A couple of years ago, I was at a tourist location while on vacation. There was a section of the area devoted to souvenir shops. These shops had quite a variety of souvenirs to offer—everything from T-shirts to antiques. Most of the items had something printed on them referring to the phenomenon which drew tourists to the location in the first place.
But there was one store which stood out. It was selling life-sized photographs of
famous celebrities, cut and mounted on wood so that you could have them stand
next to you. In particular, the store
was pushing life-size cut-outs of Justin Bieber, the hottest celebrity of that
moment.
I thought it might be interesting to have one of these in my
home (until I saw how expensive they were).
But it got me thinking.
What if I had one of these Justin Bieber cut-outs in my house and
suddenly the real Justin Bieber showed up?
The natural reaction would be to ignore the cut-out and pay attention to
the real person. All that money paid for
the cut-out would have been a waste, because it has very little value when you
have access to the real thing.
And if you saw someone ignore the real Justin Bieber to
spend time with the cut-out photograph, you’d think they were a little bit
crazy.
THE ANALOGY
Sometimes, I think strategic planners can get a little crazy, like someone who would rather hang out with a photograph of Justin Bieber than the real person.
Strategic plans are an attempt to represent what is going on
in the environment and how we would like to change it for our company’s
benefit. They are not reality
themselves, but merely a representation of that reality (and the future reality
we desire). They are a “cut-out” rather
than the real thing.
But, as strategist, we tend to love those planning documents. There can be great joy in getting such a document completed. And sometimes strategists can get all caught up with all their other documents, and data, and graphs, and spreadsheets. There’s just so much of it to occupy our time that there is no need to ever leave the office.
But reality takes place outside the office out in the
marketplace. We can go out there and see
our real Justin Bieber (the world we compete in) any time we want. But instead, we seem content to embrace our
hand-made cut-out version of Justin Bieber and never leave the office.
Yeah, the cut-out is nice, but isn’t visiting the real thing
occasionally even nicer?
The principle here is that great strategic planning goes beyond dreaming up great theories in offices or in printing up thick strategy books. The best strategies are most in tune with the marketplace. Therefore, it is helpful if the planning process spends time interacting with the marketplace where the strategy gets played out.
1) Get Out in the Field
When was the last
time your strategists went on a sales call with your sales team, or spent time
listening in at the call center, or visited (or worked at) the factory, or
spent time in direct contact with your customers? These are the types of places where your
strategy either succeeds or fails. The better
you understand them, the better you can prepare to win there.
At most of the
retail companies where I have worked, I have insisted that whenever my team
traveled on business, they should carve out extra time to get out and experience
the local marketplace. I told them to
visit our stores, the stores of competition and even stores that had nothing to
do with us. After all, you never know
where you will learn something new that will be useful in strategy.
I was appalled
one time when a retailer I worked for opened up the first prototype for a new
retail concept. The top executives got
on the corporate jet and then drove directly to the store. They cut the ribbon for the grand opening and
then went directly back home. No time
was spent observing or talking to customers.
No time was spent visiting the competition. What a missed opportunity to learn.
When H. Ross Perot
was placed on the board of directors for General Motors, one of the first
things he did was go to a GM dealership to buy a car. He wanted to experience what consumers
experienced when buying a car. He also
wanted to own and drive a GM car to better understand the product. Later, Perot was shocked to find out that
many of the other board members no longer bought cars—they were given to them
by the company. And most of them no
longer drove cars—they had drivers. And
at least one no longer even had a valid driver’s license. How do you build strategies for the
marketplace when you are so out of touch with the marketplace?
Granted, you
cannot go everywhere and see everything.
But you should at least spend some time experiencing the world of the
line employees and your customers. This
gives you some “real life” context for evaluating strategic options. And just as you can learn more spending time
with the real Justin Bieber than you can with a photo cut-out of Justin Bieber,
you can learn things out in the field that would never show up just looking at
numbers and documents in your office.
And to supplement
personal experience, include more input from those who live out in the
field. Invite input from line employees,
customers, suppliers and distributors. With
all the social media tools out there, it has never been easier to include all
the voices of the marketplace in your planning process. Not only will this allow you to learn more
for strategy design, but it will create greater buy-in and cooperation from the
field during strategy execution (because they were part of the design process).
2) We’re Not in the Publishing Business
A lot of
strategists get upset when all of their strategy documents and presentations
get ignored. After the strategy meetings,
everything given to the leaders gets put on their shelf, never to be touched
again.
Why does this
happen? To a lot of the leaders, all
that material is like the photo cut-out of Justin Bieber—not quite fully real
to their regular day job. After the planning meeting, they have to go back
to living life out in the field with the real Justin Bieber. And given the choice of spending time with the
cut-out or the real thing, they naturally opt for the real thing.
Remember, a
company’s strategy is not what is put in a book, but is the result of all the
daily decisions made throughout the organization. If the written strategy is not made real at
the point where all the decisions are made, then it is not the real strategy.
Strategists are
not publishers. Our end products are not
books, Powerpoint decks, budgets and so on.
Our end product is a transformed company which is moving in the
direction of the vision. Therefore, to
succeed, we need to make our strategy relevant in the minds of the people
making the daily decisions. To do that,
the strategy needs to get translated into the context of the reality of where
decisions are made.
To do that,
strategists need to spend time at the beginning out in the field so as to understand
that
context. In addition, strategists
need to spend time out in the field after the strategy is crafted, helping the
decision-makers see how to relate the strategy to their daily decisions. And that cannot be done by just hanging
around your office.
Successful strategies are the ones which impact what happens out in the marketplace. That impact is increased when a) the strategy is built upon the knowledge of the realities of the marketplace; and b) those who are making the daily decisions out in the marketplace understand how the strategy is relevant to the choices they make. This requires that strategist do more than just produce books, spreadsheets and Powerpoint decks. They need to spend time out in the reality of the marketplace.
All of this is not to imply that analytics, budgets, spreadsheets, presentations, strategy books and vision statements are a waste of time. No, they help to quantify and communicate the core strategy. They also help to flesh out strategic insights and concepts. But unless one has a deeper, more intimate knowledge of the reality of the marketplace—something that cannot be found just studying sterile numbers—you will not fully comprehend the context and relevancy of that information.
It is like designing a house without understanding the
terrain the house is to be built on. It
may look great on the blueprint, but it cannot become a reality because it is
inappropriate for the terrain. First, go
out to the site and learn the terrain, so that the house you design on the
blueprint can actually be built and be the right structure for that location.
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