We rush to answers.

This good in some places. The savana perhaps when leafing though a flora and fauna guide to assess the leathality of the sabre tooth would have ended in certain death.

But rushing to answers will kill your relationship, your team and your business.

We need to treat big problems as we hope our medical advisors treat us—-with a clear and agreed understanding of the problem at hand.

In this episode of Riot Point Radio you get the solution the palm of your hand.

• What’s not working?

• Tell me more…

• Does that summarise the problem?
  

Welcome to this special edition of Riot Point Radio

What a mess this virus is creating.

Can’t go to work? Losing sales?

Can we use what’s going on to build a better business?

Yes we can.

Can we talk business? Please.

I've enjoyed the online self-development stuff but enough already. 

I'm done with following the online workout, and people trying to sell me their technical solutions to remote working. 

I don't want to use this lockdown to 'learn how to mediate.'  I want to use it to improve the quality of my business, and sure as heck I don't want to be under this stress at the next pandemic.   

Are you the same? This is where I am.

• If it's not about making customers or keeping customers, I don't want it in my inbox. 

• The only ‘economy’ I can really improve is yours and mine.

So, come on, let’s get back to business.  

As they say in construction, “Let’s start pouring concrete.”

Based on my customer research (you’ll hear this in the Radio broadcast), this is what we’re going to do.

Two things. 

Part 1. We’re going to give you a framework that will help you make sense of what’s going on at the moment. It will help you analyse what has worked in the past, and what will work in the future.

You’ll receive this via a special episode of Riot Point TV next week.

It will include an diagnostic exercise of your business (yes, we’re all Doctors now) and we’ll use this output as raw material for part 2.

Part 2, We’re going to offer you a simple but powerful guide for helping you thrive in the day after the chaos passes. We’re calling this the “Battlefield Guide to Strategy in a Post-Corona World”. 

It’s a set of field manuals that will help you respond when you’re under fire but still have a mission to fulfil.

And there’s no need for your sign up for anything. It’ll come to your inbox unless you opt-out.

You hear that? That’s the truck of action pulling up.  

C’mon. 

Let’s start pouring concrete.

Oh, and if you know someone else who wants to pour concrete, pass this on. Share the love.

Customer service research is a cost-effective way to drive up sales at ever increasing prices. It’s also a remarkable tool for taking out risks in new product development.And, as a bonus you get customer needs spelt out in customer language. What a treasure trove for executives.

But after early decent yields, they are disappointed when the tree stops producing fruit.

Naturally, they blame the tree. But they’d be wrong.

They don’t understand Pavlov and Pink Floyd—-but you can. Listen to this episode of Riot Point Radio

Riot Point Radio: Your dose of provocative thinking

The most important acronym for your business is not ROI. it’s ABM.

What’s ABM?

ABM is Always Be Marketing. Lack of it can kill your business.

A colleague of mine learnt this lesson the hard way.

He was delivering full tilt to his best and biggest customer-and then one day he got a call. 

The customer was leaving his family and his job tp take up as golf course marshall in the Bahamas—with his (very much younger) companion.

While the former customer went to bang balls on the range, my mate went from boom to bust.

That’s when I learnt about the importance of ABM. Always Be Marketing. Always be filling the pipeline.

For the rest of us it’s “they won’t come if they don’t know.”

In fact, I’d go as to far to say,

the smaller your organisation the better you need to be at marketing.  

Which means, if like me you fly solo, you are a marketeer. 

And if you’re not, there might be desperate times ahead.

Look, I won’t blow my own trumpet but I will blow yours.  

I bet you’ve been beaten to business by folks who’s offer compared yours is, frankly, dung. 

But they’ve beaten you to the punch by being better at marketing. Or even just doing marketing.

I bet you’ve the worlds best mouse-trap. But while you’re in your basement workshop perfecting it, some bloke is out there selling a fly swatter saying it kill anything from beetles to rats.

He can’t get away with that.  You’re better than him. But nobody knows it. And that’s going to change. 

Be a marketeer.  Get into the marketing habit.  This habit yields return whether you’ve marketing a product, a service or a cause. 

You should be marketing in some way shape or form every week. If not, that guy with the fly swatter is going to be eating your lunch and I don’t want you to go hungry.

Remember these eight words and chant daily as you summon the marketing muse.

No tell, no sell. No sell, no….

Sign up here for tips and tricks on strategy, leadership and marketing, 

When you solve problems, do you prefer to think out of the box? 

In fact, do you take a sledge hammer to the box and pulp it.

If so, then you’re an innovative problem solver (and a muscular one too it would appear) according the Kirton Adaptor Innovator theory or KAI.

Or do you prefer to be creative by looking at what's worked in the past, and extending that success by continuous improvement.  

If it ain't broken, improve it is your motto.

Then, according the Kirton Adaptor Innovator theory, you're an adaptive problem solver.

Time to redress the balance.

Everyone likes to ‘think-out-of-the-box’ til the wind builds up and the temperature drops.

Then who do they rely on?

Innovators, do you need adaptors to help you get things off the ground?

Yes?

Then learn how they think and how to get their buy-in and expertise.

This episode is for you.

To be successful we need both styles but, as you'd expect, those of us making better beautiful boxes don't always appreciate a sledge hammer through the front door.

So how should innovators and adaptors work with each other for greatest mutual benefit?

Well you're about to one half of the answer.  

In part 1 we heard from an innovators perspective. In part 2  Sandi gives us the adaptors perspective.

If you're interested in knowing whether you're an innovator or a creative adaptor, you can find out more here.

Or, you can send me an email.

Come with me to the mid-1800’s.

You’re a doctor, a surgeon and fine one too.  You’ve a reputation for speed. 

It’s just as well, because anaesthetics have yet to be discovered. 

Most amputations, extractions or gouging out of tumours are finished in game-on, pain-on excruciating sprint lasting anywhere between 30 secs and 5 mins.

But the agony for the patient doesn’t end there. Fifty percent of patients die of post-surgery infections and, annoyingly, that plays havoc with your accounts receivables system. The dead patient market segment contributes less gross margin than others.

And one day into your surgery comes a sales rep offering you the choice of  anaesthetics or antiseptics. 

You can’t have both. Which would you choose? 

Find out what choice most surgeons made and how the answer can help boost your next product or service innovation.

Welcome to this episode of Riot Point Radio.

On 16th October 1846, surgeon Henry Bigelow performed the first recorded operations under anaesthetic at Mass General in Boston.  A young woman, who’d undergone tumour removal, awoke and claimed to have no recollection of pain or the procedure.

In mid-November Bigelow published his experiences in the Boston Medical Surgical Journal.

By mid-December, surgeons in Paris and London were using anaesthetics.  By February the following year, anaesthetics were being used in most of the capitals of Europe. By June, you’d find the anaesthetics in use around the world.  

Anaesthetics went from trial to commonplace in 7 months.

Contrast this with antiseptics.

In the 1860’s, one in two patients who’d undergone major operations such as fractures or amputations died from sepsis-infection. But Joseph Lister, a surgeon in Edinburgh Scotland, noted that these numbers greatly reduced if a stinging dose of carbolic acid was applied to wounds, surgeons hands, instruments and swabs.  

Surgeons were requested to perform operations under an irritating mist of Carbolic Acid. 

Nursing staff had to endure washing their hands and soak bandages in burning solutions before applying to open wounds.

All time-consuming and sometimes painful new activities. 

In 1867, Lister published his findings in the British medical journal ‘the Lancet.’

Now you might predict a similar frenetic rate of adoption as anaesthetics, but no. It was laborious and unenthusiastic

Twenty years later, a surgeon at Mass General, home of the first operation with anaesthetics, noted, “the use of washing hands by surgeons is perfunctory.” In other words, done without much effort or interest.

So what’s the difference between the uptake of the two.

Firstly, anaesthetics solved immediately a visible (and audible) proble.  Secondly, resolution of this immediate problem was to the benefit of all participating parties. Everyone involved got something out of it. The patients less pain; the doctor more time (and less stress) in order to accomplish a better job.

In contrast antiseptics solved a problem which was neither visible nor immediate.  The gap between surgery and sepsis was days or weeks; not the seconds or minutes gap of anaesthetics.

And with antiseptics, benefits were accrued by only one of the two participating parties, the patient. Yet delivery of this benefit was reliant on a significant change in protocol and behaviours by medical who received little in return other blistered hands and personal satisfaction.

So what can we learn from this

Well, if you want rapid uptake up of your products, services or ideas you should hit these 3 points, 

1. Solve an observable (and ideally big) problem

2. Resolve it rapidly and

3. Benefit of all participating parties.

   Even if you’re solving a huge problem, such as climate change or social responsibility programmes, break it down and dig out some visible and immediate wins.

Be a little more anaesthetic and a little less antiseptic.

Finally, a goodbye and thank you to an outstanding anaesthetist, Laurence who is no longer with us. A kind friend to many and holder of great a sense of humour.

This is for him.

Question: How many anaesthetists does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Ten…Nine..Eight..Sev

Living life as a high-innovator is fun—and tough.

Stimulating and energetic when you’re in your preferred style.

“When I’m with other innovators it’s like I’m tapped into the main grid. The energy I get is amazing.”

Sapping and claustrophobic when you’re not.

“Adhering to needless bureaucracy. It sucks the life out of me. Doing expenses is blotting paper for the soul”

In this episode of Riot Point Radio I chat with Susan Robertson on how high innovators can reveal the strengths to others, while adopting coping strategies to deal with the less fun parts of life.

Strategy and budget presentation 2019

Have you, like me, been in a presentation so boring that, though you hadn’t given up the will to live, you wish the presenter had.

Or been exasperated by emails which go on and on, screen after screen, but never come to the point

Or worse, have you feared that ’tis you who is the drab presenter or the tedious typer of text.

Don’t worry, because even if you are the winner of the Duff Communicator gold medal, you’re not to blame. 

So whose fault is it and what can you do about it?  

Well I’ll tell you on this edition of Riot Point Radio

So who’s to blame if you’re a poor communicator? Well, if you were raised in a loving family home, it’s your parents fault.

Why?

Remember that first letter you did at school? 

It was all, “Today I did this, today I did that.” 

And when you took it home Mum and Dad cooed and your grandparents laid garlands upon your shoulders, confident a Noble prize in literature was a certainty in your teenage years. 

And thus they spoilt your ability to be a whizz communicator forever.

Until today.

You see, by responding as they did, your kind, loving family reinforced the wrong behaviour. 

As a budding Jane Austen you got the message, “If I write about me I’ll get a positive response.”

Wrong. Completely wrong.

You see, Master Hemingway, in the real world, effective communication is not about you. Not directly at least. It’s about them, your audience. And it holds true whether your audience are customers, colleagues or family members. 

The best communicators understand what makes people tick. They know we humans only want to know 3 things: 

That is the essence, the hard core of good communication. 

Get it right and you’ll get hugs from your customers, smiles from you boss—and money in the bank.

But get it wrong and the consequences of bad communication are serious.

Customers won’t buy your services because they won’t know how you can improve their lives. Only 11% of the money spent on adverting leads to sales.

Employees won’t know what’s going on so do their own thing.  In a study by Renaissance Worldwide, on 1 in 20 employees know their organisation’s strategy. That means 19 out of 20.

And there’s no such thing as ‘no communication.’ If you’re not communicating to your colleagues or employees they will fill the vacuum with their own story. And it’s likely to be closer to a Steven King horror novel than Harry met Sally.

The sole purpose of your communication is get action from your audience. 

• You’re not communicating to entertain. Leave that to Hollywood script writers.

• You’re not communicating to inform. Leave that to journalists at the BBC.

• You’re communicating to get things done. 

If you’re successful, your communication leads to physical action, not feelings.

And you don’t need to be a great orators like Cicero, Churchill or Lincoln.

And you don’t need to be the worlds best powerful, punchy writer.

But you do need to communicate to your audience

How do the best communicators get folks to take action?

Well you can find out two ways:

1. Sign up for Riot Pointer tips and tricks on the new website theriotpoint.com or

2. Come to a one day workshop, Communicating For Action.

Next week we talk, headlines, convincing copy, and call to action.

As ever, if you find this useful, pass it on.

Share the love.