12 Questions that Move Dreams to Reality
Meaningful success requires strategy.
Dreams are easy; strategy makes you sweat.
Dreams without strategy are:
- Ships without rudders.
- Passions without direction.
- Excuses for stagnation.
- Comfort to irresponsible leaders.
- Hopes without substance. Rudy Giuliani said, “Hope is not a strategy.”
12 questions that move dreams to reality:
- What business are we in?
- What business aren’t we in? “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter
- What does success look like?
- What do we aspire to achieve? “Sound strategy starts with the right goal.” Michael Porter
- Who are our current and potential customers? Drucker makes it clear, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
- Who aren’t our customers? “You can’t be all things to all people.” Michael Porter
- How will we create new customers?
- How will we keep current customers?
- What are current strengths and capacities?
- What strengths and capacities must we develop?
- How will we monitor and measure success?
- What management systems best exploit and enhance our strengths and capacities.
Outward:
Strategy always faces outward where results come from.
An inward facing strategy assures extinction.
Future:
Strategy includes thinking about the future. But, effective strategy is always executed in the present.
“Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.” Peter Drucker
What are the essentials for developing effective strategy?
** Suggested resource: “Playing to Win.”
I guess Target’s strategy really sucked! (yet the guy at the top still walks away with a big bonus) Now that is strategy for you. (maybe not for you, but certainly for him)
Leslie
Thanks Leslie. Power often creates inequities. Do you suppose that what happened?
Eventually, the power will dissipate, given enough failures.
Leslie
Good one!
Thanks!
I’ve suggested that we specialize by what we don’t do. You can’t do everything well. Do certain things. Do them well, and slowly expand what is done well.
Thanks Andy. Elimination is essential to specialization. It’s one of the most courageous things leaders do.
Dear Dan,
You have covered almost many important aspects of developing strategy and I would add some. I have seen people planning for years and no execution. They keep on blaming others for not execution. They also claim to wait for right time. And the fact is that, they never turn planning into realities. Funny thing is that they never accept their mistakes. I mean one need to understand that as long as one looks for time time, one can not execute strategy. One need to have conviction and commitment. There will always be something that can perturb. Secondly,one should resist blaming others. In fact one should question oneself, what went wrong, and ready to accept mistakes.
I also feet that using gut may be disastrous in executing strategy.One need to have various information, data and scenario keeping present time and environment in mind. This will surely help to develop effective strategy.
Thanks Dr. Gupta. Very useful insights.
Strategy requires an execution plan. It’s odd that leaders leave the room with a strategy but haven’t worked out how to get it done. (at least at a high level)
Dan, sometimes I think it’s not our “dream” per se that does not come true, rather our strategic plan that they we don’t lay out specifically.
The trouble with many plans is that we base them on the way things are. To be successful, our plans must focus on what we want and perhaps what we see as dreams and even miracles, not what we think is probable or even possible. After all, dreams and miracles don’t prove what is impossible; they confirm what is possible.
When plans are strategically laid in advance, it is not only surprising but almost a “dream-come- true and even miraculous” how often circumstances fit them.
Thank Books. I see the “aspiration” side of strategy in your insights. Exactly!
Looking back is part of strategy but aspiration drives strategy making. A question to add is “What do we aspire to achieve?” Or, “How do we aspire to make the world better?”
Good points – I think that one of the hardest things for an engineer to do is to move out of the thinking tactically and move into thinking strategically.
Thanks Bill. It’s not just engineers. But, I often see strategy conversations devolve too quickly into tactic conversations.
“Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option.”
I believe the quote is from James Cameron: The Lessons of Titanic and other Reflections
Status Report Source: NASA HQPosted Wednesday, November 24, 2004, at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14594
“So my message is in whichever realm, be it going into space or going into the deep sea, you have to balance the yin and yang of caution and boldness, risk aversion and risk taking, fear and fearlessness. No great accomplishment takes place, whether it be a movie or a deep ocean expedition, or a space mission, without a kind of dynamic equipoise between the two. Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option.”
Thanks Ken. Thanks for bringing up the tension between caution and boldness. When it comes to strategy you need both green heads and red heads in the room. (See: bit.ly/1xzgv3f)
I am a junior leader, am good at thinking about strategies but I believe I fail at going through till the end of executing the tasks for an effective strategy…so in my opinion it’s about thinking, developing and then executing strategies that are aligned with all involved and especially the business I am in. Thanks Dan for making me think about this one.
Thanks Dennis. I think the most common point of failure in strategic planning is execution. What language is important? What management systems are necessary? Who are the champions? Thanks again for jumping in.
As a Mgt Consultant / Executive Coach who gets the opportunity to take a ‘coach approach’ with senior leader in MNCs to working with young startup entrepreneurs this is great to see. Very powerful questions (key point is questions) that allow the individuals / organizations to focus on execution. We need more of this in corporate America.
I love the questions: What business are we in and what does success look like … I must ask this at least once every week as people begin to add new product lines or new dreams to their road map …
Thanks Perspectcoach. I like how you put execution central to strategy. What is aspiration without execution? 🙂
Dan, Do what you do to to your best, what gets us here! Stay the course what you special in and create the niche! Venture of course in your values may be a ship wreck! Dabbling outside your expertise in venture that can help you grow or sink. Research your dabbling before venturing without a mission in mind.
Thanks Tim. “Create the niche!” All things to all people is being nothing to most.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter This can be very tough for many leaders, because many times this means saying no to good options so that focus and resources can go towards the best options.
Thanks Jay. Exactly! One way to deal with this is to focus on the strengths and passions of the people on the team. Where do their strengths find greatest fulfillment.
Very timely for our ITS Dept as we are in the middle of developing our ITS Strategy for the next five years. Many good things to think about. Thanks, Dan
Dreams without strategy are excuses for stagnation. Wow, this convicting.
Thank you. I’ll ask a few of that question myself in my morning self-analysis sessions.
DREAMS MADE DEEDS. DEEDS MADE DONE.
No effective strategy exists without or apart from a clear terminal goal and its achievement conditions (if you don’t know where you want to end up (and in what state) almost any and every path and direction ‘works’ [or not]). Hence talk of strategy without first identifying / establishing a terminal goal is just ‘echo chamber’ talk (i.e. ‘strategy’ is a nice grand word for (fuzzily focused and directed) action.
Another word for a ‘clear terminal goal with achievement conditions’ is ‘Mission,’ where ‘mission’ means “What You Want or Need To Get Done.” This is (nicely) an invariant definition – it doesn’t matter if it’s making a meeting on time, picking the kids up after school, getting a degree, or successfully taking over company ‘x’ in 21 days – they’re each and all ‘what you want or need to get done – missions. And every mission entails a strategy if it is to be realized.
Conversely, ANYTHING that’s other than accidentally realized (desirably, determinedly, consciously or unconsciously or otherwise) can be mapped as a mission and it’s enabling strategy (good, bad or indifferent).
Once you have/adopt or have a mission thrust upon you :-), the natural question is how do you get from where you are to having achieved ‘what you want or need to get done’ – i.e. you’re looking for or working to determine your path from ‘here’ to ‘there’ (and everything the path and actions on it entail). This path is called your strategy [for your mission].
Every time someone talks about strategy without embedding/associating it with a specific mission they’re emitting context-free statements that are hard to associate, measure, achieve etc (e.g.’our strategy for success is year on year growth’), or, conversely, easy to associate with lots of (any) different things. Hence such ‘strategies’ make it easy to obfuscate the connection between getting a bonus and achieving or not some clearly identified terminal goal.
Crudely put: Deliberate achievement of a Mission (Terminal goal) requires determining and executing a Strategy (Path), Tactics (Steps {of the path}), Operations (actions and activities for every step), Logistics (putting required people and resources in place and time for each operation), Acquisition or Procurement (getting/buying/setting up people/resources/circumstances required), and Requirements (identifying/designing whatever is necessary for the mission and its steps and activities).
Hence, Strategy executes Mission, Tactics execute Strategy, Operations execute Tactics. From the trivial and tedious through the tangled, troubled and transformational ‘Ops’ are where the rubber meets the road at any scale in any endeavour. It’s where the ‘deed’ becomes done (or not).
I think of all activity (business and otherwise) as being able to be modeled (there are of course a plethora of ways to model things) in two parts 1. What’s the Mission (What Do You Want or Need To Get Done] ? What are the Mission Tasks [How Are You Going To Get It Done ?] What is the enabling and enacting set/sequence of Mission Tasks – Strategic, Tactical, Operational, Logistics, Procurement, Requirements tasks ?
You can’t have a strategy without a mission. And you can’t execute a strategy without executing a tactic(s), operations, logistics, procurement and requirements. Think about the mission of ‘picking the kids at 4 after school’ and what that entails in these terms — whether or not you ever think about it in these terms. Ditto ‘winning the football league championship’, ‘getting and having a successful first date with person ‘wonderful by the end of the month’, or ‘in the next 90 days successfully launching a mobile app that increases customer engagement by 30%’ Et al.
You so often hear the sexy 🙂 phrase ‘Strategic Planning’ but outside of NASA or the military little about Mission Planning and planning how the Mission Tasks (including strategic planning) fit together and support achievement. This overall planning is what I mean by ‘Dreams Made Deeds’ (actionable) and the subsequent execution of the plan as ‘Deeds Made Done’ (actioned).