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2017 the only prediction that’s guaranteed

Welcome its 2017. That in itself poses a question, is it a start of a new year, a start of the next business cycle or just a start of another day or week with a new set of challenges.

What is clear it’s the start of a new page which predictably brings out those that love to forecast, act as if they know what’s going to happen and aspiring to be knowledgeable by sounding the warning bells of the humps in the road. Here, it is right to point out, it’s a real rarity for any soothsayer to be right. In fact they are predominantly wrong.

For anyone with the aspiration to be second to none and if they were to have a New Year’s resolution it would be not to waste valuable time reading or listening to predictions. However, with that said looking at history does provide lessons, indicators and guidance of new ways to achieve even more.

The caveat here is that someone else’s history is theirs and only an idea. If you follow trends, play follow the leader and aspire to be as others, that’s all you become, their second cousin clone. This is best summed up with a quote from Lesly Hornby when she asked a reality show wannabe what their aspiration was. The response was they wanted to be like ‘so and so’, to that she replied with they already exist – you will achieve more with a direction based on yourself.

We all do it though, follow others because it works for them so it must be good and could work for us, copy their marketing, their PR, and turn up at the same venues. Is it because we need to say look at me I can do that as well or do we really believe that in someone else’s playground we can thrive. With the benefit of hindsight copying and emulating is quite lazy marketing, lazy management and to a certain extent quite a dumb idea – but we still all do it.

Then we look at the big hitters, the Mega stars of industry. They are carving their own route to market, have their own playground and as a consequence are more profitable than those that consider themselves main stream or part of the club. More importantly their customer base tends to be exclusively theirs and not for sharing

It may surprise you to know even 10 years ago one company in the fenestration industry was pulling in 2,000 installed frames a week just from a website acting as its direct sales operation. Saving customer’s time and hassle by letting them shop online and providing the service they needed. Others are finding similar highly profitable (and I do mean profit way above the norm) ways to generate volume sales via social media. That’s of course their market place and they own it.

It is clear if you innovate, be it in the market place or with a product, you can dominate, and that is the point, customers are attracted to success – it’s a self-perpetuating concept. Dominating is how you morph into a leader and not someone’s second hand shadow. Leaders define their market in a way that when others want to play they have to accept rules that they can’t influence.

There is no halfway to success, just success, if you think about it the alternatives are just attempts to delay decline. A good guide to finding this unique path is how many times you get it wrong. If there are no disasters along the way the logic is you are not pushing harder enough, not finding the limit, so will always be overtaken. Being top of your game is when you hit that sweat spot near the edge where others don’t have the nerve, expertise or ability to steer.

A true prediction – for now 2017 is ours, we define it, and it will be what we make of it. The fenestration industry for those in control will thrive and flourish, those that follow will do all right and pat themselves on the back as a job well done – but miss the point.

A very Happy and Prosperous New Year

MBA Associates

Cognitive Dissonance
(Or continuing to believe despite the evidence!)

It’s a human trait that once we come to a conclusion or a perceived solution to a problem the belief in that conclusion or the way to solve the problem gets very hard to shift. It’s actually quite amazing the lengths that people will go to, to try and fit the evidence (often hard empirical evidence) into the model of the world that they have created and despite all the evidence to the contrary they believe what they believe. In other words people will convince themselves of a falsehood rather than alter their model of the world (or tell a lie as in the well-known Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith study carried out back in 1954).

This trait is one to watch out for in business and one that is so very common when you start to watch the way that managers and teams approach problem solving. Often they start with a perceived conclusion and try (like hell!) to make their experimental results fit the conclusion they have come to previously or the ‘facts’ they have learned. There is a simple game to play with ‘lean’ for example where participants are asked to find the most efficient way of performing a simple task like signing a number of letters, folding them and then putting them in the envelopes, sealing them and posting. The belief that batches are the most efficient way of doing anything (sign all the letters then fold them all then stuff all the envelopes then post the ‘batch’) is embedded in most people but in fact one piece flow (sign, fold, stuff seal and post each letter one at a time) is significantly more efficient (and by the way means customers get their letters more quickly, some significantly so). This translates into the more complex manufacturing processes that they encounter in their working life and whilst not ideal in our scenario it can actually lead to very serious consequences if you think about this human trait affecting how a doctor or surgeon decides on a course of action, for example bloodletting = lifesaving used to be a known fact. ..[ more ]