Unleashing Audacious Leadership: From Startup to $1 Billion in Sales with Roy Osing

In this episode we explore the art of audacious leadership and differentiation in the world of business. Today, we have a distinguished guest with unmatched executive experience. He is a former president, CMO, and entrepreneur who propelled a startup Internet and data company to an astonishing $1 billion in annual sales through 'unheard-of ways'.

With 40+ years of success, he is devoted to inspiring leaders and organisations to break free from the ordinary and achieve remarkable results. In this episode, Roy shares the secrets to driving superlative financial performance, fostering innovation, and rising above the competition. Get ready to be inspired and elevate your business and career.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Roy Osing is the Former President & Chief Marketing Officer at TELUS, a major data and internet company.

Roy took the company from its early stages to $1 Billion in annual sales. Roy  resides in Vancouver, is a keen blogger, content marketer, podcaster, a business adviser, and the author of the current 7 book series, entitled “BE DiFFERENT or be dead”.

Discover more about Roy here:

Website:        https://www.bedifferentorbedead.com/
Facebook:     https://www.facebook.com/roy.osing
Instagram:    https://www.instagram.com/unheardofways/
Twitter:          https://twitter.com/royosing
LinkedIn:       https://www.linkedin.com/in/royosing/

ACTION POINTS FOR YOU

* Create a strategic context/game plan for executing strategy and enabling innovation.
* Identify customer experience pinch points and develop plans to address them.
* Assess readiness for cultural change before attempting to foster innovation.
* Visit Roy's website and content for more ideas on differentiation and strategy.
* Listen to Roy's podcast on audacious moves.
* Purchase and read Roy's book series.

ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Dave Barr and I am the Founder and Owner of RLB Purchasing Consultancy Limited.

I have been working in Procurement for over 25 years and have had the joy of working in a number of global manufacturing and service industries throughout this time.

I am passionate about self development, business improvement, saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues, and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

CONTACT DETAILS

@The Real Life Buyer
Email: david@thereallifebuyer.co.uk
Website: https://linktr.ee/thereallifebuyer

For Purchasing Consultancy services:
https://rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk/
Email: contact@rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk

Find and Follow me @reallifebuyer on Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads and TikTok.

Click here for some Guest Courses - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-courses/

Click here for some Guest Publications - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-publications

Transcript

Intro  00:00

Welcome to The Real Life buyer podcast. In this podcast, you will hear interviews with business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors and technical specialists in their field. These professionals will hasten your development accelerate your career and broaden your business know how now introducing your host Dave Barr interviewing with a purchasing twist.

Dave Barr  00:21

Hello and welcome to The Real Life Buyer. We are incredibly lucky today to have an outstanding guest Roy Osing, the former president and chief marketing officer at TELUS a major data and internet company is joining us, Roy took the company from its early stages to, now listen to this number, 1 billion in annual sales. Yes, that's with a B. Roy resides in Vancouver, is a keen blogger, content marketer, podcaster, a business advisor and the author of the current seven book series, which I'm sure probably will be an eight before long knowing Roy, and it's titled "Be Different Or Be Dead". Today, I want Roy to give us a taster. And it will be a taster because the books are full of information of what he refers to as his "audacious and unheard of ways" that can help us all achieve success, both in our businesses and careers. So without further ado, I welcome Roy on to the podcast. Hi, Roy.

Roy Osing  01:21

Hey, thanks very much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Dave Barr  01:24

No, I think there's so much you can impart to us today. I think people can be blown away by our recording. And certainly if they can engage with your books, I think they've got a huge opportunity to learn more, but let's dive into to you, you know, the real Roy. You've been an inspiration, no doubt in the business world, certainly with your success, what do you think it was, in your upbringing, your DNA that gave and gives you the imagination, the confidence, perhaps the resilience and gravitas to achieve success and obliterate those conventional practices?

Roy Osing  02:00

While I yeah, thanks for the question. And I had to think about this, because I have been asked that before and I never realized that I think I think the key for for what actually I became was driven by my by my mom, she was one of 12 siblings, in Quebec, Canada. And so her stories were all about how she had to get attention, the attention of her parents how she actually, you know, could get as the the amount of food that she wanted at the at the kitchen table, because there was 11 other competitors going for the food. And just her general life was very challenging. And so she was she ended up to have to be a very strong individual. And to be honest, I think I think I have that I think I got that, like I can remember very, very young, she was always challenging me to look at ways differently to learn that it's okay to fail that it's okay to make mistakes, try and follow the rules. Okay, if you have to break a rule that doesn't hurt anybody else, that's okay. You go and learn from that. And so she empowered me to actually step out and try and juxtapose me and my values to everybody else around me. And so I think it was her. I've always had it. I mean, the business, the sort of business manifestation of that just happened in that context. But I've applied the same, the different kind of approach in my personal life and my career. And yeah, it's in my veins, and everything I look at these days, I always ask the question, How can I do that differently? observe what's going on around you, and make a call to do it differently. Because the world right now, Dave, quite frankly, is not doing a good job of differentiation. It's an undifferentiated world. And unfortunately, educated the educators aren't helping us because they're relying on on pedantic traditional ways that that, quite frankly, don't work today, because they're based on old principles. And so yeah, it just exudes me all the time. It gets me in trouble, by the way.

Dave Barr  04:02

No doubt. I'm just curious. Now, you had such a large family. There's fair bit of competition, I guess, between yourself and your siblings. And perhaps the only way that you can make yourself stand out was to be different from them. Is she think there may be something in that?

Roy Osing  04:17

Yeah. Well look at the truth is my mom was part but it was my mother that was part of a family of 12. I'm an only child. Oh, no, I have no idea whether that was a relationship. But what I'm saying is, I think I got the need and desire and sort of the compunction to actually be different from people around me, regardless of family size, or anything else. I mean, listen, we live in a world of tribes and herds. Right, right. And so you know, everybody wants to pull us into their herd pull us into their herd. Well, I learned that that's not the way to be successful. You need to be outside the herd. You need to create your own box. And I think I think what was going through my mom when she grew up, I got just the way she behaved and the way she pushed me in the way she did. She challenged me. And so today it's just a natural thing of what I do. So if I'm faced with having to do something first thing in my head is how can I do this? That will surprise people? How can I do this in a way that nobody else is doing it. And underscoring the fact that being different for the sake of being different is not what I'm talking about. This is not narcissism. This is not about the color of your hair, because I don't care. This is not about your pronouns, because I don't care. It's not about your sexual preferences, because I don't care. It's about being unique in a way that other people care about. You're serving other people in a way that nobody else does. That's, that's the sweet spot of being different. And as I said, it applies to your life because you have people around you that you care about. It applies to your career, because you have a hierarchy of people you need to serve. And it applies to your business, because you have customers that you need to serve and competitors, you need to beat. And I have to tell you, the theme works so well in all three of those dimensions.  

Dave Barr  05:59

Brilliant, thank you for sharing that now, your book series. Now, I'm working my way through these, just so informative books, encyclopedias of business, perhaps we can say there's a fair amount there on leadership and management. And I particularly like your reference to strategy deployment. And that a staggering I think that's the quote, There 95% of employees in a company are unaware of, or do not understand the strategy they're supposed to be part of. And I've seen this quite a few times in big business in business I've been in where there's a constant flow of new initiatives, new ideas, and I'd love for you to talk us through the right way, new initiatives should be applied in a business to ensure that everybody gets it.

Roy Osing  06:43

Yeah. And it's an excellent question. And it really starts with context, in my experience is a strategic context. Okay? Any any initiatives that an organization undertakes must be driven by strategy, this is not a world of tactics. And yet I see so many organizations is running at stuff, they've they run at AI, they run it, social media, they run at, all of this stuff. And I keep asking the question, what's the end end game? What is it there to serve? And of course, they haven't done the work upfront. And so what was successful for me was I created what I call the strategic game planning process, okay, because I didn't like traditional planning models, they, they're too expensive. They take too long. And by the way, they they're so Ultra concerned with getting it perfect. How can you get anything perfect in a world that is constantly changing, unpredictable, uncertain, and is imperfect. I mean, I really realized really early that I got to come up with a plan that did one simple thing, it got it just a vote, right. And it was super at executing. So I built this this process called strategic game planning. And it creates context, we can talk about that if you want. But the context describes the nature of innovation that goes on in the organization. Like, I don't care about how many ideas you have on doing things differently. Dave, what I care about is telling me the new things that you think makes sense relative to our new direction, let's have a conversation about that. Okay, and I'm going to encourage you to try different things, and so forth. But I'm also going to give you a box, I'm going to give you a box that says these are the three or four key strategic things that we need to achieve in order to drive towards our strategy goals, improve our performance to superlative levels. And we can now talk about innovation within that context. And so I think that, that ideas that fail are ideas that had no strategic purpose in the first place, okay. And it's leadership's job to create that context and that purpose, and then give people the tools and skill sets and empower them to go try some things and say, It's okay to fail once, never make the same mistake twice. Right, but you can make several mistakes the first time, but eventually, I know you're gonna get it right. And that's a culture that that has to has to be created in order to actually foster innovation. The other thing I would say to you, which I think was really, really breakthrough, for me, was what I call line of sight leadership. It's like, there's the general state of affairs is that you have a plan and the leader just kind of declares the the new strategy to the organization, right, and expects that everybody will get it. And everybody will, will know what to do that that in effect drives my comment about 95% of the people don't get it is because it's dumped on them right line of sight, at least the way I practiced it, is that you actually translate that strategy into what it means for each and every individual in the organization. Yes, each and every organization. What does it mean to marketing? What does it mean to sales? What does it mean to internal audit? What does it mean to customer service? So the whole idea is to draw a straight line between the strategy and what you do day in and day out, right? And so you're going to try and identify the new things that you need to take on. And the old things that are now irrelevant to the new strategy that you need to delete. By the way, deletion is a huge part of my concept of innovation, which people rarely jump onto, right? Everybody thinks that the innovation is doing new things. No, innovation is about creating value for the organization. And if you get rid of irrelevance, a lot of it, you are creating a huge amount of value for your company. And so to sum it up, execution needs to be a fundamental fabric of the way you plan. So you need to choose a model, mine, because I'm the only one that talks about strategic game planning, by the way, we can do that in 48 hours, Dave, and I'm working with small businesses today, okay, that we can sit down for 48 hours, and we have a strategy for them. Okay, that's not perfect in the sense that the academics would go yay, wow, you know, that satisfies all the philosophical ideologies, but it's perfect in the sense, you can actually do something with it the day on the 49th hour. So get the planning context, leaders translate what it means it's hard work, but you have to do it, do not delegate it to anybody else in the organization, right? You own that? I call it strategic micromanagement, right? I'm a believer in not delegating certain things. And that's one of them. Right? Creating meaning from your strategic direction for everybody in the organization is the sole responsibility of the leader of the business. Nobody else should should actually be tinkering in that. So those are the are a couple of ideas that that worked for me. Again, these are not, these are not pontificating ideas, Dave, I want to underscore all the stuff that I've given, you actually worked in the world in the real world. And a proof point is a billion in annual sales, right? People will say to me, Well, what exactly was it and I go, it wasn't one thing. It's a whole bunch of little common sense, simple things, that lit fires in people that together helped us move the performance of the organization because it was all execution based. It was not intellectually based. I don't mean it that way. The way I said it, yes, it was intellectual. But we didn't stop there think, Wow, what a great idea. Right? If you can't take a crude idea of a brave idea and turn it into a crude deed, then the idea is worthless. And we spent all of our time trying to figure out how to create an organization that believed in execution and could do it because that's where we got the year over year performance, it gradually got us to a billion,

Dave Barr  12:27

Right. So I'm thinking now that that means is you create a picture, a vision, a story for each individual, basically, so they can relate to it and understand it in their, in their language in their world. So one assumes then that you ensured that the management team that were sharing that information, sharing that vision when the each of those departments got it themselves, I guess you could also test that the right message was going down to the bottom line, where people did they fully understand exactly what was meant as well. Was that part of the process that you made sure things worked properly?

Roy Osing  13:07

Yeah, for sure. I call them alignment plans. Okay. So it actually they were plans in aligning not just outcome output from that function, but also behaviors. So that was really, really at the granular level. Because you can imagine, we had a significant part of our strategy around delivering I called gasp, or the customer experiences, right? That's a behavioral thing, right? That's not a teach. I mean, I had to hire human being lovers, I had to do all sorts of weird things, right? To do it. But it all had to be in alignment. So a lot of it was was me saying, No, that's not right. This is the way I want it to look. So I put my fingerprint on the customer moment, I architected the customer moment, say these are the behaviors that are okay. These are the behaviors that aren't aren't okay, like an example would be never pass a customer around, ever. You never do that. And you can relate, right? Because that customer is going to have to repeat their story five or six times, that does nothing to create memorable experiences. And so it was literally at that level. And it began with my direct reports, but I didn't delegate it to them. Because quite frankly, it was in my head and my heart and my soul. It wasn't in theirs, right. And so what I had to do is work with them, be part of the translation process, attend their meetings with their people, and coach them by showing them in front of their people. And at first, it was a bit intimidating for them, right? Because they were used to a model where you had dumped it on them. And then I would go back to the boardroom and talk to the CEO and the chairman of the board, right? Well, that's not what Roy did. I didn't dump it on him. I said, Okay, let's do this together. Bring your people on, you're safe. I understand it. I understand. Maybe apprehensive but You're safe. You're safe with me because this is new for you too. So let's go on and after what happened is after a while, it's kind of like I imprinted on them what I wanted them to do. By showing them. And to me, that's good leadership. I'm sorry, that's that's not, you know, getting in the engine room? Well, it is strategic engine room is okay to be in because nobody else has that role, right? And so yeah, and it was very, very onerous. It took a while to do this, like I had, like eight or 9000 people, eventually, in this organization, we kept tweaking the strategy right strategy wasn't wasn't set in stone. Right, it was a function of results. And what we had to do so the translation process was a constant thing that had to be done. While I'm sweating, just thinking about the hours that we put in doing this. And people used to say to me, are you crazy? What do you what are you doing this for? That's not your job. And I would say, yeah, it is my job and people to this day, and I will run into them in a mall somewhere. And they remember this stuff. They remember, it feels good.

Dave Barr  15:53

And one of the things you touched on there, which resonated for me was about the customer and not being past. And thinking about customers. Now, I'm sure you've experienced it as well, it's very difficult for a customer to speak to a business. Now, you have every opportunity to stop that happening by putting in these chat bots and all these other things. How many hours do people spend trying to call a company to get a human being to talk to them back? What's your thoughts on the companies that seem to be focusing on a narrow AI responses rather than human interaction? And these great big boiler rooms of people that almost like fend off customers? Are?

Roy Osing  16:38

Thank you for the question, Dave, that's a frickin Great question. It goes back to this whole thing of creating the right context. Like the people, the organizations that do that, that chase things like AI and chatbots. And trying to drive costs down in call centers. And so they don't have, okay, a concept or a strategy that's literally there to drive memorable customer experiences. Or if they do, they're lying to themselves. And they actually think the technology can do it for them. Not on my watch, never. And so, you know, I would always say to people, look at if you're going to chase a tack a tactic, first of all, try and fit it into your strategy somehow. And if it takes you a long time to sort of rationalize it, it's the wrong tactic to chase but start out with saying, what are the key things that we need to do to create to take customers breaths away? For example? What are the pitch pinch points that are going on today? Okay, so for all you business leaders out there, I want you to go back into your organization and look for pinch points. If and if indeed, you want to create amazing experiences. And and my advice is you do, okay, because that's one of the things that clearly differentiates one small business from another is the extent to which customers are treated in a delicate manner, and it just blows them away. So go back and look at the pinch points, okay, what are the things that you're doing that don't line up with that and kill them, okay, kill them, I don't care what else it's serving, okay. And it may be a whole bunch of of your FAQs. And your website's gotta be looked at all that kind of stuff, and end up coming up with a plan that says, look at, these are the three critical things that we need to do, okay, to deliver into, into that amazing experience realm. And the first thing you need to do is you need to, you need to be 100%, flawless on delivering your basic service or product, because if you can't do that, then you'll never earn the right to have a dazzling experience with any customer, right. And so the fundamental concept of, of service experience design, is get your core service, right 24 By seven by 365. Get that done. So if we, regardless of what you're what you're delivering in terms of your product, gotta be 100% reliable, got to meet 100% of the promises you make, then you go to the second level, which is how am I going to make these guys the customer feel when they transact to get my cold core service? That's the experiential piece. And the key to this is really simple. You need to hire people that love human beings. Okay, if you have people that would rather be writing code, or would rather be looking for AI applications, then put them in those those functions do not put them in a customer serving role. All right. And so I had to come up with a silly little gimmick called hiring for goosebumps, because I said look at I got to figure out a way to be able to identify people that were born with a gene okay of caring for people because those are the people that understand how to deliver gasp worthy experiences and I want them in customer service. So I would be actually part of the the interview process my first question to a candidate, which by the way, was kind of intimidating to them that would the President sit across and as a customer service rep. I'd say do you like human, do love human being things and they would look at me and they go, Oh, I know this is a trick question. And probably yes is the right answer. Say go. Yes, Roy. I love human beings. I said, Okay, fine. Tell me a story that would prove it. This is what separated the people who just kind of intellectually got the notion and the people that were born with the DNA of serving others, because they intellectualization person would kind of give me a cold story, you know, that they thought was spun, and it would left me like cold. And I'd sort of show them the door with a person that was really born with that gene. They would tell me a story, Dave That was rich, with passion, detail, caring emotion. And guess what it did. I got him right now. It gave me goosebumps. I just hired that for I got goosebumps right now. Because that's the kind of feeling you get when you're in the presence of somebody like that, right? That's the way you you want customers to feel. You want to give them goosebumps, by the way, I've never thought about it that way before. You just created an innovation for me today. I've always thought about me getting goosebumps. No, I want me and I want the customer getting goosebumps. Thank you for that. You did that for me today. I appreciate it. But that's the kind of level visceral level you have to get to in this. It's not about HR, it ain't. It's about how human beings relate to one another. Right? And getting that person that really has this natural ability, like you can't train people to do this stave. You can't teach people to train people to love people, you can teach them how to how to smile, right? And you can do all that. But you can't you can't teach them and train them how to love people. So that's a recruitment issue, silly little story that I gotta tell you. It caught on like wildfire. And I did the same thing. I had my direct reports sitting in the room with me while I was doing this. So they got it. And imagine a customer service rep. potential candidate in a room with the president of the company. Do they think their their position is important? Absolutely better believe they think it's important. So it was just one of the little things I did. 

Dave Barr  22:00

Yeah, that's a great story. And it's right that we we like to think we say buy things on, on logic, but we actually most of the time, will buy on emotion. And it's the emotions that people remember. And you know what your last experience with the company that you got passed from pillar to post went from chatbot to chat bot sent back to the website. Did that feel for you with something you want to share? It was blumin negative I suspect?

Roy Osing  22:26

Well, you know, the thing is, what happens to me is, I mean, they're crazy to put me through that because by the time I finally get a human, I mean and cranky, I'm crusty, actually. I'm grumpy as hell. And the human being the server is going well. What did I do? So they don't get the fact that I've been dragged through technology. And I'm really pissed by the time I got to see them. Right. So unfortunately for them, but the good ones, they know how to manage me. Yeah, they do not. And they weren't taught it. They just knew how to do it. And I always by the way, I always mentioned I said, You know what? I'm sorry. I know I was grumpy coming in, but you did an amazing job. And they just I can feel it. They just light up on the other end of the phone. They go. Thank you so much. Mr Osing.

Dave Barr  23:10

Probably nice to feel recognized in a positive way than just receive the brunt of people's frustration. Yeah. They were talking about this thing's the world's best practice comes into mind. Or see that subject being talked about in your book. It's something that most people most big business refer to what is best practice out there. Let's emulate best practice. And you have a very different thought process on this. Can you share that?

Roy Osing  23:37

Yeah, it's basically really simple competitive advantage and being different, is exactly the opposite of following a best practice, okay, even if you're a fast follower, you're still a faster copycat. And so the whole notion of being different is about differentiation. It's about creation. It's about innovating newness, creating new boxes, it's not about copying anybody. And so I actually think people that tag, you know, following best practice as an innovative approach is intellectually dishonest. It's not, you can never justify to anybody why copying somebody else is innovative and creative. You can't, okay, you just can't do it. Plus, look at there's so much that going on these days. And unfortunately, it's being supported by what I would say academic narratives that bleed best in class and best practices. You're absolutely right. People say well, let's What should I do here instead of instead of saying what Roy does, which is how can I do this differently? They say who's best in class and I call it gargling Google. Alright, so I'm not a Google gobbler, say that fast. Okay, in the sense that people normally go there and say, Well, let's find what somebody else has done. And then they proceed to mistakenly believe that they can take that practice execute on it and they will get some stuff Dziedzic ventures, let me say this to your audience, there are no strategic benefits whatsoever. In following best practices, all you're going to do, all you're going to do is maybe achieved some efficiency gains, right, but you will never achieve competitive advantage, you will never achieve strategic uniqueness, you'll never achieve being the only one that does what you do, which is the ultimate expression of being unique. You will never do that. And so you're right. I spend a lot of time basically beating up the concept of a best practice. Okay, I want to see people come up with what I call the only practice now what's an only practice, Dave, an only practice is something that you and only you do. Okay, that's what I want to see that expression of unmanageability right, unsurpassed ability, remark, ability. Okay, unit of oneness, that's the world that I want to see us move towards. And unfortunately, right at the moment, we're not even close strategic gains don't come from copying. And yet people keep talking about using best practices as a vehicle to get there. So it's, it's, it's like, impossible. Now

Dave Barr  26:11

I'm sure we've already sparked a lot of thoughts in people's minds. I'm thinking about those business leaders out there now that have steered a stable ship. They've done things perhaps conventionally. And this, this chap on this podcast has shaken their trail a little bit. Now, for those who may be think, well hold on a minute, this guy has got a lot of things to say that I agree with. But I've not done things in this way before. How on earth do they go back to their businesses tomorrow? And say, right, I'm going to change things up, I'm going to take on some of the lessons that Roy shared, and I'm going to foster a new culture of innovation and creativity, but their employees are not used to that. So how do they go into work tomorrow, and change the story change the whole culture of the business, so they can start taking on board some of your expertise?

Roy Osing  27:07

Well, the first thing they do is they need to assess whether, in fact, they can do it. Okay? Because look at this is not stuff that's off the shelf, this is stuff that, that that that was was a success that failed on on occasion, etc, over a span of like three decades. Okay, so this is not kind of like an ala carte approach to building innovation and creativity in an organization, it starts with completely blowing up your existing model, and starting over again, and being led through a process, okay, very deliberately with somebody who understands the nuances of how to get there. Okay, so it's, it's, I would say, and I'm not pitching work here, because I don't need it. Right. But I'm saying, for somebody that really, as a result of this really wants to make a difference. I want to have a conversation with that person. Okay? Because it's really, it's important to me that people don't want to do this, do it right. And maybe there is a way to do it, right, depending on the nature of engagement. But this is not something that's like a marketing one on one or a sales one on one or strategic planning one on one, Dave, it just isn't. And I'm not saying it's so complicated that you need to spend money on a consultant. I won't say that, what I will say is, it's a different way to think about things. And you may want to have some help from somebody that's actually done it right, the worst thing to happen, okay, would be that you would fall on your face. And you would go back and try something under the guise of creating a different organization with a culture of innovation ethic, only to have it fail. Because all that does is the people around you say Oh, well, flavor of the month, flavor of the month. You know, I knew it, I knew it was common, we failed. And I'll never listen to this person. Again. That's part of the problem. So leadership, currency and credibility can suffer extremely. But in process terms, okay, what I would do is take a step back and say, Okay, we need to redefine who we want to be when we grow up. In other words, we need to create that strategic game plan context that will now henceforth, and it's not going to take long to do it, but it will govern everything we do. And we will get to the objectives and the strategic imperatives that make sense for you. But we will do it in a contextual way. We will not chase tactics, we will not follow best practices. I mean, I got probably more faith in the leaders of businesses than they do with themselves. And all I do is pull it out of their heads, Dave, and I can do that because I can see where they are. I can see them. I know them, because I've been there and done it. And so I mean, I welcome somebody that wants to get up and get going. Just be careful because this is a moment of truth. You don't want to screw up.

Dave Barr  29:56

Yeah, you make a mistake again. Now then people are saying Oh, here we go is you say we've had this before he's read another book. If we keep, we keep quiet and and just nod wisely, then it will gradually go away.

Roy Osing  30:13

That's exactly. I did that a few times.

Dave Barr  30:18

Indeed, there's one reflection I've got here. And again, it's, it's about a reference from your book. And that'syou refer to the bear pit. Now, this is quite an uncomfortable experience. I suspect for many a leader and manager, I've heard it referred to perhaps in different ways as like a 360 appraisal, whether that's accurate enough, then that's another thing. But you can explain this now that the bear pits sounds pretty scary. Can you explain what's the best description of this and how it can be used in the right way to get the best relationship between a leader and their people?

Roy Osing  30:54

Yeah, I'll go up a level because I want to get closer, I want to put my butt against my strategy and say to you, everything I do, is driven by what my butt feels. So that's the line of sight thing, right? And so how did bear pit relate to that? Bear Pit was a was an idea I came up with that was based on the concept that I had around my leadership, which was leadership by serving around. Tom Peters in the day had management by wandering around. My conclusion was it wasn't good enough. It wasn't strategic enough. And so I came up with his leadership by serving around and what do I mean by that? I mean, the leader spends time with their people, not just to rub shoulders. No, no, it's to figure out what needs to be done to to do what improve execution of the strategy. Why is that? Because it's going to drive performance. It wasn't done because it was a cool HR idea. If that were the case, I never would have done it. It was it was done this whole serving around thing, which by the way, was led by a simple question, how can I help? What can I do to help you? What can I do to help you in parentheses execute the strategy better, more pristinely more flawlessly? So that was what I did. The bear pit was kind of a groupie around that idea. So it was crowdsourcing the answer to for those of you who wants a modern, kind of like phraseology, so it was my way didn't think about it in those terms then, but it was my way of getting a group a crowd together, it was cross functional, and basically saying, Okay, how are we doing on executing your game plan? Okay, we want to unleash the power of the internet. Here's our target at the end of the year in terms of top line revenue, how are we doing? Where are we screwing up? Where are we doing? Well, who are the Who are the heroes? Right? What kind of customer stories do you have telling me about your gas boiler, the experience that you've created and are proud of tell me where I can do a better job for you? Because I promise I will try. That's what that was no entourage it was Roy in the pit. Now, the interesting thing happened. When I first started it, my direct reports were absolutely aghast because they are afraid that I were going to throw I was going to throw them under the bus in front of their people. Right? Which mean, which told me I had a job to do with them, obviously. And I addressed that and they wanted to attend. I said, No, this is Roy and Roy and the people. That's it. That's the way we're doing it. It got to the point where their involvement was more from the point of view of okay, here's what we need to do. Here's what I heard at the Bear Pit, right? And here are the people involved, go talk to them nicely, right? Because I'm watching these are my people in the pit, right? These are pit bulls, Roy's pitfalls, and being careful while you're talking to him. So I engage them in helping remedy whatever I was told, but it literally was a group session that that was documented in terms of what they said what action I was going to take as their leader and the promises that I was making, in terms of remedying what they said the interesting thing is as I said it started out kind of like the even though even though the pit bulls the people in they were kind of like I don't know if I trust this dude, I don't know if I naturally so I address that head on, I get your anxiousness. I get your your distrust, because you've been, you've told us these things before and nothing happened, right? Well, okay, we're going to do something about him this time. And so after a while, people would would get a hold of me and asked me when and where the next bear pit was going to be held in their region because we had a province wide organization. And so the demand went up. And results, as they say, measure it in terms of top line performance. I can't give you a direct correlation between our causation between Bear Pit and revenue, but I can tell you, it was in the mix. And that was all I cared about. It was in the mix of causal factors that helped me grow top line to get to a billion.

Dave Barr  34:51

Most interesting as really, really quite profound that got some of the thoughts here and this is about individuals predominantly. but also the organization's and that's about limiting beliefs, the things you're talking about today will be as you think you would prefer to almost as radical, very uncomfortable for people to take on board is not how they've done things before. There's lots of limitations they've already got in their head to stop them moving forward, perhaps with this. So what do you think are the kind of mindset shifts that are necessary to embrace your audacious practices? And can they unlock that potential and feel comfortable about it?

Roy Osing  35:29

Well on a personal level. And I keep saying is the people, look at, if it's a journey, that you're absolutely not wanting to go down? That's fine. I'm not, I'm not saying that you're a worthless human being if you don't do this, I'm just saying, if you want to achieve something truly remarkable, you can't do it by continuing to practice the stuff that worked for you yesterday, and you can't do it, do it by being the same as other people and claiming that you're better and best, you need to be different. Okay, so if you want to go down that journey, here are some misconceptions that are out there, and solutions that kind of like follow from that. Okay, the belief that copying best practices, I know you are expecting this one, the belief that copying best practices will make you successful is a fallacy. It won't, it will make you simply one more person in the same herd of people all doing the same things. Okay? So you want to get get to a world where you're creating, and then where you're going to be unique. So the first thing is get rid of your your mindset around benchmarking, ask yourself the question, What can I do differently? Simple little thing. Secondly, there's a misconception that says that a plan that follows tradition, will be a successful plan. In other words, if you follow the textbook, it will lead you to success. Wrong, it won't, all it will do is it will measure you on the degree of conformity you were able to reach in terms of what your plan says versus like the boilerplate, you need to step out of that you need a plan that's not based on the pristineness of direction, articulation. It's based on how well you can execute it because a plan that can't be executed is absolutely worthless. I don't care how its how consistently it conforms to all of the sort of pedagogy articles of the day, you're right, get get rid of that. So it needs to enable execution. And the third thing I would say is that, you know, there's a misconception that great leaders delegate, great leaders, audacious leaders, delegate certain things, and they do personally, other things. And the ability to actually bifurcate you know, your world as a leader is extremely important. We talked a little bit about what I call strategic micromanagement, the things the roles that a leader needs to personally take on, there needs to be more of that get rid of the misconception that delegation, if you don't delegate, you're a bad leader. You know, that's not true. absolutely not true. So those are three things off the top. I could get into there's a misconception that if that if you can claim that you're better or best, that's a good competitive claim, hogwash. It isn't, it's a meaningless statement, you want to you want to, you want to be the only one that does what you do. So your competitive claim has got to be we are the only ones who the only statement is a huge part of the book, I'm sure you read about it, it's been probably the biggest, I would say innovation in my thinking over the years that the book actually communicates, because it hits the notion that differentiation is actually not happening today, Dave, on differentiation is happening. And because we rely on claptrap, and aspirations and narcissism by claiming who we are, and the only statement is a way to break out of that, because it's a statement of uniqueness in a way that other people care about. And there's a huge piece in the book about that. And we could probably spend an hour just on how to do that. And it may not be a bad idea, because it's a key key point in in all my in all my thinking anyways, so there's some ideas.

Dave Barr  39:11

Cool, though that point has been noted, potentially for a future gathering. Before I asked the last question, I'm sure now people are extremely intrigued about yourself where they can find more about you. The books that you've written, you know, learn from you, where's the best places for people to uncover yourself?

Roy Osing  39:29

So I've got a website "bedifferentorbedead.com" I'm sorry for the number of letters but I wanted it to be unique and bedifferent.com was taken and it didn't really say what I wanted to say anyway, so "bedifferentorbedead.com" come and visit me. I blog every week. Look at I've been blogging on this stuff since 2009. This is not new for me. There's a ton and I learned I'm learning about it all the time. Just like the Goosebumps for customers that you gave me today what a gift and I will write about that it will see sort of kinda on folds it as we go So I've been there's a lot of content on my site, for those of you who want to learn more about this and that. And then the other thing, and if you want to check out my books, there's some pages on that as well. And then I've also got an email Roy dot o singh@gmail.com. And I'm really happy to converse one on one with people. Dave, I have people sending me their draft only statements these days, right? Here's what here's my only this is my business. Here's my website address. Here's my only thing. What do you think I got to tell you what a great day it is. For me, Dave, when I get those emails, because I follow up on them. Of course, it's all pro bono help. I mean, I'm not here, I'm paying it forward. And so I'm happy to do a one on one with people, all they have to do is ask.

Dave Barr  40:43

That's really generous there. And you've also got your podcast, you want to say a few words about that?

Roy Osing  40:47

Yes, this is something that I actually just started doing about a couple of months ago is called audacious moves to a billion is is, is my podcast. And what I'm trying to do, again, is just articulate and deal with the content of the book in different ways. I'm a believer that everybody learns in a different way. There's an old kind of like boilerplate, sort of context, architecture that appeals to everybody. And so the podcasts with the with the blog posts with what we're doing here, in podcasting as a guest on my hope is that all of those three in their own way will appeal to different folks and, and aid in the understanding of, of what we're trying to do we come and visit me on audacious moves to a billion Yeah, you're gonna hear about hiring for goosebumps, you're gonna hear about killing down rules, you're gonna hear about cutting the crap, all the stuff that I that I did to help me along my way. So come on, and check it out.

Dave Barr  41:46

Brilliant, say great invitation there. So lastly, it's very difficult because there is so much content in your books, we've barely touched scratched the surface, or most, you talked about five boring things that incredibly successful organizations do this, every single chapter, there is something in there. Now, there's no way we can talk about all that today, we'll be here forever. But if you had to pull out a few things, beyond what you've already discussed, that would really help businesses that certainly the SMEs that are struggling, today we're hearing about businesses that are failing, perhaps at a greater rate than they have for quite some time, even the big boys out there with the big names. Some of those are failing, certainly in the UK, we're seeing that on the high street, what sort of things would you share today to help those people in that difficult situation?

Roy Osing  42:36

Like I'm a firm believer that the people shouldn't have to drink through a firehose, okay, in terms of ideas, and so forth. Okay, because I believe in focusing and distilling things down into a few manageable things. So rather than add to that, which we can do at a later date, I want to reinforce if you don't mind, I want to reinforce how important it is to be different. The whole notion of differentiation, and I know I'm repeating myself, but I gotta tell you, it bears repeating. We I want you to think about being the only one go check out what that means. The biggest problem that businesses have today, whether they be new businesses, or established businesses, is they have not declared a unique position in the market for themselves, they are unable to answer the question, Why should I do business with you and not your competitor? Okay, and the reason that they're unable to do it is, the evidence today shows that their answers to that question are things like, We're number one, we're the best, where market leaders were the first, okay, it's their view of themselves. And that's where I come up with this whole declaration and observation that we live in a narcissistic world. And that, unfortunately, is being manifested in the competitive claims that are out there. So the very, very, very first thing you have to do is start thinking about being different in a way that people care about, not in a way that you think is cool, that doesn't matter. It's gotta be. The second thing is you need to get your strategic context, right, we've talked about this in this podcast, strategic game plan is built to execute. This is not about the pristineness of your intellectual thinking, okay? Because thoughts achieve nothing, action and passion and emotion that's applied to thoughts. That's what achieves it. So you can't stop it. How cool the idea is, right? You got to get to how am I going to get in the trenches get dirty, get your fingers dirty, get get get dirt under your nails to make this happen. And there's a way to do that. And it worked for me and it'll work for you. And the third thing I will say is that I'm cultures today that are truly innovative, that are truly remarkable in terms of what they the value they create for customers, okay, those cultures are inundated with human beings that like each other. I know this has put And I know this is basic stuff, Dave. But listen, it is a basic problem that we have. It's not about technology driving you. It's about using technology to achieve your strategic goals. Right? On the backs of humans, you always want to have humans there and try and think about getting the right quality of people that love others, empowering them to do what they know is right for others, training them giving this giving them the skills and competencies of your business. And that's where I come and say, like, I can teach you what an internet services but I can't teach you how to love human beings. And that's the difference. And so if all you got from this podcast, was it the importance of differentiation, a strategy context to execute, and hiring people have a having a mosaic of humans in your organization that actually love each other, then you are well on your way to a billion in sales. I guarantee you, brilliant.

Dave Barr  45:58

Thank you very much, Roy, I do look forward to speaking to you again. It's been a wealth of information you've shared today. I really suggest people go and listen to your podcast, purchase your books, and see so much information in there so much, and so many ideas that they need to think about in a shall we say, a very profound way. So thank you for sharing today.

Roy Osing  46:21

Thank you very much, Dave, and I'm honored to have been invited I really am you did a great job.

Dave Barr  46:26

Thanks then, bye. So there's another Real Life Buyer podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it. And it has given you some ideas and inspiration for greater action and achievement. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. And a five star review would be most appreciated. If you would like to discover more about me what I do. Take a look at www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk. Bye.