Differentiation & Vanilla Ice Cream | The Leadership Book Corner

I know I am an odd one, but I actually like vanilla ice cream, in fact it is my favorite flavor. Yet, even vanilla ice cream has a lot of varieties, and there are a few brands that are greatly superior than the others. Whether your business is about ice cream, candy, technology, widgets, or some other gadget …differentiation is one of the things that separates the good from great!

In order to have great differentiation, you have to have a great strategy. Tweet This!

Steve Van Remortel, takes on this subject in his book Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream: The Scoop on Increasing Profit by Differentiating Your Company through Strategy and Talent. As the title implies this is not another book about differentiation through innovation, branding or marketing – but through great strategy development and talent development.

In this book Steve explores 4 phases of his, “Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream” process, these are:

Phase 1: Planning Process Preparation – This phase is focused on building a team and making sure everyone on the team is in the right place where they will bring the greatest value. It involves collecting the content that is needed to make sure the strategy development is effective.

Phase 2: Building the Team and Strategy Development Preparation –This phase is focused on various models and exercises to build and develop a team and improve the team communications. It delves into laying the foundation for greater strategy development.

Phase 3: Strategy Development – As the title implies this is where the actual strategy is developed and defined. In this process the team discusses and analyses the organization’s competencies and target market, and then create a strategy based on those results.

Phase 4: Strategy Implementation – This is the one I am big on …the execution. Steve takes the reader through more planning to make sure that departments and individuals can now implement the strategy.

I really liked how he used a real company, Connecting Cultures, Inc.  throughout the book to explain the process from beginning to end. It helped to conceptualize how the process would look and be deployed in an organization. The book includes access to online templates and resources to help you in your own implementation as well. Even if you do not implement the process, there is some great knowledge on strategy that would be valuable for any leader.

Steve’s book was just launched last week, go pick-up a copy today!