If you always see your organization in its present reality, you’ll never envision a new one!

There are six key insights we have learned that all successful leaders know:

Any asset brought to an extreme can become a liability. Products and services are a means to an end, they’re not the end goal, so the focus cannot be on them; rather, the focus should be on the prime benefit they bring to customers.

You can’t get to where you want to go until you know where you are now. Marketing strategies and campaigns are often based on a company’s current product offerings as opposed to where the organization wants to go and what it wants to accomplish. By solely focusing on present-day realities, you won’t create a new one that will produce the next big win.

You rarely make big decisions from a position of weakness. It’s always better to make decisions from a position of strength. Right now, your products or services may be in a position of power. But in time, this can change, and when it does, what is needed is a great idea that will take the organization to its next level.

Enormous enthusiasm is a powerful engine to produce success. Whatever your organization provides, if enthusiasm for it is missing from your organization, you will find it incredibly challenging to be successful. Enthusiasm is the fuel that energizes employees and customers alike. You really can’t expect a customer to be excited about something you’re not!

You can only manage what you Measure, Assess, Refine and Launch. The famous American Statistician W. Edwards Deming once said, “In God we trust, all others must bring data.” This is as true today as when he first said it. If you know what is causing your current success or failure, you can take steps to generate a new level of success. But these numbers make us vulnerable to risk if they are not measured regularly.

You can’t do everything yourself.  If you could, you would, but you can’t, so you don’t.  Pushing brand messaging into the market is a good thing to do if it’s part of a much grander idea. In other words, marketing is a means to an end, but it’s not the end.

By clarifying the organization’s overall goals, defining what success and failure look like, and then analyzing the current and future organization from these perspectives creates winning strategies to success.