BACKGROUND
I recently saw a blog by the Cascade strategy software company entitled “The 5 Reasons Why 70% of Strategies Fail.” You can read it here.
Since I disagree with their conclusions, I decided to write
my own blogs on why strategies fail. I came up with three major reasons. The
first reason why most strategies fail is because they are too internally
focused at the expense of an external orientation. I covered that topic in the first blog.
The second major reason why strategies fail is because they
focus too much on “doing” rather than “being.” That was covered in the second blog on this topic.
The third reason I feel most strategies fail is because they
fall victim to the “Tyranny of the Immediate.”
PROBLEM
#3: FALLING VICTIM TO THE TYRANNY OF THE IMMEDIATE
I feel so strongly about the evils in the tyranny of the
immediate that on my blog site you can see links to 15 other blog entries I
have done on the topic. In fact, I wrote an entire book on the topic which you
can download for free here.
What is the
Tyranny of the Immediate
So what is the tyranny of the immediate? Think of it as the
daily fires at your business which demand your immediate attention. It could be something like an angry customer,
or a production line mistake, or a disgruntled employee, or a bad report in the
media. Not a single one of these types of minor crises will permanently cripple
your business. So why see them as a major source of strategic failure?
The reason is because there are so many of them. Executives
typically encounter at least one of them a day. If the executive is not
disciplined, he or she will find themselves totally consumed with putting out
the fire of the day. And therein lies
the tyranny. We become captive to their demands on our time every single day. If
getting the immediate crisis resolved captures too much of our time, then there
is no time left for long term strategy.
In a sense, any strategy is worthless and bound to fail if
people in the organization are such a prisoner to the tyranny of the immediate
that nobody has enough time to adequately put the strategy into practice.
Successful
Strategies Take Time
In the classic strategy book “Competing for the Future,”
Prahalad and Hamel say:
“As a benchmark, our experience
suggests that to develop a prescient and distinctive point of view about the
future, a senior management team must be willing to spend about 20 to 50% of
its time, over a period of several months. It must then be willing to continually
revisit that point of view, elaborating and adjusting it as the future unfolds.”
Unfortunately, Hamel and Prahalad’s research found that most
executives spend less than 3% of their time to building that corporate
perspective of the future. It is no wonder that strategies fail when so little
time is devoted to them. And in my opinion, the tyranny of the immediate is the
biggest culprit causing so little time to be devoted to this core act of
strategy.
Tripped Up By
Distractions
That is why I wrote the book “Tripped Up by Distractions.” I
wanted people to see all the subtle ways in which time and effort are stolen
away from doing the work of strategy. They may only look like minor
distractions, but when you add them up they can rob us of the time needed to do
strategy properly. Until we tackle the distractions, we cannot build successful
strategies.
In the book, I identify five major sources of distractions:
- Having our head down looking at individual numbers so much that we lose sight of the big picture;
- Sending so much time trying to produce perfect documents or in trying to check off the items on the documents that we don’t have time to anticipate and adjust to realities surrounding us.
- Putting the wrong people in the wrong places doing the wrong things.
- Getting so focused on accumulating money today that there is no time left to strategize about how to build an enduring money-making enterprise.
- Spending so much time reacting to change that there is no time to anticipate change and build a strategy to take advantage of change.
Some of these look at first like innocent activities. But when
you add these issues to the normal crises of the day, you can see why companies
have a tendency to spend insufficient time on building and executing a good
strategy.
The book then has three major recommendations of better ways
to spend one’s time:
- Spend more time asking questions. If you ask the right questions, you can more efficiently get to the root of what is strategically important.
- Spend more time on broad issues rather than narrow crises. If you get the big issues right, a lot of the daily crises disappear.
- Change your actions. Not all activity is equally productive in tackling strategy effectively. If you keep doing what you did before (falling victim to the tyranny of the immediate), don’t expects your outcomes to get any better.
Warning Signs that
Your Strategy is on a Path to Failure
So, what are the warning signs that one is falling victim to
the tyranny of the immediate?
First, do a time study of what your executives do. Is core
strategy work closer to Hamel and Prahalad’s ideal of 20 to 50% or is it closer
to their findings of less than 3%? The lower the number, the harder it is to
build and execute a successful strategy.
Second, look at what your company chooses to put as top
priority regarding where time is spent. What do people get most in trouble for
if they don’t spend time on it? What are the consequences if someone spends too
little time on strategy? People will spend the time on that which they perceive
management wants them to spend time on. Send the right message. Reward good
strategic behavior.
Punish those who fall victim to the tyranny of the
immediate.
Third, is strategy work treated like a real job or more like
a hobby you do on the side in your spare time? If there is never enough time in
the day to do your day job, how can you expect much from tasks relegated to doing
in your spare time? If you truly believe that designing and executing the right
strategy is the difference between long-term success and failure, then
intentionally carve out time for it. Have people on staff for whom this is
their full-time responsibility Make at least some of the strategic work the day
job of people.
Finally, how well do your executives delegate the little
crises so that time is freed up for the work of strategy? If delegation is not occurring,
then strategic work is not occurring either.
Depending on which study you look at, somewhere between 60%
and 90% of strategies fail. If we don’t address the deep-seated reasons why
strategies fail, we will not be able to raise the percentage of strategic
successes. I believe that there are three major reasons why strategies fail and
my reasons do not always agree with conventional wisdom. The third reason I
believe most strategies fail is because not enough time is being spent on the
subject. Real success occurs when a company takes the time to get strategy
right and keep it relevant. Without a proactive commitment to spend the time it
takes to get strategy right, the tyranny of the immediate and a whole host of
other distractions will get in the way. If your strategy is a half-hearted
effort barely worked on to accomplish, you will get what you deserve: failure.
Thomas Jefferson said, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” As a strategist, it is your
responsibility to be noisy and fight so that the crisis of the day and other
such distractions do not become tyranny to your organization.
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