New product flops
• Massive product recalls
• Your premier product infringes another company’s patent
• Your CEO pulls some unethical shenanigans
• You didn’t throughly test your web application
• Your computer crashes and you lose all your data
• A competitor introduces a superior product to your top selling item

Make Preparations

It would seem that since so many things can go wrong, you just may be destined to fail. No! Once you make a list of things that could be a big blow to your company, it is time to plan your strategy. For each of your possible disaster/problem scenarios, answer these questions:

• Can we prevent this from happening in the first place? If so, get to work.
• If the problem can’t be predicted or avoided, how can we reduce its effects on the business? Back-ups and redundancy may work here.
• How much will it cost to fix the problem? If the answer is “a lot,” you need to get some insurance.
• Do all your employees know what to do in case of emergency?
• How can you build a moat around your business to fend off competitor’s attacks?
• How will you handle your customers’ needs?
• How can your customers help you? You’ll be amazed what loyal customers can do.
• How will you communicate the status and plan to all stakeholders?

Advantages of Preparedness

When you’re prepared, you can sleep at night knowing that you don’t have to worry about all those “what if” scenarios. The next day when you wake up, you can go to the office and focus on improving your business, since you have the confidence that your preparedness blanket is always in place.

The Boy Scouts’ motto is “Be Prepared.” So put on your Scout hat and get your business in order. The day will come when you’ll be glad you did.

This article is the first part of a four part series:

• Part 2: Be Observant
• Part 3: Identify your Enemy
• Part 4: Crisis Recovery