All in Strategy
The thing is, no one actually has the answer.
We want to believe someone does - perhaps that we do - but we don’t actually know that to be a fact.
Sure, we might believe our version of the answer right to our very core. We might be convinced that our boss or our peer can be trusted to get us where we’re trying to go. But what we’re trusting is our versions of the story. We’ve made a judgement based on the accumulated data at hand.
The Ikea effect is a cognitive bias where we place greater value on those things we’ve created ourselves.
There’s value in this idea when you’re a business and you’re providing customization options to your customer. The more they can personalize the product even partially, on their own, the more they will value it. Makes sense.
But we need to be wary of this bias when it comes to ourselves.
Competition is a sharpening mechanism.
It forces a clarification of our strategies, demands a strengthening of our capabilities and forces everyone to improve (if they want to continue to stay on the field).
And, in order to have competition, you have to have participation - without constraints.
Recently, Unilever, the global consumer goods giant, announced that it will be removing the word “normal” from its beauty and personal care products and related advertising.
The idea behind this is to move away from descriptions that might suggest who (the type of person) the product is for, and towards those that describe what the product does. A step towards inclusivity and body positivity.
I think we get so caught up in the goals that we’re after that we lose sight of the need to focus on the process. Especially when the goals are big, audacious.
This makes sense, intuitively, of course. The bigger the goals, the higher the stakes, the more invested we are in their achievement. It’s natural then that we takes these goals seriously, and that they occupy our thought processes.
The recent hype around Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has been interesting. A piece of ‘art’ by the artist Beeple sold for almost $60 Million. I put the word ‘art’ in quotation marks because it isn’t art in the conventional sense that most of us might think of. It’s digital and anyone can see and download it (there’s nothing physical at play here). But the NFT provides one person with indisputable proof of ownership, and that person estimated the value of that proof at $69.5 Million.
“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.” Pablo Picasso
When we hit upon a winning formula, it’s tempting to think we’ve got it all figured out. Because we actually do. We’ve understood what the market wants, what customers are seeking, at least at that specific point in time.
Getting things done, as a team, is a challenging task at the best of times.
It requires us to pull together and take actions that are consistent and coherent with respect to our common end goal. This, in turn, requires clarity, communication and alignment.
In other words, we need to all buy in and then do our bit (as part of the overall plan) to get there.
Value is in the eye of the beholder. That seems like a straightforward statement, but it’s a hard one to truly grasp.
There are certainly tangible criteria that can be applied to the price of a particular product or service - its material inputs, the resources applied to convert those materials into some sort of finished product, and the related overhead needed to make all of that happen.
This month, I'd like to speak to a few fundamental ideas about how we work and the implications of our behaviors when we work.
In today's episode, I talk about our tendency, as we get older, to focus less on what we do well and more on what we don't. It's a curious thing, because it's our strengths that will drive us forward and, therefore, what we need to build on.
It’s often referred to as the “defensive” strategy.
The sports team that emphasizes defense over offense i.e protecting their goal and stopping the other team from scoring.
Or the business that is focused on adding enough features to be able to ward off the competition.
Or the individual contributor who spends his time understanding and developing (i.e. copying) the skills of his nearest competitors.
Strategy matters.
A good strategy differentiates your offering. It galvanizes the right resources to their best effect. It positions your organization for success.
A good strategy, though, is just the starting point. Once you’ve mapped out your path, you still need to run it.
And a badly run race will slow you down, allow your competition to gain on you and overtake you, possibly even prevent you from finishing.
It’s a fact that strong financial management is fundamental to sound business management. If your revenues don’t exceed your costs on a consistent basis, you will be out of business soon enough.
There’s simply no arguing with that. You can layer in whatever complexity you like, but that truism still holds (which is why it’s a truism).
When I started in Management Consulting, everyone wanted to do “Strategy” work. Strategy was sexy. It was glamorous. It was something to brag about. Newly minted Analysts and Associates would jostle for pole position to be part of those teams.
And make no mistake, Strategy work was interesting and fun. But, for the most part, that wasn’t what paid the bills.
One of the hardest things to get your head around when you’ve decided to create something new, is that no one has the answer to what you need to do.
How your offering should be designed, what it should do, how it should be priced - all of this is up for debate. There may be comparables out there - models that you can compare to and get ideas from, and they can offer a guide, a few suggestions along the path.
There’s a mythology that's built up around the idea of growth that’s only accelerated in this age of on-demand news and ubiquitous social media.
We’re so enamored by the pursuit of growth (and scaling and valuations) that we discount those who aren’t interested in that ethos. That the idea of lifestyle businesses and staying “small” is a “settling” of sorts. That not growing is a failure of some sort - of the idea, the offering and the entrepreneur.
It’s a romantic notion, the idea of silver bullets.
It’s exciting (and oh so promising) to believe that there’s something out there - a solution, a framework, a technology, etc. - that has the potential of solving all of our problems or, at the very least, delivering a material, manifold improvement in our situation immediately.
I think we overstate the idea of originality.
We’re too caught up in this belief that being original means doing something that has never been done before. That unless we create something profoundly unique - the likes of which no one has ever before seen - then we aren’t original.
Overnight successes are all the rage. We see or hear a success story and we marvel at how they’ve come out of nowhere. Clearly, they had an idea that resonated, got their message out at the right time and were able to capitalize on the opportunity. I wish I could be as lucky as that!
Of course, overnight successes are almost never that.
Attaining leadership - in a business, in an organization, in any sphere of life - is a difficult task. It demands a lot of us and absorbs us as we pursue the path. At times, the task feels beyond us, and yet we persevere and work towards our ambitions. So when we get there, it feels like an achievement. Because, of course, it is.
The thing we forget, though, is that we haven’t actually reached the end of the path.
