What Are You Good At?

Think Fast

C'mon.

You're a small business owner ... What makes you different from your competitor?

Why would a customer want to do business with you over somebody else?

What do you do better than anyone?

What are you good at?

Yeah, you know this crap should be top of your head, back of your hand kind of stuff.

If you're unable to rattle these things off the top of your tongue then you might not be fully acquainted with them. And lucky for you, that's exactly what we're going to talk about next: core competencies and intellectual property.

What Are Core Competencies?

Core competencies are those things that you must do very, very well, every day, to execute your business strategy. Unless you're really good at doing these things all the time, you're not a competitor. Example. If you're:

• A car manufacturer that's bad at designing cars
• An attorney that chronically misunderstands the law
• An accountant incapable of distinguishing a balance sheet from a P&L
• A rodeo clown afraid of his own shadow
• A dog trainer that's a cat person

... it's not going to work. If you can't do what's absolutely required of you, you're not going to get the job done. What are those things? Are they specific? Succinct? What makes you better at those things than your competitor? Careful though: you can't be competent in everything. You shouldn't have more than three core competencies.

What is Intellectual Property (IP)?

Special knowledge and training, products, techniques, approaches, trade secret, patents, copyrights, processes ... IP is the secret sauce. It's the value that only you or your company can provide. Consider:

• The Colonel's Secret Recipe
• Coke's Secret Formula
• A Non-Toxic, Biodegradable Carpet Cleaning Solution That Doesn't Harm Kids or Pets
• A Unique Software to Diagnose a Rare Vehicle
• You've been classically trained to restore Baroque Italian paintings

Nobody else can give your client what you're able to because what you provide is unique.

How do Competencies and IP Relate to Tech Strategy?

I love it when people go out and spend, say, $10,000 on technology that does absolutely nothing to leverage IP or core competencies. I say "I love it" because it creates a stark contrast between reality and crippling, short-sighted strategy. It's like:

• "Let's go out and blow $10k on an email server because email is what we do best. Email is our core competency." Email? Say what? So email is what you've got to do day after day to execute your business plan? Uh, no.
   
• You're Ford Motor Company and you lay down $10k on a web design that talks about fruit. Fruit. Fruit, and maybe how it relates to an upcoming sales promotion with a Hawaiian theme, but still ... dude, you make cars.
   
• On a whim, one of your managers runs out and subscribes to a $10k Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Meh, it worked well at the last company they were at. But your brand is known for fast, friendly, personal, face-to-face service from knowledgeable people ... and now this manager wants to put your people behind a computer screen. That seems incongruous, no? Helllooo ...
   
• Your medical services company just spent $10k on a special piece of software that allows you to diagnose rare genetic conditions. And on Facebook? You're posting pictures of cats with stethoscopes. Because you want to be known for crazy cats with stethoscopes.

I think you'll agree with me. Technology investments should leverage what you're good at. Above all, investment in technology should yield some strategic value through differentiation, lower cost/price, create a distinctive brand, lead through innovation, scale through rapid growth, shrink time, build alliances ...

And over the next two weeks, I'm going to talk about each and every one these strategic values and explain what they mean, but listen up: if your tech spend doesn't capitalize on what you're good at, how do you expect to produce a strategic outcome? Think about it. Then start aligning your spending with what you're good at to produce specific strategic outcomes.

What You Should be Thinking About Now

• What are your core competencies and intellectual property?
   
• How does your technology spending complement either? How does your technology spending distract from either?
   
• How are your processes and systems accentuating, highlighting, leveraging either? How are your processes and systems diminishing either?
   
• Consider the culture and knowledge of your team. How does what they know - your training, hiring and selection criterion, certification regime, their aptitudes - reflect your core competencies and intellectual property?
   
• Do you completely lack IP? How does not being able to offer a unique solution to a problem put you at a competitive disadvantage? Is it time to find IP/make IP?
   
• How does your website / social media engagement  complement or highlight your core competencies and intellectual property? Are you talking about these things online?

Information as an Asset

There's Never Enough Time in the Day

If you're a small business owner, you're likely putting in a sixty hour work week to manage your business and, well, sixty hours? Yeah, that's probably a conservative figure. There's customers to appease, employees to manage, vendors to pay, and - somehow - you need to squeeze in more marketing and networking to help it grow. There's never enough time in your day. Managing technology is the last thing on your mind.

And it should be! You've got enough to worry about. Technology is a utility. It's like the lights, an elevator, or the HVAC system, or an appliance. You turn up the thermostat and it gets warmer; you flip on the air conditioner and it gets cooler; you flip on the lights and they illuminate a room; you open up the fridge and it's cold. Always. Always, always, always! This stuff is usually so rock-solid that we barely consciously think about them.

Good Data is the Byproduct of Automation

Predictability is the promise of technology and the benefit of automation to your business. You invested in computers to automate your business processes and make things faster, more accurate, and more reliable (you guys remember my blog post about that earlier this week, right?). Everything should always be humming along, providing the right stuff to the right people at the right time, and you shouldn't have to think about it.

Source: chris-kimble.com.

That predictability and automation creates the foundation of the Transaction Processing System (TPS) - the lowest layer of information systems theory. This is where we're trying to reduce the influence of manual labor and produce the most accurate forms of data we can. It's the first place I start when coaching small business owners on managing their information as an asset: Their data is an invaluable byproduct of their operations.

Data is invaluable because of its influence on the Management Information System (MIS), the second tier of information system theory. This is the reporting and tactical analysis layer. It sits above the TPS and completely relies upon it. A great example of the MIS layer is a bank statement that summarizes the thousands of transactions that occurred in an account over the period of a month. The bank statement gives you a quick picture of deposits, withdrawals, and balances - without having to add and subtract the thousands of those little niggly transactions that took place over time - and allows you to make a decision.

Garbage In, Garbage Out - The GIGO Effect

How dependent is the MIS layer on the TPS layer? Watch the causality here:

• If I run a report on bad data ...
• I'm going to get bad or inaccurate information ...
• Which leads me to make incorrect decisions ...
• That eventually costs the firm in real waste, lost efficiency, or lost opportunity.

Garbage In, Garbage Out, right? Now, imagine doing that, over and over and over again. Automation's great, but if we don't treat information as an asset - that it's important to get the data right and accurate every single time - our business will chronically be making bad decisions and wasting money, except repetitively faster! Over and over again, we'll make the same dumb decisions based on the conclusions of errant data.

The Big Picture

Now, you are a business owner and likely don't have a lot of time to think about really abstract information theory stuff like TPS and MIS layers. I get it. That's my job. But here's the big take-away that I'd like to give you as a manager:

• How is your organization treating information as an asset? How much time and attention are you paying to make the TPS layer the most accurate it can be to get the greatest value out of the MIS layer?
   
• What is your organization doing to verify and challenge the results in the MIS layer? Not all data can be accurate; not all MIS layer conclusions should be relied upon. Do you challenge the assumption of TPS accuracy?
   
• Is the reporting found in the MIS layer the right report? For the right people? Is it providing the right information to the right people to help them do their job most effectively? Are there more reports, better reports, that could be used to solve an ongoing problem?

Now You're Thinking Strategically!

If you can start thinking about your IT spend in this way, you're just broaching the problem of strategically managing your information system. You're thinking proactively about the effect of automation, the data byproduct, and the expectations of efficiency. Kudos, dude: you're managing the problem. You're treating your information system as an asset.

Next time: core competencies and intellectual property.

R

What is an Information System?

Are You Watching What You Really Need?

The other day, I got to talking about what data was. I explained that data was a discrete fact that, by itself, had no specific relevance. We can't contrive meaning out of things like "red", "287.83", or "Ron" unless we know how they're being used ... that they have context.

Information is data in context. It's the lens by which that we perceive data and attempt to make sense of it. If I told you that, in this case, Ron was interested in purchasing a red suitcase for $287.83, then the data is put in context and makes sense, and subconsciously, our minds are already making judgments and decisions surrounding the information that it's been fed:

• Is "red" really a good color for a suitcase? Your mind is already buzzing with long-held perceptions, images, and opinions concerning red suitcases.
  
  
• Is $287.83 really too expensive, given your judgment and past history purchasing suitcases?
  
  
• Is there a reason why Ron wants to travel?

Watch What the Mind Does!

The mind is an interesting thing. See the last one there? My mind wanted to jump to the next logical conclusion - it made this assumption that Ron would be travelling based off of known variables. Ahh assumptions! But did I make the right assumption?

Think About Your Small Business Information System

Should we look at this example as a lesson for understanding your small businesses' information system, I think we should make three points:

1. Facts. Are the facts (datum) recorded in your company's information system accurate? This goes back to my last conversation with you. If the data is bad, the information we'll get from it is bad, and the decisions we'll end up making will be wrong. If the data's bad, why is it bad? That's going to need to be fixed before anything else.
   
   
2. Information. Is the information derived from the information system relevant to your job, or, the job of your employees? Example: if this was a suitcase retailer, it'd be relevant - we see who bought what and for what price. Instead, if you're in the business of, say, carpet cleaning, how does this information help you? Is the information you're getting from your information system relevant to the decisions that need to be made? If it ain't relevant to you or your employees, what's the point? What's the value in being handed irrelevant information? 
   
   
3. Assumption. Finally, how did the information system work to dispel assumption? In this case, there were few data points and my mind was able to wander (as minds do!) and make a broad assumption about what I was seeing. That assumption - that Ron was travelling - may be entirely wrong! And you guys know what happens when people ... assume ... in your business, right? The next thing to look at: how is the information system providing relevant, factual, accurate information, that dispels assumption, and leads the user to the correct decision/answer every time? If the information system provides information that's left up to interpretation (or assumption), we'd see increased guesswork in outcomes, leading to more errors, more malfunctions, more loss.

If we were talking, I'd want to look at the reports being spit out by your information system. How do the contents of this report benefit its user? I'd ask, "What do we absolutely need to know to do THIS job?", and then look at how the information system is providing the right information to the right person at the right time make the best decision, and in a way that dispels assumption, because the more assumptions that'll be made will contribute to higher error rates and loss down the road.

Hey ... There's More?

Wow! Cool, okay, today we've covered some great information theory 101! All of this content is related to my discussion on information management strategy for the small business.

Next time we'll talk about automated versus manual information systems, and, the impacts of errors and omissions. Talk to you then.

R