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Business strategy isn’t what it was, thank goodness. The old ideas of long range planning and rigid, detailed and generally ignored ‘plans’ didn’t have much real-world relevance for how the business was run. As a process, it was often too slow to respond to change. As a consequence, the formal strategy process and concept was generally ignored. Strategic plans became just targets; and after a while the targets took over and the reasons and basis for them were ignored.
Times have changed and the absence of a clear strategy can leave your business floundering in markets that can change almost overnight. If you’re involved in determining and maintaining the strategy for your business, do any of these seem familiar?
- No obvious link between your current priorities, change activities and the business strategy?
- Is your strategy based on maintaining our market share and reducing costs?
- Are you chasing your competitor’s initiatives and playing ‘catch-up’?
- Are your discussions about the need to change based on short term issues?
- Are you struggling to get executives and stakeholders to engage with discussions on strategy?
- Does the idea of some overarching strategy somehow feel irrelevant?
- Is there a gap between your focus of attention, actual priorities and your stated strategy?
- Are your key performance issues directly related to executing your strategy?
- Does each function and division want to pursue their own strategy options?
- Are you struggling to find a way to keep the core and the periphery of your business aligned?
- Are you finding it difficult to implement changes quickly?
- Are you finding the core organisation becoming too prescriptive and the front line becoming more inclined to do it their own way?
- Can you explain your business model and how it gives you a value advantage?
- Does every refocus or change of priority lead to a change of your business model and mode of operation?
If these ring a bell with you, maybe you need to start thinking differently about strategy.
Business Strategy has changed, Have you..?
The old approaches to strategy are dead. They’re useless in a world where radical change can shift the basis of markets completely and the baselines for performance, cost and customer satisfaction rise and shift continually. The acceptable range of what passes for ‘good enough’ has narrowed upwards. The old concepts of strategy are unable to provide a basis for moving forward with confidence. Today, strategy is a fast-moving contact sport where winner takes all and if you lose, not only is the game lost but, perhaps, the whole market.
Over the past 35 years, the rate of business change has moved from a trickle to a whirlwind. The traditional approaches and options for strategic positioning and advantage have been brushed aside. The key business basics have not changed but the ways to leverage them have. The barriers to entry, new options for capital, investment and technology, marketing, customer perception and locations have all become important yet not strategic advantages in their own right.
A single strategy and set of targets isn’t going to cut it. In addition, copying the innovation of others has never been easier. ‘Fast-follower’ competitors can often easily erode strategic gains. Globalisation has seen distance, transport, time and resource advantages being levelled. The floor cost for manufacturing and service have dropped to the lowest global price and borders no longer act as the protection they once did.
Do you have a Business Model that adds Value..?
It’s time to think differently about strategy and start developing an organisation that can shift its strategic modes of operation with relative ease, taking advantage of new opportunities as they arise.
You need an effective and detailed business model framework that enables strategic positioning and provides flexibility so that the business can reorganise easily, leveraging value in a competitive and market-responsive way. This is a key capability for the future. Knowing how to harness and use it for competitive advantage is what will differentiate the winners from the rest in the market.
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