Practical Leadership Insights for Competitive Market Success

Unlock the secrets to becoming an impactful leader with our special guest, Roy Osing, a veteran business leader with a proven track record of success. Discover how to truly differentiate your organization in a competitive market by focusing on what customers genuinely crave. Roy shares his powerful insights on why execution trumps perfect planning and advocates for a "learn on the run" approach. This episode is packed with actionable advice on making your business stand out and achieving market leadership.

Ever wondered why endless strategic planning often leads to stagnation? We challenge conventional wisdom by promoting a pragmatic approach where only 20% of the effort goes into planning and 80% into execution. Learn how to set a general direction and embrace an iterative strategy, much like Apple and Tesla, to continually refine your business approach. Real-world success comes from action, not perfection, and Roy's experiences provide a roadmap for navigating this balance effectively.

Dive into the world of "leadership by serving around" as Roy Osing shares the importance of strategic micromanagement. Understand how getting close to frontline workers and personally engaging in key organizational processes can enhance performance and foster genuine connections. This episode also features insights from Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting, showcasing the value of diverse perspectives in leadership. Tune in to gain invaluable wisdom and elevate your leadership journey with practical, hands-on strategies.

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Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted to have you join us as he unpacks and shares his leadership experience, designed to help you in your leadership journey. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Good morning. This is Ron Harvey. I'm the Vice President of Global Core Strategies and Consulting and we're a leadership firm based out of Columbia, south Carolina. I've been around for about 10 years, my wife and I, and our sole reason for starting the company and what we enjoy most is really adding value and making a difference for leaders that are running organizations, and it's a challenging time, quite honestly, for leaders to be able to lead five generations in the workforce. All the differences of opinions and how we work in hybrid work and in the office, out the office don't want to work for four days or don't want, you know, command and control has changed. All that has changed. So, with all that being said, we stay busy and we enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 1:01

So the opportunity to pause briefly to do what we call Unpack with Ron Harvey, which is a podcast that lets you behind the curtain and I get leaders that come on board and says yes, to have open conversation without any questions in advance, and we just have real conversations with leaders from around the globe, from all backgrounds. So I love the fact that people show up and they have different backgrounds, different perspectives, because we're all unique in our own way, that people show up and they have different backgrounds, different perspectives, because we're all unique in our own way. So today I'm super excited, you know that I got Roy Ossing on with us in his own way. We'll tell you who he is, what he does, but he's done phenomenal things. So, roy, thank you for saying yes and welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 1:41

Hey, ron, my pleasure.

Speaker 2: 1:41

I'm honored to have a chance to speak with your audience. I really am. Yes, yes. So thank you, roy. Is there anything I mean? So your team did a great job. They sent over. You've had a phenomenal career. We talk about leadership all the time. You are an author. You've really grown businesses, which I think our audience would be super excited about. You've been very, very successful at growing businesses and you come with a very good background. So, diving right into, we talk about leadership all the time. How have you been able to have such a great impact on not just your organization but other organizations over time? What's the secret sauce?

Speaker 3: 2:10

Well, I don't think it's any one thing, ron to be, honest, I'm kind of like a guy that practiced a whole bunch of things, tried a lot of things, failed at a lot of things and fortunately some of them stuck and helped me with a group of people that take a startup internet company to a billion in annual sales and when I look at it, kind of trying to categorize leadership characteristics that I think kind of like related to me, I would say there's basically four. The first one is to be different. Okay, it's all about differentiation, and we can talk. I'd love to talk more about that because I'm really concerned that the world today is really doing a mediocre job in terms of differentiating themselves from their competition. So that was one piece that we just drilled down on. The second piece is all about execution. It's not about the efficacy of the plan. Like I'm a let's head west guy, I'm a let's get it just about right guy, execute it and learn on the run, and so there's far too much time these days spent on the plan. And I'm not denigrating the plan, I'm just saying hey, don't try and squeeze the last 10% of perfection out of something that cannot be perfected. I mean, help me understand why people try to perfect an imperfect world. Okay, can't do it, and so, even though the textbooks promulgate the fact that you should do it Anyways, I learned really young, so execution was the second piece.

Speaker 3: 3:32

The third piece of leadership is about serving, so I coined this phrase called leadership by serving around. You remember in the day that Tom Peters talked about management by wandering around MBWA? I don't think Tom went far enough, because it's not about casual meandering through an organization. My concept of leadership by serving around was walking around asking people how can I help? Because if I could help them do their job better, guess what would happen? They would execute better and performance of the organization would continue to climb. And so I spent oh man, I spent a ton of time just walking about asking folks, you know, various questions and actually promising that I could help them do their job better. And, of course, most leaders today sadly don't spend as much time embedding themselves with employees to ask that question how can I help? And I did.

Speaker 3: 4:24

The fifth piece that I practiced all the time is what I would call strategic micromanagement. Like, I'm a believer in micromanagement and a lot of people go oh, my goodness, you know he's getting involved where he shouldn't. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fingerprint leadership. There are certain things that leaders must put their fingerprints on, like, for example, communicating and selling the organization strategy. Why would a president delegate that to the guys in business development? Ok, that's not their job. The job of the president is to sell, take the heat, get everybody on board and move on. And so, yeah, I was hands on. I architected the customer moment for the service experience, all that kind of stuff, because in my view, it needed the fingerprint of the leader.

Speaker 3: 5:12

So be different, be the only one that does what you do. Execution, do it yourself and serving are kind of the four categories that I bore down on and, to be honest with you, they're relatively unique. I don't see many leaders focusing on that stuff. I see them trying to be charismatic. I see them focusing on the plan. I see them doing all this stuff and it's all managing up to the board. I never did that, ron. I managed and led down to the organization and the people that I needed to light their fires so they would come in my journey right to create a billion. And that's the proof point. People would say to me how do you know that worked? And I go okay, well, I don't know. We got a billion in annual sales so it must have something to do with the leadership. So I have fun with them on that.

Speaker 2: 5:58

Yes, I love it. Roy, you hit on a lot of things that we're going to unpack and we'll go down different lanes to unpack some of it. The thing that you said that is super important, that you hear across the board I'll start at the end of the conversation is you didn't manage up to the board and a lot of times people want to please whoever it is that's giving their report card to them, versus the people that are actually helping them. How do you shift? How do you help new leaders that struggle with? They want to always serve and please, and I know you got to have a healthy relationship with the board, but that's not what you focused on. How did you shift? So you started managing to the people that are getting the work done.

Speaker 3: 6:32

So it all really starts with what is your strategy for the business look like and like? If you have an aggressive growth strategy, which we did, obviously then it requires you to do things differently, and one of the things is about managing relationships. And so, you know, I sat down with my boss and I said, okay, things are going to look differently here. If you want a run rate on revenues that is going through the roof, then I have to do things differently. Okay, and one of the things that's going to suffer, quote unquote, is the amount of time I spend with you, boss, and the amount of time I spend with the board, because I don't depend on you to execute my strategy. I depend on everybody else in my organization okay, with all due respect. And so I said you can judge me on performance. Don't judge me on the tactic, okay, of spending 80% of my time with the front line and marketing and salespeople and customers. Don't judge me on that. Judge me on the results. Well, as soon as you say that, I mean you're stuck out right, you better perform. And so what happened was, because my approach was so different than most leaders, my organization just swelled up. I mean, their chests expanded. They had somebody here that they could relate to, rely on and depend on, and performance just like boom took off, and so I never had any problems.

Speaker 3: 7:54

I used to call my CEO and say you know, I know we have a meeting this morning, but I'm not going to be there. And at first he would say why, and I'd have to tell him what I was going to do. I was going to be meeting with a group of frontline people, et cetera. After a while he didn't do that because he knew what I was doing and he knew that all of those activities were absolutely performance related. And keep hands off. That doesn't apply to everybody, every leader out there.

Speaker 3: 8:19

Okay, and what I would say to you is, notwithstanding the fact that you may have a different relationship with your boss or the board, if you believe in performance, you must do this. Okay, there's no choice. Okay, you can't be managing up right and be upset when your organization doesn't perform because it means you're missing in action. Dude, get involved, get involved, get embedded, get with them. It's not about you and them, it's about us together, right, achieving results. And you know, when you start to see results go through the roof, what happens is, you know a board member will call me and say hey, I just saw your results. What are you doing? Yes, thanks for the question.

Speaker 2: 9:03

We'll talk about it. Yes, yes, results matter. Let's unpack I know you want to spend some time here because you're not noticing a lot of people having that differentiator. Let's unpack that for you, because you spent some time and you started off with one of your primary things in leadership is be different. Can you unpack that for the people that are listening and watching us today? What do you mean by that? And give us some ideas behind the scene.

Speaker 3: 9:24

Yeah. So the context is the fact that differentiation generally is not practiced very well today. In my opinion and let me tell you why I mean there's too much use of what I call claptrap expressions like we are better, we are best, we are number one, we are the market leader. The reality, ron, is that doesn't mean anything. Ok, it's your view of yourself, and so I call out that's narcissism 101 in business, to claim that you're better or best. Ok, the other part that's going on is aspirational thinking. I mean to actually say you should buy from me because I'm in the business to save the home planet. Well, thank you very much. Ok, good for you. But that doesn't do me any good as a customer who wants to make a call on what supplier I pick, and so the world is cloudy. Okay, it's so analog. It doesn't mean anything when it comes to differentiation, and universal selling propositions suck, to be perfectly honest, because all they do is propagate your view of you.

Speaker 3: 10:24

The missing piece is how you relate in a different way relative to other options that the customer has, and so the notion of be different is all about finding a way to satisfy what people crave, not need, okay, in a way that they care about.

Speaker 3: 10:42

And how you can differentiate and be different is all about seeking what I call the only position. So I've had to create the solution to the differentiation dilemma by creating what I call the only statement, and so, rather than saying that you know, you're better or you're best, what you say is we're the only ones who, and so it's an only setup here that either exists or it doesn't exist, ok, and the only position is always targeted at what people crave, and so if you crave X, I'm going to try and figure out a way to position myself as being the only one that satisfies that. Now, why are cravings important, not needs? Well, first of all, most people have their needs met, okay, and if you want to play the need satisfaction game in business, welcome to the commodity space, dude, because that's where you're going, okay. Now the reason cravings. This is so simple.

Speaker 3: 11:37

The reason cravings work so well is that, first of all, there's no competition in the craving space. Why? Because they haven't figured it out, they haven't read my books. Okay, that's the first piece. The second piece is it's not price sensitive, okay. So when you start satisfying what people desire, what they crave right, what they lust for, you're into the realm of premium pricing, and that's where businesses need to go, and so the only statement is a way to define your uniqueness in a way your target customers care about and earn the right to charge high prices, command majority market position.

Speaker 3: 12:18

And then, guess what? Ron Drive, unbelievable performance, and isn't that what we're here to do as leaders? And so I've been struggling with this man. I mean the inertia out there to change away from USPs and the use of words like better, best, number one first out, blah, blah, blah. I mean my head just get. It hurts when I think of this stuff. That inertia is so strong, and it's actually promulgated and propagated by academia.

Speaker 3: 12:46

In my humble opinion, the textbooks teach us that the definition of a good USP is your view of yourself is what you do, not what you do in comparison to others. That satisfies what people crave, and that's a huge piece of my work that I'm banging away on and I got to tell you it's like pushing rope uphill, dude, because you know there's so much momentum from the past and from tradition and from textbooks. I mean hell, I tell people, put the textbook down. Okay, there's a limit to what you can achieve in the real world. Okay, using formulas and trendline analysis. I mean hell, my degrees in mathematics. Do you think I ever solved a business problem using a differential equation? Forget it, I didn't do it. Yes, oh yeah, I'm worried about it and I haven't seen any change either.

Speaker 2: 13:39

It's a really tough problem yeah, you're spot on, I'm loving it. You're keeping it real, which is unpacking. I'm gonna unpack the other thing that you said. So, if you're spot on, I'm loving it, you're keeping it real, which is unpacking. I want to unpack the other thing that you said. So, if you're listening, I love the idea of satisfy cravings and make sure that it's relative to what other options are available, and oftentimes we don't want to make it sure that it's relative to people do have options, and I love where you say what are they craving? And no one's actually chasing that and doing that. So I love that. Let's unpack something else. You talked about execution and learning on the run. Can you unpack that? For I mean, you've written about it, you've studied it, you spent some time around it. So your first was making sure that you're different. Your next was execution Learn on the run.

Speaker 3: 14:19

The fact of the matter is and this is empirical stuff, this isn't like theoretical mumbo jumbo I mean, most organizations spend the majority of their time creating the plan. Okay, their energy goes into trying to make the plan perfect. Okay, it occurred to me a long time ago. And why do they do that? Well, because the notion of perfection in a plan and using all these academic and theoretical tools is promulgated by the people who actually sell those tools. Right, and so most consultants out there have a prescribed approach that draw on trend lines and predictive modeling, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3: 14:55

I'm not saying that those are irrelevant. What I'm saying is we're spending too much time on those and not enough time trying to execute a direction and learn from that execution. And so what I try and get people to do and work with clients is to say, look, if we're in New York, I'm okay with having a strategy that says let's head West. Okay, without defining with any precision whether our end game is going to end up in Vancouver, whether it's going to be San Diego, whether it's going to be Los Angeles. Because, quite frankly, when you start your journey, how do you know? There's too much imprecision, there's too many not moving your feet, you're not doing anything, you're not learning from anything. And so I flipped the paradigm and I said, look, all you need to do is get it just about right. What that really means is we're going to spend 20 percent of our time on the plan and 80 percent trying to figure out how to breathe life into this puppy so we can start moving our feet, going west and learn on the run. So we can start moving our feet, going west and learn on the run.

Speaker 3: 16:05

Okay, so it's exactly the opposite be different to the normal paradigm for planning, and the thing that really works in that regard, it takes the pressure off. It means that you're not going to spend I don't know five months and 75 to $150,000 trying to create a strategic plan for your business Okay, which, by the way, when you finished, it is probably out of date in some respect. Anyways, right, so the approach I use is 24 months. It's called my strategic game planning process. It's a 24 month plan.

Speaker 3: 16:40

Okay, because look at five-year plans we know don't exist, because a fifth year never shows up. Yes, all it does is give you permission to put things off, right? Yes, so we have, I have a planning process that says we're going to focus on what we want to be where we want to be in 24 months, and that's 24 periods of 30 days, and that's how we manage it. Just to make it here and now, execution focus Right. And so it's just like get it done, move on, get it done, move on, learn as we go and eventually you kind of iterate in a very imprecise, unpristine way, which drives people crazy.

Speaker 3: 17:19

We love straight lines. Straight lines, yeah, we arrive at our destination, and so the notion of getting it just about right is another one, just like the only statement is another one that people have a lot of difficulty with, and I don't blame them, because they've been taught to formularize everything. They've been taught that there is a point, estimate, result for every problem, and the reality is, trust me, as a guy that took a startup to a billion in sales, I know they don't exist. I know that precision is a figment of the academics imagination. Whoa, I've never said that before, ron, you pulled that out of me. There's a good quote I've never said that before of the academics imagination. It exists in academia sphere. You know it doesn't exist in the real world, and so let's try and get real Now.

Speaker 3: 18:09

Having said that, I know it's difficult and uncomfortable for people to do that. I mean, the root of just about right planning can lead to you perspiring a lot. Yes, because it's very nerve wracking, and the reason for that is we're not used to it. But what you need to do is trust that the process I know it's imprecise, right, but it works, and the only thing I can say to you is. I did this, this was my ethic and it helped us immeasurably to move to a billion in sales. So trust that it will work. Just give it a try.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Yes, and, quite honestly, everything that we're looking at whether it's the iPhone, whether it's Tesla, whether it's any they started probably exactly as you said and learned on the move. It wasn't perfected. Even today, they're still trying to get it better, but they're constantly moving and selling and moving, and selling, and moving and selling. So everything that we continue to do, the concept and what you're laying in front of, is actually very accurate, and they don't sit still and wait for it to be perfect. They keep changing.

Speaker 3: 19:11

Yeah, and yet if you think about release management, that's exactly what it is yes. And yet, in spite of all of this stuff we're talking about, okay, I guarantee you, right now, in a conference room somewhere, there are a group of subject matter experts trying to squeeze the last piece of perfection out of their strategy, believing that if you spend another two days on trying to get that 5%, their strategy will be perfect and it will happen. I don't know, but it will, by serendipity, happen. Like people will understand it, agree to it and support it. Just like miraculously, like that, even though the president is missing in action in that whole selling process. I guarantee you that's going on right now, in spite of the fact that plenty of evidence out there that shows everything is a draft. Life's a draft, the strategic planning process is a draft, your only statement is a draft, and the reason that that's important is it prepares you to change on the run, and that's just the world we're in. We need to change on the run.

Speaker 2: 20:12

So You've done it, you've been there. Can you tie together on there, roy, that embrace the change while serving? Because you mentioned something that's super important and I'm in the leadership space and I love the fact of the serve show up, ask and fulfill your promise, asking questions and delivering on your promise. How do you tie that? Because that's a change of how it used to be. It used to be command and control. It used to be don't you see me? I'm here and you're serving me. That's not what you're mentioning. You're mentioning embed yourself on the people that are getting the work done. How do you serve and embrace that? It's changed.

Speaker 3: 20:51

Yeah, it's like a transformation and like a do this philosophy, yes. Do this philosophy yes. How can I help philosophy? And it's really a subsection and thank you for the question because I haven't thought about it this way before. It's kind of a subsection of the execute function. I mean, one tactic that's really worked for me in terms of execution is to get really close to the people actually doing the job and that's sort of the genesis of the leadership by serving around piece.

Speaker 3: 21:19

But it's different than what most people practice, because I'm actually looking for opportunities to improve execution by asking people what's going on with you, like I don't ask how's it going, how's the family? I mean, I might, but what I'm really interested in is what's preventing you from executing our strategy even better? Can you help me with that? And when you tell that to me, I promise I'll do my best to get that remediated for you. I will make your life easier. And it's incredibly stressful. I found it, at least as a leader, to do that. Because you're setting yourself up, people now expect you to deliver as a leader. And if you, because you're setting yourself up, people now expect you to deliver as a leader and if you don't, it instantly discredits you and people will never believe you when you ask them how can I help again? So you extend the hand, you better deliver.

Speaker 3: 22:11

And so, sitting in your office dealing with concepts, dealing with philosophies I'm not saying that's wrong you do you right If you're looking and think that that behavior is going to drive epic performance in your business. You're smoking something. Okay, you are absolutely smoking. Take it from a guy that never did that, okay. And I know, if I sat there deciding on theory A versus theory B and blah, blah, blah, nothing would go on, nothing would happen.

Speaker 3: 22:42

But I do know because I sat on the switchboards. I was in the telecom business. I mean, this was a startup Internet company. So I sat when we had a monopoly. I sat with operator services people and asked them questions when they were doing their job. And ask them questions when they were doing their job. I listened to how they, to the crap that they had to put up with from customers and the sort of ways that their jobs could be improved, that they wanted to be improved. So you know and nobody else had a vision of that because they never practiced it that way and so I had these incredible insights in terms of how to improve execution, which drove results that most people simply didn't have because they didn't practice leadership by serving around.

Speaker 2: 23:20

Wow, I love it because you're exactly right Leaders do need to serve around and they serve the people that are really getting the job done. You mentioned the strategic micromanagement and some people will cringe, probably, when they heard that word. Can you unpack that a little bit more for people to get the importance of that?

Speaker 3: 23:35

Yeah, my generalization is that leaders spend too much time delegating. Okay. It starts out with that premise there are various things that make sense to delegate, okay, and I'm talking about operational issues and kind of like repetitive issues and stuff like that. But I concluded very, very early on. There are certain things that a leader has to do themselves, and these are strategic things. These are things that relate to the performance of your strategic plan. They're not day-to-day operational things like processes and so forth. Not saying those aren't important, they are. But when you have limited bandwidth in terms of your time, you need to allocate your time a certain way. And so, for example, every element of activity that had to do with communicating and selling our strategy to the organization, it was me, nobody else did that. Okay, nobody else explained it. Nobody else could explain it with the passion I've got. Ronyan, you can feel that right.

Speaker 1: 24:33

Nobody else can do that.

Speaker 3: 24:35

And, as president of the company, people actually listened and they got it. I was able to infect their heart with this journey in a way that was fun. Yes, like this wasn't your kind of like standard pedantic PowerPoint presentation. Like Roy was out in the crowd mixing and having fun with this stuff and people got it because it was so practical and it made sense to them, because I built it from them, because I spent time with them and so nobody else could do that and I had to take the heat. Okay, like it was not a joy ride. I mean I was challenged on the, on the sorts of things that we were doing, because in some respects it affected employment, obviously, and so I had to put myself out there. So, like it or not, I did that.

Speaker 3: 25:22

I decided in many instances I did not take an entourage, it was me and only me. I had this thing called a bear pit session, which was my way of getting cross-functional people together and asking them hey, how's it going? What do we need to do better to execute the strategy? It was roy alone in a bear pit, so that's why I called it the bear pit. I mean, there's no running and hiding from this run. It was just like I was there exposed, people loved it. They were signing up for these things, okay, because it was real, they were real, so stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 25:56

I didn't ask my direct reports to go go get me input from sales and how well the strategy was working. I got out of my office, I organized a bear pit and I asked them don't tell me what I want to hear. I'm not interested in that. Tell me what sucks. Tell me the stupid things we're doing as an organization to prevent customers from being dazzled and being left in a gas worthy state is kind of the way I talk, right, and they would give it to me Wow, golden nuggets, golden nuggets. And so it's that sort of strategic lens, okay, that I kind of described this do it yourself piece and really the concept morphed about I don't know. I'd say about six months ago. I decided that I'm going to talk more now about calling it fingerprint leadership. Yes, yeah, put your fingerprints on that right. Your uniqueness, and I kind of like that. It sort of resonates, I think, a little bit better, because it's really focused on what part of you. Are you prepared to invest in them? That's the issue of leadership around fingerprints.

Speaker 2: 27:04

And I have fun with it and that's important for people to listen. What part of you are you willing to invest in your team to be successful? I love it and I call it FPL. When you said it and the reason I did, I'm from Florida originally. We have Florida Power Light Company, so now I got a new acronym for FPNL Fingerprint Leadership, so it resonated really fast and I'm military so we use a lot of acronyms. So I'm always like how do I remember what he said? And I tied acronym to FPNL for what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 27:30

As we begin to come to a close and you think about, like the success and where we're headed, what would you tell leaders that are entrepreneurs, that are running major organizations and you've written several books and you've run companies, you've been successful in your own way, have made a difference in society and in your space, for leaders that are watching and listening, what would you leave them with that they can make practical and actually start doing now to change the course, without it being perfect, because I love the idea. You don't need to be perfect, but you do need to move. So what are some of those tidbits that you would give us?

Speaker 3: 28:01

Yeah, well, first of all, I would say that you need to get off the momentum bandwagon of things that used to be successful, because what worked in the past will not work on a going forward basis. The world is far too complicated, too chaotic, yielding more body blows than ever, and what I want you to do is, first of all, think about the notion of being different in a way that other people care about. That statement encapsulates the serving piece. It's about being the only one that does what you do. So try and figure out a way to be comfortable with being different. Now let me just say one thing here, ron. Yes, because a lot of people misinterpret what I mean when I say be different. Be different is not about your sexual preferences, it's not about the color of your hair, it's not about your pronouns and it is not about the color of your skin. Yes, because a lot of people say that, say wow, I got yellow hair.

Speaker 3: 28:57

No it's about doing things differently, in a way that other people care about. So it's entirely oriented to serving what people crave in a way that nobody else does. Yes, serving what people crave in a way that only you do. If there's one takeaway from this conversation, leaders, you need to figure out what that is for you and you need to figure out what it is for your organization, all right. So if you check out my website, be different or be deadcom. You will find all sorts of content on there about what I call my strategic game plan, because that's the process I had to create.

Speaker 3: 29:35

We can literally do a let's head head west, just about right strategy, ron, in 48 hours, boom, this works right. So start there, guys. Don't get buried in the tactics. Get up high, be different, look for ways, look, define your who, figure out what they crave and put together a few key strategies to get there and just go do something, go try something right and take the flack, because you will get the flack. By the way, you probably don't realize this, but in my world, pain is a strategic concept. Okay, if you can't handle a pain, you can't do this work, and that's okay. But don't tell me you want to do the work and not endure the pain.

Speaker 2: 30:18

Yes, that's a great way to close it, because oftentimes you forget pain comes with it. There's gonna be some body blows and probably a whole lot more, so you're gonna have to endure the pain and they come with this line of work and so I mean phenomenal, that's a great way to close it. So I know you have books and I know you have a website. You know what's your latest book and then, if you can, just how do people reach you and get to your website so they can see what you're doing and they can get some other answers?

Speaker 3: 30:42

So the website's bedifferentorbedeadcom. I've been doing this work since 09. I've been blogging weekly, ron, since 2009. So there is a ton of content around my stuff on my website. Please come and visit me. There's also information on my books.

Speaker 3: 30:57

My latest one is be different or be dead the audacious, unheard of ways. I took a startup to a billion in sales. You'll see that on there. You can check that out, you can order, you can do whatever you want. I've got a podcast called audacious moves to a billion. You can check that out again. I'm just talking, talking, talking about this stuff, and I come at the content different ways because people learn differently, right? So I just keep it alive, keep it alive. And lastly, I have an email address. It's Roy Osing at gmailcom. And, ron, I'm happy to have people contact me directly and in fact, it's so much fun. I have people sending me their draft only statement. They're saying, roy, or they'll say, I got this dumb rule in our company, what should I do with it? Or how do I cut the crap? Or you talk about hiring for goosebumps, roy. What's that all about? And we have a conversation and I'm able to share more of my stuff and hopefully pull more people onto my journey.

Speaker 2: 31:56

Yes, yes, I mean, and so please reach out to Roy directly. He made himself accessible and a lot of content and it's super important that you continue to learn. And, roy, thank you so much for sharing just a slice of what you're doing with our audience and the people that are following and for those that are watching and listening. If you're looking for a podcast, go out and look him up and listen to what he's doing. On this podcast, I mean phenomenal information, energy, really, really great.

Speaker 2: 32:19

And for all you that are listening, again, ron Harvey, with Global Core Strategies and Consulting, love what we do around leadership, but I love even more having people like Roy on the platform sharing what I don't share, and I will tell you that I've been successful by helping other people have a microphone and give you something that I want to offer services. I don't have all the answers, so always invite guests, so feel free to join us on Unpacked. With Ron Harvey, we release every single Monday a different episode that's coming from wisdom, from people from across this globe that have great ideas to help you be successful. It's been great. Thank you for joining Roy and I today on this podcast and we look forward to you joining us on the next one.

Speaker 1: 32:56

Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.