🏋️♀️ Core Skills and Assets
🎯 Skip the BHAG
🚏 Pick Your Priorities
🏋️♀️ Core Skills and Assets
Competitive advantage is unique. What may be a strength for your competitor could be a liability for your business, and vice versa.
I noticed this in college while working out with a friend. We were both doing bench press, but Eric was struggling to move the same amount of weight as me. It then dawned on us: Eric had to push the bar almost 30% farther than I did.
Eric is an endurance athlete with exceptionally long limbs. He is like a gazelle in an Ironman race, but he was at a disadvantage when power lifting.
The same is true for businesses. How your business approaches competitive and strategic problems will differ based on its natural strengths and capabilities.
David Aaker writes in Managing Brand Equity, “Assets and skills provide the basis of a competitive advantage that is sustainable.… An asset is something a firm possesses such as a brand name or a retail location, which is superior to that of the competition. A skill is something a firm does better than its competitors, such as advertising or efficient manufacturing.”
Your organization’s core skills and assets enable it to rise above the competition.
What does your business do better than anyone else?
When you understand your sources of strength, double down on those assets and capabilities. This is where you will gain a sustainable competitive advantage with profitable growth.
One Stat to Watch
36%
36% of a CEO’s time is spent in reactive mode, handling unfolding issues, both internal and external, according to an HBR study.
🎯 Skip the BHAG
Jim Collins popularized the concept of the BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goal, in his seminal book, Built to Last.
The authors write, “A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as a unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.”
The concept of the big goal or the bold vision is a powerful motivator, except when your business is getting punched in the gut again and again with a constantly changing business environment.
When uncertainty is omnipresent, replace the BHAG with a clearer definition of the challenge.
Richard Rumelt writes in The Crux, “Too many people start with goals and other visions of a desired end state. Start with the challenge, and diagnose its structure and the forces at work. Once you do that, your sense of purpose and the actions you consider will change.”
Embracing the challenge, instead of the goal, empowers clearer thinking and better opportunity identification.
What is the pivotal or critical challenge your business needs to solve in order to drive its growth to the next level?
🚏 Pick a Priority
What’s holding your business back at the moment?
- Sales: Do you need to generate more opportunities?
- Quality or size of customers: Are you selling to the right customers?
- Winning deals: Does your sales team struggle to close deals? Customers come to you, but they seem to get cold feet at some point.
- Price: Are you suffering from death by a thousand cuts? Do you have to constantly discount to win business?
- Resources: Do you have the resources to meet current customer demand? Or worse, do you have too much of the wrong resources for the moment?
- Competition: Are competitors beating your brand up, and making it hard to win?
- Something else: There’s a clear threat or problem holding your business back.
Analyze your business and the areas that you need to fix in order to accelerate your growth.
Identify one or two pressing needs every six months and make a plan with clear goals, resources, and metrics to fix those issues.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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