I'm writing today inspired by a post I saw by Chris Walker - on LinkedIn . It resonated with me personally and professionally. There is a dichotomy between having a vision and seeing what others don't while also needing their approval and trying fit in. We are often asked to solve problems and come up with new and innovating solutions to what we see in front of us. Rarely are you asked to implement a dated and by the book strategy, everyone wants to be on the cutting edge. Oddly enough, the more your ideas or approach differ from the status quo, from what the people within the organization has succeeded on, the harder it gets to take those new roads. It feels like most of time, people want you to take the same path and miraculously see something that no one else before you saw, hang a right and boom ... you are at your perfect oasis. Ridiculous.   Here's a fun list for you: Apple Tesla AirBnB FedEx KFC Evernote Blogger Amazon   Wondering what the list is about? All of t

  I had an interesting experience the other night that level me surprised and questioning some assumptions. I saw an article on LinkedIn that was written to support route optimization and highlight differences between different types of final mile (last mile) deliveries. As I went through it, I couldn't help but feel like it was a little off. Not that the information was wrong per se, more that the frame didn't quite capture all of the nuances I felt it should (I appreciate I am a touch opinionated - I prefer to call it passion). It dawned on me later that evening, a question that might explain why I was feeling off after reading the article. In an on demand world, that is based on dynamic orders and routing, is knowledge being lost that supported the previous "traditional" models. The major difference I am making between dynamic and traditional models is that traditional models are/were built on fixed and planned service schedules. This could be five deliveries per w

This week seems to be starting off with a theme for me ... the idea and requirements of Express Delivery in last mile. Last mile is a challenging space. You are making direct deliveries to a customer. These are typically the least efficient deliveries that you can make, because an individual order size most likely will be challenge with respect to the operating costs to perform the activity. The discussions I have seen recently seem to be providing people with a bit of a false sense of security (in my opinion). We live in an age of data and technology, where the smallest operations can replicate what used to only be achievable by the biggest companies. This is a double edged sword however in the face of rising expectations. Everyone thinks about Amazon, and how they are 'easily' able to deliver on their service experience, but even Amazon has been careful and slowly approaching express / same day delivery. Walmart has been in the news recently as they launched their

Where are we playing? How do we win? So many businesses these days don't see to really be able to answer these questions. Now, while they seem straight forward and simple, they are actually extremely powerful questions and answering them properly requires quite a bit of work; but for the companies that can answer them properly, they are successful in what they do. Businesses of all sizes struggle with really understanding where to play. A company that tries to be everything to everyone while being everywhere is a great example of a company that doesn't really know where to play (and how to win). The underlying premise of those two questions is to really understand where or what your competitive advantage is. For anyone who wants to read more, please see: Competitive Advantage . Simply put, a competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices (cost) or by providing greater benefit

What does "customer experience" mean to you? Or maybe better yet, the real question should be what is "customer experience" to your customers? I often see two types of streams when this topic comes up, and you can usually see which a business adopts pretty quickly. The first I would say is a functional one.  Under this model, a business prides itself on their processes and creates good workflows for the fact that they deal with a lot of different customers, and try to be something for everyone. This business pride themselves on their clean invoices, their simply payment options, their execution of basic services ... all in all, they are essentially easy to deal with but still relatively impersonal. The second type is more personalized. Here, you will find a business that leverages their people and their ability to create connections with their customers (on top of focusing on be great at what they do) in order to "wow" their customers. Wowing y