Graham McGregor: Is it time to change the game?

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Opinion

On October 20, 1968, 21-year-old Dick Fosbury from Oregon won the high-jump gold medal at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.

Any medal won at the Olympics is an outstanding achievement, but this particular medal was significant, for the way in which Fosbury won this event.

In his case by demonstrating to the world a new and different way of conquering high bars...up-and-over backwards, knees, chest and face to the sky, the "Fosbury Flop!"

Journalists covering the game went nuts over the new technique. They realised immediately they were watching a sport being completely changed.

Within a decade, almost every elite high-jumper was doing it Fosbury's way.

Since 1980, no one using any other technique has held the world record
Dick Fosbury single handed changed forever the game of high jumping.
And won an Olympic Gold medal in the process.

The same concept of changing the game applies to business as well...

If you can change the way the game is played in your type of business you can often do remarkably well with very little effort.

Look at the Flip Video Camera.

Flip came along about ten years ago when all the video cameras were adding extra features, increasing the size of the image they were taking and so on.

Yet Flip said, 'Why don't we make a worse camera?'

Let's take out some of the features that we don't need. Let's make it really small and let's make the video quality a little worse.

And by doing this they changed the rules of the game for video cameras.

They made a cheaper camera, a smaller camera, a camera you could just plug and play into your computer right away and they were a remarkable success story because that's what people wanted.

They really didn't want more features, the other video cameras were too cumbersome and hard to use. This was very easy. Even your grandmother could use it and it worked extremely well for the types of videos that most people take.

How do you 'change the game' in your business?

Ask a simple question:

"What can I change in my business that would make a real difference to my clients and customers"?

(Let's face it, if you do things the same as everyone else in your field you are probably going to get very similar results.)

When you ask this question, you will be amazed at how simple it can be to change the game and get a totally unfair business advantage.

There's a doctor in Brooklyn, New York who did exactly this.

Guess what he is doing in his medical practice to be different?

He's now making house calls.

Nobody makes house calls these days. He's does it through the internet. Using Skype he puts himself in your house to talk to you and treat you.

He does one office visit to get all your background information but he keeps up with his clients regularly either by walking around Brooklyn and visiting them or doing it through emails and Skype. And he's doing amazingly well.

Action Exercise:

Write down five things you could change in how you 'play the game' in your own business. Then put into action at least one of these ideas.

"A competitive world offers two possibilities. You can lose. Or, if you want to win, you can change." Lester Thurow. Former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management

* Graham McGregor is a marketing consultant and the creator of the Unfair Business Advantage Report. www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com