In the flat world business is hyper competitive. If you’re #1 or #2 you can’t rest on your laurels for long. There’s always someone gunning for you.
So what’s the secret to staying on top? Here’s my recipe for total market domination:
- Create stuff that your customers will love – not like. Love. Stuff they’ll be passionate about. Stuff that makes a difference in the world.
- Have a laser-sharp focus on magical customer service. Anticipate problems before they arise, and fix them. And when a customer complains, turn it into a great experience by going a few steps beyond just taking care of it. Make it effortless for the customer (that means work for you).
- Have a purpose beyond making money. Combine product and service innovation with social good. The money will follow if you execute well.
- Smile and be nice. It will drive your enemies crazy.
- Hire nice people. Do not hire assholes. Be vigilant about this. (although some may question this looking at Steve Jobs. There are few assholes as brilliant as Steve Jobs. If you can find one, hire them, then make sure you have the tools / processes to manage them.)
- Make sure those nice people are passionate high performers. Nice alone obviously isn’t enough.
- Be human. Act like you’re working and talking with other humans. Cut the jargon and know that all humans make mistakes. Just don’t make the same ones twice.
- Aways be innovating. When you release that incredible widgit or service, get to work on the next. Get to work on making it better. Have a solid roadmap for innovation. Know where you want to go but be cognizant of market changes so you can adapt.
- Be a chameleon – build flexibility into your processes so you can adapt to rapid changes in the market. Rapid is the new normal.• Prototype rapidly – test many ideas quickly to find out which are sticky and which are merely ego. Quick and dirty testing is a lot more effective than drawn-out focus groups where people might not give you the unvarnished truth.
- Be open to the unvarnished truth. Never get defensive when your beloved whatchamacallit is criticized or panned. Think of it as a learning opportunity
- Never get too attached to what you produce. It blinds you to hearing and learning from critical feedback.
- Listen. Listen. And listen some more to your customers. Never assume what they’re thinking. You can’t do too much listening.• Have a plan for turning what you learn from listening into action. If you just listen and do nothing, well, what’s the point?
- Be open to ideas that scare the hell out of people – including your customers. They may not always know what they want until they see it. And even if they did, they may not be able to articulate it. The listening mentioned above is for learning what they like / don’t like about your products. And what problems / pain points they face each day.
- Have a no-excuses policy. When anyone complains, make sure they offer a solution.
- If something is broken, fix it. If something is not broken, don’t fix it. This sounds obvious, but how many change initiatives have you seen that are just fancy machinations without real purpose beyond looking like something’s happening?
- Never, ever, get complacent
- Repeat
