Strategic Planning Analogy #491: Seeking Choices

THE STORY

When my children were little, they often weren't pleased by what was served at home for dinner. They would complain and ask if they could have something different to eat.

I would explain to them that we weren't running a restaurant. I did not have an extensive menu of options for them to choose from. Each dinner had only one meal on the menu. The only choice they had was to either eat it or go hungry.

It did not make my children happy when I eliminated their eating options.

THE ANALOGY

It’s not much fun looking over a dinner menu if there is only one item on the menu. The lack of options and choices makes the task seem a bit futile. Since you’re going to get the one item on the menu anyway, you may as well skip looking at the menu.

A similar situation can occur with strategic planning. A lot of business people resist going through the planning process, saying they do not enjoy it. In many cases, I think the reason for resisting a strategic planning process is similar to the reason for resisting a menu with only one option on it—a perceived lack of choices.

If you think you are going to be basically doing the same things after the planning process as you were doing before the process (because of a perception of no other alternatives), then why do the process? You can skip it and go back to doing the one thing you knew you were going to do anyway. Under these assumptions, the strategic planning process can be seen as a waste of time, keeping you from getting your one task done (just as looking at a one-item menu wastes time and keeps you from getting to eat the one meal you know you are going to have).

This really hit home with me as I looked at the way business people from different countries treated the concept of strategic planning on social media sites like Linkedin. In fully developed mature economies, pure strategic planning jobs were disappearing and the discipline was not held in high esteem. By contrast, in emerging economies people actually seemed excited about strategic planning and there appeared to be a greater abundance of professional strategic planning positions being created.

Then I started to make the connection that much of the excitement around strategic planning in developing economies was due to a perception that businesses had many more options. As a result, it was important to spend time in these countries doing strategic planning in order to choose which options to focus on. It was as if they saw strategic planning as the way to choose the best items on a lengthy menu of tasty options.

By contrast, those in mature economies or industries seemed to see fewer options available to them.  It was as if the rules had already been written and hardened in concrete.  You couldn’t change anything—choices had already been made.  Your only option was to work harder at the same old thing.  Therefore strategic planning was a waste of time—a one-item menu that could be skipped.

Of course, a skilled strategic planner can see the value of strategic planning in virtually any environment—even mature ones.  But if their audience does not perceive the value, the planning process will be resisted (or even eliminated).  Therefore, strategic planners need to address this issue of perceived choices.

THE PRINCIPLE

The principle here is that great strategic planning processes deal with determining which strategic choices to make.  Choice is the essence of what strategy should focus on.  In his famous Harvard Business Review article “What is Strategy?” (from November-December 1996), Michael Porter said “Competitive strategy is about being different.  It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of values.”

In the 2011 book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt says that the main difference between good strategies and bad strategies is that good strategies are based on making tough choices and bad strategies refuse to make choices.  Or, in Rumelt’s words “Strategy involves focus and, therefore, choice. And choice means setting aside some goal in favor of others.  When this hard work is not done, weak amorphous strategy is the result.”

In a prior blog, I also talked about how the lack of making choices can lead to disaster.

The problem is that many modern strategic planning processes are missing this key point.  They are focusing on something other than making the hard choices and trade-offs necessary for creating a winning position with a complementary winning business model.

It’s gotten so bad that even many of those in the strategic planning field no longer see their primary task as one of helping companies make tough choices and coordinated trade-offs.  Without someone advocating the need to make tough choices in a strategic manner, the tough choices won’t be made.  Worse yet, business leaders are increasingly buying into the idea that there is no need to make tough strategic choices.  And once they start believing in that, it isn’t much of a leap for these executives to questioning why strategic planning should be done at all.  After all, what is the benefit of staring at a one-item menu?

Common Substitutes for Choice-Making

There are many processes out there which call themselves strategic planning, but really are not, because they do not focus on making choices.  Here is a brief description of some of them:

1. Elaborate Budgeting:  Here, the end outcome is not a set of coordinated choices and trade-offs, but a set of numerical spreadsheets.  In essence, it is just a budget with perhaps a couple more years of length to it and a few more words attached to it.  The tough choices needed to make the budget a reality tend to be missing.  It’s just a bunch of numbers one “hopes” to achieve. This often occurs when the planning process is housed in the finance department and run by the same people who create the budgets or do financial analyses.  In the past, I have used the basketball analogy and said this insufficient process is like focusing on yelling at the scoreboard rather than focusing on the hard choices of what play to draw up on the clipboard.  Yes, the highest score wins, but you don’t get the highest score by just staring at the scoreboard (the numbers).  I've spoken more about this here, here, here, and here.

2. Platitudes and Lofty Aspirations:  In this version, the focus is on lofty goals and aspirations which end up sounding like hollow platitudes. The end outcome is not a set of choices, but a nice phrase that can be put on a banner and hung in the lobby. They say things like “we aim to be a world class this or that” or “delight customers” or “create superior shareholder value” or something similar.  These are nice things to achieve, but unless you make hard choices about how to be different, or how your business model’s trade-offs achieve these things profitably, they are only wishes.  Wishes won’t come true just because you want them to.  They are the outcomes of tough choices. I’ve spoken more about this here and here.

3. More Better:  Here, the goal is to just do the same old thing as before, only more of it and better than before.  The end outcome is list of things to do which improve upon the status quo.  The problem is that this assumes the status quo is the right set of choices. It often isn't  because environments change, making the status quo obsolete. Second, when you try to improve everything, you often improve nothing, because you did not make any trade-offs needed to truly excel in any area.  Instead, the efforts cancel each other out.  The third problem is that this process tends to try to outrun the competition with a similar position, rather than trying to find a point of differentiation.  In other words, this version rushes directly to what to “do” without first stopping to decide (choose) what you need to “be.”  I've spoken more about this here, here and here.

How Do We Overcome This?

So how do we overcome all of these poor excuses for planning and get back to solid strategic planning which focuses on making the right choices?  There are two areas to work on. 

First, we need to offer strategic planning processes where choices are the focal point.  This needs to replace lesser processes which are often little more than budgets, platitudes or attempts to be more better.  We need processes focused on questions like:

1. Where are we going to win? (Customers, Markets, Solutions, Points of Differentiation)
2. Why are we going to win? (What bundle of trade-offs will give us the competitive edge in owning the winning position? What business model will beat out the alternatives?)
3. What do we need to focus on to pull this off (capabilities, capacities, competencies)?
4. What should we NOT focus on? (because it will keep us from winning)
5. How do we tweak the business model so that we not only win, but make money?

Second, we need to get management excited about the importance of making these types of choices.  There are many reasons why management may not see the importance of making choices.  First, they may not believe they have many choices.  This is usually a false notion.  Restructurings, repositionings and new business models come about all the time.  Just look at how businesses and industries are continually being replaced by something new.  Why not become the next new thing which replaces the status quo?

Or perhaps management feels that the status quo is just fine, so there is no need to change it (no additional choices needed). But we all know that the environment changes and that all strategies eventually become obsolete. Isn't it better to be the agent of change and grab all the market share which comes with being the next big thing rather than to be the victim of someone else’s change and become obsolete?  Making better choices will create a stronger, more prosperous company and who wouldn't want that?

In other words, first we need to build processes which create robust lists of options and a way to choose the best option (like the Maitre D who helps restaurant patrons make a great choice from a great menu). Second, we need to get management to want to make the tough choices (desire to go to the restaurant and choose something new to eat off that menu).

SUMMARY

The key function of strategy is to help companies make the tough choices and trade-offs which will place them in differentiated positions where they can win.  Unfortunately, lesser processes which focus only on budgets, platitudes or tactical improvements have crept in to replace the key function of choice. To get companies back on track, strategists need to do two things: 1) Bring back processes which focus on choice; and 2) get management interested in making those tough choices.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To get patrons to try new choices on the menu, some restaurants offer free samples. Perhaps you need to get your management interested in making choices by giving them samples of what particular choices could mean for the company. 

Anticipation and Creation

THE QUESTION
By almost any measure you can think of, free-market economies are superior to the highly planned economies of socialism/communism.  Free market economies create more total wealth and do a better job of raising the general standard of living for the whole society.

Yet, for many years, I have been advocating strategic planning for businesses.  This begs the question:

If the economy in total is better off with free markets versus planned markets, then why do I believe that individual companies are better off having strategic planning?

This question is becoming more relevant based on the most recent book by Nasssim Nicholas Taleb, called “Antifragile.”  You may recall Taleb’s earlier book, “The Black Swan,” which caused quite a stir.

In Antifragile, Taleb takes a dim view of strategic planners.  His claim is that strategic planners do more harm to businesses than good in their attempt to gain control by way of rooting out the risk of randomness.  Taleb believes that the unintended consequences of these acts are to add delay, complication and inflexibility to the very business they are trying to improve.  As a result, instead of saving the business, the planning increases the risk of failure. 

This is a valid concern.  I have seen examples where this type of result has occurred.  For example, in the name of reducing risk by sharing knowledge and expertise, large shared services organizations are built.  These shared services organizations, if structured improperly, can add delay, complication and inflexibility to a business.  In two instances I am personally aware of, these negative results were so severe that the shared service organizations were dismantled.

So we cannot just dismiss the argument posed in this book.  We need an answer to the question.

 

ANSWER #1:  SURVIVING CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
One of the main reasons why a free economy is superior to a planned economy is due to the concept Joseph Schumpeter referred to as creative destruction.  The general idea of creative destruction is that great improvements to the economy do not come from proactively tweaking the status quo.  Instead, they come from allowing the status quo to die and be replaced by something far superior.  Only by freely allowing marketplace churn—letting old business models be destroyed by new business models—does the market make great leaps forward.

And the beauty is that, when left free of excessive planning, the market will do this creative destruction all by itself.  It is when we try to interfere and protect the status quo that we hinder the ability of the marketplace to make great strides. 

In a macro sense, allowing creative destruction has much merit.  But business leaders live in a micro world.  Their primary role is not the health of the total economy, but the health of their business.  Freely allowing their business to be destroyed in the name of Creative Destruction will not win them any praise from their stakeholders (shareholders, lenders, employees, etc.).  No, these stakeholders want the business leaders to cause their businesses to survive and thrive regardless of what is happening in the macro economy.

I believe that the best way to do this is via planning (we’ll discuss how to do this further below).

 

ANSWER #2:  NOT ALL PLANNING IS GOOD PLANNING
In his excellent book “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy,” Richard Rumelt makes the case that most of what is practiced today in the name of strategy is truly awful.  Worse than just poor execution of good processes, Rumelt believes that much of what is called strategy today is not strategy at all.  It is just terrible actions which hurt businesses. 

I suppose Rumelt would agree with many of the points made by Taleb.  In the name of strategy, a lot of negative activity is taking place.  But that is no reason to abandon strategic planning.

That would be like saying that just because some doctors conduct malpractice, we should abandon the science of medicine.  Or, because some reporters distort the facts, we should ban all news organizations.    

No, the proper response would be to eliminate the bad practices and promote good, healthy planning which works in concert with creative destruction rather than against it.

 

 
ANSWER #3:  GOOD PLANNING IS NOT ABOUT PRESERVATION
My first rule of strategy is this:  “ALL strategic initiatives eventually fail.”  My second rule of strategy is this:  “You are not an exception to rule #1.  YOUR strategic initiative will eventually fail.”

The primary reason why strategic initiatives eventually fail has a lot to do with the forces of creative destruction.  The environment in which you conduct business keeps changing.  What was the best thing to do in one environment is usually not be the best thing to do in a different environment. As the environment changes, your original strategic initiative becomes less relevant.  If you do not change, eventually your strategic initiative becomes irrelevant and you die—destroyed by creative destruction.

But here is where my rule #3 comes in: “Just because strategic initiatives die does not mean that your company has to die.  As long as you continually abandon failed strategic initiatives and replace them with relevant initiatives, the company will outlast any individual strategic initiative.”

The idea here is that good strategic planning is not primarily about trying to preserve the status quo or reduce the risk within the status quo.  It is about preparing yourself to prosper in a world where the status quo changes.

Hence, two of the most important words in good strategic planning are ANTICIPATION and CREATION.

Yes, the environment is changing.  But the change is rarely random.  There is logic behind the change.  The impact of an aging population can be roughly predicted.  The impact of business life cycles can be roughly predicted.  Advances in technology can be roughly predicted (like Moore’s Law).  As a result, the future environment should not be a complete surprise.  It can be ANTICIPATED.  And if something can be anticipated, then it can be prepared for.  And that is a key role for good strategy—to help companies better anticipate the changing environment in which they must prosper (and find ways to best exploit what is anticipated).

Why I would even argue that unusual Black Swans (events which have never before occurred) can be anticipated.  Sure, we won’t know the exact nature of the next potential disaster, be it a tsunami, earthquake, nuclear meltdown, housing crisis or whatever.  But bad, unusual things cycle through on a fairly regular basis.  And the best strategic response to negative black swans often doesn’t vary much.  There are only so many ways a black swan can impact the environment, no matter what it is.  Through the anticipative act of scenario planning, one can have a set of pre-planned responses which will work for almost any black swan.

However, even stronger than anticipation is CREATION.  Creative destruction occurs when a company reinvents the rules in a way which renders the status quo obsolete.  Those who are early masters of the new status quo typically gain disproportionate benefits.  Creative destruction has to be created by someone.  It may as well be you.  After all, isn’t it better to destroy someone else’s status quo than to have someone else destroy your status quo?

As Peter Drucker put it, “The best way to predict the future is to create the future.”  Therefore, good strategic planning looks at ways to reinvent business models—to create the next cycle of creative destruction.  In essence, the planning process is not used to preserve the status quo, but to become a leader in controlling how the status quo will be destroyed.

This is somewhat similar to the Blue Ocean approach to strategy.  The idea is to use planning to look for new, uncontested spots in the marketplace.  In other words, instead of trying to win in the highly competitive red ocean of the status quo, create your own new status quo (the blue ocean).

Strategic planning as a source for anticipation and creation might even be an approach that both Rumelt and Taleb would find acceptable.

 

SUMMARY
Even though highly planned economies tend to be inferior to a more free-market economy, that doesn’t mean that planning is a worthless activity for individual companies.  Planning is worthwhile for individual companies, because it provides a means for them to survive the forces of creative destruction—either through anticipation or creation.   However, not all processes labeled “planning” focus on anticipation and creation.  Some focus on trying to preserve the status quo.   In a world where all strategic initiatives eventually fail, that second approach is not a recipe for long-term success.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS
The best planning looks forwards, not backwards.  As hockey great Wayne Gretzky put it, skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.  Anticipation drove his actions.  You should be driven by the same thing.

Strategic Planning Analogy #467: The Flavor Conspiracy

THE STORY
There’s a global conspiracy out there which is trying to get you to believe a lie.  I call it “The Flavor Conspiracy.” 

Think about those artificial flavors.  You can find “cherry” flavor in hundreds of items, from candy to cough syrup.   And every item which claims to have the “cherry” flavor tastes exactly the same.  If everyone is claiming that to be cherry flavor and they all have the same flavor, then that flavor must be the flavor of a cherry, right?

WRONG!  If you were to bite into a real cherry and it tasted like the so-called cherry flavor, you’d spit it out and say that it tasted funny.  Real cherries don’t have the flavor of what manufacturers call cherry.  It’s a lie!

That artificial banana flavoring is even worse.  The flavor doesn’t even come close to that of a real banana.  But every manufacturer uses that same imitation flavor and calls it “Banana Flavor.”  Just because they are all telling the same lie does not make it true.  It’s merely a conspiracy—the flavor conspiracy.

 

THE ANALOGY
A similar conspiracy is taking place in the world of strategic planning.  There is a lie out there that strategy is little more than setting numeric goals and then tracking progress against those goals.  Just shout the numeric goal and plot the progress on some dashboards and spreadsheets and you are done.  Your strategy is complete (except perhaps for additional shouting when the goals are not met).

In more and more companies, this is pretty much how strategy planning is defined.  It is a small offshoot from accounting, where being a CPA is considered a primary prerequisite to working in strategic planning (since those people are skilled in tracking numbers).  If you don’t believe me, go to a job openings site like www.indeed.com and search for strategic planning positions.  Most of the job descriptions tend to move in that direction.

But just because everyone is calling that “strategy” does not make is so, no more than claiming that artificial banana flavoring tastes like bananas makes it so.  It is still a lie.  The conspiracy of having large numbers of people promoting the lie may make it harder to go against the flow.  But that doesn’t mean the majority is right.

Just as those artificial flavors do not accurately represent what the true fruit flavors are, this idea of strategy as merely goal monitoring does not represent what true strategic planning is.   

 

THE PRINCIPLE
The principal here is that unless the planning community stands up to the goal monitoring conspiracy, real strategy will fall away.  It will be like people who never got to taste the real fruit, so they have no reason to reject the false artificial flavors.  Similarly, unless we show the business community what real strategy looks like, the false notion about strategy will be all they know, so they will have no reason to reject it.  They will not know what they are missing.  And they will be missing a lot.  In this blog, I will refer to what is missing as the three R’s.

1. Missing A Reason

Numerical goals are nice, but if you have no reason for why the goal is attainable, then there is no reason why you should assume the goal will be attained.  For example, I could have a goal of wanting to be seven feet tall (2.13 meters).  But I have no reason for why my mature body should suddenly become so much taller.  Therefore, I am unlikely to reach my goal.

Similarly, expecting a mature business model to suddenly jump significantly in sales or profits without any underlying reason is also highly unlikely.  Without a reason, that goal is rather worthless.  And improving the accuracy in your tracking of that goal does not make the goal any more reasonable. 

In my latest book, The Most Important Question, I talk about how the most important question in strategy is “Why should a customer naturally prefer me over the alternatives?”  If you have no reason for why a customer should prefer you, then they will not prefer you.  There will be no reason to expect results to suddenly get better and reach much higher numbers because you have not given customers a reason to reward you with higher numbers.

Sure, you can work a little harder and a little longer at the same old approach and perhaps squeeze out a few drops of extra performance.  But this has a very limited impact.  Any advantage from working harder is usually met with a competitive response which negates the advantage.  And the extra pressure could chase away your best employees or cause them to create more errors due to fatigue. 

 

Also, as markets change, you may find that your old status quo position is becoming less relevant.  And working harder at an obsolete approach doesn’t make it more relevant.  If you are not looking for reasons to succeed, you may not even notice the drift away from a relent reason to exist.  You will only see that goal.

Sure, you can overcome no reason to be preferred a bit by “bribing” the customer with lower prices or better deals.  This may increase sales a bit, but lower profits due to the cost of the added incentives.  And since most of these types of bribes or incentives are easy for competitors to copy or neutralize, they may not even improve sales.  Finally, since there is no underlying reason for why they customers should stay, you could lose those gains as soon as the “bribing” is stopped.

That is why true strategy doesn’t start with a numeric goal.  It starts with defining a position where you have a reason for being, a right to win.  It examines the marketplace to look for viable positions which are desirable, attainable and winnable.  It looks at both rational and emotional drivers of consumer behavior (something not found on a CPA exam).  It dreams up ways to be different from everyone else (whereas accounting tries to achieve conformity in rules with everyone else). 

And most importantly, true strategy questions the status quo to make sure you continue to have a reason to win in a changing marketplace.  It is willing to abandon old rules and adopt new ones.  It is a creative exercise more than a tracking exercise.

2. Missing Reinforcements

True strategy is about making strategic decisions regarding resources.  Where should I put extra resources; where should I take away resources?  Just having a numeric goal doesn’t tell you how to make those choices.   

Michael Porter says the essence of strategy is making the right trade-offs.  In other words, what do I de-emphasize, so that I can afford to create superiority somewhere else?  To answer that, you need to know:

 

       a)      Where you are trying to win (your reason);

b)      What business model makes winning possible;

c)      What attributes are most critical to that business model;

d)     How all the various parts of the business work together to reinforce the winning position.

True strategy isn’t just about telling the people you have today to go out and reach for a goal.  It may first be about eliminating lots of activities (and people) who need to be traded away so that investments can be made in new competencies and capabilities (and new people) that don’t currently exist in the business. 

Until you get the right infrastructure in place, shouting the goal may be shouting at the wrong people.  To win, you need to reinforce the areas of the business most critical to success.  To fund the reinforcement, you need to take funding away from less critical areas.  A true strategy points the way to how those trade-offs are made.  This is a complex task, requiring cooperation and a reduction of political in-fighting and turf wars (particularly from the areas being de-emphasized).  You won’t get that from just shouting a numerical goal.

3. Missing Restrictions   

Strategy is more than just saying which way to go.  It is also about saying which way not to go.  Strategy is about getting alignment around a proper go-to-market strategy.  It is about moving the company in a common direction, so that actions reinforce the reason for being. 

That means that there are more actions which can be wrong than can be right.  And if you are not specific about which activities are wrong, you will not stop them from occurring.   

There are lots of ways to hit a numeric goal.  And a lot of those ways can do harm to the long term prospects of a company.  For example, you can increase profits for a little while by:

a)      Eliminating necessary investments in maintenance or infrastructure;

b)      Destroying quality or damaging services;

c)      Raising prices to non-competitive levels.

In the long run, these actions can destroy a business.

If all you emphasize is hitting a goal, you can end up with all sorts of actions which hit the near-term goal, but destroy long-term prospects.  That is why a true strategy puts restrictions on activities to prevent wrong actions.  True strategy is more about doing the right thing than in hitting a number.  Because if you keep doing the right things, it is easier to hit good numbers year after year after year.  But if all you do is try to hit today’s number by any means possible, there may not be any future.

 

SUMMARY
Just because nearly everyone is doing the same thing doesn’t make it right.  Even if everyone says that imitation banana flavor tastes like bananas, it does not make it true.  Similarly, if most businesses are defining strategic planning as just goal setting and monitoring, that does not mean they are right.  True strategic planning is much more.  It involves determining a reason for winning, a well-thought out trade-off analysis about where to make reinforcements, and restrictions on bad behaviors.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS
Richard Rumelt, in his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, says that a goal monitoring approach is bad strategy.  More specifically, Rumelt says that this type of bad strategy “is not the same thing as no strategy or strategy which fails rather than succeeds.  Rather, it is an identifiable way of thinking and writing about strategy that has, unfortunately, been gaining ground.  Bad strategy is long on goals and short on policy and action.  It assumes that goals are all you need. It puts forward strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impractical.” 

In other words, this approach is not just doing strategy poorly.  It is taking on an approach which is the enemy of true strategy and poisons the mind so that true strategy cannot occur.  We need to fight this conspiracy.