It’s time to reimagine the concept of competitive advantage.

A July 2020 blog post on Investopedia defined competitive advantage in classic terms:
“factors that allow a company to produce goods or services better or more cheaply than its rivals [and therefore] to generate more sales or superior margins compared to its market rivals.”

And, yes, owners should take a look at their business through this lens during the strategy development process. Tried-and-true strategic practices due offer decision-makers helpful frameworks to consider business objectives and challenges.

However, the world (and the markets that operate within it) has changed since competitive advantage was first conceptualized. The world has different requirements than it did in the 1950’s when business strategy became a profession (and then an industry known as Management Consulting.) And there is no doubt the world will continue to change.

“All this uncertainty poses a tremendous challenge for strategy making.
That’s because traditional approaches to strategy—though often seen as the answer to change and uncertainty—actually assume a relatively stable and predictable world.”

(Harvard Business Review, 2011)

“[today] the business environment is becoming more dynamic and unpredictable.
This is a result of several enduring forces stressing and stretching business systems — from accelerated technological evolution to a greater interconnectedness of the global economy to broader issues such as rising inequality, species depletion, and climate change.”         
                                                                                    (Harvard Business Review, 2020)

 

If the tools we’re currently using were built for a less dynamic, more stable world than the one we’re living it (and will continue to) shouldn’t the frameworks we use to build viable, value-creating businesses change, too?

Here’s the crux of my criticism: The concept of competitive advantage is limiting and, therefore, so too are the business strategies built to achieve it.

1. Competitive advantage limits a company’s ability to terms relative to its competition (cheaper than, better than)

 

What if, instead, a company measured its ability in terms relative to customer value? (And yes, there is a difference.)

When businesses frame their goals and achievements in terms relative to their competition, they are choosing to play a game.

Games (chess or basketball or monopoly) have specific rules every player must work within.

Games have a monometric means of measuring success (checkmate or points or assets.)

Every player gets better at the same skills (strategizing, shooting, buying.)

The same proverbial ground is covered over and over offering incremental learning at most.

This is a slight simplification of how businesses compete, but the take-away is the same:

Competitors strive to produce incrementally better variations of a solution that hold only incrementally better (at most) value for customers.

The opportunity for meaningful value-creation is limited.

 

2. Competitive advantage limits the measure of success in monetary terms (make for less, sell for more)

 

Monetary input and output fuels a business – it’s part of the system.

But money does not equate to instantaneous (or guaranteed!) results.

There are other inputs a business needs to achieve future and on-going success.

Those other inputs should be considered and measured in pursuit of success.

A company could measure its ability in terms relative to creativity that are known to contribute to successful business outcomes.

How many more ideas did employees generate last year?

What risks did we take? What did we learn?

What out-of-the-box customer “wins” (success stories) did we have?

What do we think the future will look like?

What impossible feats do we want to achieve in that future?

Future-tense financial outcomes are not only the result of present-tense financial modelling.
(If they were, all a business would need to ensure success is a sound financial model – and many, many businesses with sound financial models have ultimately failed.)

They say “what gets measured gets done.” For a business to define its ability and success only in dollar signs is to severely limit its view on the value contained within it.

Just like the future value of one professional basketball player compared to another cannot be determined by who jumps higher, the future value of one business compared to another cannot be determined by which fetches the higher product price. It might help, but it’s not nearly enough.

There is far too much uncharted territory and untapped human potential to keep building businesses the same way we have for the better part of a century.

We can do better.

And in order to do better, we need to think better.

We need to integrate the tried-and-true strategy principles with modern sensibilities. We need to take one tightly-gripped hand off the competitive advantage throttle and grab hold of a new, complimentary joystick I call creative advantage.

Creative advantage is the unique approach or angle a business takes to value-creation. It is the particular way a business applies itself to the world (market) it operates within (serves.)

I think of creative advantage as the “edge” of a business strategy and tried-and-true principles of competitive advantage as the “power” behind that edge.

If a business strategy is a basketball player, creative advantage is their ability to see scoring opportunities in real-time and competitive advantage is their ability to execute them.

If a business strategy is an axe, creative advantage is the blade and competitive advantage is the human wielding the handle.

It is humans who dream up the axe. It is humans who wield it.

It is the modern sensibilities of humans that make both the dreaming and the wielding possible.

• When I profiled Shopify, I described the human tendency to crave certainty and hold on to established beliefs and the status quo for too long. Tobias Lutke, Shopify’s founder and CEO, gained creative advantage when he challenged the long-held industry truth that a Canadian start-up must move to the US in order to reach unicorn status. An industry truth Shopify has decidedly disproven.
• When I profiled Paramount Fine Foods, I dug into the topic of taking perspective – a human trait and a lever of creative advantage that CEO Mohamad Fahik applied when he decided that the right thing to do for people – kindness, reciprocity, compassion – is also the right thing to do for business.
• When I profiled The Flying Monkeys Brewery, I wrote about how play can be applied in business to dream up brave new ideas. The status quo business environment greatly undervalues (and probably misunderstands) the usefulness of play in the problem-solving process. Yet the systematic integration of play – especially in today’s environment – can be a sure-fire way for a business to gain enormous creative advantage.
• When I profiled HR consulting firm Cannabis at Work, I described how “stupid” ideas can actually be brilliant ideas in the right context. But the human truth of fear (of loss, shame, exclusion, failure, etc.) often leads decision makers to repeatedly recycle the same old low-value ideas. (The irony being that these safe ideas turn out to be the most stupid because they add nothing to the growth and evolution of a business.) By ignoring stigma, and instead focusing on the facts and investing in her intuition, Founder and CEO Alison McMahon developed a one-of-a-kind service business with inherent creative advantage.
• When I profiled Barriston Law, its journey to becoming the first B Corp certified law firm in Ontario and largest in Canada offered real-life context of what it means to have “beauty” in business (i.e., exemplifying the highest standards of social and environmental accountability while still being a successful for-profit business).

Co-Managing Partner and Chief Innovation Officer, Joanne McPhail, described her and her partners’ “vision of quality” to be a law firm with meaning and the often “ugly” (uncomfortable, challenging) process required to realize it. Barriston Law remained committed to that vision for over a decade, steadily investing in their creative advantage every time they invested time and money into socially and environmentally responsible business initiatives.

These modern sensibilities of challenging the status quo, taking perspective, play, intuition, courage, and commitment are examples of the tools we use to craft creative advantage.

They are examples of how humans dream up the axe.

They are examples of how humans wield it.

Which is why my process of developing creative advantage is called ‘Human-Centered Strategy’.

Working with small and medium Canadian businesses, I systematically integrate human truths and human traits with traditional principles to develop stand-out business strategies. What makes these strategies stand out is their creative advantage.

Competitive advantage directs companies to out-perform competitors on a shared scale.

Creative advantage invites companies to out-perform customer expectations on any scale.

 

Competitive advantage directs companies to imagine for the future through a financial lens.

Creative advantage invites companies to imagine the future through a holistic human lens.

 

Competitive advantage directs companies to look for incremental improvements.

Creative advantage invites companies to discover new territory and new possibilities.

 

“Increasingly, managers are finding…instead of being really good at doing some particular thing, companies must be really good at learning how to do new things.”

                                                                                                (Harvard Business Review, 2011)

 

Competitive advantage directs companies to carefully balance financial inputs and outputs.

Creative advantage invites companies to courageously break through old boundaries.

 

“With the mainstream of business education and managerial practice focused on managing performance…transient high performance is commonplace; it is sustained performance by resilient companies that stands apart.”

                                                                                                (Harvard Business Review, 2020)

 

Competitive advantage is about what trshould be done.

Creative advantage is about what could be true.

 

Stephanie Ruth Grimbly is a ‘human-centered strategist’ and creative problem-solver. She combines traditional business practices with emerging innovation disciplines to reveal insights about customer preferences and develop stand-out strategies for Canadian businesses. 

Before arguing the seemingly outrageous claim that success is the result of stupid ideas, it’s important to first define what is meant by ‘success’ and what is meant by ‘stupid ideas’. 

In the context of Canadian Small Business Women and its blog, success can be defined as the creation of an enduringly profitable business. A business that earns more money than it spends, while simultaneously creating more value for its stakeholders than it takes from them. This is the only definition of ‘success’ that this article is concerned with. 

When it comes to what this article means when it says ‘stupid ideas’, commonly used idioms or expressions from the English language (since, alas, it is the only language I know) offer some guidance:

When your father says “I need a [insert undesirable thing] like I need a hole in the head” he means that the thing in question is as useless, unappealing or undesirable as having a hole in his head would be.  This turn of phrase suggests that ‘a hole in the head’ is a stupid idea.

When your mother reminded you of the “stranger danger” rule when you were heading out into the world as a not-quite-fully-grown person, she wanted to ingrain in your conscious mind that engaging with strangers is unsafe and therefore a stupid idea. 

When your friend describes finding out her recent ex-boyfriend is already dating someone new as “salt on an open wound” you know she means that this news caused her pain in addition to what she was already feeling from the breakup itself. ‘Salt on an open wound’ is understood here as undesirable and therefore another stupid idea. 

But are these actually, inherently, stupid ideas? In a different content, could these not actually be really good ideas? Do certain life-saving procedures not require surgeons to drill holes in a patient’s head? Are AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Kijiji, eBay and other such game-changing enterprises not simply platforms that bring strangers together to exchange accommodations, transportations and goods? Does salt on an open wound – as painful as it might be – not also offer having wound cleaning and healing benefits? 

The answer to all of these rhetorical questions is, of course, yes(!) In a different context, a stupid idea can suddenly be a brilliantly useful one. Which begs the question: is there truly such a thing a stupid idea?

Similar to the saying (attributed primarily to Mark Twain) that “humor is simply tragedy plus time” perhaps success can be thought of simply as stupid ideas + time. Essentially what this means is that the usefulness and therefore quality of an idea depends heavily on contextual factors. Which are, over time (more now than ever before), in constant flux.

Unfortunately, when we emotional beings are under pressure to come up with useful ideas (such as in our ever-changing professional lives) we consistently favour our immediate, short-term context disproportionately more than our future, long-term context. We favour what is acceptable now over what might be incredibly useful and therefore favourable later (for potentially longer.) 

All too often, when a brave soul proposes an idea that does not suit the immediate, short-term context (or, even more commonly, the knowledge accumulated from context of years past) it is dismissed without proper consideration. Of course, not every ‘stupid idea’ is not automatically a winning idea. The dismissiveness is a problem because they are all rejected before the losers can be filtered out from (or developed into) the winners. In a phrase, we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And what’s left is the same old safe-right-now ideas, recycled over and over without adding any new value.

These safe-right-now ideas (one that do little to challenge current conventions and, thus, can be easily agreed upon and acted on), cannot possibly be the path to success. If an idea is easily agreed upon and acted on, chances are it has already been done, in some way, and is therefore limited in its usefulness.  Even if the safe idea offers some incremental value, the operators of such a service or product will be hard pressed to sustain themselves beyond the short-term. Not only does this go against this article’s definition of success, a stunted runway means a business will not have the time necessary to develop sophisticated systems and deep expertise – the kind that result in paradigm shifts and first-to-market value capture.

Bottom line? Incremental value – the best possible outcome of current-context “good” ideas – will not lead to the definition of ‘success’ presented above.

Instead, ‘stupid ideas’ – those that seem at odds with the current context – offer ambitious entrepreneurs and business leaders much more potential for sustained success.

Industry-leading recruitment and HR consulting firm, Cannabis at Work, out of Edmonton, Alberta, is a real-life example of how the strategic consideration and pursuit of a ‘stupid idea’ can lead to sustained success. 

In the summer of 2016, Alison McMahon found herself winding down her first start-up and in search of a new venture just as the cannabis industry began budding south of the border.  After familiarizing herself with the growing body of research on medicinal cannabis use, Alison began to see the writing on the wall: wide-spread cannabis legalization was just around the corner. 

Considering how she might leverage her HR expertise, Alison identified an opportunity to educate and advise employers on how to accommodate individuals who are being treated with cannabis for a medical condition when enforcing safety standards (something that often requires employees to take – and pass – a drug test.) 

Alison decided on the stupid idea of speaking out publicly on this stigmatized and politically-charged issue to help organizations navigate this new dynamic in spite of the fact that the sale and consumption of cannabis was not yet legalized in Canada (and most US states.)

Looking back at those early days, she describes the “push back” she experienced from people close to her who asked, incredulously, “Why are you talking about this?” “Why are you doing this?” One particular anecdote stands out in Alison’s memory:

“I remember my husband at the time, John, telling me that he had told his dad what I was up to and his dad response was literally “No! Why is she doing that? Why does she feel the need to take her business in that direction and talk about weed? It’s not worth it!”  They were essentially afraid for me – I think – that I was going to talk about something or do something [I’d regret.] That somehow it would end badly for me.”

Going against the context (stigma) at the time, Alison launched Cannabis at Work, held six different conferences on cannabis in the workplace, in four different cities and countless private education sessions with all types of organizations over the next couple years.

This enormous volume of education work in affected industries allowed Cannabis at Work to build its brand, credibility and relationships within the growing cannabis sector as well. Today, less than five years later, it is an industry-leading team of people, working across Canada and international markets, helping organizations within the cannabis industry build high-performing teams through recruitment and other HR consulting services. 

And it all started with (what seemed like) a stupid idea. 

It’s important to note that even if the road to success is paved with stupid ideas, it doesn’t make persisting down that bumpy road any less challenging – and scary. Alison fully admits she had her own fears about potentially committing “career suicide” by speaking publicly on what was (and still in many ways is) a controversial subject. She explains that, before she got to the point of publishing any of her work on the subject, she went through her own “risk assessment” many times over. What she decided for herself – and what she would tell other ambitious entrepreneurs – is that “it comes down to informed risk.”

Not only does Alison offer sound advice to entrepreneurs and business leaders who face fear and doubt regarding a ‘stupid idea’ they feel could be a very brilliant one, she reinforces the fact that if your apparently good idea is considered so because it is devoid of risk (i.e. it is not as much a good idea as it is a safe idea) then it probably doesn’t carry much business value. Alison explains:

“I never got to a point where there was no risk involved in moving forward [otherwise] it wouldn’t be a business anymore. But I trusted my instincts…I could look ahead at the landscape and there was momentum around medical cannabis. There were a few states that had already moved through legalization of medical cannabis. It was fall 2015 when Trudeau was getting elected and he was talking about cannabis as part of his platform. So there were enough indicators around me that solidified my belief that there would be continued momentum forward on cannabis legalization across North America. And that it would be a very relevant conversation.” 

So, if you’ve been sitting on a ‘stupid idea’ (current context) for a while now, here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help you move forward (or move on):

• What strong indicators or evidence exist that suggest this is only a stupid idea now, and perhaps for not much longer?
• What are the primary causes for my fears and doubts: my own internal wranglings or external influences who (perhaps because they care about me) are projecting their own less-informed fears and doubts onto me?
• What groups of people will be the primary stakeholders in this evolving near-future context? How large are they? How urgent will their needs be? How long will it take to deliver services that will meet their needs?
• Is the expected volume of work large enough to sustain a sole-proprietorship or small team for years to come? 
• What expertise might this sole-proprietor or team of professionals develop along the way that could solidify its ability to create value for this community – and its leadership position – over the long-term? 

Perhaps the most important question that ambitious entrepreneurs and business leaders should ask themselves is “Am I interested in this work? Does it excite me?”  

How she personally felt about the work was an equally important consideration for Alison when she pushed through her early-day doubts and decided to take the plunge: 

“I think the other piece that was alive and well for me was that nobody else was really digging into the workplace case law and presenting that back to the HR and safety community in ways that informed that conversation, that created roadmaps for organizations around new things they needed to consider. That really was exciting to the entrepreneurial side of me [that wants to] build and create. So, I was very like engaged and motivated…[Today] I’ve built a business that I love, and that I’m excited about working on every day, in an industry that I love, that gives me the pleasure to be able to employ people I really enjoy working with and also to live a lifestyle that I love.”

If you say similar things about the ‘stupid idea’ that you’ve been sitting on – and find favourable answers to the first list of questions – then you have all the reason and evidence you need to get it off the ground. 

However, if perhaps you’ve been operating your business for a while and find yourself stuck recycling the same safe-for-now ideas year over year – I can help break through that thinking pattern.

As a human-centered strategist, I collaborate with Canadian businesses to systematically deconstruct problems, uncover new meaning and opportunities.  If you’re in need of a fresh approach to persistent industry or organizational challenges or are having trouble structuring your unconventional idea into a functioning business model I’d be happy to help.

 

Stephanie Ruth Grimbly is a ‘human-centered strategist’ and creative problem-solver. She combines traditional business practices with emerging innovation disciplines to reveal insights about customer preferences and develop stand-out strategies for Canadian businesses. 

If you are of the mind that work and play shouldn’t mix, think again! Play is inherently an act of exploration and discovery and therefore, to ambitious entrepreneurs and problem-solvers, an incredibly useful approach to producing promising new ideas. 

Before this article goes any further, it’s important to clarify what is meant by “play” and “work”.  Some dictionaries might have you believe that play means to “engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose” and is engaged in “especially by children”. This article takes a strong stance against the former definition and while the latter point may be true, this article proposes that it needn’t be nor shouldn’t be.

In contrast to these erroneous definitions of play, we humans and the dictionaries we share tend to view work as an activity in which we “exert strength or faculties” possibly involving “sustained effort” out of “necessity” and so on.

But wait a minute – don’t we play sports? Sports certainly require exertion to produce target outcomes (scoring points and winning games.) Ask any fanatic and they’ll tell you sports can be both enjoyable and serious.

Don’t we play instruments? Instruments require sustained effort to become proficient enough to produce target outcomes (pleasant music that evokes emotion.) Again, both enjoyable and serious. 

And of course, we play games – like chess and poker – too. 

If we have no trouble accepting that work and play go hand-in-hand in some arenas, why do we perceive them to be at odds with each other in more typical work environments? Do we not want our experience of work to be more enjoyable? Wouldn’t more enjoyable work lead to more sustained effort and, potentially, more proficiency? This article argues in addition to all the obvious, surface-level value of more play at work (which have their own merit) that play is also a means of innovation and break-through in supposedly “serious” environments.

Every organization should prioritize play the same way they do prudent accounting practices and precise revenue projections: as an essential part of the routine.

To be fair, the business world has embraced the idea of ‘game theory’ or ‘gamification’ in recent years. It has proven to be quite effective in changing and sustaining behaviour of customers, employees and any other human stakeholder in an organization’s favour. One of the more obvious examples of this is the way mobile app DuoLingo has gamified learning a new language. 

I will concede that the emergence of “gamification” on its surface (we’ll ignore the destructively addictive design of most social media platforms for now) is a tiny step in the direction of wielding the power of play in the world of work. But it is only that: a tiny step.

New York Times columnist, Eric Ravenscraft, in a May 2019 article sums it up nicely: 

“Duolingo has infamously persistent notifications that pester you to come back and give that adorable green bird attention every single day. The downside is that it can be tempting to gamify the experience, rather than actually learn…Which leads to another important lesson: skirting the rules on a self-improvement project hurts no one but yourself.”

The kind of play that has the potential to propel our work in new directions is very different from the kind of play you experience during a bout of DuoLingo.

A game comes with a fixed set of rules and a single target outcome.

True play has no fixed rules – only circumstances and curiosity about an idea – and infinite possible outcomes.

True play is a curious scientist running experiments based on a “hunch” she has. True play is chef, recently back from an exotic vacation, mixing newly discovered flavours with tried-and-true local fare. True play is craft beer brewery, Flying Monkeys, adding seemingly obscure ingredients, like pandan leaves from Indonesia, into a new brew. 

The Flying Monkeys Brewery, is an independent craft beer brewer out of Barrie, Ontario and one that has been acknowledged for being one of the few that launched Ontario’s Craft Beer Revolution.

Today they are one of the largest international exporters of Ontario craft beers, sending their colourful beers to over 20 countries. The stand-out success the brewer has had, cannot be contested can be (at least partially) attributed to their playful culture and approach (something that is boldly reflected in their branding.) As owners Peter and Andrea Chiodo, revealed in one interview, “we will play with any ingredient to keep things unique…as an independent craft brewery, our beer offerings are always evolving— it’s a game that moves as you play. And we do love playing.” 

Entrepreneurs courageous enough to pause the usual day-to-day exertion and apply themselves to exploration of new ideas stand to have that investment of time pay them handsome returns.

Professionals who play are first-to-market with the next industry trend, slurping up competitors’ market share.

Professionals who play reposition products to reach new, niche market segments that have yet to be a patron of your industry.

Professionals who play re-design services to be more inherently enjoyable for customers who reward them in turn with greater customer loyalty and more customer referrals.

If you’re dealing with a persistent issue in your business – high staff turn-over, low content engagement, lagging service times – that you haven’t been able to solve through more traditional problem-solving tactics, try replacing them with a playful one.

One example is to replace brainstorming “good ideas” with brainstorming “bad ideas” or, as one Harvard Business Review article suggests “the worst idea possible”.  This will help you and your team create space between the same old ideas that get recycled over and over to no avail.  Once you have a long list of “bad ideas” start challenging the underlying arguments. What assumptions are being made about what makes these ideas “bad” that could be diminished or disproven?  Under what circumstances would some of these bad ideas suddenly be turned into good ideas?  Try clustering these ideas by theme if obvious ones emerge, see if multiple ideas, taken together, create a potentially good idea.

To ensure the furthest-reaching collection of bad ideas, make sure that each individual involved generates a list of their own bad ideas independent of any other person’s influence. Set a five-minute timer and have participants generate as many of their own ideas as possible – silently – before the buzzer goes. Then have participants write all of their bad ideas on a white board (or on individual post-it notes that are then stuck onto a white board) for the group to discuss and analyze together.

Such stand-out success like that of Flying Monkeys brewery is within reach of any entrepreneur courageous enough to take a less obvious, less direct approach to problem-solving.

By nature, such an endeavour will be tricky to start. Adopting a new cognitive reality is not so simple. Seeing alternatives to the deeply-ingrained status-quo is not so easy. I can help. 

As a human-centered strategist, I collaborate with Canadian businesses to systematically deconstruct problems, uncover new meaning and, ultimately, design more effective customer-facing systems and content.  If you’re struggling to integrate playful practices into your organizational routines, I can help.

 

Stephanie Ruth Grimbly is a ‘human-centered strategist’ and creative problem-solver. She combines traditional business practices with emerging innovation disciplines to reveal insights about customer preferences and develop stand-out strategies for Canadian businesses. 

Perspective matters a lot. It is our brain’s own unique filter through which we take in the world as we encounter it. And it’s unavoidable. We encounter far too much world that, if our brains were to try to absorb every single detail of it, we’d get quite literally nothing done. Imagine you had to re-learn that what your eyes were seeing was a dog every time you saw a slightly different one (like a mixed breed or one that didn’t have the exact same colour pattern that you had seen before?) It would take days to walk a single block of Queen street west because we’d encounter what our brain would perceive to be a “strange new thing” every 30 seconds. (It’s hard enough already just trying not to pet all those cute pups!)

Luckily, instead, our brains are designed to take knowledge we’ve already acquired (“that is a dog breed called Golden Retriever”) and apply it to a new piece of information (“that creature walks on four legs, is medium sized, is golden in colour and has curly hair”) in order to make a justified jump to conclusion (“that is probably a dog that is a breed similar to the Golden Retriever.”)   

Our brains are constantly making those little justified jumps to conclusions as we go about our day. And different people with different knowledge make different little jumps. That’s perspective.  And because it’s always on, it has an enormous influence on what we as individuals perceive is possible and, in turn, what we believe we’re capable of. 

We take perspective – it is not given to us (although it can be heavily imposed upon us by authority figures and other social influences.) And if we choose to be more mindful of what our own unique variety of little jumps are and of what other varieties of little jumps exist, we suddenly gain an abundance of choice when it comes to how we see the world. 

A recent article by Psychology Today describes our perspective as “arguably the single greatest aspect of our uniqueness.” For ambitious entrepreneurs, who know that “what makes you unique makes you valuable”, personal perspective can be an incredible differentiator. 

Entrepreneurs face many constraints on their journey to build and create things. They also face detractors all too often along the way. Ambitious entrepreneurs know the importance of perspective empirically. Every entrepreneur has faced all too many nay-sayers and skeptics who held perspectives that were at odds with the entrepreneur’s own. And yet, these ambitious entrepreneurs pressed forward anyway, oftentimes proving through their actions and resulting success that their perspective was not only valid but valuable. 

That’s the irony (and the take away.) The refusal to accept the current-day rulebook and the constraints it imposes upon us is what ultimately leads to game-changing innovation and differentiation.

And it all starts with perspective. 

This article argues that ‘taking perspective’ is the first step to overcoming constraints and building an enormously successful business.

Mohamad Fakih came to Canada with almost nothing. He worked very hard. Saved a lot. And eventually Fakih found himself in a position where a fellow immigrant – from whom he was simply buying take-out at the time – asked to borrow a rather large sum of money to save his struggling restaurant. That restaurant was Paramount Fine Foods – now a very successful franchise with 76+ locations and, notably, the sports complex in Mississauga formerly known as The Hershey Center, proudly sharing its name. 

Abiding by the current-day rulebook, Fakih could have easily justified ignoring the stranger’s plea for a small fortune. Fakih had no obligation. He had his own responsibilities to tend to and had worked very hard earning that money. No one would have blamed him for saying no. 

But Fakih’s own principles were at odds with the current-day rulebook. He saw himself in that man. He remembered all the help he had benefited from over the years. Fakih’s perspective on the matter led him to invest in the man – giving him a cool quarter-million dollars.

The man did exactly what the current day rulebook would caution against: He almost immediately mismanaged the funds, decided to throw in the towel and leave Canada and handed ownership of the restaurant over to Fakih. 

Freshly disappointed from his last leap of faith, Fakih now faced another daunting current-day rule book constraint: attempting to recover his investment by operating the failing restaurant without any experience in the food services industry whatsoever.

And we now know how that worked out for Mohamad Fakih: really, really well. 

And it can work out really, really well for you too if you leverage the constraints and limitations you face to take a new perspective and build a differentiated business. Here’s one way to get started:

Reframe the constraints you face in as many other ways you can possibly think of. 

Play a game with your management team (or, even better your front-line staff) called “What Else Could It Be?”  Here’s an example:

Constraint: We don’t have enough money to pay for marketing and advertising and therefore can’t grow our top line

Reframe 1: We have time to develop strategic partnerships (because we’re not spending it on marketing campaigns) and therefore have time to develop higher price point products and services

Reframe 2: We have more time to spend strengthening our relationships with the customers we already have, increasing their loyalty and willingness to recommend their friends and family. 

Reframe 3: We can come up with new ways to market ourselves that do not require money, improving profitability and our ability to invest in our continued growth and development. 

To quote curator and art advocate, Sarah Lewis from her book, The Rise: The “key to the great mystery of life and progress” [has been] the ability of men and women to fashion a mental or material picture and let his or her entire world, sentiments, and vision of every other living thing be affected by it.” 

Encourage your team (and your own brain) to develop new mental pictures of the roadblocks and detours you cross paths with every day. Go as far as to translate some of these mental pictures onto paper independently and then present them to each other. Identify what’s similar and what’s different between and what those findings might be able to tell you about how you could reframe and therefore overcome a roadblock or two.

While the old rulebook might’ve claimed that doing the right thing for people and community was inherently a cost and therefore more bad than good for business, Fakih’s perspective was different.

He saw his own humanitarian efforts and generosity in business as a great way to gain trust and commitment from his team and the communities his businesses serve, stating “You don’t only help them change their life. It’s actually beneficial to the company, beneficial to the country entirely. They want to overperform.” 

He credited his success in part to the kindness and charity he received from others stating, “If those people didn’t help me, I wouldn’t be able to be who I am today” and committed himself to paying it forward.

Today, he perceives working in the restaurant industry as “one of the most rewarding experiences” he’s ever had – even though others perceive the same industry to only offer temporary, transient work.

And when he purchased the naming rights of the former Hershey Center, Fakih didn’t see it as a marketing opportunity like others would. Instead he believed the Paramount Fine Food Center would represent what his company is all about: community coming together to celebrate diverse cultures.

Such stand-out success is within reach of any entrepreneur open-minded enough to challenge the “little jumps” their brain has influenced how they view a challenge and adopt a new perspective to leap and bound from. 

By nature, such an endeavour will be tricky to start. Adopting a new cognitive reality is not so simple. Seeing alternatives to the deeply-ingrained status-quo is not so easy. I can help. 

As a human-centered strategist, I collaborate with Canadian businesses to systematically deconstruct problems, uncover new meaning and, ultimately, design more effective customer-facing systems and content.  If you’re struggling to reshape a persistent perspective in your pursuit to solve customer problems, nurture a productive workforce and achieve stand-out success, I can help you overcome it.

 

Stephanie Ruth Grimbly is a ‘human-centered strategist’ and creative problem-solver. She combines traditional business practices with emerging innovation disciplines to reveal insights about customer preferences and develop stand-out strategies for Canadian businesses.