Offense vs Defense

It has often been said, especially in professional football, that “the best defense is a great offense”. Or was it “the best offense is a great defense?”

After 20 years of providing marketing and management consulting services to businesses within the entertainment category as well as other industries, their strategic business approach is  either “offense oriented” or “defense-oriented”, based upon the team the leaders, managers or owners have assembled.

Every client says they want more revenue, but in reality, some are actually AFRAID of more revenue. They are the defensive businesses who tend to hire defensive employees. People who are content with the status quo; people who say, “Oh we tried that and it didn’t work.” 

People who believe that they are in a “sunset industry” or a "no growth" or "very low growth industry" and, thus, have no motivation to do anything differently...other than to say, "Nothing works anymore." (Including them!!)

Or people who just want to ride it out until they can sell.

Or they hire people who are mere auditors always thinking about theft; that someone is stealing, that they have to micromanage everything and their strategic visions is, “Don’t lose what you have and protect the principle at all costs”. People who say, “I will invest as little as possible to market my business” and are slow, very slow, to embrace dynamic and new internet marketing processes.  

Some have even hired internet companies to do this for them and may have even been successful with it, but the center no longer manages or plays in the game…they have hired replacements to play what they believe is “offense.”  Yet, when they don’t see immediate returns in 90 days, they fire the company and move even further away from "the offense" culture and dig their heels in even deeper to play “better” defense.

In fact, the worst situation that the defensive company can be in is to hire a bright, intelligent motivated person to develop a new set of programs. And when that employee stays up and burns the midnight creative oil to present proposals with facts and conclusions to owners, managers and other employees, they eventually get, “that won’t work”; “you can’t do that because of blah, blah, blah.”

Eventually and usually before six months that new employee quits, having been frustrated by the defensive players’ fear of risk, finger pointing and blame.  While employees are very concerned about any changes, it is usually, the leader, the manager and/or the owner the owner is even more scared than the employees and this attitude just permeates the organization... So they continue to play defense and still don’t understand why their business begins to atrophy.

On the other hand, those companies who are led by the “offensively oriented proprietor, manager or company executive wants all employee input; wants to reward them for new ideas; has established a culture of "teamwork", goal setting, easy to implement processes, and constant training. 

In this offensive minded environment, every idea is valuable, is considered and evaluated thoroughly from the perspective of “how can we run this play”?   What new resources will we need to make it happen?  How quickly can we roll it out in an alpha and then beta test?  It is this organization that truly values every employee and accepts new ideas from all.  

Unlike the defensive company that says, ah we’ve heard that before, it just won’t work here, the offensive company looks for reasons to make it work, to reward the employee for his /her idea suggestion, recommendation and creativity.

What kind of people do you think they tend to hire? That’s right. The aggressive self-starter who wants to achieve, who wants to be part of a team and who respects everyone on that team

If you find yourself in the former category (defensive), look in the mirror and evaluate yourself first.  

Offense or Defense?  The choice is yours

The choice is yours. But I know what I would do.

Because Every Voice Matters

I  never ask my blog readers to buy anything, except a couple of times a year I ask for a contribution to a charity that is near and dear to my heart; SAY (Stuttering Association for the Young). As a youngster, and even as an adult, I experienced stuttering first hand. And it made me what I am today. 

I am fortunate and blessed to have achieved many of my dreams and that’s why I am so passionate about helping kids who stutter. I know the humiliation, the teasing, the embarrassment, the tears of anger and frustration and the low self-esteem they feel because I felt that too. Like Moses, who had a stutter, he was driven to succeed because of his trials as a child.

In this world, everyone is given obstacles, some more serious and painful than others. Part of our intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth is to use them as motivations and not merely restrictions. 

Sometimes the challenges we are given becomes the accomplishments.

So today I am asking that you go to www.say.org/ruddbowling. 

See for yourself what SAY does and how you can be a part of our fourth annual bowling benefit just by clicking the donate button. Then use your credit card and donate any amount, $10, $50 or $100 or whatever you feel good about. 

And if you’re in the NYC area October 26^th, please join us. Please know that SAY and the entire organization of specialists and volunteers are doing the needed work to help each child who stutters feel like his voice matters and that stuttering cannot and will not cast a pall on his dreams.

“That which limits us can also empower us.”  Moses

My heartfelt thanks to you in advance.

Best regards

Fred

www.SAY.ORG is The Stuttering Association for the Young and is a non-profit organization that empowers young people who stutter and inspires the world to treat them with compassion and respect, so they can achieve their dreams.

What's Your Marketing Vision?

In the days before computer imaging and technology, manufacturing was conducted by subtraction.

That is, a large block or sheet of metal was rolled out and a press or a cutter was used to make it into the precise size the part was specified.

Manufacturers literally “subtracted” pieces of the block or sheet to make the part.

In today’s world, 3D printing technology, it can make a car fender, a computer screen or almost anything else by “adding” the technology to it.

Parts for spacecraft have been done this way for years. I haven’t seen it in person, but some of my friends who are 3D geeks say this is the future that all manufacturing will be done.

If that be the case, then what is to follow?  Will we add more to our existing stuff?  As proprietors, we have added sweepers, tournaments, 9pn and 8 pin no tap games, and a myriad of other games to the basic 10 pin gam,e?

But how do you know what consumers want?  

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”  Obviously the Model T was not even a dream in their mind, but it was in Henry’s mind.

So it took old Henry to have a vision, to have a dream and come up with something completely different from the horse to satisfy desires customers didn’t even know they had.

It took a risk. It took perseverance and it took looking into the future.

As bowling slowly morphs into FEC’s then FEC’s will start morphing into something else.

Because as always, THE MARKETING IS THE PRODUCT?

What will that something else be?  Is someone already working on that?  

Why not you?

Spend some time; sitting and staring time, soon and think about your vision, about how you can manufacture something that just might be the next Model T