If you are listening carefully to the business news, you will have heard the experts talking about the impacts of a “soft landing” and how that will affect business performance from now until the end of the year. 

Just a few days after I shared a blog post on the incredible leadership lessons I have observed from hotel General Manager @tomboyer which include his team going above and beyond the call of duty because it was the right thing to do, I had one of the worst hotel experiences in my life.

There is significant confusion in the business world between Operational Excellence and a Low-Price Strategy. Based on our years of experience designing, developing, and implementing simulation-centric business acumen learning journeys, I want to share some insights and ideas about the differences and how these differences can be used for better strategic execution and decision-making.

The Confusion

Part of the confusion is simply a matter of semantics and wording. In the game-changing book, “The Discipline of Market Leaders (Tracey & Wiersema),” the authors propose there are only 3 different “Value Propositions” that a company can offer to its customers; Product Leadership (building and selling the most innovative products), Customer Intimacy (developing a strong relationship with the customer and offering world-class service and customization), and Operational Excellence (driving costs out of the system of business so you can complete on low price).

Every quarter, Advantexe’s business acumen modeling team meets to discuss the core interest and inflation rate in our business acumen simulations.

“I guess we better make the adjustment and raise them again,” said our top modeler very matter-of-factly. So, beginning this week, the core interest rate in our core (non-customized) business simulations will go to 5.25% and the core inflation rate will go to 3.5%. As our participants run their simulated companies, that means foundational Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), raw materials, and labor will continue to rise.

The goal of our business acumen simulations is to help our participants better understand business concepts so they can explore the simulation and bring their lessons back to their real-world decision-making.

I was scrolling through LinkedIn waiting for my flight to take off when I saw a posting from @TomBoyer.

Tom is one of those rare individuals you meet in your life that you never forget. His genuine and authentic leadership style is something I have tried to emulate and more importantly, is something I use as an example of what good looks like when explaining the difference between good and great.

Some background…

I first met Tom when he was the General Manager of the Alpharetta Marriott in 2011. Back then, I would travel there at least once a month and usually stay for a week. Every morning, Tom would be in the lobby greeting guests and asking them about their stay, and every afternoon, after everyone would come back to the hotel, he’d be in the lobby and bar area interacting with the guests and again asking them how they were doing and if there was anything that he could do to make their stay more comfortable.

At first, I didn’t know what was going on to be quite honest. I didn’t understand how everyone who came into the hotel knew this man and what where they were talking to him about. He was asking about their families, their work, their health, anything and everything. In addition to the guests, you could also see how he interacted with his staff who simply adored him. Although he was their manager, it was very clear that he was the leader and they followed him because they believed in him.