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Leaders need to be on the lookout for what today's quickly changing business
landscape means to them and their organizations. Here are three questions to
help you face the challenge:
Do you see opportunities others don't? Change breeds opportunity. Don't
outcompete your rivals; reinvent the rules of the game by finding new
opportunities first.
Can your customers live without you? Customers' options
constantly evolve. If your products and services aren't indispensable, customers
are likely to move on.
Are you learning as fast as the world is changing? As a
leader, you can't afford to stop learning. Seek out ways to evolve and be humble
enough to know you don't always have the answer.
Too often the strategy-creation process produces options that aren't any more interesting or creative than the current strategy. If you find yourself agonizing over which of your carefully crafted strategic options is the right one, chances are you are taking the strategic planning process too seriously. Give up being right and sensible. Instead, tell a story about the future. Make it inspirational and envision your organization in a happy and successful place. Have everyone participating in the process tell his or her own story, and together you'll have created a list of options. Then start the real work of strategy creation: ask yourselves, for these stories to come true, what would have to happen?
Generate Your Next Breakthrough
Business leaders can learn a lot from the way that designers solve problems and create new innovations. Successful designers find new ideas in seemingly mundane places. Here are four steps to finding something original in the ordinary:
1. Question. Don't just ask the obvious questions. Look deeper, and don't be afraid to rethink basic fundamentals about your business and products.
2. Care. Caring doesn't just mean giving great customer service. Get to know your customers as intimately as possible. Immerse yourself in the lives of the people you are trying to serve.
3. Connect. Find ways to bring together concepts, people, and products. Many great breakthroughs are "mash-ups" of existing ideas.
4. Commit. Give form to your idea as quickly as possible: create a prototype and begin testing it right away. This is the only way to know if you've touched on something truly promising.
To come up with a few good ideas, you need to generate a lot of bad ones. And to give your good ideas a chance of reaching their full potential, you need to do some serious pruning. But don't just get rid of the bad ideas; kill some good ones as well. Focusing on many ideas requires thinly spreading your resources. For your truly good ideas to make it to market, they need a concentrated focus and the resources to develop them fully. Make the tough choices and pull the plug on good ideas that aren't quite good enough.
Involve Front-Line Employees in Creating Strategy
Even brilliant strategies fail if front-line employees don't execute them well. Many leaders struggle to help their front line understand and buy into new ways of doing things. Next time you change your company's direction, don't relegate strategy creation to a handful of executives. Involve as many of your employees as possible, especially those who interact with your customers. Make them part of the process by bringing them together to think about the company's future. Ask them for input about how the company can achieve its goals. Front-line employees who help make a strategy are far more likely to do a stellar job of executing it.
All new ventures are fragile. Even if revenues are growing (which they should be), chances are your company hasn't yet hit breakeven. To manage through this precarious time, be sure you know these three things:
How many days does your venture have to live? Businesses fail because they run out of cash. Knowing exactly how many months or days you have to live can help you better manage costs and your funding strategy.
Why you are doing this? Success requires hard work and constant attention. If you don't know exactly why you should make the effort, neither will your funders.
What are the top-two critical issues? Be precise about which two issues deserve the highest priority. These may not be the most urgent, but they are the ones that your venture's success depends on.
In business, it's important to set goals - achieve a sales target, grow the company - and lay out the strategies you believe will get you there. A clear strategy that dictates the process for achieving goals can be comforting, but be careful not to let it distract you. Don't keep your head so focused on the process that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Look up every once in a while and remind yourself what you are trying to achieve. Markets change, customers change, and even your company changes; looking up ensures that you don't miss new and important opportunities.
Avoid Certain Types of Failure
Innovation experts have long argued that companies should be more tolerant of failure. But not all failure is created equally. Here are three types of failure that rarely contribute to learning and should be avoided whenever possible:
Knowingly doing the wrong thing. When a project falls apart because someone hid information or misled others, any learning is moot. Failure is only acceptable when the project was done with good intentions.
Failing to gather the right data. Often you can avoid failure by doing some simple research: asking target customers for input or testing an idea before launching it.
Prioritizing research over experience. Some things are unknowable without real-life experiments. Don't waste resources on researching a theory when you can create a prototype or conduct an experiment that will give you a more realistic answer.
Risk management departments are springing up in many companies. They categorize and analyze risk to the company before it happens, and in most cases, they create systems and processes to prevent risks. But the reality is that all hazards can't be predicted or avoided. Instead of simply staving off risk, focus on building resilience so that when the unthinkable happens, you're better prepared to face it. Look at all the risks you face and play out what you would do if any of them were to come to bear. Having systems in place to respond could save you valuable time, money, and resources.
For every small business that goes belly up, there are dozens more that are thriving. Here are three lessons for how you can operate like a small business to survive even the deepest of downturns:
Agility. Small businesses have a great advantage in a fast-changing world: they adapt quickly. Without layers of bureaucracy slowing them down, they can react quickly to changing circumstances.
Rapid testing and refining. Social media and online marketing tools allow even the smallest of businesses to do real-time market testing. They can also engage customers and build a community around their business.
Planning. Plans are often outdated as soon as they come out of the printer. Small businesses tend to focus more on planning and less on plans. They watch their surroundings and act accordingly.
You can't prevent all disasters. Companies often face unforeseen or unpredictable circumstances. However, leaders need to ensure their organizations are equipped to stop most crises before they happen. Prevention requires three things:
Pattern recognition. Encourage your people to share information and make connections so that you can recognize when a problem is forming.
Broader communication. Communication across silos is not easy, but it should be mandatory so that critical information reaches all parts of an organization.
Trusted leadership. Leaders need to react quickly when a problem surfaces. Showing that you care about an issue is critical to gaining your employees' trust in your ability to handle problems.
Don't Shy Away from a Temporary Solution
When looking to make a change, reorganize a unit, or develop a new system, people often seek solutions that will last as long as possible. They want them to be sustainable. But nothing lasts forever. Finding a permanent solution may be infeasible and even foolhardy. Next time you need to make a big change, come up with a temporary solution - not a final one. Most approaches are useful for a certain length of time. When that time's over, you need a new way to attack the problem, which is likely to morph.
Failures in the innovation process can be costly and time consuming. So why not reduce your failure rate to as close to zero as possible? It's a lofty goal and one that very few innovative companies have ever achieved. Plus, failure is important to innovation - how else do you learn? Rather than eliminating failure, focus on reducing the cost of failure by doing these three things:
Make your experiments cheaper. Experiments need not be expensive. You don't need to recreate a concept exactly to test it. Find low-cost ways to test assumptions.
Change the order of experiments. Test strategic assumptions before logistical ones. Confirm the market need before perfecting a product.
Make decisions faster. Larger organizations often let bad ideas linger. Accelerate decision making when it comes to innovation and get rid of flawed projects before they cost you time and money.
Stretch Your Marketing Dollars
Companies need creativity and resourcefulness to stretch dollars when cutting budgets. Fortunately, doing more with less doesn't necessarily mean reaching fewer customers. Instead of reducing message frequency, consider shifting from TV to less expensive radio advertising. Create different versions of an ad for different markets or segments rather than separate commercials for each. Consider Internet advertising if you haven't before. Because the medium provides immediate feedback about what's working and what's not, now may be the right time to experiment with search or banner advertising.
Almost all companies have or will need to cut costs to survive in the current environment. Unfortunately, not all do cost cutting smartly. Consider these three pieces of advice before making cuts:
Put strategy first. Cuts across the board rarely, if ever, lead to effective results. Laying out strategy first helps you decide where to cut and also helps employees accept the cuts as a step toward a goal.
Focus on good customers. Rather than cutting valued services to valuable customers, "fire" high-maintenance customers who create unnecessary complexity. Focus on serving your more cost-effective customers who are happy with your products and services as they are.
Keep your business simple. In a healthy economy, it's easy to overlook processes and activities that are redundant or overly involved. Simplifying them can save you money, with the added bonus of increasing both customer and employee satisfaction.
Google has long been the envy of blue-sky thinkers and innovators who admire its world-class and nonbureaucratic approach to innovation. But even Google needs limits. The company has announced it would begin using formal processes to ensure that senior leaders give resources and attention to the right ideas. Don't assume that processes and constraints will inhibit innovation; they often accelerate it by focusing creativity and ensuring that funding finds projects with the highest returns. Create a process to structure and guide innovation. Just be sure that the process doesn't become a burden and squash innovative ideas with unnecessary bureaucracy.
Companies love to introduce "new and improved" products. Yet, often these new innovations are useful to the company but not to the customers it aims to serve. For example, a self-checkout lane may help a company reduce the number of cashiers it needs, but may be a hassle for customers who are baffled by the new machines. Before you roll out a new service, feature, or product under the new-and-improved claim, be sure to learn whether it is something customers want. Evaluate new innovations through the lens of the market, not just the lens of your organization.
Strategic partnerships yield great benefits for those involved, but they are fragile entities. To ensure success, remember these eight I's when forging alliances with other organizations:
Individual excellence. Both sides bring strengths, and neither can be expected to prop up the other.
Importance. The relationship must matter strategically to both sides.
Information. Transparency strengthens the partnership; hiding information impedes trust.
Integration. Create several points of contact across the organizations.
Institutionalization. A formal structure can aid in objectivity and ensure the partnership works for both sides.
Today's economy is forcing many organizations, both big and small, to consider acquisitions or mergers. Before fully integrating your organization with another, consider forging a strategic alliance that may give you and your partner lower costs, greater scale, or broader market scope without sacrificing independence. For smaller organizations, consider forming alliances to reduce costs of duplicative activities. Nonprofit organizations can partner to market to prospective donors. Regardless of the reasons, proceed cautiously, as alliances can be difficult to build and even more complex to maintain.
Big companies used to win out over small ones because of their experience, impressive client lists, and seeming permanence. We trusted big business because it was big, but the economic crisis has changed that. Small companies are now winning the confidence and the business of customers. No matter the size of your company, restore customer trust by doing what small companies do well:
Be available. Customers of small companies don't need to holler "agent" into a phone to talk to a real person. Make it easy for customers to find you; react quickly to requests and demands.
Keep your promises. Always follow through on what you say you're going to do.
Grow and sustain. Consumer confidence is shaken, and customers want to know that businesses are going to be around no matter what the economic situation. Assure customers you are acting in a financially responsible and sustainable way.
Even large corporations need to innovate as start-ups do when resources and time become scarce. Here are four tips for innovating in a tough economy:
Forget the big budget. Innovation doesn't have to cost a lot. Rely on open-source software, online market research tools, and virtual prototypes to test ideas cheaply.
Test in the real market. Don't waste time endlessly perfecting ideas before you launch. Get a "good enough" design out there, then test and refine in the market.
Skip the business plan. Focus on making the idea happen, not planning every detail.
Make decisions and move on. Tough times require quick decision making. Don't be afraid to wind down ideas when they start to fail. You'll free up scarce resources for the next good idea.
Stop Ignoring Growth Opportunities
Chances are that someone inside your organization has a great idea for how to grow your company. Chances are that leadership is ignoring that idea. Kodak long ignored an engineer's idea for a "filmless camera" (aka a digital camera) because it was in the business of selling film. The largest growth opportunities are often the market-changing ideas that represent not only growth but a threat to your business as well. Figure out what those threats are before someone else does. Ask your people: what could put us out of business? In the answer to that question may be your biggest source of innovation.
Answer These Strategy Questions Simultaneously
The two essential strategic questions are: Where should a company play? How can it win there? Answering these requires analysis and logic, but most importantly, creative integration. Many good strategists focus on only one of those questions, trying diligently to figure out how to globalize or deliver a new product. A master strategist addresses both questions simultaneously and ensures the answers fit together. Don't rely on a single logic or analysis, but creatively integrate your company's choices about what market to play in and how to win there. The integration is what sets superb strategies apart from those that go nowhere.
How can you help your company become an innovation powerhouse? Don't put all of your resources into big bets on possible new offerings or business processes. Instead, conduct many small, inexpensive experiments in safe venues, such as quick pilot projects to test out ideas for a new product or way of serving customers. Use these small experiments to see what's working and not working. Then iterate and refine to produce a successful final innovation. Amazon did this by conducting experiments - Kindle, Amazon stores, and elastic cloud computing - to identify and capitalize on unique growth opportunities beyond the company's core book business.
New challenges require new ways of doing things; this means not only a new approach but a refusal to be bound by the rules that applied in the past. Here are three ways to spur innovation to address your next challenge:
Look outside. When faced with the need to innovate, most companies turn to their inside talent. Instead, reach across corporate boundaries to your extended network.
Mobilize passionate individuals. There are people who are likely passionate about your product, idea, or area of focus. Find those people and connect them so they can share ideas and mobilize one another to innovate.
Embrace new technology. Look to younger generations of employees to see what technologies they are using. Support and embrace these technologies, as they may be the source of your next innovation.
Every innovator hopes for and works toward breakthrough innovations. But in tough economic times, innovation often requires too much risk for an organization and its change-resistant customers. Instead of dreaming of "the next big thing," focus on innovating in smaller, shorter bursts. Look for improvements to current products and services. Use small and cheap experiments to test new ideas. Seek out innovations that consumers can easily adapt and don't require huge investments. These innovations are more likely to be palatable to your stakeholders and customers, and they're often the building blocks for larger, longer-term breakthroughs.
Forest fires are an essential part of a healthy ecosystem. They rid the forest of old underbrush that otherwise could serve as fuel for an even larger fire. Recessions are the economy's forest fires; while painful, they seem to be necessary. Rather than compensating for dips in the economy, prepare for them as opportunities to rid your company of excess and develop your organization's resilience. When the fire is out, discover the room you now have for new things to grow - new ideas, new strategies, and new opportunities.
More and more companies are introducing social networking tools to help employees connect. However, these should not be considered "work versions" of Facebook or Twitter. These platforms are intended to support your work, not give you a place to post pictures of your poodle. Here are three ways to make good use of these tools to advance your work:
Narrate your work. Talk about your current projects: where you are, what you're struggling with, and what you're producing. This will help others who may be doing similar work find you.
Ask questions. Often, collective wisdom is out there. If you're stuck, ask the crowd to help you out.
Talk about social activities. If your company's softball team won last night's game, post it. Socializing is an important part of work, and these tools are perfect for supporting it. You may want to dedicate a specific part of the platform to socializing, however, so people can avoid it if they want to.
Many companies' forays into social media yield nothing more than wasted time and effort. Before you establish a company Twitter account or start a Facebook page, step back and think about what messages will be relevant to your customers or potential customers. If your brand and your communications aren't useful or interesting to them, you might as well be tweeting into a black hole. Start by understanding the conversations about your brand that are already happening. Then craft messages accordingly. Before sending anything out, ask yourself: What value does this message carry for our customers? What action are we hoping to inspire? If you don't have a sharp answer to these questions, it's time to return to the drawing board.
Invest up front to grow your social ecosystem and regularly feed it new ideas, insights, and content. Whether an internal wiki, a Twitter account, or a blog, all social media initiatives require careful monitoring and management to capture value. Social media that aren't well tended risk lack of adoption and participation, and become anything but social.
What's your company's story? What makes it unique, and how does it positively affect people's lives? If your company is not getting its story out to customers in a consistent, thorough way, it's losing out on a chance to distinguish itself from rivals. And in today's dire economy, that can be fatal.
Use the latest technology to spread the word. If your company serves businesses, make sure your marketing message can be consumed via Black-Berry. If it serves consumers, be certain to put an application in the Apple App Store. Creating consistent and coordinated touch points will broadcast your company's story most effectively - and engage your customers.
Great companies have a single purpose that drives them toward success. That purpose is simple, straightforward, and can be stated in one sentence. For example, Google's is, "We organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." ING Direct's is, "We lead Americans back to savings." Your stated purpose should not be a tagline but a single idea that defines your company's reason for existing. Discover what your company is best at and put it into a sentence. Don't settle for being middle of the road, but strive to be the most responsive, most colorful, or most focused. Then, make sure that everyone in your company knows that sentence and uses it to be successful.
Find Your Company's Inner Self
Sometimes the economy forces companies to take a hard look at what they do. Some will need to reinvent themselves to survive. Here are three tips for finding your company's inner self and developing a plan for recovery:
Find your company's purpose. Don't focus too much on spreadsheets and data. Figure out what your company stands for. Most great and adaptable companies have a purpose that is larger than their products.
Don't (necessarily) mess with the business model. Struggling companies often try to revamp their business models. If your customers still have a need for the business you're in, you may only have to recommit to your business model rather than reinvent it.
Focus on quality growth. Companies that grow for the sake of growth rarely survive a downturn. Growth should be driven by quality, not quantity.
Don't Control the Customer Experience
Whether or not you're aware of it, every interaction your company has with its customers contributes to their larger experience with your organization. Perhaps your company knows this and carefully and thoughtfully crafts each experience in hopes of influencing opinions. But, despite calculated efforts, customers will not always perceive your company as you wish. People don't behave or react exactly how you expect they will, but don't give up because of this unpredictability. Accept it as part of the challenge and frequently monitor what customers are experiencing. By getting their input and feedback, or better yet, observing them in real time, you can adjust efforts accordingly. Perfect control is not necessary to influence their opinions. Continue to aim for the ideal and modify as needed.
Organizations that are too inwardly focused often miss important happenings and opportunities in the market. Use these three ways to get your people to look outward for customer insights, competitor moves, and market changes:
Listen to customer-facing employees. Front-line employees are your ear to the pavement. Value them, ask them what they hear from customers, and if necessary, train them to listen for the right information.
Get people out. Send executives on sales calls. Ask directors to train as customer service reps. People calling the shots should meet customers face to face.
Share data, both good and bad. Some executives protect their employees from troublesome market or customer data. While well intentioned, this hinders your organization's responsiveness. If there is bad news, deliver it with a well-articulated plan.
Help Boost Your Company's Online Sales
Disappointed by your company's online sales? You're not alone. The problem isn't that Web consumers are cheap or disloyal. It's that most companies aren't exploiting what online shoppers really want: engagement.
You can engage your firm's Web site visitors by giving them information on products and services related to your core offerings and brand. Porsche, for instance, uses the Web to offer adventure tours and travel information, reinforcing its image of passion and high performance.
Learn what customers are interested in by offering them a list of topics and asking them to vote on their favorites. Use their responses to decide which attributes (wealth, attractiveness, exclusivity) you want customers to associate with your company's brand. Then provide supplementary information that helps them make those associations.
Energize Your Online Customers
Competing for your customers' attention online can be tough, especially when you're up against dancing banner ads and all of the daily e-mails customers get. Here are three tips to cut through the clutter and capture your customers' attention in this crowded space:
Create a sense of urgency. Send out a coupon that needs to be used by midnight or offer a free product to the first fifty respondents.
Energize your customers to tell their friends. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful and valuable, especially on the Internet. Give your customers something exciting that they'll want to share with their friends.
Make it fun. Whatever the interaction is, keep it simple, fresh, and engaging.
While knowing how your customers break down into measurable categories is helpful, typical demographics don't tell you much, if anything, about how your customers behave. To truly understand their motivations and ultimately why they do or don't buy your products, ask customers about their purchase experiences. With the purchase as the "end goal," what steps do your customers take to achieve that goal? What is their thought process as they take each step? What obstacles are in their way?
Understanding their answers will help you create and market products that your customers - not their demographic category - truly want.
Use Customer Passions to Grow Sales
Have you ever loved a product or service so much that you couldn't wait to tell everyone you know about it? All over the Web, people's passion for products has led them to share their love via You-Tube videos, blog posts, and Facebook groups. These "natural" spokespeople have created valuable buzz and initiated sales growth - all for free. Find your most devout customers and encourage them to talk about your products in their online forums. Ask them to rave on their blogs or create Facebook groups in support of your product. Thoroughly search the Web to see if natural spokespeople are already singing your product's praises. If so, harness that passion for free.
Advances in technology and pressure to cut costs have changed the customer service experience. Companies now push far more function and responsibility to the consumer. Here are three ways to support and involve your customers in this new paradigm:
Be transparent. Show your customers your company's internal systems so they feel part of the experience, not separated from it. For example, consider how shipping companies now allow customers to schedule pickups, print labels, and track packages on their own.
Convert or capitalize on tribes. There are groups of people who are going to blog, tweet, and find other ways to praise or complain about your products. Find your company's tribe and make it an ally in delivering a positive message.
Open the door to new talent. Some of your customers may be so enthusiastic about your product that they can sell it better than you can. Find ways to discover who these customers are and capitalize on their talents and passions.
For companies that care about the customer experience (and who doesn't?), integration is a must. Choreograph all your customer touch points so customers have a seamless experience, whether they walk in your store, reach your call center, or use your Web site. Be sure the systems and processes that support this coordination are in sync. Often, companies have channel-specific silos that are culturally and logistically at odds. Create incentives that encourage your people to coordinate across those channels. Look out for those who are barriers to a harmonized customer experience. If they can't learn to coordinate, it may be time for them to make room for their integration-minded colleagues.
Traditional demographic information, such as gender and age, is only so useful when getting to know your customers. Psychographic information reveals far more about customers' preferences and purchasing habits. If you understand how your customers interact with the world and what they value most, you are far more likely to be able to give them what they want. Ask them questions geared at their personalities and preferences. Use association-based questions, such as, "If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?" The answers will help you better profile your customers so you understand which products they want and how to market them.
The recession created unprecedented consumer anxiety. Consumers don't trust companies to stay around or to do the right thing. This means you need to tap into your customers' emotional sides. First, understand what makes them anxious. That anxiety may be distrust of your product or concern over their family and community. Then, craft a simple, emotional message that directly addresses that anxiety. For example, at a time when many consumers feel financially unstable, one insurance company created a Web site explaining that because it is owned by its policyholders, it's more likely to keep its promises.
Customers are far more likely to purchase a product or service if they feel valued by the person selling it. Underappreciated customers will look elsewhere to make their purchase. Reach out to your customers and make sure they know how important they are to you. Give them the opportunity to meet as many of your staff as possible, all the way up to the CEO. Thank them for their business and ask them to tell you about their company. When you create an emotional connection with them, they are more open to hearing what you have to offer and much more inclined to purchase. The connection needs to be genuine, however; your overtures shouldn't be phony or insincere.
Successfully communicating with customers is the foundation for all sales. Here are two tactics that will increase the likelihood your customers hear what you have to say:
Understand their language. Too many companies use a one-size-fits-all sales pitch. The reality is that your customers speak a unique language informed by their life experiences. Tailor your approach and your language for each customer.
Focus on them, not you. When trying to make a sale, you might be tempted to talk about "my company, my product's benefits, my product's features." Instead, turn the spotlight on your customers. Talk about their problems, their values, and their purchasing plans.
When it comes to customer data, many believe that multiple-choice surveys across large samples that can be statistically analyzed yield the most rigorous research. This type of analysis, however, only gives you a shallow understanding of your customers. To get more nuanced information, use qualitative methods to discover what your customers think about your products and services. Qualitative techniques, such as focus groups or open-ended questionnaires, let you delve deeper into the relationship between your firm and those who buy or use your products. They also allow your customers to express their opinions using their own words, not yours.
All organizations depend on customer feedback to make their businesses better and increase customer satisfaction. Yet customer complaints take up an inordinate amount of time and money, and the complainer doesn't often get what he wants. Here are three tips for expediting the complaint process and keeping customers happy:
Understand the full context. Try to understand as much as you can about the complaint. The more information you have, the easier it is to determine the root of the dissatisfaction.
Propose a resolution. Know what would make the situation better for your customer and propose ways you can solve the problem. Show respect. Complaining customers are often upset. Train employees receiving complaints to be empathetic and to reframe the harsh criticism they may receive into constructive feedback.
Involve Customers in Product Creation
The best way to get your customers excited by your product or service is to involve them in creating it. Instead of offering them what you think they need, ask them to help you design what they want. If you are a consultant, design the project with your clients, not for them. Leverage their deep knowledge about the company culture and personality. If you are in the business of selling products, hold an online contest to bring customer design ideas to the table. Customers who have a stake in the development process are far more likely to feel pride of ownership and be happy with the end product.
Develop Services Your Customers Want
Creating services that captivate consumers and generate profits is tough - thanks to the abundance of offerings, vendors, and channels. (Consider the options available for someone who wants to see a movie.)
To stand above the crowd, don't start with technology. You'll risk creating services that are too far ahead of customers' priorities, too cumbersome for people to use, or too expensive to produce profitably.
Instead, begin with customers' needs - both those they're aware of and those they don't know they have. To uncover these needs, host interactive online forums with sophisticated users who can illuminate what other users may want to do in the coming years. Analyze leading-edge consumer activities in international markets. Take time to research product investments being made in industries related to your service offering.
Today's consumers reward simplicity. They want direct connection and streamlined design. Find unnecessary complexity in your organization: Is it in your product offerings, your processes, your services, or all of the above? Do you offer too many product variations? (GM has forty-seven brands of cars.) Or do you have costly functions that need to be better integrated? (Seagate Technology had the highest R&D costs in the industry after accumulating and not integrating acquisitions.) Find ways to cut the clutter in your business. Serve your customers how they want to be served - simply.