Category Archives: Consulting

August 13, 2018 · 3:43 pm

Learning And Doing

I’m in training now to expand my consulting practice. I’ll have more about what exactly that means in another week or so, once I’ve officially completed training and can begin working with clients. The training has been two or sometimes three 90-minute training sessions a day for the last week or so. It’s pretty intensive, and while much of it isn’t highly technical and involves some business knowledge that’s common to what I’ve learned working in other areas over the years, it’s still a lot. I’m enjoying it, in part because it’s been quite a while since I’ve had to absorb this much information about a topic that is totally new to me. Always good to get those old synapses firing, isn’t it?

One thing it’s reminded of is the difference between learning and doing. Maybe I should phrase that as knowing and doing, but they’re different. In any event, one is certainly not the other. I can explain to you the elements of a great golf swing and I can probably point out what in your swing is causing you problems. I know what a good swing looks like. Can I perform one myself? Oh hell no. I’m a great caddy – I can club you correctly and discuss strategy. Can I hit the shot I’m describing? Not consistently well.

That’s knowing vs. doing. Learning vs. doing is having the information as I now do about this new business area but really nothing more. I can tell you the rules, I can tell you the best practices, I can even tell you the mistakes you’re likely to make. What I can’t do is to give you any first-hand experience nor any nuance nor anything particularly insightful from that which you could get from anyone else. That last part is where any of us add value to what is, in essence, a textbook view of the world. A kid coming out of graduate school with an MBA (yes, 28-year-olds are now “kids” to me) has a ton of education and knows an awful lot but they have very little experience. The good ones that I’ve worked with know that and are anxious to add to their education by doing. The less good one think they already know it all thanks to their learning.

I know I can be effective in my expanded area right away although I’ll be even more effective as time passes and I learn the things one only learns by doing. Part of why we see some problems in the business world, particularly in the tech world, is that we have CEO’s who got to those jobs by being founders. They don’t have real-world experience because they’ve not done the series of jobs and learned from each that traditionally gets one into a CEO chair. Without a bunch of doing, a little learning can be a dangerous thing, don’t you think?

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August 8, 2018 · 9:56 am

Wanting And Needing

If you hang around the candy aisle of the supermarket long enough, I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll hear some kid yell at their parent that they “need it” with a large bag of candy in their hand. At that moment, I think the kid believes it. Hopefully, the parent explains the difference between “needing” and “wanting”. Hopefully, that’s something you can recognize in your business life too.

A need is something you must have to survive. As humans, water, food, and shelter are about the extent of those needs (I put clothing and warmth under the shelter heading). As a business, the fundamental need is to make a profit. Without that, no business can survive over the long term. In order to make those profits, you need money coming in, which means you also need customers who will pay you for your product or service. As with any need, once we have satisfied it we can move on to the “want.” You want customers who are happy so they stick around. You want customers who are pleasant so you can interact with them without drama. You need to have people working with you who are loyal and knowledgeable so they support your customers. You want them to stick around for the long term at a reasonable cost to the business.

The hard part for me when I began consulting was that I think I probably spent too much effort helping clients get the wants and not enough time focused on the needs. Rookie mistake, one I don’t make now. I’m not surprised when a client and I get into the need/want discussion and there is a bit of a disconnect. With early-stage companies especially, you have to get the needs shored up.

I try to focus on telling clients what they need to hear, which is not necessarily what they want to hear (see what I did there?). I did the same when I was part of a larger organization, sometimes to my detriment, I’ll admit. I did learn that the people who can hear things that are true but sometimes unpleasant are the ones with whom you want to work. They have learned that the bag of candy is a want, but those wants might not be affordable or necessary. They might even be detrimental. Make sense?

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August 3, 2018 · 11:20 am

David And Goliath

I’d like us to think about David and Goliath this Foodie Friday. In the food service world, there are a few Goliaths – McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks to name a few. There are far more Davids – everything from mom and pop restaurants competing in the same quick-service space to regional chains. It’s interesting to see how the little guys try to compete with the big ones and there is a lesson in that for any of us in business.

I’m often surprised at how some Davids think they can just “me too” their way into success by following the strategies and tactics of the big guys. I guess the thinking is that one wouldn’t have to grab a whole lot of share from a big guy to have a wildly successful business. They drop pretty large crumbs.

I was reading something recently that reinforced my surprise. It’s a study by Sense360, a restaurant consultancy. It found:

McDonald’s has been admired for its value-oriented strategy that’s led to its market dominance and resurgence. Many QSRs have tried to replicate McDonald’s winning strategy, with little success. That’s because they’re copying the wrong things and not taking away the key lessons that would lead to a better result.

What McDonald’s and other Goliaths do is to formulate very detailed customer personas. They identify key consumer attributes and build their strategy around attracting the core customers they’ve profiled again and again. Those personas are NOT the same across different brands, so trying to use strategies designed to attract them may not fit your customer profile at all. For example, the quality of food at McDonald’s is, according to the study, a very minor reason why their customers go. Advertising the quality of your food as a way to grab a McDonald’s customer is going to fall on deaf ears.

Obviously, the Starbucks customer has different concerns and priorities than the McDonald’s customer, which is exactly what the study found. Therein lies the lesson for any of us. What we all need to be doing is looking internally and see what we can do well that is different from what our competitors are doing and which resonates with OUR customers, not theirs. What will give my business and my brand an opportunity rather than going head-to-head with someone who has more resources than me, often moves faster to adapt to market changes, and has a different customer anyway.

David beat Goliath because he managed to hit him in a weak spot and not because he went after his strength or waited for him to tire. That’s the sort of thinking we need to incorporate in our business planning, don’t you think?

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