Beautiful Flower Syndrome: Differentiation May Not Always Be The Best Strategy

Beautiful Flower Syndrome: Differentiation May Not Always Be The Best Strategy

One of my favorite moments on any project is the moment when, after spending hours investigating a process, an exhausted interviewee gives an exasperated gasp and says “Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it!”

Most companies with a long and storied corporate history have a similarly colorful story behind their internal processes. System limitations, management fads and product introductions have shaped everything from invoice generation to marketing campaign design. In many instances, over a matter of time these processes become a source of pride, and are even seen by some as a source of competitive advantage. People in the company that know the nuances of these processes, and are able to “finesse” a new product or management dictum into the confines of the current practice are highly regarded, and many an intelligent person is relegated to hammering square pegs into round holes, albeit to much acclaim.

When a new system is implemented, there is a golden opportunity to simplify and redesign processes. Unfortunately this chance to start anew is overlooked, and much effort is expended to once again find creative ways to maintain self-inflicted problems. While competitors apply innovative talent to their product and service offerings, companies implementing new systems spend their creative efforts maintaining rather than redesigning. Whether it is due to self-inflicted time constraints, political problems or the sense of pride around the homegrown practice, “that’s how we’ve always done it” becomes a mantra and excuse to hammer the old ways of business into new systems.

The marketplace is increasingly demanding highly specialized products, unique in the problems they solve, and equally specialized in their marketing and customer value statement. The Apple’s and Google’s of the world have shown what can be accomplished through product innovation, and by extension, offer a lesson in how dramatically a company will be left behind if it is not innovating. While there is an increasingly compelling case to apply corporate creativity to product design, foolish companies expend this “creative capital” to arbitrarily prolong the life of legacy processes even while implementing new systems.

With a sense of unwarranted pride, these companies regard themselves as “beautiful flowers,” assuming they have a better design for rudimentary aspects of operations like calculating product prices or shipping product than those provided in purchased software. While “industry standard best practices” is touted as a key contributor to buying packaged software, too many companies immediately throw out these practices to maintain their own. Make your products speak for themselves, and seek unique positioning and customer value. No customer will care that your billing process can support over 372 exception processes, and would likely seek a different supplier if they knew the actual cost of supporting these exception processes. Not only are there hard costs associated with convoluted processes, but there is an immense opportunity cost lost by keeping the “smart folks” on cleanup duty rather than developing competitive advantage.

The analogy of the beautiful and unique flower should be the analogy your company strives for when customers regard your product and service offerings. Internal processes however, should elicit a resounding yawn for their simplicity, standardization and ability to “just work” without the care and feeding of your most capable resources.