Positioning is leadership
Leaders make sense of things
A leader is someone whom people gladly follow. It has nothing to do with having a C in your title.
True leaders are people who give direction and make sense of things, so that progress feels both feasible and worthwhile.
Positioning is leadership because it’s a direction-giving, sense-making, ambiguity-busting pursuit. It’s a dot-joining, crap-cutting activity. It’s strategic. It’s galvanising. It’s too important to delegate.
Positioning is leadership
I use the discipline of positioning to help service business CEOs make sense of their organisations:
- > for their people
- > for their ideal customers
- > for investors
The result is a strategic narrative that rallies the troops, makes your shop window work harder, and gets the smart money on board.
CEO is a sense-making role. Positioning is a sense-making discipline. Positioning is leadership.
Making sense of your organisation
Positioning answers two sense-making questions, clearly and precisely:
- > Who does our organisation serve?
- > What do we do that makes us exceptionally attractive to these customers?
This is the stuff of strategy. To whom are we dedicated? To what are we dedicated? These are big, upstream choices.
Good answers to these questions will give your people and your investors something to believe in and get behind.
Your irresistible truth and how to tell it®
Some people call it their secret sauce. I call it your irresistible and inimitable truth. It’s the reason your best customers keep buying from you. It’s why they refer you to other customers. It’s why they say nice things about you. It’s what they say when they say nice things about you.
Your best customers know your irresistible truth better than you do. But it takes skilful questioning and good listening to get it out of them.
My irresistible truth is that I’ll help you find yours. And I’ll help you tell it.
Positioning with style
The irresistible truth of a service business always has an element of style or character. Customers come for what you do. But they stay for how you do it. Whoever advises you on positioning has to really get you. Most outsiders don’t. I do.
Lowfalutin®
My style is Lowfalutin®. Simple, clear, coherent, and pragmatic. (With a touch of flair.)
I don’t use so-called AI.