Strategic Planning Analogy #500: Be Careful Who You Follow

THE STORY

In the wintertime, Minnesota can have some nasty snowstorms. If they come just before the rush hour commute, they can grind traffic on the highways to a stop for hours. When that would happen to me, I would get off the highway and try to make my way home via the back roads.

With everything covered in white (and even more coming down), it would be hard to see where you were driving. And if the back roads took you into unfamiliar territory, it would be even more difficult to know how to get home. Therefore, when I got onto the back roads under these conditions, I would try to find another driver who appeared to know what they were doing and then follow them.

On one of these evenings, I found a car that really seemed to know all the back road shortcuts, so I started to follow it. Everything was working out quite well until that car I was following suddenly turned up a driveway and went into its garage. It was home. I was not. And I really wasn’t very sure about where I was.

I just kept driving and luckily I soon came to a main road which I recognized. From there, I was able to find my own way home. If I hadn’t come across that familiar road, I might have been wandering aimlessly out in that winter storm for many additional hours.

THE ANALOGY

Following someone can make life a lot easier—so long as the person you are following is going to your destination. But if that person is going somewhere else, they can lead you in the wrong direction.

When that car I was following turned up its driveway, I was in big trouble because he had led me into a neighborhood I did not know and where I did not belong. He had reached his destination. Unfortunately, his destination was nowhere near my destination. I was left in a place where I was lost.

The same thing can happen in the business world. It is usually easier to follow someone else’s strategy than create one of your own. This seems easy to justify, especially if you are following the market leader. After all, that strategy made them a huge success. Won’t it do the same for me?

The problem is that they are the market leader and you are not. They have different capabilities and resources than you do. As a result, the right strategic destination for them is most likely not the right destination for you. Trying to win with a strategy designed to take advantage of someone else’s strengths (not your own) will lead you to a place where you do not belong.

But even if you are roughly similar businesses, it is usually a mistake to blindly follow the leader. After all, each strategic position can only be owned by one firm in the mind of the customer. If the leader already owns that position, then the customers will view you as an inferior version of that position, even if you do essentially the same strategic actions. Instead, it is usually better to find your own unique position (where you can win) than to be seen as an inferior copy of someone else’s position. In other words, you need to find your own home to drive to rather than follow the leader to their home and not be invited in.

A great example is Walmart versus Target. Walmart’s strategic destination was “lowest cost structure/lowest prices.” Target could have tried to follow Walmart with a similar approach, but it probably would have been a failure. Just look at the evidence. There used to be dozens of discount store chains in the US chasing Walmart which have all gone bankrupt. But Target is still going strong because it decided not to follow the Walmart strategy and went to a different destination.

Target’s heritage from its parent company was the more upscale, more fashionable department store business. This was an advantage they could leverage against Walmart. So Target chose the destination of “Cheap Chic,” the more upscale, more fashionable alternative to Walmart.

Being a desirable alternative to Walmart is much better than being an inferior Walmart clone. Both chains now could successfully coexist, because they were winning in their respective, differentiating positions. They had each chosen different strategic “homes” and took different paths to get to their homes.

THE PRINCIPLE

The principle here is that a strategy of following someone else is usually a mistake. Most of the time, it is better to develop a different strategy—one specifically suited to your unique situation (skillsets and market position).

Why Following is Usually a Mistake #1: Differences

We have already discussed many of the reasons why following is usually a mistake. First of all, every company is different. There are differences in capabilities, resources, corporate culture, geography, prior investments, product portfolio, patents, market perceptions, and so on. What works for one firm won’t work for another because of these differences. You need to choose your strategy based on what makes you unique, because it is your uniqueness which provides the competitive edge needed to win.

There is no single best strategy for everyone in an industry. If there were, we’d be in trouble, because then you would only need one company per industry—the one best at executing that single strategy. Fortunately, there are many different ways to win a segment of the industry. You can choose to win on a variety of attributes, like price, service, customization, quality, speed, or specialization to a particular segment (such as a particular customer segment, geographic segment, usage segment, or solution segment). Rather than imitate someone else, find the place among these options which is best for your unique situation.

Throughout history, there have been business leaders who have had a great reputation for success. At one time, it was Jack Welch at GE. More recently, it was Steve Jobs at Apple.  Each time one of these business superstars appears, I’ve seen many leaders trying to implement the identical leadership styles (and strategic approaches) of these superstars in their own businesses. They try to follow these leaders just like I followed that car in the Minnesota winter. And usually, the results are similar to my experience. They end up lost rather than having success similar to these superstars.

Why? Well, the personality style of these superstars may be different than the natural style of those trying to imitate them. That difference makes it hard to be genuine and effective with that unnatural style. In addition, you are placing that leadership style into a different context. That style may not be the best for that context. These differences can make following these superstars a mistake.

Consider the fact that even Steve Jobs was not incredibly successful everywhere he went (think about when he ran NeXT). And many of the people highly trained at GE in the Jack Welch style had unsatisfactory results when they left GE to run companies in a different context. If they couldn’t pull it off when the situation is different, why do you think you can?  Differences matter and can make imitation inappropriate.

Why Following is Usually a Mistake #2: Only One Leader at a Time

Another problem with following has to do with the laws of positioning. As Al Reis and Jack Trout pointed out in their works on positioning, consumers will mentally place only one firm as a leader in a particular position. Everyone else is seen as inferior. And once someone locks into that leadership position, it becomes extremely difficult to unseat them from that top position. As a result, Reis and Trout recommend that if you are not the leader in a particular position, go and find a different, uncontested position where you can win.

This is like when Target did not try to unseat Walmart from its position but found a different place where it could win. Another example would be social networking where anyone essentially trying to copy the success of Facebook (like Google+) is failing. However, Linkedin differentiated by going after a different customer segment (business professionals) and has done well.

There was a time, generations ago, when industries held more financially viable players for a given position. But due to consolidations, the power of networks, price wars, and greater transparency, the number of profitable players in a given position keeps shrinking. Often, only one player per a given position makes a respectable return on investment. If you are not the top player in your position, you will probably be a poor investment. So, instead of copying someone else’s position, find a different place where you can win.

Exceptions to the Rule

Does this mean that following is always a bad idea? No, there are a few situations where following is okay.  One such situation is when critical mass is needed to get an industry started. For example, when the next generation of DVDs was being developed, there were two competing technologies—Blu Ray versus HD-DVD. This created uncertainty in the marketplace. Customers were reluctant to purchase either one for fear that they would choose the wrong format. It wasn’t until the players in the supply chain (movie studios, media player manufacturers, retailers, etc.) started following each other in one direction (Blu Ray) that the critical mass was formed to get customers to buy.

Another example could be electric cars. Until consumers are comfortable that the right technology is found (and the compatible charging infrastructure for it is in place), they will hesitate to buy.  

This is similar to the Blue Ocean strategy which talks about abandoning the status quo to open up entirely new industries. Sometimes you need a critical mass of players following each other into the new blue ocean in order to make to new industry look real and viable.  If the new market is big enough, it may be worth following to get the market jump-started.

Another time to follow is when an industry is still developing and you have special leapfrogging skills. The idea hear is to let others test the waters of innovation and take all the risks of failure. Then, when they hit upon the rare success, be a fast follower and overtake them in the race for leadership. This has been the strategy of Coca Cola for decades. Coke lets other people invent markets (like diet cola, cola in cans, bottled water, sports drinks, energy drinks) and then they use their superior distribution skills to overtake the upstarts and dominate the new business. As long as an industry is still unsettled, the fast follower approach can work if you have the capabilities to outrun the innovator.

However, even in these two cases, the benefits of following are temporary. Eventually, the markets will mature, and following won’t work anymore.

SUMMARY

Although following someone successful may seem like a path to similar success, history would say otherwise. The followers usually lose because either:

a)     They are in a different situation than the leader which makes their strategy not applicable; or

b)     The leadership in that position is already owned by the leader and you cannot take that leadership advantage away from them.

Therefore, rather than follow someone else, find the unique path that is just right for you.  

FINAL THOUGHTS

Eventually, I mapped out my own back roads for when a storm hit in Minnesota. That way, when the storms came, I was following my own path, rather than the path of someone else. That worked out a lot better. You should do the same.

Strategic Planning Analogy #495: The 3 Keys to Success (Part 2)

THE STORY

I was excited the first time I was to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  The museum is full of famous works of art.  I had read about or seen pictures of this art in books, but now I was going to get a close up look at the original paintings. I imagined that it would be a very inspiring visit.

Instead, it turned out to be a very disappointing visit.  As it turned out, not only do you see the greatness of the paintings when you see them up close.  You also see all the imperfections.  In particular, I remember looking at some very famous Picasso paintings.  When you studied them up close, you could see the rough pencil sketch underneath the paint.  They looked a lot sloppier than the little photographic reproductions I had seen of them earlier in art books.  After awhile, I became so fixated on the imperfections that I couldn’t enjoy the paintings.

I kept thinking to myself that I could probably find many artists who would be able to reproduce all of these paintings and have fewer imperfections. But in later reflection, I realized that I was missing the point.  No matter how much more “perfect” these reproductions would be, they would never be more valuable than the original.

THE ANALOGY

Copying is a lot easier than creating something entirely new. Imitators may even be able to make small improvements over the original.  But in the world of art, the value belongs with the original, no matter how flawed it might be. 

A similar situation exists in the business world.  The ones who create, get known for and exploit exciting new business models first usually create more value than the later imitators.

Therefore, you’d think that there would be more business people striving to be the next Picasso—creating something new, exciting and very valuable. Yet, when I look around, it seems that the business world is more often filled with imitators and copiers. The idea seems to be that “People like that original over there, so if I make something just like it, they will like mine just as well.”

But as we all know, a “just like Picasso” is never as valuable as a real Picasso.  Why should we expect the rules to be all that different in business?

THE PRINCIPLE

We are currently on the second blog in a series on the three characteristics which tend to determine whether a business is a great, lasting winner, or a long-term loser. In the first blog, we looked at “Passion” and saw that the winners have a passion for the business and the intricacies of the business model which makes it work in the marketplace.  The losers focus their passion on the money that comes out of the business and are only tangentially concerned about the details in how it is made.

In this blog we will look at “Direction.”  Winners tend to move in new and different directions, like Picasso.  Losers direct themselves to follow what is already working (the imitators).

The Problems With Following

There are many reasons why the followers rarely become the great companies. It doesn’t matter if you are following the standard rules of convention for your industry or following the innovation of the leaders.  You are still following.  And followers rarely reap great rewards.

There are three problems with focusing on following the conventional rules for how your industry works.  First, if everybody is doing the same things in the same way, then you tend to have parity of offerings amongst the competition.  How do you win over the competition if you are all perceived as being the same?  This tends to lead to price wars (“everything is the same, but we cost less”), and we all know that price wars are not the path to creating above average prosperity.

Second, even if you can execute within the conventional rules a little bit better than everyone else, it is usually only a temporary advantage. In an earlier blog, we looked at the battle between Fuji and Kodak in conventional analog photographic film.  Sometimes Fuji would have a slight advantage; then Kodak would get a slight edge—back and forth it went with no clear winner.  The real winners were the innovators who abandoned the conventional rules of photography and brought digital imaging to the masses.

Third, there are limits to how much better one can become by playing by the same rules. The law of diminishing returns tells us that ever increasing improvements tend to lead to ever smaller perceived benefits.  For example, I could make an ever more perfect nail, but at some point, the guy hammering that nail into a board won’t be able to see how those perfections improve his hammering.  In other words, superior executions of the status quo often do not create enough of a differentiating benefit to shift habitual shopping patterns for the customers.

So what about following the innovators?  Well, you’re still a follower.  The last time I checked, followers never win races.  Just as Picasso gets superior credibility for pursuing a new path, business innovators get superior credibility over their followers.  The innovator becomes synonymous with the innovation.  The rest are seen as mere copiers. 

For example, Google means search.  Even though the follower Bing claims a slight superiority in blind tests, Google still wins the war for market share in search.  Why?  We are not brand blind.  The emotional bonds associated with the leader brand overcome the slight differences.  The same thing happened when follower Pepsi claimed superior taste in blind taste tests over Coke.  Coke still won the war.

Finally, the follower usually is one step behind the innovator.  By the time the follower catches up to where the leader was, the leader has moved on to the next innovation. That is why hockey great Wayne Gretzky attributed his success to ignoring where the puck currently is and instead going to where the puck is going to be.  Rather than following the puck, he got in front of it. 

There are only two ways to win by following.  First, you can win by having your competitors make colossal mistakes. Their failure becomes an opening for your gain.  But a strategy that depends on others to make mistakes is not much of a strategy.  In addition, if you are a follower, you will probably follow them into similar mistakes.  For example, the financial collapse which triggered the great recession was caused by colossal mistakes in the banking industry.  But because most of the big banks tended to be following each other and playing by the same flawed rules, most of them fell victim to the flaw and could not gain meaningful advantage.

The second way to win playing by conventional rules is if you are substantially larger than everyone else and can leverage your size to your advantage.  However, this begs the question of how one gets to be so much larger than the others in the first place.  Usually the bigger players got to be so much bigger because they were the innovative leaders which rewrote the old conventional rules into what became today’s conventional rules. It was their leadership which made them big, not any form of followership.

The Value of Being Different

There are two ways to be different.  First, you can create a new business model which is inherently superior to the status quo model at delivering value.  For example, Southwest Airlines has been a consistent success competing against other airlines who struggle to survive.  Why?  Southwest Airlines played by a different business model, focused on point-to-point (among other things).  It’s unique business model allowed it to provide superior value that those playing by conventional rules could not imitate.  Even the best player by conventional rules could not exceed the value offered by Southwest’s different approach to the business.

Another example would be Salesforce.com.  While others were playing by the old rules of installing and supporting software scattered everywhere, Salesforce.com eliminated the software paradigm and was a leader in putting everything up in the cloud.  That change in business model gave Salesforce.com inherent advantages that the conventional operators couldn’t match if they stayed in the old paradigm, no matter how well they executed it.

This helps reinforce the first differentiation we talked about in the prior blog—where winners focus on business models.  You won’t find the success of a Southwest Airlines of Salesforce.com unless you spend time focused on business models. 

The second way to win in difference is by creating a new value proposition which did not exist before.  Apple has been a winner by creating wholly new types of value expectations.  The iPod, iPhone, and iPad changed the whole way people thought about how to live and enjoy their lives.  They created new values in new places.

The “Fast Fashion” operators, like H&M, Zara and Forever 21, helped change the definition of what to value in fashion for a significant segment.  Instead of defining fashion by Exclusive Labels, High Prices, High Quality and Fashion Seasons, they made fashion more disposable, where frequent change/variety combined with low prices (and lower quality) was a new winning formula.

If you look across the spectrum of business, you will find that nearly every great company at some point took one of these different directions.  They either came up with a new business model which had inherent advantages over the old model in the conventional industry, or they invented whole new industries by redefining or creating new value formulas.

SUMMARY

One of the key differences between business winners and losers is the direction the leaders take the company.  The losers tend to move in a following direction—either following the conventional rules or following the innovators.  By contrast, the winners tend to move in a new direction, either by finding new ways to better satisfy old values or by creating new values through new industries.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Artists create; craftsmen copy.  Are you an artist or a craftsman?

Strategic Planning Analogy #450: Pushing the String

THE STORY
Here’s an experiment. Take a long string and stretch it out on the floor. Go to one end of the string and try to push the string across the floor. That effort will essentially be a failure.

Now re-stretch the string on the floor. Go to one end of the string and try to pull it across the floor. This should be a great success.

Conclusion: It is much easier to pull a string across the floor than to push it.

THE ANALOGY
What was the difference between pulling a string (success) and pushing a string (failure)? When you pull a string, you are in front of the string. When you push a string, you are behind it.

You organization is like a string. Strategic planning tries to move an organization to a better place, sort of like trying to get a string across the floor. Just as getting in front of a string (to pull) is the best way to move the string, getting a strategy in the hands of the person in front of the organization is the best way to get the organization to a better place.

By definition, followers need leaders up in front. Strategic leadership, then, is a pre-requisite to strategic followership. Trying to move the organization from another position is far more difficult.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategic planners are not typically positioned at the front-most end of the organization. Therefore, if strategic planners want to effectively move the organization forward, they need to work through those people who are at the front and capable of pulling the string—top management. This becomes their primary audience.

Like it or not, strategists are not in front of the string. In most cases, they are usually further down the ladder. It is common for them to report to a CFO, who then reports to a CEO. Without the mantle of top leadership, strategists cannot directly pull the string.

If the primary force for change in an organization is the strategist, then the effort to move the organization is more like trying to push the string. The string will not respond as desired, because the effort is coming from too far back in the organization.

Mistake #1: Having the Strategist Lead
There are many reasons why having strategist lead the strategy movement is sub-optimal. First, consider the audience—the organization. They will ask themselves a few questions:

1) If this is the person we should be following, then why aren’t they in a position of leadership?

2) Since they are not the leader, what gives them the right to ask me to follow?

3) If this were really important, wouldn’t the real leader be leading us?

They will think: I’ve got enough responsibilities on my plate handed down from my direct superiors to worry about. Why worry about the ranting of someone who has no direct control over me?

Therefore, the organization will not wholeheartedly follow the strategist. It will be like trying to push a string.

Now think of it from the position of the real leader of the organization. Leadership from anywhere else can be seen as a threat to their power. Most leaders don’t like potential threats to their power. Consequently, they will not abdicate enough power to the strategist to really be able to effectively pull the string on their own. Others in the organization will see that the power has not been handed down to the strategist. Therefore, the strategist will not have enough power to pull the string. They can only push.

Mistake #2: Having the Strategist Merely Keep Score
So if the strategist cannot lead, should we just take them out of the leadership equation? No. As we’ve talked about many other times in these blogs, the strategist provides an important leadership function. They can provide a unique perspective which can be gained almost nowhere else, because:

1) Strategists are the least vested in the status quo. Therefore, they can most objectively look at the status quo versus alternatives.

2) Strategists are the least captive to the “Tyranny of the Immediate,” those daily crises that tend to capture the immediate attention of the operators of the business. This allows the strategist to focus on long-term implications more than anyone else.

3) Strategists spend the most time focused on understanding the big picture (and where it is heading). They can look for the holes in the marketplace yet to be filled. As a result, they can offer an important perspective not available elsewhere.

Therefore, it is mistake to lower the position of the strategist to little more than a mere scorekeeper (as we saw in the prior blog). To do so will be to lose the power of these insights.

Solution: Become the Strategy Whisperer
So how do we take advantage of the needed leadership of the strategist while understanding they do not have enough leadership power to pull the string? I refer to it as becoming the “Strategy Whisperer.”

The idea is based off of the book The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans (which was made into a movie starring Robert Redford). The book and movie made popular a form of horse training known as “natural horsemanship.”

The basic idea of natural horsemanship is that wild or unruly horses will become more effectively useful to their riders if they are approached with respect rather than with force. The idea is to work sympathetically with a horse in order to obtain cooperation (rather than submission). Instead of trying to destroy the horse’s will by overpowering it, you gain its respect so that the horse’s natural power is voluntarily given over to the desires of the rider.

And this is an effective analogy for strategists. Their goal is not to overpower the leaders of the organization. The task is not to break the will of the leader. No, the strategist needs to come to the leaders showing great respect for their power. Rather than posing as a threat to the leader, the strategist merely seeks mutual respect in return. And once gaining that non-threatening respect, the strategist can then whisper into the leader’s ear what he or she needs to hear from the unique perspective of the strategist.

As a result, the leader is still the unquestioned leader. Their power to pull the string is not threatened by the presence of the strategist. Yet, because the leader is listening to the whispering of the strategist, the leader is pulling the string in a direction which is more strategically correct.

The Strategy Whisperer approach may not come naturally to the strategist, especially if the strategist wants to be the one with the hands on the string. But if you want to effectively help move the company, this can be the best approach.

SUMMARY
The best way to move a company in the proper strategic direction is to get the leader of the organization to want to lead the organization in that direction. This requires positioning the strategist as far more than just a scorekeeper, but far less than a threat to the power of the leader. The optimal spot is that of a Strategy Whisperer—a respected advisor who has the ear of the leader.

FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s better to have your hand on the shoulder of the real leader (so you can whisper in his/her ear) and let them effectively pull the string in your desired direction than to insist that the string be put in your hand and only be able to ineffectively push it.

Strategic Planning Analogy #356: Followership

THE STORY
Imagine, if you will, a marketer explaining her new marketing plan. This is what she says:

“I have 100 consumers for my product, but I am going to spend my entire marketing budget on reaching only one of them. I will ignore the other 99.”

You might want to ask her, “Does this one customer spend a lot more than the other 99?”

Her answer, “No, that one customer is slightly below average in spending.”

Then you might ask, “Are the other 99 so loyal that they do not need to be marketed to?”

Her answer, “No, they defect to the competition all the time.”

At this point, you might conclude that this woman is in the wrong profession and should give up a career in marketing.

THE ANALOGY
It seems silly for a marketer to focus all their effort on one person and ignore everyone else. How can you expect consumers to patronize you if you ignore them?

Yet businesses do something equally silly. It seems that all the business books and consultants are focused on “Leadership”. For example, there are tons of books out there on how to become a great CEO, but try to find a book on how to become a great low level employee. They don’t exist. Last time I checked, there are a lot more followers in a business than there are leaders. Why don’t we spend more attention on followership?

Although strategies may be created by leaders back at the corporate offices, strategies are implemented primarily in places far away from the corporate offices by the hundreds and thousands of rank and file employees. A well crafted strategy at headquarters can be utterly destroyed by a front level employee who mis-handles a contact with a customer. How can you expect employees to properly implement the strategy if you ignore them?

Focusing only on leadership is like a marketer who focuses only on one consumer. It misses all the potential from everyone else. I understand why the authors and consultants focus on leadership…that is where their money is made. However, your money is made primarily by the labors of the followers. A strategy which ignores the followers will most likely fail.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategic success should not be determined by the cleverness of the plan, but by the effectiveness of the implementation. Therefore, careful consideration should be given to how the plan impacts the implementers.

For example, many strategic plans try to implement change. Although that change may be good and desirable, change is typically resisted by the rank and file employees. If your strategy does not include specific attention to overcoming that resistance, then it will fail to be properly executed by those who resist it. Hence, the plan becomes worthless…all because of ignoring the implementers.

Although this principle has always been important, recent trends are making it even more important.

1. De-layering and Empowerment
There has been a trend in business to eliminate many layers of leaders and give more decision power to front-line employees. This can be a very good thing. It improves flexibility and the ability to react quickly. However, it also increases the risk that a strategy is implemented improperly. If those front-line employees are (a) unaware of the plan or (b) do not buy into the plan or (c) do not see the connection between what they do and the plan, then that extra empowerment they have will empower them to ignore the plan.

2. The Nature of Knowledge Work
Back in the days when most labor was assembly line factory work, the typical difference between the most productive and least productive employee in terms of output was about 20%. That was because the assembly line itself served to help people conform to the norms of efficiency. If you deviated much from the norm, you upset the entire assembly line. This was highly noticeable and the inefficient would soon be eliminated.

However, in knowledge-based work, it is a lot harder to detect and control output. In knowledge-based work, it is not uncommon for the best employee to accomplish more in a couple of hours than what the worst employee does in an entire week. In knowledge-based work, there can be a lot of people like Wally in the Dilbert cartoons, who can go for months without doing any real output and go undetected.

Without the assembly line to help enforce conformity, it takes extra effort to get employees committed to executing in conformance with the plan. If you do not pay special attention to this issue in your planning, these knowledge-based workers may end up doing nothing to advance the plan, or worse yet, apply their knowledge in a way that acts counter to the plan.

3. Social Networking
In the world of social networking there are no secrets. If a front-line employee screws up in the interaction with customers, it will soon be broadcast to the world via emails, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other such media. Rather than accept your strategic claims at face value, customers go to social networking sites to hear other voices speak about your company.

In the world of social networking, headquarters has less control over its image than ever before. Successfully getting consumers embrace your strategic position and trust you with their patronage is harder than ever. Therefore, it is more critical than ever to implement the strategy well—even at the smallest levels. This requires more diligence in working with your implementers on execution.

4. Lower Employee Loyalty
The loyalty contract between employer and employee is not what it used to be. In general, newer, younger employees are not as blindly committed to their employers. They are more likely to quit if things do not go their way. They are not accustomed to blindly following orders. They ask a lot more questions.

As a result, loyalty can no longer be accepted as a given. If you want loyal employees, you have to earn it by “going the extra mile.” Good strategic plan implementation works best when implemented by loyal employees, particularly if the plan involves a lot of change. Therefore, an investment in building more loyalty throughout the organization can be very important to strategic success.

So What Does This Mean?
Keeping this in mind, strategic planning can improve its success in implementation by doing the following:

a) Consider how the strategic plan impacts your expectations of how employees should act (what they should be working on and how they should interact with others).

b) Consider what barriers may exist to cause employees to resist acting in this manner.

c) Develop tactics to remove those barriers.

d) Incorporate into the plan a means to communicate the essence of the plan to all workers (on a regular basis) so that they understand it, buy into it, see its relevancy to what they do on a daily basis, and want to work to make it a reality.

e) Link rewards and compensation to strategy implementation.

f) Whenever key decisions are being made in the organization, make sure its strategic implications are a part of the discussion. Institutionalize it into your decision-making process.

g) Get strategic issues into the daily conversation at the lowest levels of the organization, so that it is not forgotten.

h) Proactively work to improve employee loyalty.

SUMMARY
Clever plans can be fun to develop, but true success depends on getting favorable results. Therefore, a large portion of one’s strategic effort should be focused on barriers to implementation. Since implementation depends on the implementers, significant attention needs to be given to the lower level employees who do that work. They will only execute the plan well if they understand the plan, see its relevancy to their work, and are motivated to want to see the plan succeed. Getting this right can do more for your success than just being clever.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The definition of a leader is someone who has followers. If you only focus on creating a great leader, you may not get great followers (and have failed in your task). However, if you focus on creating great followers, you will have (by definition) a great leader.