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CREATE DISTINCTION

Greenleaf Book Group Press

Contents

PREFACE....................................................................................xiiiINTRODUCTION...............................................................................1ONE How We Got into This Mess: The Three Destroyers of Differentiation.....................11TWO Who Moved MyCareer?....................................................................37THREE Three Levels of Differentiation......................................................53FOUR The Ebert Effect......................................................................75FIVE The First Cornerstone: Clarity........................................................85SIX The Second Cornerstone: Creativity.....................................................113SEVEN The Third Cornerstone: Communication.................................................153EIGHT The Fourth Cornerstone: Customer-Experience Focus....................................179NINE More Lessons in Distinction...........................................................211TEN Distinctive Is Superior................................................................223RESOURCES..................................................................................231NOTES......................................................................................235ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................241ABOUT THE AUTHOR...........................................................................245

Chapter One

The moment was one of the most surreal that I have ever experienced. A farm kid from Crothersville, Indiana, I was part of a team invited by an international organization, People-to-People, to participate in a goodwill mission. At home, the United States was in the midst of a presidential election between our only non-elected president and a peanut farmer from Georgia. It was our bicentennial year.

But that day I was standing in Red Square, in Moscow, in the Soviet Union—at the very center of communism.

Even though it was September, the day was unseasonably cold and gray. Behind my colleagues and me was the bland and massive GUM department store, occupying a significant space on Red Square. In front of us was the tomb of the father of communism, his body resting inside, appearing almost as a wax figure. Just beyond loomed the sight of the imposing Kremlin. The sentries at Lenin's Tomb goose-stepped their way through the changing of the guard in a manner that I had witnessed only in old black-and-white newsreel footage of the Nazi soldiers in Hitler's Germany. Their precision and efficiency were completely devoid of emotion.

As the ceremony silently concluded, a short, rotund senior citizen stopped me and asked in broken English if I was, in fact, an American. I affirmatively answered with pride in my country yet with a bit of fear as I was certainly in unfamiliar territory.

He opened his coat and pointed to a scar on his chest. With tears in his eyes, he gestured at his wound and said, "From war. Please! No war. No more war."

Wait, We're the Good Guys!

I was stunned. Like most Americans of that era, I assumed the Soviets were the aggressors, not us. Nevertheless, here was an obviously earnest Russian who firmly believed we were the enemy.

Slowly I assured him war was not our intent, and I hoped it wasn't the objective of his country either. I emphasized my colleagues and I were greatly enjoying our visit and were grateful to see his homeland. As someone standing beside him translated my English into his Russian, he broke into a wide, toothy smile and nodded rapidly in agreement.

Just a bit befuddled, I then asked him, "Out of this large crowd, how in the world could you recognize me as an American?"

He spoke to his friend, who then turned to me and said, "Your clothes have color. You are smiling, having fun, as you are in Red Square. That gave it all away."

The fact my clothes were not the standard-issue Soviet gray, and the fact that I seemed to be enjoying myself set me apart from the crowd. It pegged me as someone from another place.

It was a lesson in being different—the lesson of this book.

What I saw in the Soviet Union of the 1970s was the result of conformity and similarity, which is, historically, the natural occurence when the state owns or controls almost everything. The emphasis on uniformity seems to be a constant of every monolithic institution.

However, communism isn't the only political or economic doctrine that produces bland sameness. Ironically enough, capitalistic competition serves just as well.

To truly understand how to create distinction, it's first important to understand why distinction is so rare in today's marketplace. It's why this chapter focuses on the Three Destroyers that created the collapse of distinction.

Taken individually, each of these Three Destroyers of Differentiation creates a compelling challenge. When combined, they have a synergistic and destructive impact on your industry, your organization, and even upon you, professionally and personally, as well.

Differentiation Destroyer #1: Copycat Competition and Incremental Advancement

In our competitive, capitalistic society, the bar is continually going to be raised. We will naturally and constantly seek advantages for our products and services to move customers to choose us over the other guys and gals.

When you are faced with a competitive situation, you've got to constantly get better and provide more compelling reasons for your customers to spend money with you. Otherwise, you will go out of business. (This point shouldn't be surprising to anyone in business.)

However, here's the interesting and challenging rub that's often overlooked: When my competitor creates a point of differentiation and gains an advantage, my natural inclination is to either:

* merely imitate the competition's improvement, or

* attempt to incrementally improve upon the advancement.

If you get slightly ahead of me with a new advancement or strategy, my natural response is to replicate it. If I can discover a method to duplicate your effort, it then becomes easy for my customer base—and for the team inside our organization—to believe you no longer have a competitive advantage.

If your new method has enabled you to gain significant traction in the marketplace, then my best move appears to be to attempt to imitate whatever created your advantage and attempt to marginally do you one better.

In addition, I will probably call my latest effort the "new category leader," built to eliminate your advantage. For example, how many mobile phone manufacturers have been proclaiming their newest product to be the "iPhone killer"? (If we were in Vegas, we would ask, "What's the over/under on ... all of them?")

Notice the problem: in both examples, all efforts are based upon what my competitor is doing, not necessarily what my customers desire. And in most cases, such advancements are evolutionary—not revolutionary.

Unfortunately, if I'm like executives in many industries, I am thinking I don't want to stick my neck out too far—because you may chop it off in front of our customers and prospects. (Since we are competitors, my...