Business Unusual - Tacitcal Business For Growth

	Business Navigation
	Profit Drivers
	Business Operating Systems
	Business Leadership
	Suspecting, Prospecting and nurturing
	Centre of Gravity
	Setting Conditions and Shaping
	Military Planning for Business Success
	E-Leadership in the New Economy

Centre of Gravity

“If you are still relying on your ‘Unique Selling Proposition’ alone to give your business a sustainable competitive advantage, you’re in deep poo poo.”
- Duncan Schultz

Business in our current context is fast, a 'blur' in fact. Making sense of how we can build a better business, whilst simply keeping our head above water is a challenging and consuming task. Simplification is the key. Centre of Gravity is a simple approach to ensuring that we understand what we:

Are good at,
Should be good at, and
Are not so good at.

This is generally encompassed in the traditional bulky business plan as something like - "great customer service...". This warm and fuzzy sounds good, looks good and is certainly an ideal concept. How do you make this happen? What are the specifics? What things can you do every day to work towards building and sustaining strengths and mitigating and eliminating weaknesses? The answer lies in a simplistic construct - Centre of Gravity. Have a look at the example below from 'ChocBiz'.

Note that what starts out in the centre areas as warm and fuzzy becomes very specific at the edges. Doing business at the 'Edge' is what Centre of Gravity helps us identify and do.

What is Centre of Gravity in the Business Unusual context?

The centre of gravity is the collection of capabilities in your business, from which your business creates a sustainable competitive advantage, a platform for growth and market strength. The centre of gravity in each business will consist of a number or key elements

Identifying your Centre of Gravity

The process of identifying your Centre of Gravity allows you:

To understand what makes your business ‘tick’
To target tactics to build your strengths
To minimise your vulnerabilities
To build on for growth
To mitigate competition
To weather economic downturn
To find, keep and satisfy customers…

The key aspects to your Centre of Gravity are:

Capabilities (Strengths),
Vulnerabilities (Weaknesses)
Gaps (Strengths needed), and
Requirements (the things that actually 'make' Capabilities or reduce Vulnerabilities)

Start by identifying what your existing strengths and weaknesses are, pretty much conducting a good old fashioned SWOT. Next - start asking yourself, "what are the actual things I need to do to create/sustain/reduce... this?" The answers to these questions will start to provide you with the requirements. Once you have started to map these out - start answering the questions:

what should I be good at? and
What could possible go wrong?

Mapping you Centre of Gravity on something like a mind map (as shown for ChocBiz) on a single piece of paper, single file, ..whatever - that you can easily refer to is ideal. Place it in front of you and refer to it every day asking yourself - what can I do right now to build my Centre of Gravity?

If this is the only Business Plan you have - at least it will not gather dust on a shelf.