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StrategyTuesday #25: Design-driven business

September 2, 2008 – 4:16 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

As per my last two posts (Beauty all around and Pure aesthetic experience) creating memorable experiences is imperative to the survival of your business. It is the experience that your product/service creates that your clients desire. Design is an important part of creating unforgettable experiences.

Peters writes that design is not an option any more. Design is essential for business success and we should not think that design only relates to objects; design also relates to services.

Design is not a mere action or function. It needs to be a value. A value that will impact on every aspect of your business venture. A value that urges you to ensure that your clients experience pure aesthetic joy in their dealings with you.

In his book ‘Design’ Peters gives strategies that can aid in becoming a design-driven-company. Here are a few:

• Put design on your agenda every month and for every department.
• Give an internal design award for cool designs within you company (e.g. the presentation of the annual budget).
• Have great art in the work place. Having great art around will foster an appreciation for the aesthetic.
• Use strong positive emotional statements when talking about your product/service. For example, our insanely great mailing software.
• Take note of the external recognition your company gets for its design activities.
• Invite top designers to talk at your year-end function.
• Employ design sensitivity in all your internal training and performance evaluations.

After Thought:
Aesthetic joy doesn’t always have to come with a great price tag as Craige Fraser in his photo book ‘Shack Chic’ illustrated.

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Pure aesthetic experience

September 1, 2008 – 5:46 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

In 2003 we had a stall at the IMM Cologne, an international design and interior show in Germany.

It was on day four of the show when I took my lunch break and I lingered between the exhibitions. Everything was extravagant and overwhelming. Then I spotted the small stall with the designer furniture of Barbara and Robert Tiffany. Their “spirit collection” was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist walking over and sitting on it. I sat down and the bench supported my body perfectly, no wobble and no pressure points. I just sat there. I didn’t want to move. After some time Robert (I assume) came and sat next to me. He made a few remarks in his broken English after which we just sat. He later gave me a Swiss chocolate which I ate in silence and then said goodbye and returned to my own stall.

I just love the “spirit song bench”! My experience that day was truly special. It is a powerful design that created in me a feeling of passion for this product, a passion that remains even till this day.

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Beauty all around

August 28, 2008 – 7:47 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

After watching the movie “House of the flying daggers” I decided that I want to intentionally focus on beautifying my immediate environment, activities and my services.

Part of making life meaningful is being receptive to experience the good and the beautiful that life has to offer.

I juggled with the idea for some time but couldn’t justify writing about beauty on an entrepreneur’s blog. That was until I got hold of the work of Tom Peters…

Design is about pure aesthetic joy.
Design is about demonstrating how beautiful something can be.
Design is about providing memorable experiences.

In the New Economy clients demand more than just a product or a service – they are after the experience that your product or service creates. It is this experience that stirs their emotions and makes them passionate about you and your business. Design is the principal reason for emotional attachment to a product and/or service.

Good design is no longer optional. It is essential for new ventures. [Peters]

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StrategyTuesday #24: Mission Statement

August 26, 2008 – 6:13 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

A mission statement is a brief statement of purpose and priorities. A business’ mission statement, as per yesterday’s post, is very important to make sure that everyone in the business is working towards a common goal.

Herewith are mission statements of well-known companies:

Walt Disney -”To make people happy.”

Google - “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Microsoft – “To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realise their full potential”.

Virgin Atlantic – “To grow a profitable airline, where people love to fly and where people love to work”.

In formulating a mission statement for your business you have to answer three important questions, namely

• what is your business,
• what will it be (in the future) and
• what should it be?

But to answer these questions you have to look at the reality of your customer and their point of view. The “wants” of your customers that are being satisfied by your service/product will define you business’ mission. [Drucker]

Drucker argues that for a successful mission you need to understand:

• Who your customer is?
• Where your customer is?
• What your customer really buys from you? Or put differently, by buying your service what “want” of the customer is being satisfied?

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Mission Important

August 25, 2008 – 2:38 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

The new movement in business is to automate all business actions and to free up employees for high-level innovative contributions. As a result of this, employees will increasingly have to make important business related decisions.

For this reason, it is important that everyone in your company is very clear about what your business is and what it should be - what the mission of your company is.

As entrepreneur and business owner you need to work through these questions and make sure the answers are communicated to all your employees. This can help to ensure that the decisions they make will not be made on misdirecting theories of what your true business is.

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Money in e-business

August 21, 2008 – 3:44 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

In her book Clicking, Faith Popcorn and her team predicted that a window of opportunity for big earnings are ahead for “Tech-Knows” entrepreneurs.

Faith’s research showed that people are “cashing out” of the corporate environment to start their own businesses. She quoted numbers showing that in 1989 a total of 70% of graduates went to work for big corporations and only 5 years later the number came down to a mere 50%.

She divided these entrepreneurs who opted to start their own businesses into two groups: the “Tech-Nots” and “Tech-Knows”. The first group are entrepreneurs who focus their services and products on what is lacking in the corporate environment, for example, hard to find services and personal attention whether it is in home repairs, beauty services, garden services, etc.

The “Tech-Knows” set up businesses focusing on the latest technological development and support available.

Her research also showed that “Tech-Knows” businesses earn on average 25% more than “Tech-Nots” businesses. I think today this percentage might be even higher.

This prediction correlates with what Peters describes is going on in the world economy today, namely: that the IT revolution are in its infancy shoes and that for business there is no higher priority than TOTAL TRANSFORMATION of all business practises to e-business practise.

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StrategyTuesday #23: Metaphors as a language tool

August 19, 2008 – 6:21 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

Following on yesterday’s post “The word is mightier …” I want to explore metaphors as a way to get new perspectives on old issues.

Metaphors can be used as a tool to understand challenges better and to approach it with innovation [Von Oech]. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which two things that seem to have little in common are compared, usually in an interesting and memorable way.

A metaphor can be used to compare your challenge with something else. By exploring your metaphor for similarities between the two ideas you might get a fresh understanding of your task at hand.

Planning and implementing a new business venture is a safari in a game reserve. You are very much relying on your own ability to spot the wild animals in the veldt. Yet, an assembly of cars in the road ahead can be a sure indication that one of the big five is present. Then again, the crowd will inhibit your ability to watch the animal at length and at your own leisure. Thus, with a new venture, if you follow the crowd you might be surer of a success but then again, the slice of the cake might be smaller and there might be more conditions that apply.

Sourcing independent and creative employees is flying a kite. It is about balancing freedom and tethering it to the ground. Although a kite is visually pleasing, its features, such as the tail, are vital to successfully fly and control the kite. Thus, you not only need to give creative workers enough freedom to be innovative but you also need to find ways to keep their actions within the mission and vision of the business. Secondly, like the tail of the kite, you need to beautify and simplify your business procedures and policies.

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The word is mightier …

August 18, 2008 – 5:28 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

Entrepreneurs need to find and seize opportunities in their environment. Today, this environment is complex and volatile and therefore presents challenges to the entrepreneur. Language can be a powerful cognitive tool in increasing the ability to find solutions and new opportunities (see posts on questions, use of language, adversity is temporary).

Language plays an important role in grappling ideas, in developing an understanding of concepts and in constructing meaning. You craft reality through your choice of words, your values and beliefs.

As individuals we are constrained by our language as to what we are able to extract and absorb from our environment.

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Globalisation

August 13, 2008 – 4:17 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

In Bill Gates’ article on creative capitalism he explores the question of “How to most effectively spread the benefits of capitalism and the improvements in quality of life it can provide to people who have been left out”?

Wolf is convinced that globalisation has proven to be the best means of increasing the welfare of the largest number of people on earth. Globalisation is a process whereby an increased portion of economic or other activity is carried out across national borders.

Globalisation can be a great opportunity for poor nations such as the ones in Africa to increase the welfare of its people.

But some of the challenges that Africa needs to address in order to more effectively tap into these benefits are:
• Better education.
• Improved technological literacy.
• Good government.
• Dependable legal protection.
• Giving citizens greater choice, voice and ownership.
• Increased purchasing power of people.

These challenges represent ill-structured real life problems and hold locked-up in them many new business opportunities – for those willing to think differently.

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Delay of gratification

August 11, 2008 – 7:48 pm
by Rene Hattingh-Rust

The delay of gratification is the ability to purposefully defer immediate reward for the sake of delayed, but more desired future outcomes. The ability to persevere in an endeavour, in anticipation of larger gain, is an important indicator of psychological maturity [Hall & Lindzey].

Victor Frankl tells the story of people he had witnessed in the concentration camps who one day would refuse to get up. No threats or pleading could get them out of their bunk beds. Lying there in their own urine and faeces, Frankl witnessed them taking out their last cigarette that they’ve treasured for days, smoke it and then die within twenty-four hours. Regarding this observation Frankl remarks, “When the meaning orientation of an individual had subsided, the search for immediate pleasure takes over”. [Frankl]

Entrepreneurs seem to have an ability to give up immediate rewards and to persevere with their ventures and challenges in order to achieve a delayed reward.

Sandra Africa remembers in the beginning of her construction company “often it went like this: I would pay R35 000 in wages, after which I had to send my daughter to go and ask my sister for R20 or R5 to buy bread, promising that I would give it back the next day.”

“After the two years I still didn’t make a lot of money, but I always said that you only had to cut off my throat to get all the knowledge I’ve gained out of me. Money was not that important to me.”

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