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Want A Successful Business? Build An Effective Strategy

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ByLee Yat Thong
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Your yesterday’s success under yesterday’s condition may no longer apply as we witnessed how the two years of pandemic changes the business landscape drastically, truly befitting the statement. “what gets you here will not get you there tomorrow”. In the post-pandemic days, doing business will change substantially. Do you need a new strategy for tomorrow? 

What is business strategy? 

In layman’s words, business strategy is your business strategic plan to bring you to your objectives while in the art of war, strategy is choosing your war to fight to win. It is later that matters and helps businesses to succeed. 

Strategy is a means to a goal, and this is exactly the premise of war strategy by the military, to win the war. A good strategy allows you to win optimally and it’s done with pre-emptive strikes to weaken the will to fight. Translate this into the business world, it implies working on your strategy with the right focus by choosing your playing field and getting your playbook right to have the winning edge. 

To succeed, differentiating strategy is necessary, that is knowing where to compete to win for today and tomorrow. There must be at least one distinctive strategic value advantage for today and tomorrow too. Use Michael Porter’s generic competitive strategy to identify your playing field, where you have an upper hand. 

Start by evaluating the intended playing field where you already have at least one distinct advantage to build on. Conduct your PESTEL analysis to understand the future trends that influence your chosen playing field. You want to understand the VUCA elements from the PESTEL analysis and prepare to build up your competitive advantage that is great for today and tomorrow. It is always about building up your getting to your tomorrow. 

In choosing the playing field, the Key Success Factors (KSF) must be identified and defined with clarity, both external and internal elements are evaluated to match the KSF. it is choosing to win a war of your choice, not to fight a war chosen for you. Always go for the playing field that gives you an edge with your present strategic value that matches the KSF. This is to maximize your strategy with your strategic strengths. 

The business strategy playbook

Once the playing field is decided, it’s time to work on developing the playbook. The playbook is an important success bridge as it’s about “moment of truth” experience, walking the playing field talk. To develop the playbook, you need to work on two prongs; working on the business and working in the business covering your today and tomorrow. 

Working on the business entails knowing what your competitors are doing, new rules of play, and sense making the market change while understanding the influencing factors. What is important, is always look for early signs of changes as this influences the playbook, the crux is; that the playbook is WIP. The business world is never static and is changing constantly for all and no one is immune, tomorrow will always be different from today.

Your playbook shall be your blueprint for value engineering and innovation strategy to renew your strategic values differentiation. Value engineering is the strategic acting to align all internal factors to deliver the promised strategic values. It is the combination of value engineering and innovation strategy that will have a higher chance of winning your chosen war on your chosen playing field. This is the working in the business part. 

In the book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, he spoke about niche strategy. A printer saw the void and need for fast track printing, working on his business (playing field), he went into providing niche service of fast track printing, working in his business (playbook), and became the sought-after printer for emergency printing needs. He ensures his strategy-driven playbook supports the delivery of his chosen playing field strategy. 

Business strategy is about choosing the playing field best suited to your winning strengths and developing a playbook that focuses on winning edge strategic values. To win a war without fighting is the supreme strategy and that can only be done with constant innovation in sharpening your winning X factor. This entails, working ON and IN the business to constantly innovate the winning edge, the art of strategic thinking and strategic acting. 

Strategising

There are a few proven golden rules that are applicable to strategizing strategy.

Aim

The utmost important starting point to developing any strategy is, what you want to achieve. Strategy is always the means to a goal, so the Goal or Aim must be explicitly clear. There are many military campaigns that failed spectacularly despite having all the sophisticated resources at their disposal, they failed for want of clarity of strategic Aim. Without clarity, the plans could not be brought onto a laser-sharp focus to bear on the outcome. Ironically, a well-defined clear Aim, it allows for the agility of planning for any circumstances. 

Focus

A good strategy creates a concentration of focus anchoring on the Aim of The True North. This will facilitate strategic thinking and action within the business. Each and every initiative including organizational behaviour and development works are aligned to the True North. 

Intelligence

Intelligence or information formed the backbone of developing a good strategy. Going in with eyes wide open. Having good intelligence is about knowing intimately your chosen playing field, enabling a realistic and sensible assessment of your SWOT analysis. This is part of working ON and IN the business to prepare the business for strategic success.  

Exploitation

Any good strategy will always be aimed at exploiting key weaknesses of the opponents (the fast track printer mentioned above) as well as deceiving them of our weaknesses. The competitors are doing their market intelligence too hence it is crucial to ensure that deception of your weakness is ongoing efforts as well as beefing up your weaknesses to avoid being your Achilles heel towards strategic success. Again working IN the business entails focusing on both the strengths and alarming weaknesses that hinder strategic success. 

Sensemaking

As a business leader developing a strategy, you need sensemaking to give meaning to the market information. Sensemaking is value adding to the richness of strategizing process. Sensemaking also involves wearing the shoe of opponents to see their market context, and to understand their strategic thinking and acting. This is part of the thinking process to exploit the opponents’ weakness as well as to deceive them of our weakness.

Teamwork

Crafting strategy is always a team effort with a diversity of ideas and inputs that contribute to the richness of discussions on what would win the battle for the business. Watch out for groupthink which I mentioned below as a pitfall to avoid.

Pitfalls to avoid

Here are some pitfalls to avoid when crafting a strategy:

Groupthink. Avoid groupthink as the leader’s bias will be detrimental to the richness of discussions. The outcome is not a strategy rather it is the leader’s preference. 

Bias. Unconscious bias is very unhelpful to strategy crafting especially crafting for tomorrow when the business is doing good for today. Great strategy comes from a realistic, honest and unbiased assessment of the business in current and future context. It is about building the most likely scenarios that will hurt your business which set the path to resetting and refreshing your business.  

Closed mind. Never write off and/or discard any idea however absurd it may be, Murphy’s law applies. There are many spectacular falls when uncharted idea shared ahead of their time is dismissed, Eastman Kodak does come to mind.  

Structure and Culture. Maintaining the same culture and structure despite adopting a new strategy will not yield the desired strategic success. This is why working IN your business is crucial to support your working ON the business. The ERRC matrix from Blue Ocean Strategy is one great way to redefine working culture and structure to align and support the strategy as well as change the rule of tomorrow’s game. Avoid doing the same yet expecting a different result, it will not happen. A new strategy is part of change management for business success. 

Time and Speed. Time is both an asset as well as a hindrance. One of the biggest hindrances to strategic success is the snail’s pace for approval to implement necessary initiatives for strategic success. You need to re-orientate yourself to the urgency of the VUCA situation and move fast. The market waits for no one, and that is a stark reality. “We did not do anything wrong yet we lost it”, the conclusion is, did they do what was right strategically?  

It is tough to take the road least travel to be the trailblazer yet it’s better than to battle that exhausts your resources for a small win. Trailblazers like Uber and Airbnb sets the new rules, and push out innovation that disrupts and changed the game. They get their playing field and playing book right. 

It is no longer about luck, it’s an educated choice with the right understanding and sensemaking to give “new” meaning to your market information to formulate a winning edge. It is a conscious strategy choice on what, where and how to win the war of your choice; the art of war in business. 

Are you doing what it needs to win your war of choice? 

“All the men can see the tactics I use to conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which great victory is evolved.” – Sun Tzu

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