10 Ways to Get Where You Want to Go
Organizational strategy answers three questions.
- How can we create customers?
- How can we keep customers?
- What do we do better than competitors that is difficult to copy?
Peter Drucker explained it this way, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.”
I’ve attended and led many strategy meetings over the years. Most of them felt good but many were a colossal waste of time filled with stale analysis and political puffing.
Why Strategy Meetings Fail:
- Too little time planning the strategic planning meeting.
- Customer-value isn’t identified and understood.
- Confusion about what customers love about you.
- Lack of clarity about the business you are in. Sadly, many businesses actually believe their product is their business.
- Dead horse beating. Lousy strategy meetings lose momentum in minutia.
- Focus on solving problems rather than maximizing competencies and exploiting opportunities.
- Too much time spent “predicting” an uncertain future.
Bonus: Strategic planning fails because there’s too little time for casual conversation and private reflection.
10 ways to get where you want to go:
- Define your business. What do you really do?
- Understand the real value you bring customers, from your customer’s point of view.
- Clarify internal competencies and values that make you unique.
- Paint a clear picture of success. How will you know when you succeed?
- Exploit opportunities more than solving problems.
- Eliminate all “good” options. The real courage of leadership is eliminating options. Porter said, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
- Choose what’s best for the entire organization even if it might limit your department.
- Develop simple language that expresses strategy so that everyone, especially customers know the value you bring. Strategy that’s hard to explain is a waste.
- Mechanisms that monitor and measure progress.
- Persistent, tenacious, recurring follow through and execution. Nothing really happens in meetings.
A great strategy explains how you will be uniquely useful to current and potential customers?
Strategy is a huge topic. What are the core elements of strategy development?
I am working this up to use in something else, but the factoids relate so here we go:
An article by Roger Connors and Tom Smith started this way: “Would it surprise you to learn that 9 our of 10 management teams cannot describe, with complete alignment, the most important results their organizations need to achieve. Their responses vary nor only around which results are most important, but also the description itself.” Their Workplace Accountability Study (2014) revealed that the basic assumption that “result expectations are clear to the organization,” is not an organizational reality.
93% of employees don’t really understand what their organization is trying to accomplish in order to align with their own work
85% of leaders aren’t defining what their people should be working on — an equal number of employees crave clarity
84% of the workforce describes itself as “trying but failing” or “avoiding” accountability, even when employees know what to fix
more than 70% of those surveyed were extremely pessimistic about the viability of their understanding of their organization’s key measures.
(Workplace Accountability Study (2014) )
Amazing, eh?
Thanks Dr. Scott. Sad but true!!
Good information Dr. Scott. It’s quite probable that over half of legitimate vocations are operating like this or “flying blind with no radar.
Scott, great add to one of Dan’s most meaty posts. Would it surprise any of us that most people cannot (or will not) describe “specifically and in great detail” what they “personally” really want in life, and also what their greatest character and personality asset is?
If people do not know the reason why it’s important to have a “definitive” view of achieving their “personal” desires (like a home on the beach with a circular library on the 3rd floor, and a kitchen facing the ocean, etc., or a 1952 Chevy pickup, et al.),–it’s a rather daunting prospect to get these same persons to take a first step professionally.
However, I am a believer that optimists are right! So are pessimists! It’s up to us to choose which we will be! I also believe “numbers” can “figure” some things out, but only words “elaborate on the meaning” of things. In your data analyses, why are 7% understanding,
15% of leaders defining clearly, 16% of the workforce accepting accountability, and 30% perhaps somewhat optimistic of their understanding of their organization’s mission? Maslow studied SUCCESS not failure. Leaders must do the same and advocate it in their staff.
With respect to getting where we want to go, I believe the first step is to decide that we are not going to stay where we are. A second step is to remind ourselves and others we are not running from anything, rather running to something: Our well delineated goals. And along with the host of suggestions Dan has listed, I believe it is essential to remind ourselves and others that free enterprise (intra-preneurship) means the more enterprising we are–the freer we are.
Excellent summary!!! Organizations like people with no clear purpose squander valuable time. Your comments reflect a greater truth than most cannot comprehend.
Great insights men!
Dan, your article is good food for thought for me, even though I’m operating from the solopreneur, small partnership point of view. Communication, analysis/observation, and adjustment are key elements for me. It’s tempting in my niche of the business world to think that I’m alone, without a team, and that most strategy talk might not be useful to me. But the fact is, my customers are part of my team. My resources are part of my team. People I might hire to consult with are part of my team. I need to put myself in their shoes to be sure that my communication is clear. I can’t afford to ignore this. I need to analyze what I actually do and whether my decisions make sense with the resources I have. Do they match what my customers need, or am I off in the weeds. I need to analyze my direction and the environment that my business exists in, as well as the one my clients find themselves in. I need to listen, a lot. To my customers, to the environment changing around me, to my own needs. I need to understand my mission and direction. And I need to be able to re-evaluate and adjust along the way. These are all essential to my strategy if my solo business is to ever grow into something more than just a way to make ends meet.
Dear Dan,
An interesting post.
Strategies need to be decided by the core group and communicated well down the line. The 10 ways to work on strategies as listed are quite relevant and essential. Strategy-making meetings need the fact based key information which can help to identify good opportunities to grow and review the organization strengths along with needed capabilities to succeed. These meetings are to be well planned for a strategic group to arrive at meaningful dialogue and conclude with a definite course of plan for its well execution.
Great article! Definitely something to think about for Public sector where the customer is the tax payer.
Thank you for this pivotal article. It takes a true grit type of person to lead with these strategic examples and thinker questions.
I’m glad that I’m a month behind in reading this. Your message in this post is very relevant and insightful at the moment 🙂
Thanks Michael. Me too!