CHAPTER COMPETITORS

DON’T COPY

There’s a formula for failure, though. The problem with this sort of copying is it skips understanding — and understanding is how you grow.

DECOMMODITIZE YOUR PRODUCT

If  you’re successful, people will try to copy what you do. It’s just a fact of life. But there’s a great way to protect yourself from copycats: Make you part of your product or service. Inject what’s unique about the way you think into what you sell. Decommoditize your product. Make it something no one else can offer.

Zappos.com – Customer Satisfaction

Polyface – sell clean meat to families

PICK A FIGHT

Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Starbucks

Audi vs. Traditional luxury car brands

Apple vs. Microsoft (&PC)

7UP vs. Coca Cola

Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers, too.

UNDERDO YOUR COMPEITION

This sort of one-upping, Cold War mentality is a dead end.

Flip does not have big screen, no photo-taking ability, no lots of stuff

Don’t shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight it. Be proud of it. Sell it as aggressively as competitors sell their extensive feature lists.

FOCUS ON YOU INSTEAD OF THEY – WHO CARES WHAT THEY’RE DOING?

Focus on competitors too much and you wind up diluting your own vision.

CHAPTER PRODUCTIVITY

Reasons to quit:

It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

Workflow:

• Why are you doing this?
• What problem are you solving?
• Is this actually useful?
• Are you adding value?
• Too much ketchup can ruin the fries. Value is about balance.
• Will this change behavior?
• Don’t add something unless it has a real impact on how people use your product.
• Is there an easier way?
• Problems are usually pretty simple. We just imagine that they require hard solutions.
• What could you be doing instead?
• What can’t you do because you’re doing this? For small team with constraints: if you do A, can you still do B and C before April? If not, would you rather have B or C instead of A?
• Is it really worth it?
• Is this meeting worth pulling six people off their work for an hour?

Good enough is fine

Find a judo solution, one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

When good enough gets the job done, go for it.

Quick wins:

Momentum fuels motivation.

The longer something takes, the less likely it is that you’re going to finish it.

Excitement comes from doing something and then letting customers have at it.

Try to break work down to small pieces… You want a steady stream of good news.

When there’s something new to announce every two weeks, you energize your team and give your customers something to be excited about.

Go to sleep

If it becomes a constant, the costs start to mount:

• Stubbornness
• Lack of creativity
• Diminished morale:
  You lose motivation to attack the big problems
• Irritability:
  Your ability to remain patient and tolerant is severely reduced when you’re tired.

Your estimates suck

Keep breaking your time frames down into smaller chunks. Instead of one twelve-week project, structure it as twelve one-week projects. Instead of guesstimating at tasks that take thirty hours or more, break them down into more realistic six-to-ten-hour chunks. Then go one step at a time.

Long lists don’t get done

There’s a better way. Break that long list down into a bunch of smaller lists. For example, break a single list of a hundred items into ten lists of ten items.

Yes, you still have the same amount of stuff left to do. But now you can look at the small picture and find satisfaction, motivation and progress.

Make tiny decisions

Once ego and pride are on the line, you can’t change your mind without looking bad. The desire to save face trumps the desire to make the right call. And then there’s inertia too: The more steam you put into going in one direction, the harder it is to change course.