Your Activity Fit Map results from discovering where you can be unique and different and then building key activities to clearly show your customers how you do it.
Differentiating Example: Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines is an example of a business differentiated from its counterparts and the most successful airline in the world.
Look at Southwest's different positioning from full-service airlines.
Southwest’s differentiators were Limited Passenger service, Frequent reliable departures, Lean, highly productive ground and gate crews, High Aircraft utilization, Very Low Ticket prices, and short-haul point-to-point routes between mid-sized cities and secondary airports.
The smaller blue circles contain the activities Southwest does to accomplish each of these in detail.
Another example of this is IKEA
When you compete, you need to decide what to do, as well as what not to do. The latter is often most difficult because it feels like you need to chase everyone and everything to maintain customers. When you know who you are and what you’re good at, and feel confident, having completed the Key Attribution Framework, you quit chasing everything.
Where to Start?
Once you’ve accomplished this you need to determine what activities will support these differentiating activities. Fit these into your 3HAG in swimlanes, and you’ve not only built your strategy, but you’ve also given you and your team a clear path on how to meet your 3-year goal and differentiate yourself from your competition.
Working on these together gives clarity and confidence to achieve your goal.
This simple framework gives you the ability to differentiate your business. While the path is clear, the discussions, decisions, and the dynamics of the market won’t make this as clear a path. You’ll need to have many discussions when choosing the differentiators, deciding where to put your resources to make these the differentiators for your business, and then stay abreast of what your competitors are doing month over month, or at least quarter over quarter, to ensure your strategy is on course.
Three Barriers to Growth
The final barrier, scalable infrastructure, is precisely why every business needs a 3HAG
Building a successful business requires forethought, discipline, discussion, discovery, and exploration.
To create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best, contact Positioning Systems today to schedule a free exploratory meeting.
Growth demands Strategic Discipline.
Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.
A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting
Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.
Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:
DECISION |
RESULT/OUTCOME |
PEOPLE |
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STRATEGY |
|
EXECUTION |
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CASH |
Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $250M) business Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.
The great resignation or turnover crisis has been identified as a cultural crisis among businesses. Businesses with a strong culture appear to have evaded this resignation crisis, while those who don’t have severely suffered. Simon Sinek is known for his videos and book on starting with Why. Do you know how he discovered this formula? That’s our next blog.