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Posts Tagged ‘Wayne Gretzky’

“It never occurred to me that I might lose; to me, it was always as if I had the right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into a self fulfilling prophecy” says Sam Walton in Sam Walton: Made In America about his days as a football player. He was a good football player who had an uncanny sense where the ball was going to go. Sounds familiar? Wayne Gretzky, the Virtuoso of Hockey, was adept at knowing where the hockey puck was going to land, and skated there in anticipation. Do you know which trends will affect your business so that you take your business there? If you have not done so already, it’s a good time to read Review of How to Build an Empire on an Orange Crate by Honest Ed Mirvish, which is another biography.

When Sam Walton was diagnosed with bone cancer, his family encouraged him to get serious about writing his biography. Whether or not you like Walmart, and the way that it’s operated, there are some things that their founder Sam Walton did right. After reading his book, I can say that I do not agree with some of his philosophies, but I found a lot of very useful information. I have pulled together some information from Sam Walton’s biography that might interest you.

Sam’s 10 Rules for Building a Business

1. Rule 1: Commit to your business and believe in it more than others do.
2. Rule 2: Share your profits with all the people who work for you, and treat them as partners in the business.
3. Rule 3: Motivate the people who work for you, and keep things fresh, interesting and never become predictable. Give them the opportunity to switch job functions to learn other aspects of the business.
4. Rule 4: Communicate everything you possibly can so everyone knows and understands what’s going on.
5. Rule 5: Appreciate what your workers do for you by simply saying thanks or publicly acknowledging them. Money and stock options are great, but sometimes the little things can make all the difference in the world.
6. Rule 6: Celebrate your successes and find humour in your failures.
7. Rule 7: Listen to everyone in your company, especially the front line workers who directly serve your customers.
8. Rule 8: Exceed your customers’ expectation.
9. Rule 9: Control your expenses better than your competition.
10. Rule 10: Swim upstream, go against the grain and ignore conventional wisdom.

Strategy

Growth: Organic – by increasing sales and opening new stores – and by takeovers

Inventory Management: Have sophisticated information systems, and vendors are connected so they can monitor their product levels

Distribution: Have large warehouses within a certain distance (usually no more than one day’s drive away) from the stores, and have their own fleet of truck

Information Systems: Have one of the most sophisticated computer system, which allows them to be agile and responsive to the market

Theft Management: Greeters were originally introduced as a deterrent to potential thieves

Customer Acquisition: Competitive shopping to look at what competitors are doing well, as well discover what their prices are, then make the necessary adjustments at the store. Conduct information interviews to identify trends, and discover ways to do things better. Sam Walton was part of a research group which was actually a form of peer mentoring. His peers would visit his stores and give honest feedback, which he used to make changes. His focus was to give customers the best deal.

Hiring: For the senior level positions, he hired people who were skilled in the areas he wasn’t, and that was key to their early growth

Major Regret: Didn’t include associates in the profit sharing plan when Walmart went public in 1970.

Five Great Ideas

1. You can ride through any crisis if you look for the underlying opportunities
2. The best opportunities are created out of necessity
3. If you do not give your customers what they want, someone else will
4. Learning never ends. Look at what others are doing right and doing better, then try to incorporate that into your work
5. Innovate to take things beyond where they have been

I recommend that you give Sam Walton: Made In America  a read and I am sure you will not agree with all of his philosophies, but if you own a business, or planning to start one, you’ll find information that you can immediately apply.

What do you have to add to the conversation? Is this the kind of book you’d enjoy reading? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

All book links are affiliate links.

Further Reading

Review: The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence

Innovate The Steve Jobs Way

Review of How to Build an Empire on an Orange Crate by Honest Ed Mirvish

Review: Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp

Wayne Gretzky, also known as the “Great One,” is a hockey virtuoso. He was extremely adept at anticipating where the hockey puck would land, and positioned himself at that spot. And most of the time, he was correct in his prediction.

To become a virtuoso, Wayne had a lot of talent, he understood the game, and he practiced his craft more than the 10,000 hours required for expert status and rose to the level of virtuoso. If you have talent, and have worked at your craft for over 10,000 hours, like Wayne Gretzky, you too can predict where the “puck” is going to land. But you have to know something about spotting trends in your industry.

How do you stay on top of what’s going on in your industry? Who do you watch to anticipate the “next big thing”? In the past, how did innovation occur in your field? Who are the trend spotters in your industry? What are some trends that are shaping other industries that would work equally well in yours?

After you have learned how to spot trends in your industry, you will know exactly where to position yourself, you will know where your “puck” is going to land. Please refer to the Review of the Next Big Thing which will help you to spot trends.

What are your thoughts? How do you anticipate where your “puck” is going to land? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Photo Credit: Google via Apture

Book: The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit
Author: William Higham

I was delighted that someone decided to write a book about trends, how to spot them and how to exploit them. There are many websites and books about trend spotting and trend hunting, but I have never been able to wrap my head around how to exactly use the information, and many times I felt quite helpless. In an age where things are changing so rapidly, the ability to spot trends and exploit them is a skill that would make any professional more marketable, because they are equipped to accurately predict client attitudes and behaviours, and assist companies with product development strategies.

And, William Higham, the author of The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit is qualified to write a book on trends because he has consulted in the area for 10 years, but more importantly, the area of trends has always been his passion, so he has studied it for many years. I found The Next Big Thing on http://www.netgalley.com, and was able to download a copy for review using Adobe Digital Editions. The book is very well researched, and while reading it you get a sense that the author knows what he is talking about.

The Next Big Thing is 272 pages in length (over 40 of which are used for the Appendix and Index) and divided into two Sections: Trends and Trend Marketing and six Parts: The Value of Trends, Beginning with Trends, Understanding Trends, Identification, Interpretation and Implementation. According to Higham, the objective of the book is “To use my experience and knowledge of trends to strip away the ambiguity and mystery that surround them, to provide a straightforward introduction to the topic, to clarify meanings and debunk myths. I also want to offer some suggestions for standardized trend analysis and implementation process that I call “trend marketing”, and show how it can be learned and practised and incorporated into everyday business practice.”

So what is a trend? William Higham defines a trend as, “A long-term change in consumer attitudes and behaviours that offer marketing opportunities. Trends are the manifestation of change.” He adds, “To identify a new trend, marketers need to look for any signs of change among consumers. These can be change in behaviour or attitude.”

The author spends a lot of time going into the nitty-gritty of trend marketing providing a multitude of examples to build a case. This is good for most people, but for me it was too much information. I wanted him to get on with it, and that’s my bias because I have over 15 years of research and analysis experience, I know many websites that spot trends, so all I want to learn now is what do I do with them. How do I move forward with trends to provide better services to my clients? For me, the meat of the book started at page 115. Your response to the detailed information will depend on what your needs are.

In The Next Big Thing, the author provides many examples of consumer changing tastes and how companies are responding to these changing tastes, or even predicting where their customers would be, similar to the way Wayne Gretzky would skate to where he anticipated the puck would be, which made him a very successful hockey player. I liked the idea of heritage marketing where brands would use their rich heritage, their founders and history to market to consumers. And even those brands that haven’t been in existence for a long time would create a heritage for their clients. How can you use heritage marketing, even if your company and brand haven’t been around for a long time?

Savvy companies that know how to use trends can capitalize on trends such as Trading Up, Come Together and Gender Blending.

Trading Up Trend: Consumer across socioeconomic categories buy more premium products, and you exploit this trend by having products at different price points to create ranges. Think how you might expand into other complementary or even non-complementary product categories.

Come Together Trend: The growth of building community and social networking is staggering, how can you exploit that trend?

Gender Blending Trend: There is a growing trend for gender neutral products. Recently more women have been buying technology products and more men are purchasing and using skin care products. If your products are not gender neutral, how can you make them so? And could you create a line that’s targeted for the “other” gender?

For The Next Big Thing to be truly useful to me, it had to teach me how to do three things, and I suspect it would be the same for most people who are interested in trend marketing.

1. How to research trend activities
2. How to interpret and analyze trends
3. How to implement trends

The book delves into how to create a Trend Marketing Department including the skills needed for every stage of the trend marketing process, as well as how to hire a consultant who specializes in the area. Higham also talks about how trends come into being, “Trends do not just appear spontaneously. They are driven by specific environmental or individual changes. What is happening around consumers affect their thoughts and actions. Trends start when an environment shift disrupts consumers’ normative attitudes and behaviours. And they typically occur as a reaction to something a consumer experiences.” The book also goes into fad versus trends, micro vs. macro trends, national vs. international trends. Several chapters are devoted to identifying, interpreting and implementing trends.

Identifying Trends

Who to Study

Consumers

• Innovators
• Influentials
• Early adopters

Observers

• Journalists
• Academics
• Researchers
• Entrepreneurs

How to Study

• Practical identification
• Theoretical identification
• Behavioural identification
• Attitudinal identification

Finding Data

Statistical: research reports, government reports, press releases

Observational: focus groups, clubs

Media: news media (mainstream consumer, alternative consumer), non-new media (books, films)

Interpreting Trends

• How do trends spread?
• What are active trend drivers?
• How will the trends develop tomorrow?
• How to map trends against the key drivers

Implementing

• Potential impact of trend
• How to benefit from trend
• Feasibility
• Consumer demand, relevance, interest

There is a lot of content in the book, and this review should not be used as a substitute for reading The Next Big Thing. Though the information is overwhelming, if you are serious about the entire trend marketing process you have to read the entire book once and use it as a reference guide. William Higham could have easily upped the perceived value of The Next Big Thing by simply including a five page summary of the trend marketing process. He already knows that there are lots of resources out there that spot trends, but people, myself included, do not know what to do with them.

I recommend The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit. Before you read The Next Big Thing, ask yourself the following three questions, and keep a notebook and pen handy to take notes and capture information that’s relevant to your situation.

Questions to Ask & Answer

1. How are my customers changing?
2. Which trends will my customers respond to?
3. How can I exploit the opportunity to identify new markets as well as better service my current clients?

Note: For readers who haven’t read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, it’s the perfect time to do so. The book provides strategies on how to get the most out of what you are reading. And if you haven’t done so already, create Google Alerts for the trends or other important information that you are interested in to flag articles, studies, blog posts and so on.

Further Reading

Trend Analysis Expert William Higham Forecasts Major Changes for Marketers and Consumers Alike
The Next Big Thing Blog

All book links are affiliate links.

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Book Review: The Next Big Thing (businesspundit.com)