STRATEGY -- HAVING SUCCESSFUL CUNNING PLANS

 

 

 

Being Clever about the future?

 

Do you remember those comments from your director. "You need to be more strategic," and "Please look at the big picture," also " Don't get lost in the detail." There you go, how did you do, are you any better at looking at the big picture -- not focusing on unnecessary detail?

My stepfather always used to tell me that life is made up of details not grand views or visions. President George Bush always had problems with this "vision thing." Do we focus on completing our immediate tasks and not looking too far into the future -- all the traditional strategic planning literature tells us a similar story. The following levels are pretty common

1. Strategy for the organisation - The medium to long term aims and objectives of the organisation - For example; maximising profit, minimising costs to underpin cost leadership, maximising sales penetration in a market, leading in product innovation, targeting major competitors' performance, developing core competencies and outsourcing non core tasks, maximising revenues, streamlining production efficiencies and penetrating new markets, to name but some. Oh and you may also be interested in maximising your client satisfaction.

2. Tactical elements -- Which group of actions and tasks need to be undertaken to achieve the strategy of the organisation - listing them, profiling them and resourcing them.

3. Operational elements -- Delivering the required group of actions and tasks identified in 2 above, on time and to budget

Do we seem to concentrate on levels 2 and 3 rather than level 1? Perhaps for most people that is true - Doing a list of things is always easier than actually thinking about whether they are the right things to do given the organisational challenges we face. Organisations need a long term purpose -- managers will need to think and act strategically  to steer the organisation on the path they want it to go ,in the medium to long term. What are the ends we seek and what are the means of achieving those ends?

Strategic management is a vision of the organisation in the future - but there also need to be concrete steps in place to move the organisation into that visionary situation. Strategic planning is not a dreamers charter -- but it is necessary if we are not going to be stuck in the present - however comfortable or not our present situation might be for us. Very often more time and effort goes into level 2 and level 3 elements than into level one. The detailed process of formulating a strategic approach will be the subject of a future blog. Suffice it to say that the process is at the apex of our planning approaches.If we do not get the top element correct the other 2 elements can be a well meaning waste of time.

A recent book by Laffey and Martin - of Harvard University identifies the 6 common ways that an organisation's strategy can fail. These are;

1. The Do it all strategy. Yes in the future your organisation can do everything and please everyone - Things you do now that have never worked will come good. Don't worry  - no need to prioritise anything?

2. The Don Quixote strategy - unwisely attacking your strongest competitor first of all and not your weakest.

3. The Waterloo strategy where you pursue war on all fronts - i.e. fight all competitors with the same intensity thereby wasting some good resources of your own.

4. The something for everyone strategy  - try to capture every customer\client at once; not the most important and profitable ones first and then the least profitable ones later if at all.

5. Programme of the month strategy - Undertaking a strategy that is flavour of the month but will not necessarily be effective at all for your organisation.

6. Dreams that Never Come True strategy - Really good ideas that in the cold light of day - given the culture and outlook of the organisation will never happen but we would all feel warm and happy if they did and no-one wishes to be the first to spoil the party. This point particularly chimes with me.

The elements of a good strategy, they argue, are as follows:

1. What will the future success of your organisation look like and in which markets will it be likely to occur?

2. How will the particular future markets be won over?

3. How can the organisation play to its strengths relative to those of its competitors?

4. What aspects of the organisation's performance need to be managed for it to reach its future goals and which elements need to be discarded?

Some heavy stuff indeed - but still ultimately necessary to consider.

We all need to strive to ensure that our dreams, do, as far as possible come true. At least we need to work hard to make them happen!