Author Stephen Grosz writes in The Examined Life, “If we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us- we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand”. His book, at first glance, may seem like a self-help book, but it’s not. The New York Times states that it is, “...rather, an insightful and beautifully written book about the process of psychoanalysis, and the ways people’s efforts to connect the past, present and future reflect their capacity to change”.
Our attention span is the fuel that drives our interactions, our lives and our decisions. If your attention is being wasted funneling through spreadsheets and taking yourself away from analyzing your business, you are wasting fundamental time to better serve your customers. You aren’t able to tell the correct story of your business, because you simply don’t understand the story in its entirety.
You know what I find totally awesome? Our company has created something that is 180 degrees different than all of our competitors. Would you like to know how? How do software giants become software giants anyways? Well, they had to start somewhere and create a base with some sort of cool IP that everyone wanted. Then as they got a few customers and started solving some problems where they were able to attract a few more mega customers and then they had money. They had enough money to go out and buy out the competitor that had the right IP in an area they were interested in building out, but didn’t want to replicate the wheel by starting from scratch. Why would they? If there is a company that has spent their time becoming a leader in the space and has a lot of paying customers, why wouldn’t the company with a lot of money just acquire them? Funny enough, that’s exactly what they do. Sooner or later, that original company with a lot of money had a vast amount of solutions in their portfolio that could solve any problem. They were comprised of mecca of different vendors that had been acquired over the years and they’re trying to piece it all together, connect them to one another and slap their name on top of it (since they are in fact, a software giant). There’s one tiny problem with this strategy.
All of these companies that they’ve acquired are different. They have different heritages, different backbones and come in all forms of shape and color. Some may be sparkly and some may be matte. They’re trying to put a round peg in a square hole and guess what! Sometimes, you’re really just trying to put a round peg in a square hole.
Remember how I said we took a 180 degree approach to our competitors? At o9, we have created a platform that offers one single solution. It’s called mPower and we have spent the time configuring it and putting it all together from the ground up. If you are trying to deploy our Merchandise Financial Planning workflow, you will see it directly impact all of the other divisions in your organization. If you’ve deployed our Merchandise Financial Planning workflow and would like to also use our Replenishment workflow- it’s the exact same UI and in the same system. It’s one underlying code for the entire system that never changes. The system is the same across industry and domain.
Do you want to stop funneling through spreadsheets? Do you want to start telling the right story of your business, so that you can better serve your customers? Do you want to start thinking differently? As Apple’s Think Different campaign once said, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” You can be different; you can even be a storyteller; you just have to think differently.
Coco wears a Valentino Bow Dress, Helmut Lang Blazer, Christian Louboutin Simple 100's, Hermes "H" Heure Watch
Photography by Lena Xiao