Getting curious about your value proposition.

All suppliers occupy moments on spectrums. How much a particular client needs them in their lives (from “we would die without them!” to “wouldn’t even notice their departure”). How much they WANT them in their lives (“I love having them around so much it hurts!” to “I can barely tolerate them and am continually looking for a better alternative”). How much value they think they bring (“Stupidly amazing levels” to “Sweet Fanny Adams” (and “no bloody idea” somewhere around the apex of the bell curve).

Moments may be a better way to think about it, rather than positions, because it changes in the blink of an eye, and a position infers you might stay awhile. All it takes is a goal change, a leadership change, a market forces change, your own behaviours not aligning with what’s needed, and whooshka - you slide up or down the scale before you’re even aware of it.

A great many successful organisations and the teams that drive their client engagement or delighting activities get predictably comfortable with their positions. They judge their worth, their value, on their history, on stuff they did once upon a time, and then maintain to keep the good times rolling. If it's been going nicely to this point, they understandably think themselves somewhat expert, or at least highly proficient, based on the footprints in the sand and the old order books in archive boxes. After all, the past is concrete, the present is wobbly and the future is unknowable. So, makes sense, many plan around the known, because it feels surer. And then one day... whammo. The bloody lip served up by forces they thought were meant for others shocks and stuns. Maybe because they got lazy. Maybe because they stopped darting and weaving. Maybe they stopped looking further out and connecting some dots back to the very next action step. Maybe they stopped being curious.

Curiosity is interesting. Can it be taught? Can it be institutionalised and mandated? If you imagine a normalised distribution of organisations and their self-judgement about their positions or health or ability to thrive into tomorrow, there’s...

• the leading lip (those that are cocksure, shooting the lights out, got it under control, get out of the way, the plan continues to work brilliantly), and
• there’s those trailing with white knuckles (panic, scattergun, dice rolling, teeth gnashing, cling on for one more shot).

Neither seem particularly curious. One group maybe thinks it has it all figured out, the other is too angsty and desperate to be very introspective or probing deeply for safeguarding future insights.? It’s in the guts of the bell that curiosity likely has a powerful home – those enterprises and teams that, based on track record, know they potentially have something of value to the markets of the future, but that also have an inkling that what they did yesteryear (effective as it may have been) isn’t likely going to be adequate or quite right for the needs and wants of tomorrow. Asking curious questions, continually, about change signs, stimuli and some maybe-shift-is-needed options, is a curious practice of those perhaps likely to map to “better”.

All this is a lead-in to poke your curiosity bone around your value proposition – what you can do viably, sustainably and valuably for some in the market, who can keep you afloat in turn.

Bubbling out of a load of strategic review and planning processes I’ve been facilitating of late, there’s some tough (often late) dawning realisations happening for many.

1. Your “knowledge provider” advantage? If the main reason they have you at the table is linked to study you’ve done, data you’ve interpreted or your role in informing them on matters, then the difficulties you face in differentiating and preserving profitable value are about to crescendo. Consider the last 5 matters you gave advice on that you charged handsomely for. Then type those same questions your clients sought you out for into ChatGPT, and watch what fast and free looks like today. (And before you throw the “it’s flawed” comeback in there, here’s news - you are too, and it’s getting better just a smidge faster than you). It’s not just that these tech-powered ubiquitous research, problem-solving and question-answering tools are available to all at the touch of a glass screen. It’s the rising willingness of your customers to use them (I ask in every session, it grows). Perhaps it's as a precursor to you, perhaps as an adjunct or double-check. But perhaps, tomorrow, to bump you or downsize you. I encourage the brow-furrowed arm-folders not to go Ostrich on this one. I’m seeing front door mats yanked out from under otherwise confident knowledge expert feet near daily.
2. Your “service provider” advantage?? We know service standards and expectations, fuelled by the power of integrated tech, quick learning chatbots and our sugar-hit instant gratification feedback loop ways, go north and quick. Old fashioned, high touch service is a claim of many, but there’s so often a disconnect between resource investment, cultural nurturing, role-modelling, systemisation... and what’s purported in the marketing glossies. It’s very expensive to go all One Madison Park or Downton Abbey in making every client feel like a special flower. It’s the first rationalisation cut of most, with many leaders thinking that “core business functionality” matters more than “delighting payers” (it possibly does in many cases, but I’d get really curious on the analysis of that in your house and market, might surprise you). In the age of customer experience muscling into the priority choice criteria of the modern help seeker, I think you need all eyes on how and what this requires, but I’d suggest that unless you’re willing to truly go out onto the farthest limb on this, you’ll likely be engineering to keep up with “adequate” ahead of “trailblazing”. But please, prove me wrong, I urge you.
3. What about your “people” advantage?? It’s always struck me – every strategic planning process and SWOT analysis I’ve facilitated (and 18 years in, it’s edging closer to 4 figures) puts “our people” in the superpower box. Every single time. Kudos for loving and believing in your folk, now more important than ever. But do they, by their actions, by their interplay, by the choices and deliveries, and by how they are seen in the market, truly stand you apart in an exceptional and advantage-sustaining way, right now? If they do, spend all your money on making that value prop Scotch-guarded. As the biffo for the best, brightest and most-values-aligned rages on, it’ll be the truly magnificent human swarm that wins hearts and minds (and maybe dollars) in a subset of tomorrow's market. But if you’re reflecting that it’s currently “OK, but could be better”, then perhaps this isn’t the value differentiator to stake the family cutlery on.
4. Your “any other asset” advantage? Your systems and processes? Your infrastructure? Your geographic locations? Your proprietary technology? Your supplier agreements? Your one big fat loyal longstanding client? Your leaders? Ask yourself, curiously, “will what we have here truly set us apart in valuable ways to sufficient numbers of potentially investing folk in the next few years? Reading the tea leaves, comparing and contrasting, extrapolating and imagining, is what we’ve built this city on over the years gone by, still going to be the thing that makes that P&L sing strongly in the future?”

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Maybe you’ve nailed it. Maybe what you have has endurance, or you’ve done the heavy lifting on change earlier than this poke-e-note hits your feed. Maybe you’re twirling the dials, pulling the levers and rousing the troops to deftly manoeuvre your way through the waterways and chop.

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Maybe though, your value proposition could do with a rethink.

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Maybe you’re not as immune to what’s going on out there as you thought you were yesterday.

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Maybe it’s at least worth asking about, checking, with others.

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Worst case? You solidify your confidence and that of the team in that which you’ve already decided. Forward ho.

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But maybe you catch yourself before the scaffold starts wobbling at that point of no return. Maybe you imagine and realise and recalibrate on what the chosen few truly want, need, will value, and be utterly delighted by, and plan based on that, not on what your history book tells you or what you think your current "position" is.

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Maybe curiosity killed a few cats.

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I’m confident more sluggish cane toads get squashed by barrelling Road Trains though.

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If you want a hand pulling your crew together to reflect on and sharpen your strategy, your value proposition, your customer experience creation pathways, or the ways you’ll all commit to working together in alignment to tackle tomorrow, give me a hoy.

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It’s what we do.

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