Strategic Planning Analogy #506: Perspective

THE STORY

Let’s assume that a government transportation committee examined whether to add more lanes to an urban highway. 

The conclusion of their study went something like this:

Yes, we concede that during a brief period of the day (rush hour), the highway becomes highly congested and traffic stops moving. However, outside of rush hour, the highway is operating well below capacity and flows very smoothly. Since the highway is well below capacity for approximately 85% of the day, we see no reason to add any lanes. After all, 85% efficiency for a highway is quite acceptable.

The response from a consumer group advocating extra lanes went something like this:

The reason why the highway flows well outside of rush hour is because that is not the time when the highway is most used and most needed. According to our research, 85% of the cars using the highway use it during the congested rush hour period when cars greatly outnumber the current highway capacity. Since the highway is well above capacity when 85% of the drivers are on it, we see a clear justification for adding more lanes to the highway. After all, 85% inefficiency for a highway is quite unacceptable.

So is the current highway 85% efficient or 85% inefficient?

THE ANALOGY

Strategy creation involves making decisions. Facts are a key input for making those decisions. In fact, I had a boss once who on a daily basis would say that he would not make any decisions unless they were “fact-based.”

But how reliable is the “fact-based” approach? In the story above, two groups used facts to reach a conclusion. The transportation committee used facts to “prove” that the highway was 85% efficient. The consumer group used facts to “prove” that the highway was 85% inefficient. These facts lead each group to come to a different conclusion about adding lanes to the highway.

Was one group’s facts right and the other group’s wrong?  No, both groups had equally true facts:

a)     85% of the TIME OF DAY the highway had excess capacity.

b)     85% of the TIME OF DRIVERS using the highway was during times of inadequate capacity.

So what is the right “fact-based” decision? Obviously, we need more than just these facts to reach an acceptable decision. And when it comes to strategy we need more than just facts as well.

THE PRINCIPLE

The principle here has to do with perspective. Facts alone do not automatically lead to the proper conclusion. It is only when we place those facts within the context of the proper perspective that we see what is the right thing to do. Therefore as much care and effort should be given to developing the proper perspective as is given to acquiring the right facts.

Perspective depends on two items: Where one is looking from and what one is looking at. In strategic analysis there are usually multiple places to look from and multiple items to look at. If you miss out on examining some of these options, you may come to the wrong conclusion.

Perspective #1: Where One Is Looking From

From the eyes of the transportation officials looking at the highway from afar, what they saw was smooth operations nearly all day long. From the eyes of the drivers on the highway, nearly all of them saw congestion nearly every moment they were on the highway. Their different perspectives cause them to see the situation very differently.

A similar situation can occur in developing your strategy. From the eyes of the executives inside your organization, you may see a particular strategic option as ideal for your bottom line. But how does that option look from the perspective of other eyes?

Perhaps your decision places added burdens on your suppliers, causing them to no longer want to supply you or only supply you if they get added compensation for those added burdens. That added compensation might wipe out a lot of the original advantages you saw from the internal executive eyes. A similar situation could also occur with your distributors.

Or perhaps your decision triggers an adverse reaction from your customers when they see it. This problem could not be seen with the internal executive eyes, but was quickly apparent to the customers’ eyes.  The unperceived adverse consumer reaction could make that original strategic option no longer as viable as first seen.

Or perhaps when your competition sees the strategy, they perceive it as a bigger threat than you thought and they react far more aggressively than anticipated. This aggressive reaction wipes out your perceived benefit.

Or maybe when those ideas from headquarters get down to the factory floor, they cannot be operationalized as smoothly as one thought. Something gets lost in the implementation on the factory floor which hurts the strategy’s effectiveness.

Therefore, before making a decision, step away from the pile of facts and look at the situation through other sets of eyes. How will the decision be seen by all the other relevant parties (suppliers, distributors, customers, competition, front line employees, the government, etc.)? How will their perspective affect their behavior, and how will that behavior impact your strategy?

You may find a need to modify your strategy in order to get all of the players see the situation in a manner which moves them all in a favorable direction for your business.

In addition, consider how you communicate your decisions, so that you can help influence how others see it. How the decision is communicatted may be just as important as the decision itself when it comes to implementation.

Perspective #2: What One Is Looking At

In the story, everyone was looking at the same issue: what is the proper number of lanes to have on the highway.  It assumes that the only way to address congestion is by looking at lane-count for the highway. Is this a fair assumption?

Perhaps there are other solutions one could look at, like:

a)     Increasing use of public transportation;

b)     Convincing more people to use alternate routes;

c)     Getting businesses to stagger the hours employees work;

d)     Reallocation of traffic direction for the current lanes depending upon time of day (e.g., more inbound lanes in the morning and more outbound lanes in the evening).

e)     Financial incentives for carpooling.

f)      Building a separate road nearby.

How do you know you are making the right decision if you have not fully explored all potential options? All those facts you’ve gathered may only be applicable to examining one particular option. If you look at the problem in a different way, you may find that you need a different set of facts altogether.

Remember, business success usually depends on offering a superior solution to your customers’ problems. There may be many distinctively different ways to solve that problem. Unless you examine many alternatives, you may not offer the right solution.

Perfecting the obsolete is not a path to success. After all, even a mediocre smart phone is far superior to the best Morse code telegraph solution, no matter how much time you spend trying to perfect it.

So don’t frame your strategic discussion too narrowly. Before deciding on the best way to do something, first make sure it is something worth doing. First frame the discussion around finding the best solution rather than just finding ways to improve the status quo.

SUMMARY

Facts are useful, but facts alone are incomplete. Facts are only useful if seen from the proper perspectives. Therefore, before deciding a course of action, improve your perspective by:

a)     Looking at the problem through all the eyes of the various people who have an influence on the successfulness of the strategy (suppliers, distributors, customers, competition, front line employees, the government, etc.).

b)     Looking at multiple ways to solve the problem. Creative, superior solutions may look nothing like the status quo.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Great strategic solutions may take you into uncharted territory—doing things in a way they have never been done before. There won’t be a big pile of facts to help you in uncharted territory. And if you wait to act until you can get a big pile of facts, someone else will have already captured that strategic space. Perspective helps fill in the holes when facts are hard to come by.

Strategic Planning Analogy #470: Present For Whom?

THE STORY
There’s a popular story out there which has been around for generations in one form or another.  It usually goes something like this:

A little boy wanted to get a special present for his father for Christmas.  In the boy’s mind, the most special type of present he could think of was a toy.  After all, that’s the type of special thing the boy liked.  So, he decided to get his father a toy for Christmas.

Then, on Christmas day, the father opens the gift and finds a ball in the box.  Excitedly, the young boy says, “Daddy, now we can play catch together.  Isn’t that great?”

The father smiles and says “Thank you,” knowing that what the little boy really gave him was not really a gift for the father, but a gift for the son—more time to play with his father.

 

THE ANALOGY
The little boy had good intentions, but the gift he gave to his father was really a gift to himself.  He couldn’t help himself.  Little boys have difficulty seeing the world from any perspective but their own.  What looked like a great gift through his eyes wasn’t necessarily the most appropriate gift when seen through the eyes of the receiver of the gift.

As we get older, we are better at seeing the world from other people’s perspectives.  But even then, we don’t always get the picture right.

In the business world, we are always dealing with others, be they customers or suppliers or other business stakeholders.   To get what we need out of the relationship, we usually need to give them something of value in return. 

Often times, we can end up like that boy.  We have good intentions of offering something of value to the stakeholder, but we end up offering the wrong gift because our thinking is too clouded with our own perspective rather than the perspective of the receiver.

Our strategy is not necessarily the same as their strategy.  Therefore, gifts which seem valuable from the perspective of our strategy may not be very valuable to our stakeholders because it is not relevant to their strategy.  Therefore, if we want our strategy to succeed, we may also need to think of ways to also promote the strategies of our stakeholders—even if the action does not directly benefit us.  The reason is because if we help our stakeholders, they are more likely to respond in ways that will benefit our strategy.

So, in a sense, achieving the strategies of our stakeholders becomes a part of our overall strategy.  Otherwise, we end up offering our stakeholders gifts which are really for ourselves.  And the stakeholders probably don’t love us as much as that father loved his son, so they will be less forgiving if we make that mistake.

 

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that if we do not fully understand the strategic perspective of our stakeholders, we may make the wrong decisions about how to deal with those stakeholders.  And those mistakes can damage the ability for us to achieve our own strategy.  Therefore, we need to not only understand our own strategy, but that of our stakeholders.

That may sound like an obvious statement, but I have seen examples where companies still don’t fully grasp it in the way they act towards their stakeholders.  I will illustrate this with the hypothetical example of a manufacturer trying to get a retail partner to carry his product.

The Manufacturer’s Pitch

The manufacturer in this example knows that he needs a compelling reason for the retailer to carry his product.  That compelling reason is the “gift” he gives the customer in return for carrying the good, just like the gift in the story.

The manufacturer decides that his gift is twofold.  First, he has a very desirable product.  Consumers love it.  Second, he has a high selling product.  Consumers buy it. 

The manufacturer figures that any retailer would jump at the chance to carry a product that consumers love and that sells in high volume.  Therefore, he prepares his sales presentation around the ideas of high desire and high sales volume.

The Retailer’s Response

After hearing the sales presentation, the retailer rejects the product and says she will not carry it.  The manufacturer is shocked!  He thinks, “Why would a retailer be stupid enough to reject a desirable, high selling product.”  But then he hears the rationale.

The retailer rejects the product because:

1.  “Desirable” to a retailer is a relative term.  The retailer explains, “Just about everything I have in my store is desirable.  And since my store is already full with product, the only way I can accept your product is if I get rid of something I already sell.  You have not proven to me that this product is more desirable than any of the other desirable products I already sell.  What product should I get rid of to sell this one?  Are you willing to drop one of the products you already sell me and replace it with this one?  If not, then why should I believe that this product is so much better than the good stuff I already sell?”

2. “Sales” to a retailer is a net number.  The retailer explains, “Yes, you may be able to sell a lot of this product, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am better off if I carry it.  It looks to me as if nearly all of your sales come from people who are replacing this product for items which I already sell.  In other words, the sales I gain from selling your product are nearly equal to the sales I lose when customers switch from their old preferences to this one.  My total sales in the department remain the same.  And when you add in the costs I incur to add your product and get rid of theirs, not only do total sales not increase, but profits go down.”

3. “Sales” are not the full story.  The retailer explains, “The items people currently buy take up less shelf space and are easier for my labor to handle than your product.  If people shift to your product, then I have the same sales, but my labor costs go up and I have to eliminate even more product to fit yours on the shelf.  This makes me less profitable.”

4. And then there are the other retailers.  The retailer explains, “This is a product which requires extra service to sell.  I am not a high-service retailer.  Therefore, this product gives a competitive advantage to other retailers who provide more service.  Why should I promote a product that gives my competitors a selling advantage?  This will encourage people to switch from buying products which sell better in my store to buying products which sell better in their store.  Where does that scenario benefit me?”

The Manufacturer’s Revised Pitch

After hearing the response from the retailer, the manufacturer realized he was like the boy in the story.  He did not fully appreciate the nuances of the retailer’s strategy.  He had only thought about his own needs and thought that the retailer would be happy when only the manufacturer’s strategy had been met.  So he changed a few things and made a revised pitch to the retailer.

First, he revised the formulation of the refills to the product so that refills had to be purchased a little more often.  This change meant that consumers would have to buy more refills than before, creating much higher total sales than the retailer made from the products this item would replace in the store.

Second, he made a special version of the product which would be exclusive for this retailer.  This special version required less service to sell than the original version.  By having an exclusive version suited to the retailer’s selling style, she should be able to compete better against the retail competition.  This special version also took up less shelf space.

Third, the manufacturer was going to help pay the cost of the retailer to add this product and delete another. 

Fourth, he did some consumer research which showed how the desirability of this product compared with other products, and could demonstrate specifically what made sense to eliminate in order to carry this product.

Although none of these changes directly benefitted the original strategy of the manufacturer, they really helped the strategy of the retailer.  As a result, the retailer decided to carry the product and promote it heavily.  And then the strategy of the manufacturer benefitted. 

 

SUMMARY
It’s great to have a strategy and to have everyone in the company understand it.  It’s even better if you also understand the strategies of your stakeholders.  Then you can modify your strategy so that your stakeholders’ strategies are best served by cooperating with your strategy.   

 

FINAL THOUGHTS
If you give someone a really great gift, they are more likely to reciprocate by giving you a great gift.  So next time you meet with a stakeholder, think of it as a gift exchange.  Try to give them the perfect gift (from their perspective).  In the end, you’ll usually get more back that way.

Strategic Planning Analogy #383: Showing Up (Part 1)

THE STORY
Just because you are good at moving ON the basketball court does not mean you are good at moving to get TO the basketball court. Former basketball star Isaiah Rider is one such example. Isaiah seemed to get left behind when the rest of his team (the Los Angeles Lakers) were on their way to the game.

In January 2001, he was late and missed the Lakers charter plane to their next game. Isaiah Rider had to catch a commercial flight in order to catch up to his team. In the prior November, Rider missed the team bus to get to a game in San Antonio. In December of 2000, he arrived an hour late for a home game.

For a person who had so much trouble getting to his rides, it’s ironic that his last name was Rider.

THE ANALOGY
Just think of what the sporting world would be like if all the athletes had as much difficulty getting to games as Isaiah Rider. It’s impossible to perform well on the court if the team doesn’t show up. All the effort to charter planes and buses and to arrange all of the other transportation issues is a waste of time if nobody bothers to use them.

The same thing can happen in the world of strategy. You can put a great deal of effort into creating the perfect strategic position and an ideal plan to get there. But, if the employees do not show up, the plan will never succeed.

Even if the employees show up physically, if their desires and emotions are not with the plan, then the plan will probably fail.

That is why strategic planning has to deal with more than just how to win in the marketplace. It also has to deal with getting the company to accept the plan and be willing to fight for it in the marketplace. In other words, you need to sell the plan to the employees, so that they will show up willing to execute the plan to the best of their abilities.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that the level of strategic success is often correlated to the level of buy-in that the employees have for the plan. If significant numbers of employees disagree with the plan (or are not fully committed to it), then the likelihood of success drops considerably.

I was reminded of this in looking over the work of Chris McGoff. After spending a lifetime consulting with governments and businesses, he has discovered that if you want to successfully get things done, you first need to understand how people interrelate and how groups function. After all, the work gets done by groups. If the groups are dysfunctional, then so will be their output. McGoff has summarized his learnings into 32 “Primes.” You can read about it here.

Much of his work talks about trying to knock down those roadblocks which keep a team from backing the plan. In other words, he tackles the barriers which keep people from showing up completely committed to making the plan succeed. I have reworked some of his ideas into my own list. If you have a team that cannot rally behind your plan, consider these items as areas to address in order to get the teams back on track.

I have seven points on my list. We will look at three of them today, and the remaining four in the next blog.

1. Motivation
A good coach will tell you that a team performs better when there is greater motivation to win. Perhaps what your team needs to get on track is greater motivation. Since people are motivated in different ways, we need to use multiple methods to ensure that everyone on the team is properly motivated. This means using multiple flavors, multiple targets, and multiple communication tools.

Motivation comes in two flavors—Positive Motivation (an inspirational outcome of a great higher purpose if you succeed) and Negative Motivation (great harm and evil if you do not succeed). Positive motivation converts work from merely being a job to being a mission for greatness. An example of a positive motivation occurred back in 1983 when Steve Jobs motivated Joh Sculley to leave Pepsi and take over Apple by asking him if he wanted to “sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?” We’ve talked about this concept here, and here.

Negative motivations try to show that what we are working on is extremely important. Too much is at stake to not take this seriously. It is worth the sacrifice. An example of negative motivation would be in how countries motivate people to go to war. The logic is that if we do not go to war against this great evil, it will overcome us and we will lose everything we hold dear.

These two flavors can be pointed at three targets—the head (logic), the heart (emotion) and the wallet (finances). All three need to be addressed, since some individuals are only motivated by one of these targets. To reach all, you need to address all. Use logical appeals, emotional appeals, and financial appeals.

Finally, some people think visually, some think numerically, and others think verbally. Therefore, use a variety of tools to communicate the motivation—pictures/charts, numbers, and stories.

2. Core Beliefs
In today’s political environment, it seems that people want to position the opposition as stupid. In other words, if you do not agree with me, you must be an idiot. It’s hard to resolve differences when you have no respect for the intelligence of the opposition. This same situation can happen when a business discusses strategy. Cooperation breaks down because we have trouble dealing with “idiots.”

My experience is that those opposing us are not stupid. Their conclusions are not baseless. There is sound logic behind their conclusions. It’s just that they are working from a different set of core beliefs. And until you specifically address the core beliefs, you are wasting your time arguing the outcomes of those core beliefs.

Until you understand these core beliefs, you will not know how to reach a solution which addresses those beliefs. Perhaps you can find common ground where the core beliefs overlap. Perhaps most importantly, understanding core beliefs will increase the respect people have for each other. Rather than assuming the opposition cannot think, one now can understand how they think, making it easier to work together to make the plan a reality.

So if a discussion bogs down over an issue, consider redirecting the discussion towards an understanding of the core beliefs behind people’s differing conclusions. Ask people to explain the beliefs which lead them to their conclusion. For more on this idea, go here.

3. Perspective
We can only react to that to which we have been exposed. Different parts of the organization have been exposed to different things. Therefore, it is not surprising that each area comes to different conclusions. If you want people to come to similar conclusions, then you need to have exposure to a similar perspective of what is going on.

This is like the old story of the blind men and the elephant. One blind man was only exposed to the elephant’s leg, so he thought he was dealing with a tree (and needed a tree strategy). One blind man was only exposed to the trunk, so he thought he was dealing with a snake (and needed a snake strategy). One was only exposed to the tail and thought he needed a rope strategy. And so on.

So first of all, that requires sharing our experiences with each other—a mutual perspective from all angles. As in the story of the blind men, each blind man needs to share their perspective with the others. Similarly, the people at headquarters need to know what is going on out in the field and vice versa. For example, someone out in the field may be arguing for redirecting resources to shore up a weakness not knowing that headquarters has already decided to shore up that weakness with an acquisition, making that redirection unnecessary.

Secondly, one needs to have a large enough perspective—large enough to encompass the context needed to reach the proper conclusion. If you want an “elephant” strategy, then you need a large enough perspective to encompass the entire elephant, not just the legs. In other words, if you want people to back a big plan, then you need them to see the big picture. Take the time to show how all the pieces fit together. Otherwise, people will separately try to maximize the results in their own little areas, creating sub-optimal results for the whole of the business.

Therefore, if people are coming to different conclusions, check to make sure that everyone has a complete enough and large enough perspective on the facts relevant to the discussion. If not, fix the perspective before moving on.

SUMMARY
To be a success, you need more than just a great strategic vision and a great plan to achieve it. You also need to have your employees united around making it a reality. If the employees don’t show up with enthusiasm to achieve this common purpose, the rest of the work is a waste of time. There are seven roadblocks to achieving this employee commitment to the plan. In today’s blog, we looked at three of them:

• Motivation – Does the team see the higher purpose; do they see what is at stake; do they feel it in their head, heart & wallet; has the communication captivated them at their point of interest (stories, pictures, numbers)?

• Core Beliefs – Does the team understand what is driving the logic behind each other’s conclusions; do they have respect for how others think; are they looking for common ground?

• Perspective – Does the team have a shared perspective, so that we all know what everyone else knows; do the team have a large enough perspective, so that they can see everything necessary to grasp the entire vision?

FINAL THOUGHTS
Woody Allen once said that “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” If you want to win the battle in the marketplace, make sure your people show up—physically, mentally and emotionally—ready to fight hard for the success of the strategy.

Strategic Planning Analogy #273: The Back of the Coin

THE STORY
If you take a coin and hold it close to your eye at a perpendicular angle, it no longer looks like a coin. All you see is the edge, and the edge looks like a straight line. It is only when you change the angle in which you look at it that you can see it is a circle.

I’ve used this concept to help explain some of my political observations. In the political world, people like to describe things on a one-dimensional line. At the left end of the line is liberalism. On the right end is conservatism. People are judged politically by where they are on that line—left, right or center. The thinking is that the further you are to one of the extremes on this line, the further your political thinking is from those folks on the far other end of the line.

However, in my observations and discussions with the really radical extreme conservatives and liberals, I see something different. The really radical extremes on both ends start looking more similar to each other.

- Both tend to highly question the abilities of the general public to be able to comprehend the “truth.” They do not trust them to make good choices.
- Both tend to have little faith in current political system to solve problems and are willing to take drastic steps to bring down the status quo.
- Both seem more inclined towards the idea of benevolent dictatorship (although they may define benevolence a little differently).
- Both tend to use populist rhetoric.

This is where the concept of the coin comes in. As you move further to the extreme on the political line, what you are really doing is moving along the edge of a coin. As you get more extreme, you start moving around the edge of what you see to the back of the coin. As a result, the radical, extreme elements of both conservatism and liberalism are so extreme that they are both moving to the back edge of the coin, and moving in a direction where they are now getting closer to each other.

In other words, politics is not on a line, but on a circle. We just can’t see it because we are looking at the coin from the wrong angle.

THE ANALOGY
In the business world, we also like to position ourselves as being on a one-dimensional line. However, instead of using the terms Liberal vs. Conservative, the extremes on our line could be:

Low Price Vs. High Service

Mass Vs. Niche

Multi-Purpose Vs. Specialized

Fashionable Vs. Pedestrian

High Quality Vs. Low Price

Efficient Vs. Customized

With this mind-set, we position one extreme against the other. The idea is that if you become more of one end of the continuum, you are by necessity less of the other. In other words, the more mass you are, the less niche you can be; or the lower your prices, the worse your service or quality needs to be. It becomes an either/or proposition.

This mindset is like looking at the edge of the coin. All you see are linear opposites.

But what if we change our perspective and look at the entire shape of the coin? We may find that if we throw away conventional thinking and get very radical, there may be a way to get to the back of the coin, where both extremes can co-exist. The “either/or” becomes a “both/and.”

Maybe there is a way to be both mass AND niche, or to provide high service AND low prices. All we need to do is find a path to the back of the coin.

We, as strategists, need to sometimes look at things from different angles, so that we can see possibilities that appear impossible from the original point of view. We need to change from thinking lines to perhaps thinking circles.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that so-called opposites can possibly co-exist successfully if we take a more radical approach to how we look at things. We will illustrate this by looking at a handful of U.S. retail companies.

1) Home Depot
The thinking in the hardware/home improvement industry used to be that one could either be high service or low price. You could not be both. This was the conventional linear thinking.

In the late 1970s Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank started looking at things differently. They could see a circle, where low price and high service could co-exist. To do so, they had to get radical and rewrite the business model for the industry. Rather than small departments in a low price discount store or small, high service hardware stores, Marcus and Blank built huge stores that encompassed every imaginable home improvement need.

The large stores created enough demand and efficiency that they could offer unheard of low prices and still have money left over for high service. The early stores were staffed with former hardware store owners and part-timers who still worked in the skilled trades of plumbing, painting and the like. They even held seminars to teach the skills to the customers.

Bernie and Arthur had found the path to the back of the coin, where low prices and high service could co-exist. They called it Home Depot. It was very successful.

Unfortunately, when Robert Nardelli took over as CEO of Home Depot, he returned to linear thinking. He wanted to lower prices, so he cut back on service, thinking that to get one (low price), you had to cut back on the other (high service). This point of view severely damaged the prospects of Home Depot during the past decade. It wasn’t until Nardelli was replaced by insider Frank Blake (who understood the back of the circle) that things started to turn around. Service returned, and so did market share.

2) Amazon
Jeff Bezos used the internet to rethink a lot of the old linear ideas in retailing. Through the creation of Amazon, he was able to develop a mass retail site that had every imaginable customization tool, so it could also cater to every conceivable niche. Both mass and niche feel comfortable using Amazon.

Because of the efficiencies of internet technology, Bezos made Amazon both a slick, efficient low cost operator as well as a high service operator, providing recommendations, reviews, wish lists, easy ordering, and so on.

All of these services and customizations came with the convenience of shopping at home 24 hours a day. Yet, at the same time, Amazon was able to provide very low prices. Never before had so many linear “opposites” successfully coexisted in a single retail brand.

Jeff Bezos used the internet as a tool to radically redefine what one can do in retail. He saw the circle and got to the back of the coin, where all these so-called opposites come together. To Jeff, the internet was not just another place to do conventional retailing. It was a tool to redefine retailing.

3) Target
Target is known for its “Cheap Chic” image. Before Target, no retailer would have considered the combination of cheap and chic. These were supposed to be linear opposites. However, Target was originally owned by a sophisticated department store company which understood fashion well. This background gave them a different perspective as to what was possible.

By taking some of the tools from department stores and some of the tools of discount stores, they were able to fashion a new type of store which could provide both chic and cheap. They got to the back of the coin.

Once Target showed that you could have both, another wave occurred. By using the radical supply chain innovation of “fast fashion” (small batches of Apparel knockoffs made quickly—while the fashion is still hot—and sold quickly—without markdowns), chains such as H&M, Zara and Forever 21 are also finding a way to combine cheap and chic.

SUMMARY
Sometimes the way we look at a problem limits our ability to find the solution. If we see attributes as linear opposites, it is hard to picture them as successfully co-existing. However, if we are willing to change the angle we use to look at problems (and are willing to consider radical departures in our business model from the status quo), we can find ways to combine these so-called opposites into a hugely successful strategy.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Almost everything about the way we live and think today was at one time considered a very radical departure from the status quo. Therefore, don’t be afraid of thinking radically. All you may be doing is just redefining the future status quo.