Strategic Planning Analogy #369: Or Vs. And

THE STORY
I recently returned from a vacation to Europe. On the plane ride across the Atlantic Ocean, I discovered that flight attendants are experts in the language of “or”. For the in-flight meal, I had the choice of meat OR pasta. For a snack, I was offered peanuts OR a cookie. For a beverage, I was offered soda Or juice Or water. For reading, I was offered either the USA Today OR the Financial Times.

Whatever became of the word “and”? Why couldn’t I have a cookie AND a peanut? Why couldn’t I have water AND a soda? Why couldn’t I read two newspapers?

It reminds me of the lunch I had yesterday. Before I could fully finish the drink in front of me, the server place before me another glass of the same drink—twice—without even asking me. At these types of restaurants, be careful what you choose for your first drink, because the servers will try to make that your only drink choice for the entire meal. The idea of variety never crosses their mind. What if I want to try one thing, AND then later want to try something else? No, those servers don’t understand the word “and”, either.

THE ANALOGY
It seams that servers (on airlines and otherwise) like treating me as being one dimensional. I’m only allowed to like one thing. That seems a bit narrow-minded to me.

Sometimes, I think many strategic planners can become equally narrow-minded. As we will discuss later, there are several different schools of thought as to how to approach strategy. Individual strategists tend to gravitate towards one of these schools of thought. This then becomes the singular way they treat all strategic problems.

Just as those servers want me to drink the same type of drink all day, these strategists want me to use the same approach to all strategic issues. When you read the writings of the popular strategic writers, the approach seems to be: “choose my school of thought, not the other.” In other words, it is a land of “or” (one school of thought or the other), not a land of “and” (accepting and using multiple schools of thought).

Just as it makes sense to me that I might want to read both the USA Today AND the Financial Times, it makes sense to me that I might want to use the strategic tools found in one school of thought AND another school of thought.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that there are a wide variety of strategic issues in business. If you want to be successful in solving this vast array of problems, it helps if you draw upon a variety of strategic resources.

For example, sometimes a company may be sub-optimizing because it is poorly positioned. Other times, a company may have a great position but cannot execute it well. Or maybe the company is executing well, but is executing the wrong thing. Since these are all distinctively different problems, they require distinctively different approaches to fix them. If you limit yourself to only one school of thought about strategy, you may be applying the wrong solution to that particular problem.

The Right to Win
I was reminded about this in a recent article in Strategy+Business, the strategy publication of Booz & Co. The article, called “The Right To Win”, categorized strategic thinking into four different schools of thought.

One is the “Position” school of thought. The idea here is that winning companies create and hold a distinctive position in the marketplace. This school of thought includes the work of Michael Porter and the thinking behind the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Another is the “Concentration” school of thought. Here, winning is supposed to come from focusing your effort on your core competencies. Key books for this school of thought are “Competing for the Future” by Hamel & Prahalad and “Profit From the Core” by Chris Zook.

A third school of thought is the “Execution” approach. The idea here is that winning companies work on aligning people and processes for operational excellence. This includes the quality movement proposed by W. Edwards Deming, the Reengineering movement of the 1990s, and the book “Execution” by Charan and Bossidy.

The fourth school of thought was called “Adaption.” The idea here is that the environment changes very quickly, so successful companies need to excel at quickly adapting to the change via creative experimentation. This is the approach recommended by Henry Mintzberg and was a key part of the book “In Search of Excellence.”

The article pointed out the pros and cons to each of these schools of thought. It showed how each approach was useful in some situations, but fairly worthless in others. And that is the key point. If you limit yourself to only one school of thought, you are only prepared to solve a subset of the strategic issues you may face. You will be fairly worthless in solving the others.

If you want to be prepared to solve all the strategic issues you may encounter, you cannot take an “or” approach. You need to take an “and” approach and embrace multiple approaches.

Otherwise, you will be like the old saying which says that, to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail (even if it isn’t really a nail). Just as a good carpenter has a variety of tools in his toolkit to handle a variety of carpentry tasks, a good strategist needs to put a variety of strategic schools of thought into the strategy toolkit. I talked about this idea in greater detail here.

The Three P’s
That is why I use an approach to strategy which I call the 3 P’s. The three P’s stand for Positioning, Pursuit, and Productivity. The idea here is that a successful company needs to do well in all of three of these areas.

With a three legged stool, the stool is only useful when all three legs are functioning well. If any one leg is missing, then the entire stool is worthless. Similarly, successful companies need to be supported by three strategic legs:

A) A strong/unique Position (a place where you can win);

B) An aggressive Pursuit of excellence in the key elements of that position (which allows you to own the position and adapt faster than anyone else); and

C) An efficient and effective business model, so that there is enough Productivity to allow for optimum profits and cash flow.

My approach is simple. First do a systematic diagnostic of the situation. From this analysis, determine which of the three legs of the strategic stool is most in need of attention (Position, Pursuit or Productivity). Then, use the tools available within that area to fix the particular problem at hand.

Although Positioning, Pursuit and Productivity do not line up exactly with the four schools of thought in that article, you should be able to see how the tools offered in those four schools of thought can be useful in different ways to each of the three legs. All have something to offer at different times, depending upon which leg of the stool is broken.

That is why I shy away from the narrow-minded view that one should lock onto only one school of thought (just as I wouldn’t want to lock into only one beverage for the rest of my life). For example, if you only lock in on the Positioning school of thought, you will only be able to fix one leg of the stool—Positioning. You will be ill-equipped to handle problems with the other two legs (Pursuit and Productivity).

If you want to learn more about the 3 P’s, check out my blogs which feature Positioning, Pursuit and Productivity in the links section.

SUMMARY
Not all strategic problems have the same root cause. Different strategic tools are needed depending upon what is the nature of the problem. Therefore, do not limit your strategic toolbox to only one strategy school of thought.

FINAL THOUGHTS
While I was in Europe, I tried one of the local beverages, called Kofola. Kofola was the communist alternative to Coke at a time when Coke was unavailable in communist Europe. It was not the drink for me (it tasted to me like motor oil). It was a good thing the server let me change my beverage choice. Just as Kofola was not appropriate for my taste needs, each strategic school of thought alone will not be appropriate for all of your needs. At certain times, you will need to change approaches (just as I changed my beverage to something other than Kofola).