Donald Mitchell's Articles in Business

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Zoom Toward Accomplishing Breakthrough Goals Most people know how to set high goals, but few have any idea how to implement those high goals. As a result, the high goals are abandoned, and improvements crawl along. In this article, you'll learn how to rapidly turn high goals into that level of performance. Your Business Model Is Obsolete And Falling Profits Face You Static business models don't have a chance in the global, connected marketplace. Continual upgrades of business models are needed. Would You Hire a Carpenter Who Never Measures? -- Progress through Measurements of What to Work on Sloppy carpentry can ruin the most valuable materials and leave a mess that costs a fortune to correct. Yet many businesses limit themselves to measuring physical things, such as a good carpenter might do. Perhaps no more helpful measurements exist than those that direct us towards valuable tasks. Win the Race to Make Breakthrough Improvements "What if" thinking can lead to seeing higher potential areas for creating breakthrough improvements. This article provides an example of how to do this kind of thinking and accomplish a large profit improvement. Who, What, and Where You Provide Your Offerings Have Huge Profit Effects This article looks at the interaction of customer selection and location with the type of offerings you provide for impacting profits and growth potential. Which New Customers Should You Try to Attract? To many business leaders, one customer is about the same as another . . . except where personal friendships are involved. But 80 percent of profits come from only 20 percent of customers. Be sure you go after the right new customers to gain the most profit growth. Where Does the Customer's CEO Sit? Dealing with huge forces you can't control requires careful attention, tact, and quick action. What One Thing Can Most Improve a Company's Growth and Profits? Continuing business model innovation is what company leaders must do best in setting a strategy and a learning agenda. What Is a Good Business Model? Leaders can use this article to test the quality of their business model. What If You Knew You Could Only Succeed? You can accomplish more than you think you can by working on gaining more confidence, knowledge, and experience. What Are the Highest and Best Directions for Your Offerings and Talents? If we aim at less than what we and our offerings can provide we shortchange customers and ourselves. As the world changes, we need to constantly review how we can provide better applications of our offerings and talents. Weave a Flawless Fabric of Cooperation Many believe that the need to cooperate is a disadvantage. But start with the right concept for cooperation, and you'll turn cooperation into a flawless advantage. Value: Locate Ideas to Create More Sales from Improved Value at the Current Price If you want to improve the profitability of your business model the most, you need to add value without increasing price. Value Conflicts: Do Your Customers See Slashing Your Organization's Size as Good for Them? Value alignment works a lot better than value conflicts. Yet many profit-obsessed leaders and managers choose directions that cause such conflicts . . . making profit problems worse instead of better. Use Scenarios to Retest the Need for Outsourcing Before Signing a Contract When circumstances change, outsourcing may be a bad idea. Scenarios can help you think through how circumstances might void the benefits of a long-term outsourcing contract. Use Price to Attract More Attention for New Business Models Low prices get attention better than claims of better offerings. Use Outsourcing to Learn How to Do-It-Yourself Outsourcing can be a tactical decision to gain strategic advantages, such as when you need to learn how to do something. Use Moore's Law to Get More Lead Time on Irresistible Force Changes The continual improvement in electronics will provide opportunities to create more and better ways to anticipate irresistible forces in the future. Use Measurements to Check Your Perceptions of Irresistible Forces and Powerful Trends Once you've identified your irresistible forces and powerful trends, you need to develop accurate perceptions. Measuring the forces and trends is essential to improving your perceptions. Use Knee-Jerk Reactions to Kick Start Improvements Many businesspeople make it too complicated when it comes to creating an environment for making improvements. This article shows how basic instincts are the best way to give you the results you want. Use Hands-On Apprenticeships to Create Breakthrough Performance Continuing skill expansion is critical to creating breakthroughs. Use Guerrilla Tactics to Locate the Best High-Speed Paths to Growth Unconventional sources for finding growth paths are usually cheaper, faster, and more accurate than the tried and true methods in an industry. This article suggests a process for finding such unconventional sources that organizations of any size can benefit from using. Use Custom Incentives To Stimulate Breakthroughs People are likely to respond to different sorts of rewards for using their skills well. Be sure to use the right rewards for each person. Use Curiosity and Questions to Improve Your Business Model This article demonstrates how one man built a very profitable single-person business through continuing business model innovation to add more benefits for his customers. Use Competitors To Anticipate And Profit From Powerful Trends Competitors actions and results can often reveal the future and current direction of powerful trends. Use Breakthrough Solution Cost Reductions as a Management Development Tool You can expand the rate of cost reductions by making learning about breakthrough solution cost reductions a required part of becoming a more senior level manager in your organization. Upgrade to a New Business Model Rather Than Try to Get More Out of Your Existing Business Model This article asks what you as a leader and entrepreneur should focus on: better business models or increasing the performance of your existing business models. Upgrade the Role You Play in Your Customers' Lives Would you rather lead a star business or be a bit performer? This article describes how the role you choose in serving customers determines your ultimate success. Understand the Seven Dimensions of a Business Model Through an Example A child's lemonade stand provides an example of what a business model is. Understand The Always-Win, No-Lose Strategy Rather than be buffeted by irresistible forces, it's better to choose a strategy that is always superior regardless of circumstances. Turn Business Model Leadership into Industry Leadership Can a small industry player use a new business model to become the industry leader? You bet. This article discusses how this might be done in gold mining. Treat Those With Bad News Well, or You'll Never Know What Hit You Leaders and managers usually don't know what's going on. If they bite off the heads of those who tell about problems, no one will warn them of what to look out for. Travel the Road Less Threatened to Succeed Taking on extra risk for no potential gain is a foolish choice. Not checking for the risk-reward relative to irresistible trends is even more foolish. Tough Love Helps a Financial Executive Meet His Career Goals Many organizations don't offer mentoring bosses. When that's the case, you may want to rely on taking courses from professors who have been senior executives in major companies to get the mentoring you need for a fast-track career. To Start a Successful Consulting Firm, Learn from Your Clients Clients will teach you what you need to know about what services they need and how they want those services provided. But you have to be a sincere student of your current and potential clients to gain the right learning. To Prosper the Most Measure How You Are Doing with Non-Accounting Measures Accounting measures are often inaccurate for making strategic decisions. Use non-accounting measures to determine how you are doing. To Prosper Look for Causes and Continually Monitor Irresistible Forces Many mistake trends by failing to understand the trend's causes and by not tracking what's happening with the trend. Eliminate those errors and you'll be much more successful in exploiting trends. To Profit More From Powerful Trends, Compile an Irresistible Force Inventory Measuring irresistible forces needs to begin with identify what the forces are and what's happening with them. To Prepare for Future Challenges, Throw Away Your Hockey Stick Forecasts A common assumption about the future is that circumstances will be difficult for a while, but then a era of easy success will follow. Wrong! To Make Great Cost Reductions Start with a Global Perspective By only looking at your home country, you'll miss most of the good opportunities to eliminate unnecessary costs. To Make Exponential Cost Reductions, Start by Eliminating the Unnecessary You want to reduce costs by 96 percent. Where do you start? Eliminate the unnecessary. To Lower Your Costs the Most, Start with Growing Your Market This article explores ways to stimulate a market to develop faster than it would otherwise do. To Lower Costs Through Simplification, Have a More Exciting Purpose Inspiration is valuable in reducing costs. With an exciting purpose, better ideas will be developed and implemented. To Grow Rapidly, Don't Be Misaligned and Cast Adrift Values are helpful guides to action when they are known and appreciated. Many leaders make the mistake of not communicating what the organization's values are. To Grow Faster Temper Your Optimism with First-Hand Information The best way to test your beliefs about trends is to get information from as close to the source as possible. With better information, you'll make more appropriate decisions. To Grow Faster Take the Simple Route to Expansion Where You Can Safely Travel Fastest Having chosen a way to grow much more, it's easy to get bogged down when trying to actually grow. In many cases, those implementation problems are created by having chosen a poor way to pursue growth. This article provides good ways to choose better growth paths. To Grow and Reduce Costs Avoid Making Customers Wait in Unending Lines That Frustrate Them Speed up customer service without harming the quality of that service, and you'll reduce costs and add customers. To Erase Harmful Costs, Provide Hands-On Experiences Before Offerings Are Sold Extensive trials with offerings in everyday situations can spot and help you eliminate harmful costs. To Eliminate Harmful Costs Help the Unskilled Avoid Accidents Costs don't end when you sell an offering. Those who use the offering incur costs that need to be avoided also. Accidents are often the most harmful and expensive of such costs. To Eliminate Harmful Costs Ask Beneficiaries, Customers, Users How to Avoid Accidents Those who design offerings often have tunnel vision concerning how the offerings can cause harm. But those with a fresh eye can deliver cost-slashing insights. To Earn More, Create a One-Step Solution for Providing Your Offering Providing for customers needs to be simple. This article explores why and what the implications are for leaders and managers. To Change Irresistible Forces, Add A Pinch Of Prototypes And A Cup Of Celebrity To A Dash Of Demand This article describes how to change the direction of irresistible forces to favor your enterprise. To Appreciate a Trend Look Over the Curve of the Horizon A long perspective helps make the implications of irresistible forces clearer. With a clearer perspective, you can pick the right strategy. Throw Me A Blindfold--The Cover-Up Stall Keeps You Blind to Powerful Forces Avoiding embarrassment is a human instinct that gets in the way of finding and dealing with irresistible forces. Thinking about Marketing Stickiness How do you make people be interested in and focused in on a new concept that isn't yet proven? This article uses a case history to describe how this can be accomplished. The Well-Aligned Enterprise Using the Right Operating Principle Goes Further When an organization can encapsulate a key principle in a way that everyone can understand and act on, that principle will guide everyone to accomplish more of the right things. The Shortest Route Is Not Always the Quickest When You Look to Grow Look to the most effective way to make progress, not the most direct. The Seven Dimensions of a a Business Model "Experts" are fond of telling entrepreneurs to have an advantaged business model, but seldom define what a business model is. This article provides a clear definition that can be used to start thinking about how to create an advantaged business model The Future Value of Business Model Innovation Those who provide continuing business model innovations rapidly and easily will gain exponentially larger competitive advantages and profit gains. The Competitive Importance of Continuing Business Model Innovation You can gain lasting competitive advantages. How? By continually upgrading your business model in more profitable ways. Test Your Exponential Profit Growth Strategies Out of Sight Competitors may steal your growth strategies if they monitor your tests. This article looks at how to avoid that problem. Take Purchase Frequency Into Account in Estimating When Trends and Irresistible Forces Will Shift Purchase frequency is a major influence on forecasting changes in trends and irresistible forces. Take Out Insurance: Check Your Cost-Reducing Solutions with Outsourcing Many people stop when they think they've found a cheaper way to do things. But their "great" solution may not match what an outsourcer can do better at lower cost. Take Costs Away from Customers If You Want More of Them A narrow focus on operating cost reduction can create inefficiencies for customers that drive down sales and profits. The article explains that you have to look at both your own and customers' costs before making a business model change. Take 38 Hours Off from Your Work Week and Still Get the Same Results Most business people spend their time on tasks that don't need to be done, performing tasks that do need to be done in in effective ways, and by involving themselves in work that doesn't need their input. In this article, I explain how you can get your work done in very little time while still accomplishing just as much. Table Tennis Balls Inspire Superior Business Model Innovation An original business thinker derives ideas for major profit improvements from enjoying table tennis. In this article, you will see ways you can use your interests and added education to boost your career and credibility. Support Cost Reductions Through Simplification with Processes Organized support for simplification through establishing processes is more effective than simply ordering simplification. Study Your Instructions Carefully Before Launching into Exponential Cost Reductions Many cost reduction efforts are a disaster. Why? They cause costs to rise. Strive for an Ideal Business Model An ideal business model brings exponentially greater rewards than a good business model does. This article describes the ideal approach. Stop Daydreaming about Having More and Grasp a Hen That Lays Golden Eggs Most people would like to have more . . . and know just what they would spend more money on. They would do better to find a way instead to create more with limited effort. Step Up to Serve Customers as They Become More Affluent and Educated Global cost reductions often come from serving those in underdeveloped countries as they emerge into the money-based economy to buy and use global offerings. Step Two: Learn How to Anticipate When Irresistible Forces Will Shift Anticipation of force and trend shifts is more valuable than merely adapting to force and trends shifts after they occur. This article discusses how to anticipate such shifts. Step Three: Identify Future Best Practices for Locating, Anticipating and Adapting to Trend Changes You need to appreciate the full potential use of irresistible forces before you start applying your knowledge. Step Six: Near the Ideal Practice for Locating, Anticipating, and Adapting to Irresistible Forces Be sure to come as close to perfect as you can in locating, anticipating, and adapting to irresistible forces. Step Seven: Enhance Your People's Ability to Achieve the Benefits of Irresistible Force Management Building and motivating your organization are key elements in achieving the full benefits of irresistible force management. This article points out that critical skills are probably missing in your enterprise, and that they must be quickly added through hiring, training, and by adding partners and suppliers. Step One: Recognize How Measurements Can Help Identify and Understand More About Irresistible Forces Most people don't think about identifying and measuring irresistible forces. But learning how to do this is essential to taking advantage of irresistible forces. Step Four: Find Ways to Exceed the Future Best Practices in Your Enterprise To gain a competitive advantage, you have to outdo the best that anyone else will be doing in the future. Step Five: Identify the Ideal Best Practice for Dealing with Changes in Irresistible Forces There is a nearly perfect way for relating to irresistible forces. This article explains why it's important to identify this nearly perfect way. Step Eight: Repeat Steps One Through Seven for More Effectiveness in Irresistible Force Management Each time you repeat the first seven steps of the irresistible force management process, you will make exponential improvements in your performance. The article looks at example to explain this point. Steer Your Customers to the Right Offerings Most customers pick the wrong offerings and for the wrong reasons. The resulting disappointments harm your business. This article shows how to avoid that problem. Start Sooner on Developing Your Profit-Expanding Communications Instructions for creating a profit-expanding opportunity are usually left until the last moment. The result is often a confusing mess that leaves lots of profit unachieved. Standard Incentive Programs Don't Fit Anybody Customize incentives to each person to help them perform at their best. Square the Benefits of Your Recent Breakthrough Cost Reductions By repeating the breakthrough cost-reduction process, you can double the size of the benefits you gain. Speed Up Your Profit Expansion by Stealthily Testing Every Promising Idea Simultaneously Organizations often presume to know what profit expanding tests will work best. This article points out that you are better off assuming that you don't know and how to act on that observation. Smoke Out and Eliminate Pesky Long-Term Problems Every organization is hobbled by problems that everyone knows about, but no one has solved. This article describes methods for finding and accomplishing lasting solutions. Six Degrees of Opportunity: Connecting Knowledge in All Directions This article describes how re-forming your business model can allow your take knowledge and provide and receive more value from it. Simulate Accidents to Create Self-Education in Avoiding Accidents Help customers eliminate accidents and you'll reduce costs that retard acceptance of your offerings. Simulating accidents is a good way to help customers educate themselves in this regard. Simplify, Simplify Again, and Simplify Some More for Your Customers Complications add cost, create delays, annoy customers, and open the door to errors. Leaders and managers need to focus their organizations on operating as simply and directly as possible. Simplify Your Work to Make Your Work Better Many people cannot resist adding little touches to improve an offering or a way of providing that offering. Yet if those little touches add more work, they may ultimately diminish the value for customers and users by increasing mistakes while driving those who produce the offering crazy. Keep it simple! Simplify Each Business Model Step for Customers, Users, and Beneficiaries Even a simple, effective business model can be made even simpler by taking each step that customers, users, and beneficiaries go through and making each step even simpler. Share Your Growth Vision by Telling Your Story Better Ask most people in an organization what they are supposed to be doing, and you'll find some confused employees. Tell those same people a compelling story about the organization's purpose, and they'll know what to do. This article explains what to do in crafting your vision story. Seven Ways To Stupidly Lose Profits By Trusting Others Other organizations will act in their own best interests . . . you can count on that irresistible force playing its role in your business. Seven Simple Steps to Locating Your Profit-Expanding Obstacles Most attempts to grow faster fail due to running into large unanticipated obstacles. This article describes a method for locating such obstacles before you try to grow. Set Goals Beyond What Seems to Be the Theoretical Best Practice Limits mainly exist in the mind. Set goals that go beyond what you can conceive and you are likely to achieve the cost-reduction goals. Set Cost Reduction Goals to Move Years Ahead of Competitors by Seeking Worldwide Expertise While your competitor is trying to take 5 percent out of costs, you should be working on a cost breakthrough. Self-Justification Is Usually a Mistaken Excuse Not to Address Powerful Trends Those who take a self-sacrificing approach to irresistible forces will often simply waste away critical resources. Get busy addressing what's running against you! Select the Best Opportunities for Establishing a Vastly More Profitable Business Model Most organizations have far more opportunities to create improved business models than they can implement. How should you choose a new model? Seek Out Ugly Ducklings to Find the Best Profit Opportunities If something smells and looks bad, few will go near. Yet that unattractive mess may be a jackpot in disguise as Alexander Fleming discovered in finding out more about bread mold ... and producing penicillin. Chances are your competitors are ignoring the same areas, and you can leap ahead and end up smelling like roses by diving into understanding what everyone else avoids. Salespeople: Ask Questions to Find Out if You Are Getting Your Point Across Most salespeople focus on a great pitch for their offerings. But it may not be such a great pitch if the listener doesn't care about what you have to say or doesn't understand. Questions can help you make more sales than even the best pitch. Rule Out Cover Ups to Gain Advantages for Pursuing Powerful Trends Hints about new powerful trends and shifts in existing ones usually show up in unexpected failures. Keep those failures quiet, and you delay progress in dealing with the trends.
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