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Use the EMBER Model to Help Your Company Break From the Pack
Posted in Growth
Posted by Oren Harari, to his blog in March of 2007 (this article was also published in the March 2007 issue of Performance magazine)
If you want to lead your organization to new heights of performance and competitive advantage, employ what I call the "EMBER" model. From now on, as you weigh the pros and cons of any important management decision or course of action, ask yourself five simple questions:
- (E) Does it make us extraordinary? Remember, your products, services, alliances, distribution channels, and value propositions must help make your organization stand out in very crowded markets. Your actions must help your organization be perceived as unique and special. If your actions stamp your company as a "me-too" or risk-averse copycat player, you're ultimately dying meat in today's uber-competitive marketplace.
- (M) Does it matter to customers? Whatever "extraordinary" things you do must matter to customers. You can crank out zillions of patents and new product features that thrill you and your staff, but if your customers don't find them of much added value, then what you've done simply doesn't matter.
- (B) Does it break new ground? In today's nanosecond economy, getting to market first, and consistently so, is critical for product differentiation, brand identity, and your ability to attract customers, talented employees, and investors. Is your organization built for disciplined speed and healthy urgency?
- (E) Does it encourage evolvement? Your company's product or service might be extraordinary, it might matter to customers, and it might break new ground, but you want to make sure that it's not just a "one trick pony" which will be quickly imitated by competitors. Is your organization geared for perpetual evolvement--with healthy pipelines full of next generation prototypes, beta tests of new breakthrough ideas, exciting product improvements, fresh sizzling ideas for customer service, and more innovative scaling and distribution?
- (R) Is it real? Is that new product or service truly appealing, growing and profitable---or is its effect chimerical, a result of "creative accounting" or slippery metrics? Unless you can demonstrate, with accurate and open data, that the market impact of your actions is real--real as in customer excitement, market buzz, net income, and returns on invested capital--then you're only fooling yourself and possibly even getting into ethically gray areas.
If you diligently follow the five components of the EMBER model, then your decisions will ignite your business like oxygen to an ember in the fire. If you don't, that ember will gradually die. This is 100% true for large companies, and it is 110% true for small.