how do you really

GROW YOUR BUSINESS & GROW YOUR PROSPERITY

Why and how your business will benefit with a Unifying Philosophy Statement (UPh®)

Copyright Harish Chauhan 2008

hard questions the uph® addresses

Dear Business Owner/Leader

In these following pages you will discover a special tool, called the Unifying Philosophy Statement, and how it becomes the DNA of your company – your Brand, Strategy, Culture, Operations, Customer Experience and Business model all in 6 words or less.

What you will learn is that the Unifying Philosophy (UPh) will become one of your most critical assets of your business. With a one-time investment in a developing the UPh for your company you will simultaneously achieve immediate and long-term results:

• Increase business performance and profitability

• Improve management and staff engagement • Enhance customer and brand loyalty and experience

• Maximize shareholder value performance

We guarantee these results

So if you are wondering:

• How come all of the departments and management are NOT on the same page

• How will I grow my company more profitably • How can we sell more effectively to the right customer(s) • How can I ensure I create maximum value in my business (value I

can cash in on when I grow, sell or retire from the business)

Then the UPh is your solution. The following pages will help show you why and how the UPh helps you grow your business in the best way possible. I hope you will see for yourself and for your business why the UPh is a unifying strategy for your prosperity.

Harish Chauhan, B.I.D., B.Eng.

With excitement and thanks,

TABLE OF CONTENTS

what is a uph® (unifying philosophy statement)

Page. 09

the 9 uph benefits - why owners and their businesses need a uph?

1. Your UPh Aligns all Key Stakeholders ON THE SAME PAGE Page. 10

2. Your UPh Empowers Management and Staff Page. 11

3. Your UPh Drives Business Growth and Increases Business Profitability

Page. 12

4. Enhances Leadership Succession (autonomy and continuity)

Page. 13

5. Disconnects owner Reliance Page. 14

6. Defines and Reinforces Your Growth Strategy – go to market, product/service development, operation and Business development

Page. 15

7. Establishes and Operationalizes Your Brand Page. 16

8. Measurably and Justifiably Increases Shareholder Value Page. 17

9. Attracts #1 Customers with laser focused Sales and Marketing messaging and strategy

Page. 18

next steps: Page. 19

- WITHOUT a UPh®

A business

grows linearly in value.

Business

owners risk their goodwill.

WITH a UPh®

A business grows

exponentially in value.

Business owners can

earn premiums on their

goodwill.

WITHOUT a UPh®

Problems grow as the business grows… until

unmanageable.

Business owners lead, manage and operate by anarchy.

WITH a UPh®

Prosperity grows as the

business grows.

Business owners lead, manage and operate by philosophy.

WITHOUT a UPh®

Business

undermines its profit

potential.

Business owners

struggle to do everything it

takes.

WITH a UPh®

Business creates and maintains prosperity.

Business owners have

focus and direction to do what it takes.

WITHOUT a UPh®

Business

has 11 – 54 disconnected value drivers.

Business owners

compromise value in EACH

driver.

WITH a UPh®

Business value drivers are connected.

Business owners

compound value across ALL drivers.

“Harish offers a no-nonsense, logical and systematic strategy for shareholder wealth and value creation via brand development, stakeholder alignment and overall corporate

performance enhancement.” Past President, Paul Frederick

INNOVATORS ALLIANCE – Ontario’s Leading Growth Firms

what is a UPh® (unifying philosophy statement)

A UPh is an ‘all-in-one’ strategic, operating,

and marketing statement constructed in 6 words or less.

A UPh is the ‘DNA’ of a business – defining

who you are, how you compete, how you differentiate, what you do best, how you grow and innovate, and why customers buy from you in 6 words or less.

A UPh is more practical, powerful and

profitable than a logo, marketing tagline, or mission/vision statement because it is a formal asset, appropriately structured, that drives everything, everyone does in your business everyday in 6 words or less.

A UPh is a company’s unifying strategy for

prosperity that enhances your company’s performance, growth, value, succession, exit and wealth an owner can extract out of the business in 6 words or less.

why owners and their businesses need a uph?

1. Your UPh Aligns all Key Stakeholders ON THE SAME PAGE

- The biggest challenge companies face is to get everyone working in

synchronicity for the common good of the company

- The UPh and the UPh process works with all the key stakeholders

and commands their buy-in from inception (construction of the UPh) to day-to-day implementation (with the use of the UPh and its management drivers)

San Francisco State University’s preliminary research on Business by Philosophy’s Unifying Philosophy strategy process conducted in the summer of 2006 with past UPh clients showed: “After having built their UPh, these companies have management and staff that all operate from the same page”

2. Your UPh Empowers Management and Staff

- Everything the Leaders do from hiring, training, managing, promoting and firing staff is derived by the UPh

- How everyone delivers, improves, innovates and operationalizes the

UPh’s promise is all that is necessary in creating a High Performance Organization that believes in the overall purpose of the company

Imagine if your company came up with ‘Just Do It’ first. And you had the money and resources to put it around the world just like they did. How would it empower your management and staff to perform better everyday? Would they come into the office and ‘just do it’? Do they do it better, different, poorly, hastily? What would they be doing that they didn’t do before?

3. Your UPh Drives Business Growth and Increases Business Profitability

- Many business leaders and their management teams are unclear about how their company makes money, how they can make more money in their current industry, or how they will grow their company doing what they do best?

- How does a company grow efficiently and effectively without losing

its focus? The UPh and the UPh process helps address and guide the business leaders and key stakeholders through all these critical components that help companies grow more profitably and sustain it – this is prosperity.

Within 3 years, Breadsource implemented its UPh, “Freshness On Time®” achieving: reduced wastage from 4-6% to less than 1% price margins were justifiably increased further increasing profits 70% of their new customers were acquired as a result

4. Enhances Leadership Succession (autonomy and continuity)

- Passing the reins from one leader to another or from one generation

to another is not only daunting it is riddled with failure (over 60% fail from 1stto 2ndand 90% fail from 1stto 3rd)

- How does a business and its owners/leaders prepare and succeed

during this inevitable and critical transition and growth step? During several client successes when building and implementing the UPh we have evidence of success during a delicate transition because we involve all the key stakeholders across and within the generations or transitioning parties (whether it was a pre-merger, post- merger or family business transition)

- The final company UPh is designed to withstand time, change and

leadership. For example, Freshness on Time has been a UPh for a private, family owned business for nearly a decade. Both 1stand 2ndgeneration leadership (father and two sons) were involved in the construction of their UPh. This provided both autonomy and continuity. Autonomy in leadership is important because every leader and owner wants to make their own distinctive mark and legacy in the business and the marketplace. However, autonomy traditionally has destroyed or diminished the efforts of the previous leader. How does one build on the equity, goodwill and legacy of the past yet allow for new change? UPh Continuity. Freshness on Time, regardless of leadership will remain an ongoing asset, legacy and operational standard regardless of leader, time or change. How the father drives Freshness on Time throughout the organization will be different than his children or grandchildren. Regardless, their UPh will continue to be their unifying philosophy for years to come – consistently compounding their commercial goodwill.

5. Disconnects owner Reliance

- Owner reliance on the success of the company is another pivotal issue in building a great company that is also equally valuable. How does a charismatic or visionary leader pass on their message, conviction and passion throughout the entire organization – so that everyone executes on it? Build and implement a UPh. A UPh is the core of what an organization is – it embodies the vision of its leaders AND its people.

- The dependency of a company and its people reduces greatly as the UPh becomes more and more instilled into how the business works, what people do everyday, and how it is used in everyday Leadership and Management decision making. One such client has established an employee handbook titled by their UPh, “Building Reliability”. They use it as a guide to ensure that all staff, new and old work from the same page and build reliability in everything they do.

- Overall, operationalizing of the UPh throughout the entire organization (people, process, and product offerings) improves business “Transitionability” (how the business transitions from leader to leader, through time and through market changes) and “Scalability” (how the business grows in size and geography while staying focused).

6. Defines and Reinforces Your Growth Strategy – go to market, product/service development, operation and Business development

- Why do Strategic Plans fail? They fail because they are not implemented or poorly executed – this is often due to a lack of buy-in into the plan, understanding and commitment to the strategic planning process and/or unrealistic implementation initiatives that realize the overall Strategy.

- The UPh process helps owners and their management team establish

the strategies necessary to drive business growth via their company UPh. With all the stakeholders (owners, management and/or staff) actively involved in the process buy-in is assured and implementation becomes more realistic and practical.

- For example, UPh clients in the past have established their global

growth strategy (UPh client: Surati – Canada/India), solidified their go to market strategy (UPh client: LOGIC – Bermuda), focused their product lines and operations (UPh client: BREADSOURCE – Canada), and established an implementation team and process for their UPh roll out worldwide (UPh client: Bellville Rodair – Canada/England).

7. Establishes and Operationalizes Your Brand

- What is a Brand? Essentially, it is your company’s reputation as

defined by Customers, Employees, Management, Investors, Suppliers, Competitors etc. How do you make the Brand work inside and outside the company – so that everyone lives and breathes it? That is the more important question. A Brand is abstract and therefore difficult to define for any company – unless the company defines it, by themselves, and uses their Brand to influence the market (external) and management/ staff (internal). Secondly, the Brand must be defined in a way so that it can be made operational, otherwise it is useless.

- An honorable UPh mention is “The Ultimate Driving Experience” by

BMW. Coined over 40 years ago, BMW has operationalized their “Ultimate Driving” philosophy from how they design, build and service their cars as well as how they market, retain and reinforce their customer relationships. Their Brand has been established, operationalized and can be effectively monetized – largely due to the incredible goodwill created by that one statement for the last 4 decades as well as evidence by the fact that BMW has the strongest sustained shareholder value stock in the automotive industry (rated by the Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index).

- By building a UPh, you establish the key Brand promise, and more

importantly the asset, by which leaders and staff can build, grow and live the brand in a way that makes everyone believe in it genuinely and become Brand champions. One UPh client, Bellville Rodair, has created an employee handbook that teaches all staff what the Brand means and how to live in their day to day work.

8. Measurably and Justifiably Increases Shareholder Value

- Dr. Ruth Corbin’s article on Brands in the Boardroom says it best, “On November 6, 2006, the value of shares in Four Seasons Hotels Ltd. Jumped by almost 30% following an offer by Bill Gates and a Saudi prince to buy the company. What could account for an offer of $93 per share when the company was losing money” It was clearly the brand).

- Intangible Assets, like Brands, are one of the most valuable assets

of a company. Owners/leaders are encouraged to find out how these assets are valued to prevent significant loss of wealth during their ultimate exit or retirement – at which point these assets will become valued.

- The UPh is a distinct Intellectual Property (IP) asset in and of

itself. Because of the way a UPh is built and implemented, the overall value of a company, its Brand with associated IP assets, and most other financial performance metrics are measurably and justifiably enhanced as a result of building, implementing and marketing a company’s UPh. Overtime, as in the case of BMW, the UPh statement becomes the Brand message at the top of everyone’s mind.

- UPh clients to date have created significant value in their

company’s overall share value and some have also gone to the extent of restructuring their IP assets for optimal security, tax benefit and monetization of the Brand.

9. Attracts #1 Customers with laser focused Sales and Marketing messaging and strategy

- Harish Chauhan’s book, UNCONVENTIONAL BUSINESS, presents

11 arguments “Why the Customer is NOT #1” (www.unconventionalbusiness.com). Therefore, a Brand that caters to every customer is not only inefficient it can be risky. Focusing the sales marketing strategy to capture your prized customers that will become loyal and passionate about your company and its offerings. Because the UPh is your company’s Unifying Philosophy statement, it captures the very essence of your Sales and Marketing message and strategy – in fact it helps direct it.

Examples of this focus include: - BMW’s “The Ultimate Driving Experience” (which only caters to

the luxury car buyer)

- BREADSOURCE’s “Freshness on Time” (which charges a premium

for 100% fresh bread everyday)

- BELLVILLE RODAIR’s “Building Reliability” (which only caters to

very sophisticated or sensitive Freight Management customers) - Your Company’s UPh defines precisely what kind of customers

you want/ need, why you want them and how you will get and keep them happy – all the time. This is what these three companies have been able to successfully do year after year as they continue to market and implement their UPh.

next steps:

To learn how the UPh can specifically benefit you and your company, contact Harish Chauhan to arrange an interactive presentation at your earliest convenience. harish@businessbyphilosophy.com / 416 919 1830