BE DiFFERENT or be dead: The Audacious ‘Unheard-of Ways’ I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES

By Roy Osing

• From the insightful author who created the series BE DiFFERENT or be dead, a unique roadmap to standout success
• Teaches entrepreneurs how to start their new business and avoid being a ‘death’ statistic
• Shows professionals how to make a distinctive and rewarding career for themselves
• Features proven practices to transform people into standout and revered leaders
• Defines the new sales model needed in current times of uncertainty, unpredictability and change
• Replaces boring and traditional business planning with revolutionary new ‘strategic game planning’
• Discards the old philosophy of marketing in favor of shocking new thinking and different practices
• Is the real deal in delivering amazing customer service through simple yet fascinating methods

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781631957178

Roy Osing

Roy Osing is a former president, CMO and entrepreneur with over 40 years of successful and unmatched executive leadership experience in virtually all aspects of business. He is a passionate blogger, keen content marketer, dedicated teacher and mentor to young professionals. Roy is also an accomplished business adviser using his own proven creative methods and practices. He is the author of the audacious book series BE DiFFERENT or be dead. Roy is devoted to inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and organizations to stand apart from the boring crowd and achieve their true potential. He resides in British Columbia.

Book preview

Section One

Textbook Leadership Has Lost its Lustre; Toss It and Do What Actually Gets Results in Today’s World

Snapshot

Move One

Why survival in The Bear Pit is a critical leadership skill

Move Two

What an underperforming leader looks like and how to improve

Move Three

Serious reasons we need to have line of sight leaders to succeed

Move Four

Why leaders who serve around are the best

Move Five

Six myths about being a really effective leader

Move Six

How a do-it-yourself leader makes an organization great

Move Seven

Why a crisis brings out the truly epic leader

Move Eight

How does being two-faced make an amazing leader?

Move Nine

How school failed to teach me about leadership

Move Ten

Why goosebumps tell a leader the best one to hire

Move Eleven

Five unbelievable secrets leaders need to learn from the frontline

Move Twelve

What important thing does a leader have enormous difficulty doing?

Move Thirteen

Two gems that will make you a dauntless leader

Move Fourteen

These demanding roles are never delegated by the great leader

Snapshot

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE AN UNFORGETTABLE LEADER?

Every leadership expert develops their own angle, but generally they all have a common theme that runs through their narrative which is influenced by theoretical concepts and behavioural principles.

Most writers on leadership are influenced more by what theory suggests should work as opposed to being guided by what has been proven to work in the messy world, complicated by uncertainty, turbulence and unpredictability.

Great leaders are recognized for being different from their in-the-herd colleagues because they don’t follow common doctrine, rather they do what is necessary in the moment with imperfect humans to get things done in a messy, can’t-be-formularized world.

In my Leadership Moves, discover the unprecedented moves I made, and in some cases, through trial and error and a huge amount of pain, plus the critical aspects of leadership that contribute to one’s standout brand and that drive unmatched performance.

Simply put, I made moves that others didn’t; instead, they stuck to the textbook and weren’t prepared to step out and do something different.

They all looked and acted the same. In reading this book, YOU will not fall into that deadly habit.

In this Section, learn how to venture into The Bear Pit with me where leaders and employees meet face-to-face to find ways to make the organization perform immaculately.

I intentionally made this your first Move to give you a bold action that you can not only implement easily, but also one that will instantaneously position you as someone to watch, and makes you stand out from the crowd.

Learn why normal delegation has its limitations and how do-it-yourself leadership not only supercharges the performance of the organization, it also attracts never-ending employee loyalty.

Want to know how to hire the best people? Check out my secrets to trust your gut, listen for key words and use goosebumps as the way to decide who to hire and who to usher out the door.

My promise to you is that if you prescribe to my simple proven Leadership Moves, you will not only have the opportunity to express the special YOU, you will also take your career to another astonishing level.

MOVE ONE

Why survival in The Bear Pit is a critical leadership skill

Survival in The Bear Pit is a critical leadership skill; if you have the jam for it, this should be your happy place. Amazing leaders have an uncanny ability to know what’s really going on in their organization. And one of the leadership skills they draw on from their toolkit is venturing into and surviving The Bear Pit.

What’s The Bear Pit?

It’s a people cluster where the leader invites people to provide their honest feedback and opinions on a variety of topics that matter to the leader. The Bear Pit doesn’t have to be a face-to-face meeting; nor does it have to be formal; it can be virtual, and it works just as well.

The Bear Pit essentially consists of a group of up to 12 individuals in the workplace who have a point of view on how things are going and are very willing to candidly share their feelings to the leader if asked. Larger meetings generally stifle the flow of conversation and the ability for everyone to be heard.

The Bear Pit is all about the leader subjecting themselves to the crowd to learn what will make things better for people. A leader who puts themselves at personal risk is endeared by all, and that’s what makes this skill so key in leadership development.

A bear pit session is managing by wandering around on steroids.

Venturing into The Bear Pit is not for the faint of heart. The leader enters The Bear Pit solo; no accompanying entourage is allowed. He or she stands unprotected within the group to complete their obligation to find better things for the organization and its customers. It’s a fundamental element of leadership by serving around where the leader seeks feedback on improvements required to increase organizational performance and make things easier for employees to do their jobs.

Logistically, when the leader ventures into The Bear Pit, it is a free-for-all, no-format session.

It is an opportunity for people to tell it like it is to the leader without their immediate boss being in the room.

When I started doing these sessions, I had pushback from some of my direct reports who were threatened by my being in front of their people without them being there as a filter. This spoke volumes about their worth as leaders. If they didn’t want their people to be able to speak freely to me, what did it say about how they were leading their team?

HERE ARE THE TYPES OF ISSUES THAT I RAISED IN THE BEAR PIT FOR REACTIONS, OPINIONS AND SOLUTIONS:

What is generally working in the organization and what is not.

What is the number one thing people think I as the leader should be worrying about.

How the strategy of the organization is being executed.

How effective is the leadership in the organization at helping them do their jobs better.

What are the barriers in the organization that prevent them from doing their jobs the way they want to.

Any customer service problems and opportunities to resolve that would enhance the customer experience.

Ways to reduce costs without sacrificing service to customers.

Information on what the competition is up to, and suggestions to counter their moves.

The dumb rules (more on dumb rules in Section Six) in the organization that enrage customers and threaten customer loyalty.

I had a Bear Pit session organized every week on my calendar. It mattered to me, and after I did several of them, it mattered to the people in my organization. They came to expect the meetings and they looked forward to putting me on the spot.

They began to understand that their priorities and suggestions for improvement made a difference, and that made a personal difference for them and in turn the organization benefited from more invested employees.

I made it a priority; and it mattered. It was one of the most important drivers of my effectiveness as a leader if the issues raised were followed up on and that the improvements people wanted were implemented.

Try it.

Once you have honed your Bear Pit leadership skills, you will stand out from others who will watch you with amazement. The Bear Pit isn’t for everyone, just those who want to pump up their career and leave others in their dust.

MOVE TWO

What an underperforming leader looks like and how to improve

You’ve been in a leadership role for quite some time, yet you’re not satisfied with your effectiveness; your currency in the organization is not at a level you would like it to be, and your views are at times ignored.

You believe you are not achieving your potential as a leader.

Why?

These reasons could explain why you’re an underperforming leader:

YOU READ TOO MANY TEXTBOOKS

You continue to practice textbook leadership; what the academics and experts preach about what it takes to be a great leader, many of whom have never had any significant leadership role in an organization.

The pundits tend to espouse common leadership practices that are followed by the crowd of leaders who all aspire to step up their game and stand out from one another.

Amazing leadership isn’t about doing what the books say, it’s about doing what has been proven to work by gifted leaders who have built organizations to flourish in a world of uncertainty, unpredictability and relentless change.

YOU COMPLY

You are uncomfortable stepping away from using the common tools that the leadership community sees as the requisite to effective leadership. As a result, you are seen to be the same as other leaders, offering nothing particularly special or unique. You have a blend in brand as a result.

Great leaders understand that to get the best out of people they must prescribe an approach that fits their team’s particular needs and wants, not by forcing a common blueprint on them. Great leaders don’t emulate leadership best practices; what others do that is viewed by the leadership community as the basic practices for effective leadership. They are constantly trying new things depending on the needs of the people on their team.

YOU PLAY IT SAFE

You tend to be a bit risk averse, believing in substantial study and analysis before deciding. The problem with this philosophy is that action takes a back seat to study, unnecessarily is some cases, where the consequences of a decision do not dictate exhaustive study; it’s more appropriate to do a cursory business case and get on with it.

Standout leaders know that results happen when action is taken, and as long as you are in the study mode, nothing gets done. Their approach is to do just the right amount of study to justify taking a particular action and ACT. A $10,000 investment should have minimal study: a $1,000,000 investment considerably more.

And they know that learning on the run is paramount when your bias is to act, not study; they pay attention to what is being experienced and discovered during implementation and adjust their action accordingly.

YOU EXCESSIVELY DELEGATE

You delegate too much and have no filter for figuring out when it is appropriate to pass things off to others and when to take personal responsibility for a task. Again, this tendency to over-delegate is probably because much of what is written about leadership encourages more delegation not less.

Special leaders know when it is appropriate to delegate and when it is not; the filter they use is the strategic game plan of their organization. If acting personally is vital to achieving a strategic goal, they don’t delegate it, they take it on as a personal task.

Taking personal responsibility communicates two things to people on their team: one, it says that the task not being delegated has a high priority and two, that the leader is afraid to get their hands dirty and do the work.

YOUR STYLE IS IMPERSONAL

You are an impersonal communicator; you use all the new digital tools available to you but avoid old school press-the-flesh methods.

You may think that digitized communications are a more effective and productive way to go, but you’re missing the point. Productive communications are not about productivity, it’s about capturing the hearts and minds of people and convincing them to change their ways and follow the organization on a new path, for example.

Brilliant leaders spend much of their time face-to-face with people in their organization, discussing their future and asking for their conviction and support. What do you need? is the operative question they ask.

YOU’RE ALWAYS IN YOUR BUBBLE

You spend too much time in your office which makes you out of touch with what’s going on in your organization and therefore unable to create interventions to address problems and dysfunction.

Your office isn’t a bubble; get out of it.

Memorable leaders try and minimize office time and try to schedule it out of the normal hours when people are on the job to make themselves available to others. In addition, they spend an inordinate amount of time with the frontline gathering information on customer perception and to fuel the improvements that will make the frontline job easier and more effective.

YOUR INSTINCT IS TO PONDER

You are governed by your logical, practical side—your left brain; your right brain or emotional side stays in the background. You let your mind lead you rather than allowing your feelings to play an active role. You approach problem solving from an intellectual solution perspective rather than looking for solutions that trigger the feelings in people.

Fantastic leaders show their emotions to others in their daily routine; people get that they’re feelers and that they allow emotions to play a role in the decisions they make rather than relying on theory alone that can minimize concern for the human component. Their natural ability to empathize with others allows them to strike a steady balance between what should work (on paper) versus what will work (through the energy of turned-on committed employees).

If you feel you’re falling behind in your progression as a leader, it may be because of the reasons discussed here. In my experience, 90% of the people falling short of their expectations as a leader fall victim to these very common ailments.

They can be successfully remediated, and your leadership competencies will turn around.

MOVE THREE

Serious reasons we need to have line of sight leaders to succeed

Having line of sight is the leadership skill that will set you apart from every other leader.

One of my active supporters, Ron Cox, Founder and CEO of Tailwind Consulting in Tampa Florida says that a staggering 95% of employees in a company are either unaware of or do not understand the strategy they are supposed to be part of.

No wonder execution fails!

One of the biggest issues in any organization is the lack of congruence between what the strategy says and what people do on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy says one thing and not only do people do another; they do different things out of sync with the strategy.

Massive inconsistency and dysfunction results. This is a failure of leadership.

Failing Leaders tend to place more focus on direction-setting rather than on deciding how the strategy will be executed. Precision is applied to getting the strategy exactly right and less attention is given to how it will be implemented in the trenches despite the fact, that this is where the real work gets done.

The gap between strategic intent and actual results is due to this skewed attention.

If only 20% of leadership’s attention is placed on the details of how the strategy will be implemented, the strategy will likely be hit and miss as employees find it necessary to execute the plan the way they believe it should.

Effective strategy execution occurs when there is clarity between the functional roles that employees play in the organization and its strategy.

It is about translating the strategy into what it means to each function involved in delivering it. For example: What specifically should the call center rep do differently? The product analyst? The salesperson? The internal audit manager?

If at the most granular level each employee in the firm doesn’t know how to behave and what results to produce within the context of the new direction change, it will simply not happen and the improved results expected by the new business plan won’t be achieved.

LINE OF SIGHT

Line of sight to the strategy means what it implies; it is that each employee can see the strategy from their position, and they understand what they specifically need to do to contribute to its end goal. If direct line of sight is defined for every role, flawless execution results, while indirect line of sight results in people having a clouded understanding of what action the strategy demands.

Most leaders absolve themselves of ensuring activity and strategy are aligned. It generally gets relegated to functional heads to sort out by declaring their priorities that they contend are homeomorphic with strategic imperatives.

The failure with this process is that subjectivity is introduced at a very high level in the organization and then magnified again and again as teams are asked to do the same thing through middle and junior management levels. The VP interprets the strategy in their way and sets objectives and priorities accordingly. Then, the VP’s direct reports do the same thing, adding their own flavour in terms of what’s important or not, and on it goes down the organization. By the time it gets to first level management responsible for the frontline of the organization, the original strategy has been filtered and changed, resulting in confusion and dysfunction.

And the tipping point, of course, is that leadership doesn’t approve detailed functional plans which would at least show whether they were bordering on out-of-alignment or not. Any inconsistencies between activity and strategy at the highest level in an organization are multiplied by an order of magnitude factor before it reaches the frontline people.

Under these conditions it’s not difficult to see why strategy and organizational activity diverge and not converge.

What can leadership do about this problem?

First, ease the precision around the strategy creation and tighten it up around execution. Get comfortable with getting the plan just about right and applying rigour to implementation and adjusting the plan on the run.

Next, take ownership of aligning organizational activity to strategy.

ALIGNMENT PLANS

Institutionalize Alignment Plans with functional heads; ask for sufficient granularity to the determination of whether or not every team has direct line of sight to the strategy or not. Make them work at it until they get it right and your leadership team approves.

Alignment Plans submitted to the leader should:

Define the key elements of the strategy that everyone in the organization must align with. There are many dimensions to any strategy, but it is critical to prioritize and focus on the critical ones. Greater alignment success will occur by focusing on a handful of the critical strategic imperatives rather than trying to herd the cats around a dozen.

Define what needs to change in every functional team with an action plan to achieve it. If the organization is pursuing a new or revised strategic direction, there will most certainly be projects, company values, people skills and technology that will have to be re-vectored to enable the execution of the new plan.

Details of everything that needs to change must be defined in detail. Identify activities, projects and behaviours that must be dropped to take on new activities required for alignment. Leadership is just as much about what must be stopped as it is about what must be started.

If out-of-alignment activity is not stopped, additional unnecessary resources will be most certainly requested. All non-strategic activity must be isolated, and resources removed and redeployed to new challenges that must be undertaken.

PERSONAL INITIATIVE

If you’re an employee in an organization that chooses not to impose a process to explicitly align activity to their strategy, take personal initiative to align your own work priorities to what the organization wants to achieve. Successful careers are built on the backs of the organization’s strategy and those that execute more effectively than others are quicker to reach their personal goals.

THESE PERSONAL ACTIONS WILL PROPEL YOU FORWARD:

Translate for others

Help others translate what the strategy means to them in the organization. Once you have determined your own line of sight, help others through the same process. Everyone needs to understand the new things they will have to do and the no-longer-relevant CRAP (more on CRAP in Section Three) they will have to dispose of. Unless this translation for all employees is done, the organization will be frozen in momentum management and no progress in the new direction will be achieved.

Get involved in organizing and leading workshops with various departments in the company and explore a new blueprint for each that represents the new course for them to follow.

The role of translating the new strategy for various employee groups is one that rarely gets performed. It’s a difficult task as it requires an intimate level of understanding of the strategy.

You can’t drill a strategy down into individual action if you don’t truly understand it at a detailed level.

If you’re a leader, you must dedicate much more of your time seeing that people treat this as a priority and hold them accountable. Wander through the workplace asking people to clarify the top three things they are going to do to help deliver the new strategy and what dozen-or-so things they are going to give up.

And get the expectations hard wired into the performance planning process. It is the difference between an effective one where everyone is working in parallel to support a common purpose, and a dysfunctional one where people are working at odds with one another to deliver some things that are on strategy and other things that are not.

Synchronized outcomes release the power of execution - and competitive advantage; inconsistent outcomes zap the energy of the organization, encumber execution and impair competitive success.

Set your calendar

Let the organization’s strategy guide your daily calendar. The ultimate manifestation of direct line of sight is a calendar composed only of activities relating to the outcomes you believe are necessary for you to deliver the new strategy. If you can’t strategically relate a particular activity you plan to do on a given day to the end goal, then I suggest you question why it is occupying your time.

Zero base your calendar and build it through the weeks and months ahead in the image of your strategy. While you’re at it, ask to see the calendars of those reporting to you. Is each of them doing the things required of the new direction or are they continuing to hold on to the past?

Communicate the strategy personally

Communicate face to face with others in your organization as this is the most effective way of injecting the emotional component necessary to get people to believe and act. E-mail blasts to a broad distribution list, employee newsletters and other mass means of communication don’t work as effectively. Use technology like ZOOM if physical distancing is a challenge. These mass communication vehicles prevent the ability for people to engage in a conversation and therefore, enhance their understanding of where the organization is going and their part in it.

You need to press the flesh even if it’s virtual, and make it matter by showing up in person, explaining the strategy and answering the tough questions.

I continually use employee meetings (I called them Infonet Sessions) to communicate the company’s strategy to all employees. They required high levels of energy and were extremely time consuming, but what else could be more important? People in the organization need to understand where it is going, and they have a right to challenge it if they disagree with it.

You can’t capture their hearts and minds if you’re a no show.

USE THE STRATEGY AS THE CONTEXT FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS

When confronted by a business problem or issue, always assess it and talk about it with others from the perspective of your strategy. Create the strategic context for the discussion and then assess your options. What does your strategy suggest is the right action to take?

It’s an effective way to increase understanding and awareness of your strategy and establish you as a leader and the Strategy Hawk for your organization.

People suddenly forget that they have set a new course in motion for the organization, and they look for solutions to problems in the old strategic context.

The opposite is also true; people often don’t relate the visible changes being made in their organization to the new strategic direction that has been put in motion. They don’t get that the cause of the changes they are witnessing is the new strategy.

Assume the role of connecting the dots for people in your organization. Reinforce that the changes that everyone is seeing are the result of your new strategy. Line of sight leadership is necessary to build teamwork and commitment to the organization’s strategic intent. Take a personal role is making it an essential ingredient in your culture.

MOVE FOUR

Why leaders who serve around are the best

Popularity breeds, in some circles, believability. What is a popular notion soon becomes the belief of the day.

IT’S THE AGE OF MOVEMENTS

There are many popular concerns in the world today that define the conversation around what’s important. Topics such as COVID-19, women’s rights, black lives matter, drug decriminalization, sexual misconduct, sexual orientation, climate change, the environment, indigenous rights, pipelines, and the charter of rights & freedoms tend to define some of the popular narrative in society in these times, and the priorities people turn their attention to.

In a relative sense, not much attention is given to the people who define the economic agenda of society, the leaders of our organizations whose quality of leadership defines how people live their lives in the other pluralistic society that engulfs them.

Their daily environment is shaped by how they are treated; how they are motivated and how they are engaged in fulfilling the strategic agenda of their organization.

And when attention is paid to the topic of leadership it is typically dealt from an academic and theoretical perspective. Studies discovering relationships between leadership behaviours and employee performance are discussed and conclusions reached on the skills people should own if they want to aspire to be an amazing leader.

Rarely are emotions targeted as the means to hook people to engage in a leadership conversation; certainly, the same cannot be said about debates on the environment, oil pipelines and allegations of sexual misconduct.

These topics are dripping with emotion; how people feel about something often dominates the position you take rather than the facts presented.

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.

—Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence

LEADERSHIP ISN’T A SEXY TOPIC

Certainly, other social narratives get more emotional conversations going than leadership.

This is unfortunate. The practice of leadership is every bit as important as any other social narrative. People spend most of their life in a working context with a boss they coexist with. And it is the boss’s skills, capabilities and attitudes that can impact the lives of individuals much more than any movement could.

But I’m not talking about the same old traditional leadership practices borne out of a more theoretical view of the art; rather I’m referring to a new style of leadership that has grown up in the trenches where real people work and profound performance is achieved.

It’s a practical leadership approach grown from knowing what it takes to ignite the passion and emotion in people to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS

Leadership by Serving Around—LBSA—is next-generation. It’s the imperative if people are to have meaningful and rewarding careers and if organizations are to stand apart from their competitors and achieve remarkable levels of performance.

It’s a fashionable notion because it relates to the fundamental human needs of people to feel they have a compelling purpose and that they are needed and cared for.

And it’s different from its predecessor, MBWA—Management by Wandering Around—where managers wander through the workplace without a whole lot of focus, trying to find out what’s going on. MBWA is relatively undisciplined with the intent of discovering clues on team performance, observing the efficiency of business processes and trying to spot dysfunction that impedes productivity.

There’s nothing wrong with MBWA, but it doesn’t go far enough to create teams of passionate, turned-on people necessary to ensure organizations thrive and survive in today’s highly unpredictable and volatile world.

Here’s how LBSA works: Leaders purposefully go through the workplace with a strategic purpose, looking for serving moments or opportunities to help someone.

Serving leaders are the icons of tomorrow. They earn followers through an undying display of caring for people and their wellbeing.

Managers ask: What’s going on?; Serving Leaders ask: What can I do to help you?

The leader’s agenda is to offer personal help, recognizing that if someone’s individual problems are solved, performance enhancement follows. If you take care of the person, performance takes care of itself.

THIS IS WHAT LBSA LOOKS LIKE:

They question

Leaders ask; they don’t tell. They are not present to give a presentation on anything.

Their serving job is to listen to what people have to say about what’s going on in their world as opposed to directing them on what they must do.

They know they don’t know; that the people in the organization are the experts, so they ask them. These leaders have conversations that have a minimal transmission element. Their communications style invites commentary, opinion and the truth on what needs to be changed.

They help

The key questions they ask are: How can I help?; What key changes should be made to enable you to do your job easier?; What do you think about…?

They see themselves as instruments to make life easier and more productive for others. If this leader can remove roadblocks and barriers that prevent people from doing their job, they know results will skyrocket.

Apart from a one-on-one engagement with an employee, LBSA can be extremely effective with groups of people.

I tagged the process "The Bear Pit Sessions." I