Strategic Discipline Blog

How does your business innovate?

How do you build a 3-5 year business plan to adapt and be relevant in today’s disruptive economic environment?

In this blog, and with our Positioning System customers, we’ve recommended Kaihan Krippendorff’s Outthinker Process, and his book Outthink the Competition.  Kaihan is working on completing a new book which will be out shortly. 

Watch this video for a short 2:40 second overview of the Outthinker Process:

Digital Disruption is changing business economics.  The graphic here shares what digital disruption is doing to business and industry.  If it’s not hit your business/industry, it will soon.

Digital is defined as the nearly instant, free, and flawless ability to connect people, devices, and physical objects anywhere.

What is your business doing to meet digital disruption and evolving how you do business?

Indeed what can it do?  Where do you start?

The following video from Kaihan Krippendorff shares the fundamentals for how to design a Disruptive Business Model.  It explains how many believe a large company isn’t able to innovate. The existing business model is too cumbersome or bureaucratic to allow it.  Kaihan disagrees and this 42 minute video shares innovations at large corporations like IBM, Microsoft and McDonalds to demonstrate why even large companies can innovate.

(BTW: don't miss  at 28:45 how a jean company reduced their $45-$50 jeans to $7 through innovative distribution. It's an example of "Placement.")

Kaihan provides a excellent overview of the 8 P’s we shared in Calculate Your OUTthinker Score - Assessment and 8 P’s – A Powerful Way to Discover Strengths, Weaknesses, Trends.

The Outthinker Score measures your level of competitiveness in: Positioning, Product, Price, Physical Experience, Placement, Promotion, Process and People.  Your businesses’ success will depend on your ability to differentiate yourself from the competition.

If you’d like to have you and your team discover and calibrate your current Outthinker Assessment Score. Follow the link to download the form. 

Kaihan’s research shows if you can increase your score over your competition you will achieve 40% faster growth and/or profitability.

Outthinker – 36 Stratagems

The Outthinker Process explores 5-8 of the most common strategies to achieve what Kaihan describes as the 4^th Option for your business.  In the exercise to develop your Outthinker Process your team is asked to identify 5 or more different ways your company can exploit each of these strategies.

We’ve explored some of these possible strategies in these blogs:

• Outthinkers and Thinkers In Business - Examples
• Build A Cathedral – OUTthinkers Strategy: BE GOOD
• Godzilla & AFLAC Duck - Create Something Out of Nothing
• OUTthinker Strategy - Coordinate the Uncoordinated
• OUTthinker Examples: Coordinate the Uncoordinated
• OUTthinker Strategy Playbook: Force a Two Front Battle
• Disrupt Yourself or Be Disrupted By the Competition

By asking your team to develop a minimum of 5 ideas you achieve two outcomes preventing innovative thinking.  You generate more ideas, and get your team thinking like creators. There are 36 different stratagems you can choose to outthink your competition. To review each of the 36, Kaihan created a video you can watch for background on: http://outthinker.com/the-36-stratagems/

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

The 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics and Meeting Rhythms help your business dramatically improve your forecasting, and alignment, empowering your team to achieve accelerated growth. 

Positioning Systems helps your business grow through the Four Decisions: People, Strategy, Execution, Cash.

Each of the Four Decisions Produces a specific outcome.

If you’re business is failing to achieve industry leading results in any of these areas, that's the Decision to make your One Thing.

If your business is not achieving a growth rate higher than your industry average, it’s time to focus on Strategy, and the Outthinker Process is the best place to start.

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $250M) business Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing!  To achieve growth, you need to evolve in today’s rapidly changing economic environment.  Are you avoiding a conversation with yourself on how to can successfully grow your business?

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.

NEXT BLOG – The Introvert’s Edge

Fresh out of college, my first job was as a radio salesperson. I am an introvert: I gain and capture energy by being alone. Often considered as poor candidates for success in sales, introverts struggle to succeed in sales. Learning to sell as a process, and particularly how to craft a story is Matthew Pollard’s secret for How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone. We’ll explore the value of a story for your business, next blog