Usually, when a company identifies an initiative, it's clear what needs to be accomplished. Team members then dive into the implementing tactics, measuring progress along the way. Ideally, the project gets completed on time, and on budget. So should we consider that success? The better question is, did we get the most out of the initiative itself?

A value proposition's job is to gravitate your prospects towards your business. To stand out. To connect and resonate. Customers are constantly looking for unique benefits and advantages they can capitalize on - but too many organizational value props are focused more on the company than the customer. They aren't framed through the eyes, perspective, and context of the customer's needs, wants, and challenges.

Companies are consistently looking for new ways to grow. Every organization is trying to discover new innovations which will catapult revenue, and build a bigger gap between them and the competition. However, many of these organization's leaders are making business decisions they can defend, rather than what will truly make an impact.

It's driven by a fundamental psychological bias we all face - loss aversion. Loss aversion is the tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. Loss aversion implies that one who loses $100 will lose more satisfaction than another person will gain satisfaction from a $100 windfall.

The nature of productivity is to identify what needs to get done and make sure it gets done in a timely fashion. However, there’s a big difference between being busy and being productive. Today, too many organizational leaders get wrapped up in proving their department's worth by the number of accomplishments, rather than the value of those accomplishments. 

There is a difference between having a lot to do and being busy. And there is an even bigger difference between being busy and getting (the most valuable) things done.

The popular Progressive commercials with Dr. Rick tend to hit a bit too close to home sometimes. Focused on the concept of "helping new homeowners avoid becoming their parents", it's also very relevant to us as organizational leaders. When we are young and starting our careers, we are aspirational. We embrace change and learning. We are humble enough to learn from our mistakes and are bold enough to encourage our peers to look at new ways of thinking and problem-solving. However, as we move later into our careers, we can lose that drive and turn into our "old bosses".

I heard the oddest thing, and I've heard it multiple times over the course of my career. Companies that are afraid to ask their customers what they want. Or ask them how the organization is performing. Or involve them in a new product or service creation.

Companies fail for a variety of reasons. And more often than not, we don't want to admit it occurs most frequently because of our own actions - or more importantly - our own inactions. Even though we can argue issues like cash flow, pandemics, disruptions, and the inability for teams to innovate - organizational failure actually boils down to three core killers.

Every organization wants to stand out from their competitors, but very few are truly successful at it. Outside of the frequently lauded names such as Apple, Amazon, and USAA, companies continue to do a lot of 'talking about' and 'studying', yet struggle to capture the same magic. The problem is these same organizations are using an old set of tools for a new set of challenges.

Most companies believe they understand their customers, but a recent study conducted with 50 CEOs across financial, insurance, and manufacturing industries indicates otherwise. The study, conducted in June of 2020, examined the connection between the perception of understanding customer needs and actual organizational behaviors. The overarching conclusion is: even with the widest variety of tools available to organizations, there is a significant gap in the ability to identify the needs of customers.

In 1928, American sociologist William Isaac Thomas theorized, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." In other words, a consequence will come to fruition based on how one interprets the situation. This concept came to life only a few years later, with the fall of the banking system during the Great Depression.

Between 1931-1933, those banks that were on strong financial footing were driven to insolvency by bank runs. Often, a false rumor started that a bank was insolvent (incapable of covering its deposits), a panic ensued, and depositors wanted to withdraw their money all at once before the bank’s cash ran out. When the bank could not cover all the withdrawals, it actually did become insolvent. Thus, an originally false belief led to its own fulfillment.