Most corporations have annual planning that they label “strategic.” Some of these multiple-day off-site meetings filled with late nights in the hotel bar and days of eating too much food are strategic; others are not. Those that are not strategic are usually debates about resource allocation that lead to budgets and tactical initiatives tied to timelines. Some of them are clearly tied to a strategic intent. Others are not.
Are these meetings helpful? Of course. But that doesn’t mean they’re strategic. Why not? Because they’re not intentionally helping you rethink and re-evaluate the fundamental strategy of your company. During these annual allocation sessions, most organizations aren’t asking questions about these key strategic questions:
- How is what we’re learning from our customers, our industry and our markets affecting or should be affecting the value we’re delivering? Or, more specifically, are there unsolved problems we can address?
- What gaps do we need to fill to deliver that value?
- Should we expand or contract our business category?
- Given what we’re learning, how should we adapt and shift our core strengths?
- What beliefs should we change based on external (customer, industry and markets) changes?
- What behaviors should we develop that would give us better results?
- How should we differentiate ourselves differently in the marketplace?
A commitment to addressing these questions requires insatiable institutional curiosity, dedication to continuous learning and improvement, and the agility to act on what you learn. Factors that contribute to this:
- Your strategy process needs to be continuous and adaptable. Make your strategy discussions a regular part of some of your executive team meetings.
- You need to get the right input that explains what your customers think and feel. You also need data on your industry and the broader marketplace. You need to ask the right questions about that input to probe its relevance to your company. And finally, you need to have the right interpretation of that data. What does it mean for your business?
- Risk management. Once you have the input and have tried to discern what it means, you need to take action. A good first step is to test realistic options with devil’s advocates. When the idea passes that testing phase, do a pilot project.
- Once you’ve chosen pilot projects that are viable to scale up, you need to systematically integrate your course corrections. This includes having a change management ethos that is not just top-down driven but is systemic and grass-roots driven. Organizations that can quickly change course, in big or small ways, require employees that don’t wait to be told what the next change is.
Rose Kennedy is credited with saying that “More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.” Don’t neglect the long-term viability of your business due to a lack of attention to your strategy nine months out of every year.
