Cathy and I are in Florida attending The Vision Council Winter Meeting and we are posting about some key points from today’s sessions which included two keynote speakers from outside of the Optical Industry. Both speakers were excellent and made a lot of great points about doing business in the current economic environment and we want to share some of this with our readers as they made us think and we hope the post gives you food for thought too!
1. William Taylor
William Taylor - Fast Company
The quote above “Age of Disruption” came from William Taylor co-founder and editor of Fast Company Magazine. Another quote I liked was “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” and the question “if we went out of business today would we really be missed?”
William Taylor’s points from these statements are that:
- Customers will get more selective about who they support during tough economic times
- It is the businesses that make closer connections to their customers who will succeed
- The best companies need to be original, use strategy as advocacy, reshape with important new ideas and not just to compete with rivals
- The best leaders tap into collective genius/ideas – nobody alone is as smart as everyone together
Apple Store Genius Bar
He talked about looking for new ideas from other industries and that we should look at our own optical businesses and optical industry with new eyes. I thought this an excellent statement as I believe that we are a rather insular industry and we can look outside for ideas and better ways to serve the optical consumer. An example he gave was Lexus who used Apple Stores’ innovation of the “Genius Bar” where people can come in and get help with their computers. Lexus now offers a similar service for their customers to get training on all the gadgets that now come in their cars!
2. Geoff Colvin
Geoff Colvin - Fortune Magazine
Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor of Fortune Magazine and is author of Upside of the Downturn. He made the statement that although the economy has had two consecutive growth quarters were are not out of the woods yet. He used Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France as an example i.e. we are currently cycling in the Alps, the hardest part of the race and this is when the competitive order changes. It is actually harder to change the competitive order during the easy part of the ride so now is the greatest opportunity to change the competitive order.
Here are some of Geoff’s observations for taking advantage of this time:
- Reset priorities to fit the new reality and confront it head on
- Economy is less consumer driven now and back to where it was a few years ago, the norm
- Social attitudes to spending/saving/investing – thrift is making a comeback and savings are up
- Word economy is less US driven
- Government will play a larger role in business and the public will support that
This all means reexamining the business model to find new solutions and the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves are:
- What is core to the business that should not be given up or changed?
- How is the recession changing optical consumers attitudes and habits?
- Will it create a large change in the industry?
- What can be done to attract customers rather than cutting price?
- Be present for your employees, customers and show fearlessness
Thank you to The Vision Council and speakers.
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I like a martini bar myself!