Nimble Leader Volume III: Position Your Business!

By Andrew Ortyn

Throughout Nimble Leader (six volume series), we explore key concepts that have proven to be practical, useful, and applicable to achieving sustained improvement in business performance over the long term. In Volume III: Position Your Business, you will harness the power of alternative perspectives. Market Position and positioning your business is everything! Do it well, and like a tree planted by still waters, your business will grow, flourish, and expand at a dramatic rate. You will reap significant rewards in customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, first-to-market innovation, strong brand identity, and a vibrant organizational climate as happy employees – who can hardly wait to get to work because they are involved in something bigger than themselves – serve the needs of customers who would be at a loss without the products and services offered by your company. In reading Volume III of Nimble Leader, you will explore both a roadmap and a process to help mark your way as you position your business. You will move from theory to application. You will learn how to deconstruct closely held perspectives; uncover the value of different points of view; and then use this understanding of value to build a robust Statement of Market Position – the signature identity for your business in a crowded and noisy marketplace. Importantly, you will link what your business stands for in the minds of your customers to what they are willing to pay for your company's products and services. The CASH transaction is the great clarifier. Customers will only execute the sale if they believe what they are getting is of greater value than what they are giving up – namely CASH. Volume III of Nimble Leader makes this critical connection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: May 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781633192737

Book preview

Position Your Business

Harness the Power of Alternative Perspectives

"Wherever you see a successful business,

someone once made a courageous decision."

—Peter Drucker

Volume III

Table of Contents

Introduction – Nimble Leader

The Importance of Positioning

Corporate Landscape and Fiduciary Responsibility

Start Somewhere

Ladder of Inference

Addressing the So What?

Deconstructing Closely Held Perspectives

Easier Said Than Done!

Leaders Positioning Their Business

The Case of the Peripheral Nerve Block Catheter (PNB)!

The Positioning of Wall Co.

Decorative Hardware – To Be or Not to Be!

Key Touchpoints – The Positioning Process

Summing It Up

Nimble Leader – Next Steps

Notes

Introduction – Nimble Leader

Why This Series?

Strategy. Leadership behavior. Results. The three need to mesh for good things to happen in any business.

As a leader, have you ever felt vulnerable because your background, experience, and title suggest you should know more than you do? Join the club!

As a leader, you are…

• Paid to get it right … the first time

• Paid to see the micro and macro trends before they occur

• Paid to have real-time strategies that address multiple market scenarios

• Paid to have contingency plans for eventualities that may or may not happen

• Paid to be the ‘great leader’ in tune with your colleagues, subordinates, superiors, key stakeholders, alliance partners, and of course your customers!

The above depicts a level of leadership perfection, a sense of omnipotent capability. This orientation also breeds a mindset that leaders cannot show vulnerability in any way – that an inability to understand the whole picture, all of the time, somehow implies that you are not on top of your game.

Yet – it is in acknowledging and acting on our ‘gaps’ that self-aware leaders are able to set the stage for dramatic growth, both on a personal level and with their business.

Much has been written about business strategy, leadership behavior, and delivering results. However, little has been written about bringing these three elements together in a workable format that will help leaders lead and equip them to better negotiate a dynamic and turbulent marketplace.

In the Nimble Leader Series, we provide a workable format. We make the connections.

We link business strategy, leadership behavior, and financial performance, in ways not previously addressed. We identify essential building blocks upon which to grow your personal leadership skill, the skill of your teams and the skill of individuals who work on these teams.

Our ultimate goal is improved business performance.