We attended a great event yesterday and met a great guy called Joel Roberts. Joel has work in the media in the US for a number of years and he specialises helping businesses use the principles of the media world to grab and keep our attention into how they communicate their business message.

What was interesting and why we’re writing this post was that Joel referred to a book called the “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. The book is about globalisation and impact on the landscape for business.

Friedman got the idea for the book after he visited the CEO of Infosys in Bangalore – the Silicon Valley of India. Upon arriving he was taken to a huge room with great big screens that had live video streaming from London, New York, Jedda, Cape Town, LA to name but a few. What he had walked into was global conference being hosted from India in real time. The story goes that the CEO turned and with a smile said “The playing field has been levelled hasn’t it?”

So why is of relevance to you?

Well, as a result of this ‘levelling of the playing field’ your competitors are now not just on your local High Street. They are not even just in your Town or City, most probably not even in the same Country. Your fiercest competitor could now be sat any where in the world. Technology advances mean that the whole world is now connected.

Secondly, whilst technology has exported to the far reaches of the globe so has the attention span of the Western world. People’s attention spans are shorter now than ever before – we think in 30 second chunks!

So here’s the challenge for your businesses. You have to get your message to stand out from the thousands of competitors and capture the dwindling attention of the cyber generation.

Now that’s a challenge.

One of the first things you can do is to start thinking in terms of problems. There are 2 kinds of problems  - the ones you have and the ones you don’t. You are in the business of either solving the problems your customers have or help them see that they have the problem you want them to have..as Joel would say “You are in the problem distribution business”

To begin to clarify your message, ask yourself “What problem’s do your customers lay awake at night thinking about and how does what you have solve them?”

The latest example of this is the claim that Woolworth’s demise is down to the credit crunch. Far from it.

The Woolworths story is yet another example of what happens when you fail to respond to your operating enviroment and make changes. Whilst organisations such as Kodak adapt to the changes companies like Woolworths and MFI continue to do what they always done. OK, so they may have revamped their stores and decor but beyond that what have they done to change the way in which they operate?

Kodak saw the changes in the photography market. They saw the rise of digital photography and instead of continuing to produce negatives they began to produce paper, printers, software and other accessories which would embrace the changes and keep customer close.

Woolworths on the other hand did not change the way the operated. They have sold they same stuff in the same way for last decade. Whilst the world has gone digital, they have stayed analogue.

This is not limited to business, we as humans are also guilty of the same unawareness that could result in our demise so to speak. When was the last time you looked at what you do and the results you get with a view to changing the way you do things?

Are you a Woolworths or a Kodak?