Do you have “20/20 Vision” in your business?

Let me start with a bit of background.  “20/20 Vision” is a popular western term to describe someone with perfect eye sight.  The measurement is based on the average person to clearly see from a distance of 20 feet (approximately 6 meters).  When we say someone has “20/20 Vision”, it means this person can see the object clearly at 20 feet away, without any aid such as eyeglasses.  If someone is near-sighted at “20/40”, at 20 feet he can see an object clearly where an average person can see the same object further away at 40 feet.  And if someone is far-sighted at “20/10”, he can see an object at a distance of 20 feet away whereas an average person can only see at a closer distance of 10 feet away.   If you have had an eye test, you probably were asked to cover one eye and read a Snellen chart which tests your visual acuity.  I show a type of Snellen chart here.  Prescription eye-glasses is recommended for both near-sighted and far-sighted people, to give them very close to 20/20 vision when wearing glasses.

So when I say “20/20 Vision” in your business, I shall mean the comparison of your business to that of a perfect balance.

80/20 Rule                                                             

I am sure almost all of you have come across the magic ratio of 80/20.  Some good examples are “80% of the world’s wealth is owned by 20% of the world’s people”, “80% of problems are generated by 20% of hardware/software products”,  “Spend 80% of your time listening to your customers, and 20% of time designing the solution to solve the problems”. The 80/20 rule can apply to many situations in life.

Now think about your business, and unless you are the pioneer of a new industry, the 80/20 rule can be used to measure your place in the competitive market.  Whether your business is Healthcare/Pharmaceutical, Banking and Finance, Manufacturing, Retail, etc. within each industry there is commonality across the companies.  Healthcare industry puts a lot of effort in promoting their products and services to hospitals, doctors, and patients; Banking industry demand reliable and secured systems to process and deliver data to its customers; Manufacturing industry need its production lines moving along smoothly, from ordering raw materials, assembly, quality assurance, packaging, and finally delivery to the customer; And Retail industry’s POS (Point of Sale) system to record transactions and accept payment from its customers, and the data analysis to help understand consumer behavior and product demand.

All businesses need to be unique in some way.  Uniqueness is a key to differentiate your company from other competitors, otherwise two products which have exactly the same specification, support, and quality will have to compete purely on cost.  Uniqueness can be many different forms, a product that no one else has, a brand name image (social status), quality, reliability, pre-sales and post-sales services.  Combination of these unique features results in the product’s competitiveness amongst other products, and amongst companies in the same industry.

To apply the 80/20 Rule, I say “A company should be 20% unique from its competitors, but share 80% commonality within the same industry.”