I find it interesting to listen to people debating the climate change issue. Many argue that the projected increase in temperature “it’s just a couple of degrees, so what will it matter?”
I am not going to debate climate change here, but think back a couple of hundred years and just 1 degree of temperature change changed our lives forever (ironically powered by coal).
At 99 degrees Celsius, water is not very exciting. But add just one more degree and something amazing happens! At 100 degrees, you get steam and steam moved mountains!
I’m convinced this metaphor applies to achieving our goals.
The difference between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ is very, very small. For many people, the difference between being slim and fit, versus gradually becoming heavy and unhealthy may only be a hundred calories per day. Eat even a few more calories than you burn each day and you gain weight. Burn a few extra calories each day and you lose weight.
Sure, optimum health may be more complicated, but it starts with a very small number of calories, maybe only one cookie per day!
This applies to any goal you want to achieve. Remember the old saying, “inch by inch, anything’s a cinch?” The opposite is also true. “Yard by yard, everything is hard.”
High achievers know that small differences make all the difference.
The Industrial Revolution changed everything, and it began with only one degree of additional heat applied to common, everyday water.
Boil the water, channel the steam and you’ve got a locomotive to change the world.
What small differences will you make this week? Perhaps you’ll make one more sales call, or prepare a bit more thoroughly for your next presentation?
Whether in golf or sales or in the more “routine” things like parenting, the top performers are rarely dramatically better. Typically, they are “ordinary people doing ordinary things, extraordinarily well.”
This week, do a few ordinary things just slightly better. I think you’ll see an extraordinary change in your results.

I am passionate about sport, and have coached at various levels in various sports for many years.
At the moment I am actively involved in my son’s soccer (err, I mean football) club. Last weekend the Club’s Director of Coaching was running a session for new coaches and I what he was presenting caught my attention – here’s an extract.

Goal setting is a great way to motivate your players in either the long term (whole season) or short term (game by game).
Make sure your players are fully involved in the process of setting their goals.
If you simply tell them “these are your goals for today” they won’t respond, whereas if they have set the goals themselves they will be more motivated to reach them.
The goals they set need to be SMART so they can see easily if they have achieved them.
They should also be positive rather than negative goals, i.e. “today we are going to make all our passes accurate” rather than “we’re not going to put in any bad passes today”.
• Specific: Goals should be specific for an individual player or for the team in a particular game. They should also relate to a specific skill or area of the game. Rather than “we are going to win today” make the goal “we are going to win 90% of the 50-50 balls today”. Remember that 100% is not realistic.
• Measurable: You must be able to measure the goal to see if it has been achieved, so think about how you can accurately do this. For instance, counting successful tackles for individuals or the team.
• Adaptable: There will be times when you realise that a goal is totally unachievable (often for reasons out of your control). In these cases you need to be able to adapt the goal to make it more realistic.
• Realistic: There’s no point having goals which are completely unrealistic. Don’t have a goal to beat the team you haven’t beaten in five years by 10-0, it’s not going to happen (this season)! At the same time, goals must challenge the players as individuals and as a team.
• Time frame: You need to set a time frame to achieve the goals, “we are going to achieve this by next week” or “in the second half we are going to …”.

So how can this be applied to business? In exactly the way he was suggesting it be applied to football coaching. Make sure you set goals, and that these goals are:
Specific
Measureable
Adaptable
Realistic and
Time based.

Recently I was working with a client who wanted help defining his business strategy and putting this into a business plan that could guide his management team. I started by chatting with his managers and quickly realised that none of them had the same understanding of the businesses direction, or their role in it as the CEO. This surprised the CEO as he had lunch with members of his management team every day, generally meeting each of them in this way over a fortnight.

Of most concern was the fact that some of the management team believed one of them was a “protected species” – roles had been created for him to move him out of areas where he had not succeeded. Worse, this particular manager would redefine his role to suit what he was comfortable with, rather than what was required by the business.
Now we can all see that this was something that should have been addressed by the CEO, but it wasn’t.

This took the planning project off on a tangent as it was obvious we needed to define the critical functions and related roles within the organisation so we would have a management team able to implement the plan. A functional organisation structure was needed.

Functional Organisation is arguably the most effective form of organisation, because it is designed around functions, rather than people. Each function has its own responsibilities, separate and distinct from any other. The functions don’t overlap, and the scope never changes to fit an individual. Individuals are chosen to fill functions based on their ability, knowledge, training and experience.

Once we established a functional management structure team spirit improved because each department became a team with all personnel within the department reporting to a single person who has complete responsibility for the performance, training, guidance and direction of the department, and who also has the authority to make the department fully effective in accomplishing its goals. While each department must communicate, cooperate and coordinate with all other functions in the company to achieve the company’s overall goals, each individual now reports to only one person, and all directives, orders, requests etc., will be funneled through that person.

Like so many things in business it sounds so simple, but you may be surprised how often it is not the case.

Late last year I had the opportunity to facilitate a series of seminars on “Sustainability” organised by the NSW Business Chamber. It was interesting to see that most of those attending came along expecting to hear more about the cost the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme would have on their business. Very few came along expecting to hear about opportunites presented to businesses by using carbon reduction as a way to improve their profitability.

One question from the audience allowed a response that I think really sums up the opportunity presented by the attention global warming is attracting – “If I don’t have to report on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, why would I be interested in knowing my carbon footprint?” A very valid question, especially as this person is a bit of a sceptic when it comes to global warming and the impact of carbon dioxide (CO2).

This drew considerable discussion and in the end it was agreed that even if he was right and GHG emissions were not causing global warming, if it was the catalyst for us to further cut down on waste and reduce pollution, it couldn’t be all bad. But what about his original question? From the experience of one of my clients, here is how he benefitted from taking steps to be more aware of the environmental impact of his business and taking steps to deduce it.

While most businesses in Australia do not have to report on their GHG emissions, and more importantly, those that do only have to report on what is generated as a direct result of their manufacturing processes (this is known as Scope 1 & 2, not Scope 3 which refers to their supply chain), why would they be interested in knowing their carbon footprint?

I have discovered that many organisations who undertake a review of the environmental impact of their business operations come up with new ideas that can improve productivity and their bottom line. Often they are surprised that the environmental review comes up with ideas that they may not have considered before. For this client, we agreed to do a high level carbon footprint “snapshot”. What he discovered was that most of his carbon was generated by raw materials he bought in, not his actual manufacturing processes. He also discovered that the “carbon neutral” claims being made by his major competitor were at best, questionable.

From this high level snapshot we were able to determine that:
He could improve his bottom line and be more carbon friendly by changing his freight procedures.
He could covertly challenge the “carbon neutral” claim of his major competitor by changing his marketing, and at the same time position himself as an environmental leader.
If he was to complete a detailed carbon footprint analysis he could provide a client who did have to report their emissions with information that made their task easier – a competitive advantage.
He was able to provide prospective clients with information relating to the carbon impact of various production options – those who wanted to make the environmentally responsible choice could do so.
He could see where the carbon is generated in the supply chain and then choose suppliers who were making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint, hence reducing his own. And with carbon having a cost associated with it in the future, better understand the cost implications on his business.

It’s true that not all organisations are under immediate pressure to measure their carbon footprint, however I am discovering that those practising Corporate Social Responsibility are not just doing the right thing by our environment, but are also reaping commercial benefits.

Recently I was engaged by a Philippine based software development company, ToolTwist, to help them define a marketing strategy for a new website management application they had developed.
Their product is a software tool used by corporations to create sophisticated websites with Amazon-like functionality. While their product is truly exceptional in many ways, and has a strong customer following, they were trying to work out how to get more bang for their marketing buck.

The first step for the guys at ToolTwist was to clearly understand their potential market. You see, the solution this great application provided was not easily fitted into any specific vertical market, and looking at it horizontally made defining and targeting the best opportunities extremely difficult. Various other products, with larger marketing budgets, claim to provide similar benefits, so carving out a niche market is essential for Tooltwist.
Over a few days we “workshopped” ideas. We looked at why they had their initial success, what was it that the client REALLY bought, who made the decision and why. Ultimately it was determined that of the many benefits of their product, the one that was truly unique was not related to the technology, but to how it provided a better working environment between the marketing and IT staff AND delivered more potential sales to their customers.
The service provided a great solution to enable organisations to coordinate marketing and technical departments, forming a combined team to create and manage websites. Such an overlap in responsibility is traditionally a weak link in most organizations, but Tooltwist’s unique approach allows technical teams to concentrate on technical tasks, while marketing people have the freedom to create thousands of web pages, without any technical expertise. Put simply, website design is now in the hands of the people with the best understanding of what customers want.
So for ToolTwist, their primary competitive advantage was not just the ability to dramatically improve the efficiency with which their clients can make changes to their websites, but how the product can link responsibility and authority across departments and provide the right tools to the right people. This has proven a real winner when presenting the product to executive management of their now identified target market.
So, when looking for your competitive advantage, go beyond the obvious – it may not always be where you think it is.