Strategic Planning Analogy #570: The Magic Word

THE STORY

There is a magical word in the English language. That word is “Normal.” Normal represents that which is to be expected: the routine, the average to which everything else is compared. If something is better than normal, we rate it with a positive number. If something is worse than normal we rate is with a negative number. And normal remains the eternal midpoint of 0.

What makes “normal” a magical word? It’s magical because it can change your entire perspective on life. For example, let’s say your life falls into a terrible routine—you’re locked in a prison camp, or you’re living every day in poverty with little to eat, or some such situation. It looks bad. You’d think you’d rate it a low negative number.

But…

If your situation stays like that long enough, it becomes your expected routine. It becomes your normal to which you compare everything else. It is your new reference point of 0. Now it is no longer the definition of bad. Bad is that which is worse than that new normal, no matter how bad the starting point of your new normal is.

That is why people who have lived their entire life in poor impoverished nations often seem so happy. This situation is their normal. It is pretty much all they know. It is their stating point of zero. Since it rarely gets worse, they don’t rate much in negative numbers. And since it sometimes gets better, they have many positive moments.

So, if you find your life taking a bad turn, just pull out that magic word of “normal.” Classify your current state as the new normal. Suddenly, it moves from being a big negative to being your new zero. And zero feels a whole lot better than a big negative number.

THE ANALOGY
Many companies have learned the magic in the word “normal.” When times get bad for a business, they explain it away as being “the new normal.”

“We can’t do anything about this situation,” they say. “It’s just the way things are. It’s the normal way the marketplace will work from now on. We just have to accept it and live in this reality.”

They make it sound so logical. They claim these aren’t really bad times. These are now normal times. This is all that can be expected in times like these. Instead of the situation being rated a negative number, things are now recalibrated to zero.  

And in recalibrating to zero, the business accepts the new status quo. They settle for the new point zero. They stop aspiring for anything much better. It’s okay now to be this way well into the future because it is normal.

And this is where the strategic problem arises. Once you accept a bad situation as normal, you are trapped into thinking that this current situation is the baseline for strategy. It is the norm from which you try to eke out minor improvements. The parameters of your assumptions are bound by the mistaken belief that the events causing your situation to be bad are normal, and therefore nearly impossible to change.

As a result, the expectations in one’s strategy tend to drop. After all, it is difficult to pull off abnormal results when the forces of nature are pulling you back to normal, right?  This causes weak, ineffective strategies which perpetuate a bad situation. Significant improvement doesn’t happen, because you no longer expect it or plan for it. You’ve let the magic of normal lull you into complacency.

THE PRINCIPLE
I first learned about this principle in a college political science class. Although my college professor didn’t quite say it in these words, he believed that most social unrest and political revolts were a result of changes in the perception of normal.

His logic went something like this. As long as the citizens of a nation saw their situation as normal, they were relatively content. You can’t change normal, so you may as well accept it. So even nations with horrible conditions were relatively stable. This is all the people knew and it was all the people expected, because it was their vision of normal. There was no reason to change, because they did not see anything to change to.

But then, in the middle of the 20th century, mass media started penetrating the far corners of the earth. People in the poor, repressive nations started to see how life was lived in other places. They saw how other places had a totally different type of normal life. The normal in these other nations looked MUCH BETTER than what they were experiencing. Suddenly, these nations decided that the superior normal in these other places should be their normal, too.

By accepting this new and better definition of normal, the people in the poor, repressive nations changed their perspective. Now, their current circumstances were no longer rated as zero. By comparison to the new idea of what should be normal, the current situation was a huge negative number.

Nobody wants to live in a highly negative situation, so the people in these nations started to revolt. They were willing to make great sacrifices in order to achieve their much higher expectations of what normal should be. So, according to my professor, mass media and its impact on people’s expectations is what ended colonialism and put the world on a better path.

Application to Strategic Planning  

So how does this principle apply to strategic planning? Businesses can be like those repressive nations before the mass media. Everyone pretty much accepts the current situation. It is all they know and they think it is all that can be achieved. It is the normal we have to live with.

The nations did not revolt and work to improve the situation until they could imagine a potential new normal that was worth fighting for. Without first creating the ability to conceive of a new reality, there was no reason for the people to rock the boat and take radical action.

From this, one of the most important principles of strategic planning can be seen: Before you can convince a company to take on the difficult task of radical change, you must first convince the people that there is a new and much better version of normal that can be attained from that change effort.

Therefore, one of the chief roles of the strategist is this: to help the people within the business redefine their perception of what normal can be. The strategist has to paint a picture of a future which is not only much better than today’s norms, but also something which they can envision as becoming their new norm if they are willing to work for it.

Making Insiders Into Outsiders

This is one of the reasons why most revolutions in an industry are started by outsiders. Because outsiders have not lived inside the industry, they aren’t brainwashed into thinking that the norms of the industry are the way things need to be. Outsiders have an advantage in dreaming up and going after a new definition of normal, because:

·         The minds of outsiders are not clouded by years of living under the old normal. They don’t have to unlearn the old conception to form a new one, because they never lived under the old conception.

·         Outsiders have no vested interest in the current normal. It is not theirs. By contrast, insiders have to change their thinking about their identity, which is tied to the current normal.

·         Outsiders have nothing to lose if the normal of the status quo is upset. By contrast, insiders worry the change will make their situation worse. Kodak didn’t aggressively move from film-based to digital-based imaging because that new normal looked less profitable. What they missed is the fact that bankruptcy from not adapting to the new normal is even less profitable.

Therefore another key role for the strategist is this: to help insiders think more like outsiders. This means helping people look at the industry with new eyes that are not clouded by the past. This helps people to conceive of a better normal.

SUMMARY
One of the enemies of strategic planning is complacency. If people feel the status quo is all that can be achieved, they will resist any effort to change. Therefore, one of the key roles of strategic planning is to help people to do two things: 1) Envision a new and better normal; and 2) Help them believe that the new normal is achievable.  Sometimes, it helps if you can get people to see their industry more like an outsider than an insider.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The inability to envision a better normal is not an excuse to view the status quo as being acceptable. Bad is still bad, even if you cannot see a way to make it better. In these cases, perhaps the best move is to sell out to someone who is willing to accept that poor reality…preferably before an outsider finds a way to make that view of normal obsolete.

Strategy Planning Analogy #560: Gas and What??

THE STORY

When I brush my teeth, I just put my toothpaste on the toothbrush and put it in my mouth. I thought this was normal.

Then I read an article about the research done by a toothpaste manufacturer. They wanted to figure out what would be the optimal consistency for their toothpaste. Therefore, they did a survey to find out how their toothpaste was used.

The research showed that there was no single, dominant way that toothpaste is used. Instead, there were three common approaches. Some wet their toothbrush before putting on the toothpaste. Some wet their toothbrush after putting on the toothpaste. And what I did (and thought was normal—no wetting the toothbrush) was the least popular of the three.

As a result, the manufacturer had to design its paste to work under all three conditions. So much for normal.

THE ANALOGY

We like to assume certain activities are normal, just because that’s the way we’ve always done it. It doesn’t occur to us to consider alternatives. Our current habitual behaviors seem just fine. There doesn’t appear to be any need to change.

Yet, as we saw with the toothpaste, there are alternative approaches and different ideas about what “normal” toothbrush behavior is. So what seems odd to us can seem normal to others.

This trap often occurs in strategy development. We get trapped into thinking that the way we’ve been doing things for years is “normal” and that any other approach would be odd and undesirable. Just as I thought that putting toothpaste on the toothbrush did not require water, you may think that your approach does not require any additions or changes.

Yet, as the toothpaste story shows us, there can be many viable alternatives out there. And if we do not consider that there can be viable alternatives, we will miss out on many strategic opportunities.  

THE PRINCIPLE

The principle here is that some of the best strategic opportunities may come from looking at options that run counter to what you consider normal. You may have to abandon your ingrained habits and preconceived notions of “how things are done” in order to reach a better condition (a newer, better normal).

We will be using retail gasoline as an example of this principle.

Normal #1: Gas Plus Auto Repair

Back in the 1960s, when I was a child, pretty much every gas station was also an auto repair facility. The gas pumps were in front. Behind them was usually just two stalls for auto repair and a place for a cash register. And that was it.

It was like the gas station run by Gomer and Goober on the Andy Griffith Show on TV. This was normal, and almost nobody did it differently.  

But then the world changed. Cars got more complicated to repair and the tools to do it became more expensive. The mechanics at the gas stations were not skilled enough or had enough money to invest in fixing the newer cars. As a result, auto repair moved from gas stations to large, specialized repair facilities.

The old normal for gas stations became obsolete. If you stuck with the old normal, you were in trouble. A new normal was required.

Normal #2: Gas Plus Convenience Store

The new normal was to convert those repair stalls into a convenience store. It became the strategy of the “eens”: Caffeine (coffee & soda), Nicotine (Cigarettes), and Gasoline. This became the new way to run a gas station and almost everyone used this same basic strategy.

Beyond Normal

Although this became the typical approach, there is no law that says it must be the only approach. Here are some other options in the US.

In the Carolina’s, Sheetz has positioned itself as primarily a great restaurant which just so happens to also sell gasoline. In fact, they are experimenting with hiding the gas pumps in the back in order to improve the image of the restaurant.

In Ohio, United Dairy Farmers essentially operates gas pumps in front of an ice cream store. And this is no one-store operation. They run over 200 of them. You may not think it normal to buy your gas at the same place as you get an ice cream cone, but it is normal in Ohio.

Large, big-box retailers like Costco and Wal-Mart sell gasoline. In addition, many grocery stores use gas stations as a loss-leader for selling more food. The more food you buy, the bigger the discount on gasoline. At some places, if you buy enough food, your gasoline is free.

You can find gasoline pumps in parking garages. Farmers can install large tanks on their own property and pump it at home. The list goes on and on.

The Next Normal

With electric cars, we move from gasoline pumps to electric recharging stations. Where will these end up? In front of convenience stores? They are ending up in all sorts of places, like parking structures and people’s own garages. The rules can be reinvented all over again.

Implications

There are two main implications from all of this. First, just because something is normal today does not mean that it will be normal forever. The gas plus repair shop was normal for a long time but eventually became essentially obsolete. A move to electric cars could make any of today’s mass selling of gasoline obsolete.

So don’t assume that today’s success will last forever. It is a better assumption that today’s successful normal will become obsolete sooner than you think. In your strategic planning, always look for what’s on the horizon that could make you current approach obsolete.

Second, just because the marketplace has defined a normal way of doing things, that doesn’t mean that there are no other viable alternatives. Just as there were three viable ways to put toothpaste on a toothbrush, there can be many viable ways to sell gas. You can sell it with ice cream, a restaurant, with parking ramps or a host of other ways.

Your only limit is your creativity and your willingness to break away from “normal” and do something differently. In many prior blogs, we’ve talked about the benefits of differentiation. If you do things differently, you create a unique appeal that can put competitors at a disadvantage in trying to attack you. Perhaps you should break away from the pack and do things differently.

And these implications do not only apply to the selling of gas. They apply to all businesses. In a prior blog, we talked about all the ways you can sell pizza. If there are a variety of ways to sell gas and pizza, then there are probably many ways to sell your product, including options nobody has done yet. Perhaps you can be the first in a new alternative and reap all the benefits.

SUMMARY

Just because you call something normal does not mean that it is the only strategic option. There can be a whole host of alternative approaches which could be more successful for you than sticking with the normal way. In addition, because the environment is continually changing, even today’s normal could eventually become obsolete, to be replaced by a new normal. Therefore, strategic analysis needs to look outside today’s “normal box” to ensure that you are doing what’s right for you and right for the times.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Every time you fill up with gas at the pump, remember this blog. It can be a weekly reminder to take off the blinders which keep you from seeing alternatives beyond “normal.”

Strategic Planning Analogy #446: The Mighty Fall, Too

THE STORY
I had a summer job in college going door to door in the worst sections of the inner city of Detroit. My job was to interview residents at each house to get information for creating a directory.

It was a tough job. I had people come to the door with rifles and attack dogs. I had my life threatened. I had my car stolen. All so that I could get the information for the directory.

It seems kind of silly now all these decades later. Today, people voluntarily give up more information than I was asking for to Facebook all the time. And if you want to learn about people, there are all sorts of web sites you can go to. It can all be done digitally, from the privacy of your own home. There is no need to go outdoors and put your life at risk like I did.

THE ANALOGY
Over time, the idea of what is a “normal” activity changes. When I was in college, the normal way to get data was out of books and printed directories. The people who put those directories together made a lot of money because that data was scarce. The publishers could afford to send out thousands of people like me to go door to door to get that data.

Today, that activity seems abnormal. Data is easy to come by and quite often free. All you have to do is go to the internet. And the data on the internet is often volunteered for free. That is the new normal activity. And as we will see below, this new normal is causing the directory business to fall apart.

When a business finds a way to exploit the normal way things get done, its leaders can get complacent. By becoming a huge, highly profitable player within that “normal,” you can start to feel invulnerable—too big to fail.

Unfortunately, today’s normal can become tomorrow’s idea of silliness. And being #1 at something people find to be silly and antiquated isn’t worth much. Yes, even the very big can become irrelevant if the new normal makes them obsolete.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that all strategies eventually fail—even the really good and really successful ones. The reason all strategies eventually fail is because the environmental context in which that strategy operates does not stay constant. It changes over time. Eventually that environment will change so much that your old strategy is no longer relevant.

Normal is not permanent. It only lasts for a limited time. Then a new normal appears. And these days, that time span keeps getting shorter. And being big and highly successful in the past is no guarantee that you will even survive in the new normal.

Two recent stories in the news point this out.

The Demise of Phone Directories
On Monday, April 9th, AT&T announced that it was selling off a majority stake in its Yellow Pages phone directory business. They did this because the profitability of the Yellow Pages model was falling apart. Revenues had declined 30% in just two years. Impairment charges were wiping out the profits. Verizon sold off its competing unit in 2006, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

At one time, the Yellow Pages were one of the most profitable legal enterprises on the planet. Businesses paid a fortune to get a tiny ad in the directory because it was a highly valued place to be. After all, the normal way people found businesses was to look in the yellow pages. It was such a valuable book, that people wanted to steal copies. As a result, places in the past would chain the directory to the wall so that it could not be removed.

Now, that old normal seems a little silly. Why trust a book full of biased ads when you can go to places on the internet like Yelp or Angie’s List and see unbiased reviews from people who used the service in question. That’s why one of the most profitable businesses of the 20th century is now becoming obsolete. It no longer makes sense in the new normal.

The Demise of Big Box Stores
On Tuesday, April 10th, Best Buy announced that its CEO Brian Dunn was immediately stepping down. Although there were a lot of reasons for this, part of it was due to the recent poor performance of the company. Sales, traffic and profitability were all going down, and it appeared they would continue to go down. The stock price for Best Buy has dropped over 55% from where it was five years ago.

What happened? Best Buy dominated electronics retailing for two decades. It was huge. It was highly profitable. Now, it cannot find enough profitable items to fill up its large stores.

One of the problems is a concept called “showrooming.” This is where people come to the store to find out what they want and then go buy it at a cheaper price from an online competitor. Customers bring their smartphones into the store and check to see if they can get a better deal somewhere else before picking up the item. And since there is almost always somebody online willing to sell cheaper than the big box store, the big box store loses. This is the new normal.

It used to be that customers were confused about all of the new digital products. They went to places like Best Buy to get expert advice. That was the old normal. In the new normal, that seems silly because:

1) Consumers can find more information on the internet than what can be found from asking the so-called expert sales help; and

2) Digital items aren’t new anymore. They are becoming familiar commodities that you feel comfortable buying anywhere on your own.

As a result, one commentator said, “Best Buy is dying because the free standing consumer electronics stores model is obsolete.” It no longer fits well with the new normal.

So What Should We Do
So if pillars of past success like the Yellow Pages and Best Buy can fall, so can anyone. There is no “too big” or “too successful” to fail. Even the most valued and prized option can become irrelevant if it falls out of step with where normal behavior is heading.

So what is a company to do? Remember two words—Best and Bold.

a) Be Best at the Right Thing
Nearly every company or brand tries to be the best at something. Unfortunately not all of these goals to be best are suitable to an ever-changing normal. In particular, there is a big difference between being the best at who you are verses being the best at solving a problem.

For example, if you are a telephone directory business or a big box retailer, you can try to become the best telephone directory or the best big box retailer. Unfortunately, if nobody wants that product any more, being the best doesn’t get you very much. Being the best at who you are is only relevant if people like who you are. And with a changing normal, that will not last long.

By contrast, one could have instead tried to provide the best solution, such as the best source for finding a business or the best source for buying electronics. This implies that you may need to radically change who you are in order to stay the best as normal changes. Although this is a lot of work, it is better than becoming obsolete.

Unfortunately, I see so many companies focused just on becoming better at who they are. They are looking for incremental improvements to the current model rather than new models which better serve the changing normal. This is a recipe for obsolescence. The better recipe is to also have an eye open for new ways to stay relevant by offering the best solution—even if it is radically different than the old offering.

b) Be Bold in your Change
If you find a need to replace your business model to remain relevant, do it boldly. Remember that your new competition is boldly moving forward because they have nothing at stake in the old business model. Amazon was much bolder than Best Buy in pursuing ecommerce. Yelp and others were much bolder than AT&T in embracing a social media approach to finding companies. If you are timid in your transformation, you will not win against people like these.

Also keep in mind that it can be futile to hold back in an attempt to prevent your new venture from cannibalizing the old. Just because you are not willing to cannibalize your core does not mean that others won’t do it to you. Ford was timid about introducing minivans for fear of hurting its station wagon business. So Chrysler did it instead and Ford still lost the station wagon business. The same thing happened to Kodak, who was timid about digital imaging for fear of hurting its core analog film business. It still went away. It is better to be bold and have a business left after the old one goes away.

SUMMARY
Because the world keeps changing, the concept of what is normal behavior changes over time. Therefore, if you want to remain relevant, you have to change as well. To stay relevant, focus on being the best solution and be bold about it.

FINAL THOUGHTS
When’s the last time you really thought seriously about how silly your offering may appear to the next generation?

Strategic Planning Analogy #242: Normally Speaking

THE STORY

Here in the United States, I am treated like an odd alien from another planet because I prefer to drink my soda at room temperature.  However, when I am in Europe, that behavior is considered to be normal.  I like mayonnaise on French fries as well, which makes me appear odd in the US, but normal in parts of Europe.  I also think US sweets are "too sweet," and prefer some of the less sweet treats from Europe.

 

Perhaps when I was a child…in the middle of the night…some mad scientist switched my taste buds with the taste buds of someone from Europe.  That might explain my cravings for food at odd hours—my taste buds are in the wrong time zone!  Of course, having transplanted tastebuds (a sort of Frankenstein-of-the-Tongue) would make me odd most anywhere.

 

THE ANALOGY

What is normal?  As we saw in the story, what is normal in food taste tends to depend on where you were raised.  Normal cravings in one place are seen as quite odd in other places.

 

But it doesn't end with just location.  Look at the usage of new media by age.  What a twenty-something thinks is normal usage of new media would seem abnormal to many older people, and vice versa.

 

And stand out of the way when many people of opposing political viewpoints start to argue.  Each sees their viewpoint as "normal" and reasonable.  They find the opposition to be odd at best, and insane or dangerous at worst.

 

Even things as mundane as brushing teeth can challenge the concept of normality.  Proctor and Gamble tried to determine the normal teeth brushing routing routine, so that they could design the ideal tooth paste.  They found no normal.  Some wet the toothbrush before putting on the paste, some wet the toothbrush after putting on the paste, some don't wet the toothbrush at all.  And that's just the beginning of the tooth brushing routine.  Once the toothbrush enters the mouth, even more variety in behavior occurs.

 

We live in a highly fragmented world.  There are so many different lifestyles, attitudes and ways of everyday living.   And the trend appears towards even more fragmentation.

 

At some point, even the notion of there being a "normal" seems quaint and old-fashioned.  We are told to "celebrate diversity" and see those who propose conformity to a norm as "narrow-minded."

 

As a business, this poses some strategic challenges.  How do you create a business strategy in a "post-normal" world—a place where the idea of normal ceases to exist?

 

THE PRINCIPLE

Business strategies are executed out in the marketplace.  If the marketplace is diverse enough to make normalcy obsolete, then strategic choice—how to win in that marketplace—becomes less obvious.   The good news is that in a diverse marketplace, there is not just a single best way to win.  If someone has already locked up a solid position in the market, it doesn't mean that you've lost your chance.  With all that diversity, you are more likely to find a different strategic path where you can also win.

 

The bad news is that fragmentation decreases the size of any behavior segment, so that when you win your audience, it may be too small to support your infrastructure.  Economies of scale are harder to obtain (although the digital world often tends to reach scale sooner than the physical world).

 

Listed below are five generic approaches for trying to reach a post-normal world.  As we will see, some approaches are better suited for this world than others.

 

1.  Fight for Average

In order to maximize scale, one can aim for offering a single solution targeted to satisfy the average within the diversity.   In other words, if diversity scatters behavior randomly in all directions, the single position which is closest to each individual would be the position in the middle—average features, average prices, average performance, and so on.

 

In a world without normal, this can be the most dangerous position to take.  There is no longer the large bulk at the center of a tall, bell-shaped curve.  The dispersion of people is more equalized, putting fewer people close to the center.

 

Average at everything means you are the best at nothing.  Trying to please everyone a little bit rarely works, because you are not competing against others who are also striving for average.  You are competing against hoards of specialists.  Although none of the specialists have broad appeal (and may actually be hated by more people than your average approach), for each demand group one of these specialists will be preferred over your average approach. 

 

As a result, an average approach may never come in last, but it will never come in first.  The average of black and white is gray.  If you offer gray, you appeal neither to the whites (you are too dark) nor the blacks (you are too light).  Middle of the road products and retailers have been losing out to specialists for years. We talked about this in greater detail in a prior blog.

 

2.  Do it All

If trying to cover everyone with a single go-to-market strategy targeted at average is wrong, then how about the opposite?  There are two ways to do this.  The first is to try to be the absolute best at everything in a single offering—the perfect product.  The second is to offer a near infinite assortment of offers, each targeted at a different fragment.

 

Lucky you if you can pull off the single perfect product.  It is extremely difficult to do because there are usually trade-offs which make this impossible.  Adding more features creates complexity, which fights against simplicity.  It is nearly impossible to best at all and be best at price.  In addition, there probably is no consensus anymore on what "best" really means.  Some may think the best design is contemporary while others may think traditional design is best.  For some, bigger is better…for others, smaller is better.  Best is no longer an absolute term in a post-normal world.

 

The reality is that if you are going to get a product out in the marketplace at a reasonable price, you have to make trade-offs.  You cannot afford to do it all at the level of perfection.  Customers are willing to make trade-offs to get what they want at a price they can afford.  They will migrate to firms who offer their ideal trade-off.  If you do not trade-off as well, you may be priced out of the market.

 

But then, to create a near infinite amount of trade-off offerings (one for each fragment) has its own set of problems.  First, you may not get enough scale for any one of those offerings to create a profit.  Second, you can create brand confusion.  It's hard for a brand to be known as best at everything.  If all these products come out under the same brand, it can confuse a customer as to what the brand really stands for.  In addition, customers will not believe that a single brand can be good at producing that many varieties of trade-offs.  Generalists are not usually viewed as powerful a brand as specialists.

 

So "Do it all" is difficult pull off in a post-normal world as well.

 

3.  Cluster Portfolio

If trying to please everyone with one product (as average or as best) doesn't work, and trying to please everyone with near infinite products doesn't work, how about something in between?  This would be to create a portfolio of a manageable number of offerings which are best or average for large sub-sectors (clusters) of the marketplace.  This tends to be the approach taken by people like Proctor and Gamble.  They have great technological expertise in paper/absorbency.  How do you exploit your full potential with that competency?

 

With toilet paper, the Charmin brand uses four sub-brands to cover the bigger niches: Ultra Strong, Ultra Soft, Basic (price) and Plus (with lotion).  With paper towels, there are three basic niches for the Bounty Brand: Extra Soft, Regular (thick and stylish), and basic (cost).  With diapers, Luvs stands for price and Pampers stands for good parenting.

 

The trick is to find the sweet spot between covering more fragments without diluting the brand.  If you can find that sweet spot, you may be able to get the best of both worlds—economy of scale plus specialized trade-offs.

 

4. Laser Focus

One strategic option reasonably well suited to the post-normal world is the laser focus.  Choose a relatively large niche in the marketplace and own it better than anyone else.  Specialize in understanding the niche and meeting its unique needs.  Essentially forget about all the other diversity.  Aldi isn't trying to please everybody, nor is Whole Foods.  Each has found its own niche in the grocery marketplace and is exaggerating its offering to the tradeoffs most desired by that niche.  They don't care that others may hate their offering and never patronize them.

 

Although the world may no longer have a normal, there is usually an agreed upon normal within the niche.  In fact, it is their version of normal which tends to define that niche.  Play to that normal (ignoring the rest), and you can win, provided the niche is large enough. 

 

5.  Enable Personalization

Rather than specializing in the final product for every fragment, how about providing the means so that every fragment can create their own?  A good example is Zazzle.com.  At Zazzle you can get the ideal t-shirt just for you.  They have an enormous number of customizing options.  And if you do not like any of them, you can create your own individual customized look and they will make it for you.  There are tons of firms like this who will customize clothing, food and other everyday needs to your individual tastes.

 

In this web 2.0 world it is easier to work with the customer, allowing them to customize and personalize their own unique solution.  Your solution is no longer the end product.  Your solution is to be the enabler that allows each fragment to find or build their own unique end product.

 

SUMMARY

In a post-normal world, a one-size-fits-all strategy is out of place.  It is better to either narrow your strategy to a single niche, pick a small cluster of niches, or enable the fragmented world to create their own unique solution.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Next time someone accuses you of being abnormal, just say thank you.  In a post-normal world, that is a complement.