How women underdogs can succeed

CLAIRE CAIN MILLER's excellent article, "Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley" is a fascinating highlight of the rising role of women entrepreneurs and business leaders. I've been studying underdog behaviors and successes--in business, politics and military history--and wrote a book called "The Underdog Advantage" (McGraw Hill). And the reality is the Underdogs are winning more and more in this hard-to-navigate economy: The smaller and hungrier companies, the business leaders who by default play offense and control their market dialogue and the women business leaders who are less afraid of change than their competitors.

Change will be a winning formula against the bigger and incumbent "Top Dogs" in the business world. And I'd bet on women business leaders to be at the front of that wave.

David Morey

Author: The Underdog Advantage

Newsweek's cover story, "America, Inc."

We have spent two decades at The Sawyer-Miller Group and Core Strategy Group borrowing the lessons of politics for businesses....and the lessons of businesses for politics....

And both feed off each other in terms of best practice lessons: Politics teaches the power of what we call insurgent or Underdog strategy, control of the dialogue and discipline. And business teaches the power of bottom line focus and discipline. For example, one evolution of President Obama's cabinet, I suspect, will be the addition of further business and bottom line expertise: Two cabinet officials, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Interior, have significant business leadership experience. We'll need more.

Government must not only govern--it must pay it's bills....just like those of us who run companies.

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Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

Silvers' video is a fantastic example of the power of momentum--in our campaign work, we call it the bandwagon effect. It starts small, in "Do the Doable" steps, and then grows; and grows. Ultimately, leading people means building momentum as you transfer ownership your leadership to them. It's not about the leader; it's about the followers.

David Morey
Author, The Underdog Advantage

Winning in 2010

This white paper details a framework for winning in 2010—a year in which all businesses and leaders are facing unique challenges. It summarizes our award-winning book and what we call “The Underdog Advantage”—learning and borrowing the great underdog stories and lessons from business, politics and warfare.

Today is the toughest environment in business history: 95% of start-up businesses fail by their 10th year—as do 80% of corporate products. And consumer research shows unprecedented distrust, cynicism and even anger—with distrust of institutions at an all time high. For all companies in all industries, these are remarkably topsy-turvy times. It’s the toughest time in history for the incumbent.

As a result, all companies today are in transformation—whether they know it or not, and whether they are in control of the transformation or not. And to adapt and win in these very challenging times, a company must be ready to move quickly to opportunity and away from failed strategies. So the kind of transformation you are leading within your company must be from top to bottom … and very carefully and strategically controlled. This is fundamentally what it takes to succeed today.

Download the complete white paper

Increasing Brand America’s Value

Simon Anholt’s recent article “The $2 Trillion Man: How Obama saved Brand America” argues the value of the U.S. brand increased this year from $9.7 trillion to $11.8 trillion. This $2 trillion appreciation in value is based on the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI). Usefully, it reminds us that perceptions do matter: The kinds of increases in polls by organizations such as Pew showing across-the-board improvement in the way the world views the U.S. and U.S. leadership are extremely important.

At Core Strategy Group, we build brand value for a living—and work to increase the value of a company not just in terms of revenue, but also with respect to perceptions of what we call “relevant differentiation”….how a brand is different, special and better.

To be sure, the Anholt analysis should factor in revenue dynamics—and anyone watching an hour of TV news this year knows US debt, deficit and fiscal challenges do not call for popping champagne corks. This has been a rough patch for US “revenues.”

But Anholt is correct in pointing to the additional elements that make a brand valuable—helping guide and navigate people in terms of how they think, feel and act; helping define the context of foreign policy decisions. By these terms, Brand America under President Obama follows the Sinatra melody:

“It was a very good year….”

David Morey

America Must Again Fight Like An Underdog

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt spoke on December 9 at West Point and argued America must re-focus and re-energize its leadership and economic strategy. It is beyond true.

At Core Strategy Group, we work with companies in transforming them from the status of “incumbent”—over-confident, bureaucratic, afraid of change—to “insurgent”—hungry, agile and welcoming change. And it’s this kind of underdog-insurgent approach that American policy-making needs today: Returning to the grounding principles that created our greatness from the beginning and finding the courage to change that which we must.

This means, as Immelt implies, re-booting our nation’s leadership strategies—moving beyond the kind of incrementalism we see at work in the coming health care bill and shifting toward bold, audacious and strategically-focused programs for investment and reform. America was not built on small moves; it was forged on big ideas.

The 18^th Century philosopher Goethe wrote: “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!” And today, in terms of re-focusing America’s economic, energy, educational and other reforms, it is a moment for boldness. There is genius, power and magic in that.

David Morey

Now What?!

In this challenging new reality there must be a fundamentally new approach to marketing.

That’s why we wrote the award-winning book, The Underdog Advantage, and developed insurgent marketing.

By this time you’ve undoubtedly made the obvious and even the painful cutbacks in costs. You’ve demanded more from your employees and suppliers. Now what?! You know you can’t cut your way to success. Now you must begin to create value. And you know you’ll have to do it in a different way. It’s not enough to be demanding a greater return from the same old strategies and tactics. And you know when things get back to normal, it won’t be normal at all.

It’s time for a change; for a new way.

An Approach Proved in Politics, Business and Warfare:

We have a developed a unique approach uniquely suited to these difficult times. It’s a strategic and tactical marketing and communications model based on lessons from the most successful revolutionaries and underdogs in politics, business and warfare. We call it insurgent marketing. Our goal is to use this new approach to revolutionize marketing and business.

Over the past few years far too much marketing has amounted to cautious incrementalism. And in this economic crunch, that’s gotten even worse. Imagination and invention have been missing – likewise missing have been aggressiveness and opportunism. Most of today’s marketing is based on a model made for the very different situation of past markets and mass marketing principles developed over five decades ago. As kids say, that is so over.

Start at Zero:

So we suggest beginning at the beginning – zero-base your marketing, from strategy to tactics, from top to bottom. We’ll help you redefine the job that marketing must do for your business and your brands in this new reality. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the way value is created; it’s only through developing relevant differentiation in your markets – benefits that are relevant to your target audiences, benefits that are clearly and compellingly differentiated from the competition.

If you accept the definition of marketing as a process to add value to transactions, then you must audit all operations and communications to see if they live up to that standard. If not, it’s time for a change.

Insurgent marketing strategy is based on the most results-oriented organizations – successful insurgent political campaigns, business campaigns and military doctrine. The stakes are clear; White House or out house. We bring this no-nonsense attitude to marketing and strategic communications. We’ll help you develop achievable goals that lead to real market momentum. We have created a radically different approach to market segmentation that drives profitable growth. And we will teach your organization to be more aggressive and opportunity-driven in today’s zero-sum markets with our Predator Marketing and Strategic Communications Programs.

It’s Time for a Change:

This crisis brings opportunity with it – the only organizations that will find that opportunity will have to be what the great Bear Bryant said he looked for in football recruits: “Mobile, agile and hostile.”

We preach and practice insurgent marketing strategy. We can create real change in your marketing and your marketing organization—in your own life plan, for that matter—and help generate more speed, focus and market impact. Now, more than ever before, is the time you need that; and now is the time to begin building it.

David