The groundswell of change is leading to some seismic shifts in the next five particularly for leadership, jobs won’t change much but the emphasis in your company will:

1. There will always be indispensible people required, except you’ll need a lot more in your company tomorrow. These people will be ‘world class,’ passionate, fully engaged, online, followed, creative, leaders, organising discussion groups via Linkedin, people orientated, trusting, respectful and have high expectations.

2. There will always be reliable people unless you motivate them more intrinsically. They get paid to turn up, love silos and blame cultures. Low engagement, low communication, follow the rules, have conservative expectations. Believe in authority, hide creativity, follow but are not followed. They won’t blow your mind but will deliver a great days work to their job description.

3. There will always be low paid people. High turnover, little or low motivation, low in respect. They rock up and then go home with some shuffling in between. Expectations will be low.

You are what you do and what impact you have. In the future our businesses will need to be full of the number ones because its that distinctive element that will make us competitive as our products become increasingly much the same. The future business Seth Godin says “consists of well organised linchpins doing their thing in concert, creating more value than any factory could.”

We’ve already talked about why we need to start shaping and creating communities around our brand but what are the benefits and is it worth the significant effort required?

Well we know from the case studies of Lego, Harley Davidson, eBay, Apple and Sun Microsystems that business communities no matter how big, help us to deal with the ever changing environment and enable us to proactively innovate on a continuous basis. We can’t afford the talent, all the ideas to destructively compete anymore, it makes no economic sense in a world of abundance. There is no sense and therefore no option.

People attracted to our business communities are there voluntarily. They haven’t been imposed upon and are truly motivated to provide opportunities for brands to stretch themselves and move beyond an individuals personal best. Through this we will learn to collborate, an essential skill on anyone’s CV in the future.

Admit it, a new organisational way of doing business is emerging and we are all struggling to adapt and deal with it. The presence of a fully engaged business community will aid that revolution because there is nothing like being in touch with your customers and employees.

Business communities will come up with ideas we hadn’t even thought about. They will open our minds and give us access to knowledge that will send our competitors green with envy. The new challenges we face are just to big and sophisticated for individuals or individual organisations to face in isolation. A community can take some of the responsibility and accountability for these changes and share the burden of finding the solutions. Whilst at the same time you are bonding them to your brand. Making people feel valued brings a return in commitment and loyalty.

The next few blog posts will be about how you start the process of creating a business community that can elevate you above the competition. Don’t forget we are about to go far beyond marketing

If competitive advantage has nervously changed its position to one of constant innovation, talent and customer experience, how do we make a sustainable business out of a profusion of ideas?

A plethora of questions come to mind; How do we work co-operatively with competitors? How do we cope with ‘open’ and ‘free’ systems? How do we innovate? How do we pool resources? How do we retain, afford and keep the best talent? How do we cope with being social? How do we deliver exceptional customer experience? How do we start sharing knowledge when our mindset if one of secrecy?

Business communities and eventually business eco-systems will be created to exploit not just the physical nature of development but the human one to. The challenges we will meet in the future and the answers to the inevitable difficult questions will be met by us all forming business communities around our brand.

Our businesses are already surrounded by an economic web of companies, individuals, suppliers, customers and employees which collaborate, converse, connect and compete on a daily business, building a web of relationships that evolve over time and are heavily influenced by the people involved. Those connections are powerful.

Effectively it is a community of players, within a business environment who have common purpose, share interests and have similar values. All I’m suggesting is that, as a business, we start facilitating and guiding those groups into a business community that delivers both financial and non financial value. We have the platforms and ability to do it now. Instead of spending £50k (or whatever it is) a year on buying people, why not divert it to people that already love what we do and can help us do it better.

We all have a tendency to spend enormous amounts of time on the wrong things we think make us competitive. Our product, the way the store looks, how we market, what marketing messages we communicate, how we look. And, when we are really scraping the barrel, our price. Okay some of these things are important, but not to the exclusion of what will really make us competitive in the future. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place?

In fact, the most predominant, fundamental, important, radical, distinguishing factor that makes you competitive is your people. They control costs, implement procedures, deliver customer service, develop new products, conduct research, find new ways of doing stuff and get things done.

We, on many occasions, fail to look at competitiveness correctly, realising that sometimes, we have it the wrong way round. Stop adding things to your product/service and start creating value for your people. Comprehend that 2010 will be about relationships (see last blog). They will be your worthy asset. Products come and go, relationships must not, they cost too much to replace.

Some time ago John McMahon from www.forum21.co.uk professed that there were nine competitive advantages ranging from production cost to marketing to R & D. I still think he is right but those nine can be honed down into two differentiating factors; the price you charge and doing something definably different/innovative.

Realistically, if you’re in the price sensitive market, price in some ways is all you’ve got and we know where that leads. More price reductions, more price promotions, more sales deals, less margins. People want quality but have low expectations of customer service. Let’s be honest, if I go into Primark, I’m not that bothered about having a meaningful, long term relationship with the people in there. I want my t-shirt for £1 and then I want to leave.

If you’re delivering something different and innovative, now that’s a different ball game all together. Expectations from the start are critically higher. We demand undivided attention if we are buying a premium product. We desire a mutually respectful relationship that’s full of trust. Our motivations to purchase are just as much about the product as the service and its emotional too. The focus has got to be the unrelenting exceptional customer experience.

Or, you can just be in that very vulnerable, very competitive place, the middle like Next, River Island, Debenhams and Marks and Spencer where you have to look good, be good and deliver a good price too. In fact, you have to hit both competitive advantages simultaneously, continuously, everyday! Now that’s difficult.

You don’t need to buy big exclusive brands anymore. You don’t need an Audi or a VW when a Skoda or a Seat will more than do the job. You don’t need to buy Armani jeans when Next is just around the corner. Purchasing a mountain bike, today, causes anyone procrastination issues. There is a plethora of choice and the supposed lesser brands have caught up.

The difference between a Golf and a Skoda used to be huge 20 years ago. Now you couldn’t slide a piece of paper through the difference, except the price of course. Even Alex Ferguson, Manager of Manchester United has commented that the difference between the Premiership and Championship is minimal nowadays.

This means that brands are pushing up against each other. The market place is crowded and that has implications for customer purchasing. VW are going to have look very hard at how they justify the extra £3000 – £5000 for their cars when a Skoda more than does the job, particularly after the purchase. Too many brands and you get crushed and so does your customer. If you were in the exclusive market, I bet things are getting more difficult each year?

If exclusivity is diminishing because someone chased you and closed the gap, you need to concentrate on creating a new visible wedge! It’s why customer experience is so important. Future small business success will be based on choosing one of two competitive advantages; price for identical products and those who create innovative experiences that are distinctly different.