Me too!

The continuous realisation of commercial innovations is the lifeforce of sucessful businesses. Also, there are few things as exciting as innovative and challenging projects. Such projects are critical when dealing with unique business processes, and highly competitive markets. However, many great change projects can be delivered using virtually no innovation and less risky approaches...

If your change project concerns commodity services, non-core processes or highly predictable areas of your business, then a "me too" strategy may be more appropriate than an innovative approach. In simple terms, "me too" means copying the best strategies of competitors or similar businesses in other markets. For example, don't create your own bespoke ERP solution, instead use a best of breed product and implement best practice processes using a standard approach. This strategy has some obvious advantages:

• There will be evidence that this works, and hence less risk involved.
• Other people do it first and you learn from their mistakes.
• You can more easily optimise process and minimise costs.
• The worst outcome is only the cost of a lag versus other players.

It also has some disadvantages. Some of these include:

• It is unlikely to delight your customers - they get this service everywhere.
• If it takes a long time to implement you will always be playing catch-up.
• It gives suppliers greater leverage.
• Higher labour costs and retention issues as the skills required become increasingly popular.

Overall, "me too" is a very popular strategy. Benchmarks show that it works. In the IT industry this strategy has been extensively promoted by the big manufacturers and consultancies, and has resulted in a "herd mentality" leading to the huge growth of the big software multinationals.

The trick for change managers is to understand its strengths and weaknesses, and to achieve the right balance of innovation and "me to", in order to match your organisations appetite for risk and performance.