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What does it take to become successful in the U.S.? An Interview with xBrain Co-founder

By visionandexecution on November 3, 2015 in

This is the second in a series from Vision & Execution expanding on research we did in fall 2014 about what it takes for an international company to be successful in the U.S. In each case Vision & Execution was retained to assist at some point in the process. We hope you will find these interviews illuminating as you go forward with your U.S. expansion.

International Entrepreneur Interviews

Gregory Renard, Co-founder, CTO – Chief Visionary Officer, xBrain

Mack:  What inspired you to expand to the US market?

Renard:  I had the opportunity to participate in Stanford’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Program in 2011.   While I had already created several companies in Europe I was impressed with the creative freedom to innovate that I experienced in Silicon Valley during this program.   Europe teaches you “don’t fail.”  The US has a much more supportive and nurturing culture towards innovation, and failure, so I felt I needed to be here.   In the US when you work hard and have a good idea, you have the ability to win big.  I worried if I would be good enough to succeed in Silicon Valley so I was not without fear moving here.   Being here in Silicon Valley has completely changed my point of view about risk – I’m now fully committed to the US mindset.

Mack:  Was it always your intention to be a global company? What did becoming a global company mean to you?

Renard:  With my personality I really needed to be my own boss so I was destined to become an entrepreneur.   I needed to have a bigger challenge than what was possible in Europe.   I had some lofty goals and I wanted to have a global impact.  My goal was to be the number one guy in Silicon Valley for my domain, and globally with our solution.

Mack:  How did you go about deciding where to expand first and why do you chose the region you did?

Renard:  The US is where AI (artificial intelligence) is happening, it’s the epicenter with a very small community of less than 100 experts.  I wanted to be part of that community because despite being competitors it’s still an open and collaborative community to exchange ideas.   I believed that by being part of the right innovative culture we would ultimately be more successful in Europe as well as make an impact in the US.

Mack:  What was your initial vision and timeframe was for achieving success in the US?

Renard:  I ended up moving here in fall of 2012.  I didn’t really have hard expectations about what we would achieve by my being here.  As the Founder and VP of Innovation I run R&D for xBrain so it’s my role to drive innovation throughout my company.  It was less about having sales in the US than it was about designing the right product for the global market opportunity we envisioned.

Mack:  How well has reality matched up with your expectations?

Renard:  After 3 years I can say as a company we are ten times faster at innovating and in just the last year we are ten times even faster partly because of the move to Silicon Valley and partly because we caught the wave for the AI movement.

Mack:  What was the most surprising difference between what you thought would happen and what you experienced?

Renard:  I can’t say it was a difference between I thought would happen and what happened but there was something that took me completely by surprise.   When I was in Europe and wanted to get a meeting with a top CEO I was the crazy IT guy so the meetings were hard to come by.  Now that I’m here in the US if I want a meeting with a top company I can easily get a meeting with a top executive at that company.   In Europe it takes 10-12 people to get a decision for that meeting take place.  I think of it as the Sorbonne effect; you get taken more seriously because you’re coming from the US.  Not only was it easier to get a meeting the size of the deals we were discussing were 10X the size of the deals we were discussing in Europe.   Part of it was the time we spent completing our platform vision and executing against R&D goals rather than rushing to revenues.  The rest of it was the difference in mindset between Europeans and Americans.   American dedicate less technical time for innovative new concepts so they need companies like ours who have thought through everything.

Mack:  How much did you need to change your original vision for your company to take advantage of the scale of the US market?

Renard:  Our vision hasn’t changed.  It’s simply become more achievable because I’m here in the US.   The effect on xBrain has been incredible simply because I’m here in the US.   I would say that I’ve never worked so hard to take advantage of this opportunity.  I have to manage my development team overseas often working through the night but it’s worth it because of the rate of progress we’re able to achieve.

Mack:  How quickly did you expect to generate revenue from your U.S. expansion and do you meet your expectations?

Renard:  When I came back to the US after my Stanford program to test the market opportunity for xBrain we worked with Vision & Execution.   They secured about half dozen meetings for us while I was here.  It was clear that we had demand across a broad number of industry verticals.   Because of the strong interest we experienced from these early meetings it was clear that we should expand to the US.  We are just now at the point where we expect to generate revenue.   We are selling to the top companies in each industry vertical so our total number of customers is small.   We are in pilot or industrialization programs with several of these companies already and in conversations with a significant number more to begin more pilot programs using our platform.

Mack:  Based on where you expected to be by now, how successful have you been in your attempt to enter the U.S. market?

Renard:  We have been extremely successful however not by measuring revenues to date but rather by measuring our ability to rapidly execute on a disruptive platform utilizing artificial intelligence to make life easier and simpler for end-users.

Mack:  What do you think was the most effective thing you did in planning to enter the U.S.?

Renard:  It was twofold really.   First it was important to test the US market opportunity for our technology.  Secondly was to move here and engage in the Silicon Valley community and adopt the Silicon Valley mindset.

Mack:  Based on your experience, would you still have tried to enter the U.S.?

Renard:  Without question!   Now executives from around the world are coming to the US to find us.   That would have never happened if we had not expanded beyond Europe.

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What does it take to become successful in the U.S.? An Interview with KiWi Co-founders.

By visionandexecution on September 15, 2015 in

This is the first in a series from Vision & Execution expanding on research we did in fall 2014 about what does it take for an international company to be successful in the U.S. In each case Vision & Execution was retained to assist at some point in the process. We hope you will find these interviews illuminating as you go forward with your U.S. expansion.

International Entrepreneur Interviews – KiWi – Oscar
Tomas Posker, Co-founder & CEO, Oscar Tech, Ki-Wi Digital s.r.o.
Petra Adamik, Co-founder & Business Development Executive at Ki-Wi Digital

Mack:  What inspired you to expand to the US market?

Adamik:  We were clear early on that we wanted to come to the US because of the size of the market and the opportunity it represented.  We also were inspired by the Silicon Valley culture and wanted to experience it first-hand.  We were impressed with how hard-working Americans are and that the technology is on a higher level than we were seeing in the Czech Republic.

Mack:  Was it always your intention to be a global company and what did becoming a global company mean to you?

Posker:  We knew we wanted to become a global company but we really didn’t know what to expect.  We wanted to learn what it would take to succeed in other markets and other cultures.

Mack:  How did you go about deciding where to expand first and why do you chose the region you did?

Adamik:  We really didn’t consider any other regions to expand to other than the US.  We were achieving sales in Europe and China organically but our main focus was on the US.  Once we decided we were ready to come to the US we found the CzechAccelerator, a new Czech Republic initiative.  They only offered two locations:  Silicon Valley and Boston so Silicon Valley was our obvious first choice.  We ultimately reapplied to the program and participated in the Boston program to understand the differences between the East and West coasts.   It’s really the old Broadway adage if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere although in this case if you can succeed in the US you can succeed globally.

Mack:  What was your initial vision and timeframe was for achieving success in the US?

Posker: The Czech program we participated in was a six month program.  We initially thought that within the six months we participated in this program we would be able to close at least one sizable customer or secure a partner who could represent our product.

Mack:  How well has reality matched up with your expectations?

Adamik:  Six months was simply not enough time to meet our goal.   We worked with Vision & Execution during the first six months and what we learned from that partnership was how to refine our value proposition and to really understand the challenges retailers, our customers, were experiencing and how we needed to be able to solve their problems.  What we learned from this process is that our hardware and software solution for digital signage was not a good fit for the US market.   Despite not being a good fit for the US our digital signage business is growing 40% annually as we expand further in Europe and China.

Mack:  How important are local resources to becoming successful in the US?

Adamik:  The use of local market resources is critical to your success in the US.  All of the Czech companies that have made it in the US used local service providers to gain local market knowledge.   It is budget driven unfortunately; we would have liked to have made greater use of local resources.

Mack:  How much did you need to change your original vision for your company to take advantage of the scale of the US market?

Posker:   We actually had to completely change our strategy for how to create a US presence.   The “know how” we acquired during the six month period of the CzechAccelerator program inspired us to create a new product line leveraging our existing technology and expertise that addressed an unmet need in the US market – technology for the older population.  This new product, Oscar, is a remotely managed smartphone and tablet app which provides easy communication among seniors and family. By developing a software only solution we found something that was more scalable and easier to sell.  Despite having a year of experience with the US marketplace between the six months in Silicon Valley and the six months in Boston we still continue to experience some surprises.   We had many rounds of pilot tests with our Oscar app with lots of customer feedback to finally achieve a good product market fit.   We ultimately succeeded and were recognized by winning TechCrunch’s first Radio Pitch Off on Sirius XM radio

Mack:  What was the most surprising difference between what you thought would happen and what you experienced?

Posker:   We were really surprised by the quick decision making and speed of doing business that we discovered in the US.   We had to learn to move a lot faster.   Despite the speed of business we also learned that it always takes longer than you think.   It took longer to refine our Android version until it was commercially viable and then again it took longer than expected to have our iOS version ready especially when we didn’t think it was critical to enter the market since there are more Android phones.

Mack:  To enter the US market, how did you obtain the necessary financial resources and were they adequate?

Adamik:  The CzechAccelerator program helped underwrite some of our expenses in the US however we only received those funds after we completed the program.   The main funds came from a Czech Republic angel investor.  We knew this investor before we came to the US and based on what we learned and achieved while in the US we ultimately received two rounds from this investor.  The rest came from profits from our main business of digital signage.   We would have liked to have had more financial resources to enhance our sales and marketing efforts.

Mack:  How quickly did you expect to generate revenue from your U.S. expansion and do you meet your expectations?

Adamik:  With our Oscar service we expect to achieve first revenue within 3 months of going live in the app stores.

Mack:  Based on where you expected to be by now, how successful have you been in your attempt to enter the U.S. market?

Adamik:  I would say we’ve been pretty successful thus far.  Ki-Wi Digital was recognized as the most successful CzechAccelerator 2011-2014 participant.   Because of the TechCrunch award we were mentioned in a Time Magazine article on senior apps.   This publicity has helped us move beyond business development activities and we are now ready to scale our sales nationally.

Mack:  What do you think was the most effective thing you did in planning to enter the U.S. market?

Posker:  We adapted to the US culture and experienced a mind shift.   It was a lot to take in the first six months we were here.  It helped immensely that we began working with Vision & Execution immediately.   Because of the guidance we received from Vision & Execution we became more customer centric, more open to tackling challenges that customers face.  We also learned a lot about how to present our business in a more succinct way and focus on what is most important to the audience we are addressing.

Mack:  Based on your experience, would you still have tried to enter the U.S.?

Posker:   Definitely!   We’re still here and going strong.   We’ll be launching our iOS version of Oscar at TechCrunch 2015 on September 22, 2015.

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Want to sell more product?   Understand why customers buy!

By visionandexecution on August 11, 2015 in

Long before there were buyer personas I had the good fortune to work for a boutique management consulting firm advocating understanding the purchase logic behind a buyer’s decision.   That has driven my thinking for the past 30 years and I regularly speak on this topic, “Creating Products that are Easy to Buy and Easy to Sell,” at events such as Silicon Valley Product Camp.  If you understand the emotions and thought processes that go into making a purchase decision you will understand and be able to address any potential roadblocks to achieving a sale.

Recent research from Gartner’s “Tech Go-to-Market: Trust Drives the B2B Technology Buying Cycle” report expands on this concept stating that, “Buyers spend only 32% of their journey interacting with supplier-side content or sales people. Two thirds of the buyer’s journey is devoted to internal assessments, peer networking, and the recommendations of external experts.  According to Gartner, buyers “have access to all this stuff from vendors, but making sense of it, interpreting it, understanding that they have the right stuff is where they’re really struggling.  The two-thirds breaks out as follows: 18% is internal company evaluations, 9% is social networking with peers, 12% is other interaction with peers, 13% is interactions with third parties, and 15% is reviewing independent information.”

We notice this challenge even more so with companies headquartered outside of the U.S. which tend to focus more on technical capabilities rather than the business benefits associated with why companies might buy their product.   The American mindset is particularly focused on the “what’s in it for me/my position/my company” or, in other words, how will I, or my company, be more successful financially if I acquire this product in terms of the messages they want to hear.   It’s critical to understand the reasons, besides technical features, that would inspire someone to purchase your product.

Product sellers also tend to forget about the fact that you also have to sell the channel assuming you don’t rely exclusively on a direct sales force or direct marketing.  Business to business companies who rely on Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Systems Integrators (SIs), for example, sometimes assume that it’s up to the VARs and SIs to figure out how to sell their product not realizing the friction they may be causing for the channel.  If you want to be sure that third parties can easily sell your product you have to identify and solve their pain points as well.  Sometimes the easy to sell aspect is achieving a better product/market fit, and sometimes it’s changing the sales and marketing strategies and tactics being employed.

One of the exercises I lead companies through as part of the workshop “Creating Products that are Easy to Buy and Easy to Sell”  is one designed to help companies understand the emotion behind most buying decisions.   I ask folks to think about one of their favorite products and the thought process and actions they took before making the purchase.  Then they’re asked to think about a product or service they purchased that represented an unpleasant buying experience.

  • Describe one of your favorite product buying experiences
    • Why did you “need” it?
    • Why did you choose it over others?
    • How long did it take you to make
      your decision to buy?
    • What price did you pay?
    • What influences affected your buying decision?
    • How do you feel owning it?
    • Would you buy it again?
  • Now describe your worst product buying experience
    • Answer all of the above + what you did and how you felt

Going through this process usually creates an epiphany – folks realize how often their own decisions are emotionally driven and are able to make the shift in how they think about selling their company’s products.   A bad buying experience can have far reaching, long term consequences.   My favorite example of this was a family asked to pay an early cancellation fee because the father had passed away.   The entire extended family left that particular wireless carrier and switched to another.   The buying decision and customer relationship extends all the way through to the end of the relationship, that is, if you want to retain brand equity and customer loyalty.

Have you thought of everything related to the buying experience for your product or service?  If not, let Vision & Execution help  you understand how to make your product easy to sell and easy to buy.

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Product Market Fit – Do you have it?   Do you know how to find out if you have it?   And if you don’t have it, do you have the perseverance to find it and get it right?

By visionandexecution on August 1, 2015 in

Marc Andreesen’s term “product/market fit” is a succinct way of asking the questions do you have a market worthy of investment?   And, if you do, will customers think your product will meet their needs at a price they’re willing to pay?

Many companies have the technical capability to solve a problem without understanding if the market for the problem they are able to solve is large enough to recoup their investment.   This is often compounded by a lack of understanding about whether the price a customer is willing to pay to acquire a solution is adequate to support the business.

In our workshop, “Creating Products that are Easy to Buy and Easy to Sell” and during consulting engagements, we walk folks through the thought process to help determine the answers to these two critical topics:

  1. Finding a Market Worthy of Investment
  • Problem
    • Not defining a sizeable enough market
  • Solution
    • 3 mandatories of market viability
      • Large & growing
      • Clear customer need & willingness to pay
      • Opportunity you can fulfill—defensibly
  1. What is Your Value Proposition?
  • Why would anyone buy this general type of product or service?
  • Why will someone buy our product/service?
  • Why will we meet our volume and profit goals?
  • If this new product was not available, what would someone do instead?
    • Buy something else?
    • Make something?
    • Do nothing?

Companies often underutilize customer research to help get the answers to these questions.   Sometimes these questions should be asked in “friendly” interviews with prospective customers or domain savvy experts.   Other times conducting quantitative research with a representative sample of the target market is your best bet.   The investment in getting early customer validation can save thousands of dollars in development costs or wasted sales efforts.

When you have achieved product/market fit it means you have a solution to a problem that the customer can’t live without and is likely to pay a premium to get.   And that kind of customer engagement goes a long way to lowering your overall marketing and sales costs.

If you’re struggling to find the right product market fit for you business please contact Vision & Execution.   We can assist you with industry or customer research to optimize your market strategy or product features to achieve the best product market fit.

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The Innovation Culture – it’s all about taking risk and being willing to learn from your mistakes

By visionandexecution on July 15, 2015 in

A friend recently recommended a book she had read that explained something I had noticed about seemingly two different groups of people.   The book is entitled, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” by Carol Dweck, a world renown professor at Stanford University and pioneering researcher in the field of motivation, why people succeed (or don’t) and how to foster success.

In her book, Ms. Deck describes those with a fixed mindset who seem to either plateau at a certain level, or even decline, and those that continue to grow and evolve oftentimes achieving success later in life.   Nowhere is this growth mindset more evident than in this rather famous quote from Michael Jordan who some may know was cut from his high school basketball team.

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. 

Michael Jordan

Those with the fixed mindset will do everything in their power to maintain a certain standard or perception of intelligence, even resorting to cheating.   For others not knowing the answers is seen positively, as a new challenge to conquer.

For me, this book explains why not everyone is an innovator.   Like the growth mindset, the innovator mindset is about seeing setbacks as opportunities and digging deep to find answers.   According to the book it is possible to teach a growth mindset, moreover, we have a mandate to do so in order to improve lives.   In doing so we could create a new generation of innovators.   A lot of emphasis is placed on replicating the Silicon Valley ecosystem but perhaps the most important element of the ecosystem is gathering together individuals who are inherently committed a growth mindset.

We’ve seen this played out with some of our clients.  We’ve had clients who had a strong vision for what their product or service should be but the market didn’t agree.   In the face of critical market feedback many of these clients were open to new information and went on to pivot until they found a successful way to go to market.  The culture of accepting being wrong as part of the process to learn what works best ultimately drove the success and turnarounds for these companies.

If you’re hitting roadblocks and want to learn what could be blocking your path to success, please contact Vision & Execution to help you troubleshoot your business or product issues.   Together we’ll find the best path forward.

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How important is choosing the right name for your business?

By visionandexecution on June 12, 2015 in

Naming is critically important – it can make marketing your business very expensive or very cost effective. Establishing a brand name early on and then needing to change it downstream only increases the cost of marketing your company. The challenge these days with naming is also finding an available URL – more difficult than finding a name. It’s also critical to evaluate your name for global use – or you will need to rebrand in other countries because your company name is insulting, confusing or otherwise a poor choice for a favorable impression in that country.

If you haven’t done any branding exercises I suggest you take the time to determine what your brand values should be and what that means for your brand “personality.” It might seem fluffy to spend time on this but the exercise will help you determine the type of name you should have (descriptive vs. made up). It also serves to rally your team and makes it easier to make other decisions related to the look and feel of your marketing materials.

Below are some tools you can use to help with this based on a fictional travel company:

Brand Statement
For international travelers who want to simplify the time investment in logistics planning for complex vacations while ensuring optimal travel experiences[target], {company name} is the first provider to deliver a one stop travel site to plan, optimize, organize, book and experience international travel [competitive frame] that leverages in depth, travel expert tested itinerary templates and best available pricing through consolidator partnerships [points of difference] to deliver an effortless experience before, during and after the trip[target’s goal].

Brand Attributes
Effortless

Our expert designed and tested itinerary templates take all the work out of planning international travel especially for multi-city travel.

Trusted

Our full-time travel experts constantly review and optimize our itineraries to ensure that you will have a memorable travel experience making the most of every destination.

Comprehensive

We offer a single point solution to research, plan, book, organize, enjoy and share your vacations. Our in-country support is there to help you should there be any unexpected hiccup in your travel arrangements.

Global

We utilize local travel experts in every region of the world to design the optimal travel experience for the new traveler to the locale

Flexible

Our travel itinerary templates provide a baseline for travelers to customize their own vacations. We actively listen to customer feedback to continually improve and expand our itineraries.

Organized

Our comprehensive travel planning solutions integrates all your travel components into one booking engine including all the travel documents you need for your trip effortlessly saved to your mobile device.

Value Proposition
{company name}is the most complete, simple and value oriented solution for planning, booking, optimizing and experiencing a vacation. {company name} delivers expert recommended, consumer endorsed vacation itineraries from the weekend getaway to a long holiday for the trip of a lifetime where ever you choose to go.

Customer Promise
{company name} ensures an effortless experience planning, booking and enjoying your vacation . We take the time and effort out of realizing your perfect trip- you won’t miss one important highlight on your vacation.

And once you’ve decided on a name or a group of names consider using Feedback Army to test customer appeal for the name.  And lastly be sure to use a good Trademark Search firm to make sure your name is available in every country you want to use it.

Good luck finding the perfect name for your business!

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Where is it broken?

By visionandexecution on May 22, 2015 in , ,

It’s always easy to start pointing fingers when milestones get missed but frequently the place where it’s broken is not where you think it is. Say you go to a trade show where you get lots of leads but nobody wants to talk to you after the event. Did you have the right product for the right show? Was a trade show the most cost-effective way to reach your decision-maker? Was the message compelling to the target market? Was the product competitive and priced right for the application?

There are so many things that go into figuring out the right product mix. And, it’s easy to get it wrong. When things aren’t going as planned how do you fix what’s broken? For my clients we always go back to their customers. If you understand your customers’ buying process you’ll understand what hurdles you have to overcome to get their attention. You’re then better able to understand if the roadblocks you’re encountering are product based (product-market fit), marketing based or you don’t have the right sales process.

Staying abreast of changing market dynamics may mean that your best laid plans for features, pricing and so on need to change to remain competitive. By talking to customers you’ll get their feedback on how well the product works based on their expectations or other competitive solutions. You can ask them about pricing and what they’re willing to pay to achieve value for their business. You can ask them what is the best way to reach the decision maker in their company so that they can learn about new the tools that make it easier to do run their business.

In other words you don’t have enough information which is why it’s broken. You need to go back to the customer to figure out what’s missing and how to get it right. They’ll always tell you.

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Which comes first? Sales or marketing?

By visionandexecution on May 21, 2015 in , ,

Ten years ago a former client, the VP of Sales and Marketing, had to cancel a project with me because their CEO said until you have sales you can’t spend money on marketing.  It was stunning then and stunning today especially in light of the trend towards growth hacking to drive leads for both B2C and B2B businesses.   The use of social media to drive inbound leads to the top of the funnel is now a critical skill and everyone is expected to be an expert.  But what do you do if the leads don’t come?  Is it a reflection of your growth hacking skills or a failure of product?  Whose responsibility is it to figure out if you’ve got a sellable product or not?  Sales will certainly figure it out fast enough when they can’t produce sales out of leads but marketing or product marketing should have known it from the beginning.  Ensuring that competitive or differentiated features were built into the product in the first place is key.   There’s no amount of brand loyalty or emotion around a brand driven by social media that can compensate for a product that’s not competitive in its space or compelling to its target market.

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The Values Trap: Four things Values might do for your company…and four things they won’t

By visionandexecution on August 13, 2014 in

Along with the popular chorus that “Culture beats strategy,”we’ve seen a resurgence in interest in corporate values, based on the observation that values and culture go hand in hand. So in the triune of Corporate Mission, Vision and Values, it seems that values have become of paramount importance.

A good set of values covers what is important…all of what is important. Usually that means the interests of customers and employees at all levels, as well as shareholders, and might extend to the responsibility toward the local community or the broader world. Clarifying and capturing values has many benefits.

What values will do for you:

Values can be inspirational. They call everyone to the higher purpose of the organization. Values can be grounding. They remind employees and managers alike of the guiding principles to apply in the day-to-day work and interactions. The values reinforce the cultural norms you want practiced.

Values can also identify who may be a good fit as an employee or a manager. Preserving and building a culture means that shared values are critical to that end. Making your values clear and public will attract people of like mind.

Values may also be powerful a guide to decision making when faced with a dilemma. Values tell you what is more important than everything else. Nordstrom’s values put customers first, so they have a no-questions-asked policy when an item of clothing is returned. It’s more important to risk a few scammers getting away with wearing and returning a dress, than it is to alienate the vast majority of good customers.

When values-as-professed are aligned with the actions and focus of the company, they embody the culture. But the enthusiasm behind values can be abused as well.

What won’t values do for you?

Values won’t overcome a bad strategy, or one that is a poor fit for particular markets. You still need strategy, and you still need to understand the different markets for your products and design your offerings, product mix and approach to the needs and receptivity of that market. Just having your employees apply the values that work in one market will not make up for bad positioning in another. That’s especially true as companies expand into the international space, using the same marketing, product mix and advertising across vastly different cultures in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Values won’t (by themselves) change the behavior of people who are a bad fit for the organization, although it might disguise their behavior for a time. It will let people know what they must appear to value. Someone once said “Sincerity is the most important thing. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Values won’t override the effects of misaligned policies and practice. If you say “Customer satisfaction is everything,”but you punish workers who accept customer returns of your product, you’ve just proven that you don’t mean what you say. Customers will notice. And employees know what is really important: the immediate bottom line, not the customers who are the lifeblood of the company. They’ll act accordingly.

One manufacturing organization we studied professed to empower its technical employees to bring quality problems to the attention of management and the customer so they could be addressed. That value was expressed as: “You hold the key to our success.”  But managers were being held accountable to not report bad news to superiors and customers alike. So in the end, “holding the key”really meant that the technical staff had the responsibility for fixing things they had no authority or ability to fix. If they persisted in pushing up the chain of command for attention, their careers would suffer. The cynical restatement of that value became, “You hold the bag,”because the employees were between a rock and a hard place—exhorted to do things that would hurt them personally in the end.

Finally there is one last serious pitfall of focusing only on values.

If you use “values” exhortations instead of addressing the real sources of problems, it will backfire. Not only will it not fix the problem, it may drive people to cynicism and cause customers and employees alike to question the trustworthiness of the entire operation.

A large auto manufacturer declared that “Quality is Job #1”before they accomplished their quality transformation. Implicit in that mantra was the message that workers should be more careful and not make mistakes. The real problems were in the design and manufacturing process itself, which designed in opportunities for error and defects. The response of their workforce (as expressed on the bathroom walls of the plant) was not only cynical and negative, it was unprintable. It took years before the changes were made in design and production that improved the quality of the product.   When the quality battle was won, the values statement about “quality as job #1”was simply unnecessary. The problems with quality were not problems that could be solved with attention to “values.”They had to be solved with engineering.

Values are important, and can be the inspirational focus for a business. They can support a consistent, powerful culture focused and agile enough to take on the competition. The real key is using them as a touchstone for all the decisions, policies and behaviors, to make sure that the values professed are the lived values in action; and not using them in place of fixing what isn’t working.

If you’ think codifying the values of your organization could drive the organizational change you seek please contact Vision & Execution to see how we can ensure you gain the full benefits possible.

Kevin B. Kreitman Ph.D., Master Organizational Mechanic
Vision & Execution Strategic Partner

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Beware stealth mode companies when timing your market entry

By visionandexecution on July 13, 2014 in

Think you have a great idea for a new product? Chances are that someone else has it, too. How do you avoid squandering your market leadership position?

We meet with many entrepreneurs, most of whom think they have the next great invention.   Oftentimes it’s companies outside of the U.S. copying U.S. market leaders but tailoring the idea for their home countries. That’s a great short-term or small business strategy but difficult to expand beyond your borders with a “me too” product unless you’ve found a very successful niche.   Sometimes, a very rare sometimes, it’s really something novel that could be become a global market leader. As you work to come up with a winning concept, it’s good to keep in mind that, if you’re thinking about an idea, someone else is probably also thinking about that same idea.

So, what’s the best approach to get out of the gate before the competition? What mistakes should you avoid as you move strategically toward launching your product? Here are four common mistakes we see many entrepreneurs make on the road to launching:

1)      Not Having a Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Now that you have your idea, how quickly can you develop the minimum viable product to go to market? And when I say “minimum,” I mean a product that values user experience and performs well. If you overlook either of these critical elements, you risk crashing and burning—quickly.  Determining your MVP doesn’t mean you don’t have a product roadmap; it means that you’ve focused on the most critical features to secure demand from your early adopters.

2)      Spinning Your Wheels: If you’re focusing on the minutia instead of focusing on how quickly you can get to market, you need to rethink what you’re doing. In short, this is no time to spin your wheels. Speed matters in today’s lightning-fast marketplace. Don’t worry about incorporating every little feature or new idea that the team brings to the table. There’ll be time for that later, once you have a solidly performing, easy-to-use product to launch.

3)      Lacking Early Market Validation: If you don’t know if anyone will buy your product once you get it to market, we suggest you take a step back. To get validation, talk directly to your target customers. Then, look for experts who target a similar market but aren’t direct competitors. Industry analysts are another excellent source for market validation. They can provide feedback and will usually meet with companies at least once without charging a fee. They talk to companies in your space on a regular basis, as it’s their job to know the landscape. Their feedback can prove invaluable to tweaking your product as your prepare to go to market.

4)      Overlooking Competitors in “Stealth” Mode: While you’re busy getting your product ready to go to market, you need to keep your eyes open for competitors who are on the horizon. Although they may not have launched yet, they’re out there, lurking and ready to pounce on the same customer base you’ve targeted. Don’t make the mistake of keeping your head so far down that you aren’t aware of who else is coming up on your heels that may threaten the success of your business. On the other hand, don’t get so distracted by what perceived competitors may be doing that you fail to focus on what your goals are and your unique selling proposition. Your competitor’s strategy may not be the winning strategy.

Need help getting your product or idea ready to go to market? Contact Vision & Execution today to develop a strategic plan that will help you avoid the pitfalls along the path as you refine your product or service and move toward a successful launch or expansion.