9 new strategy guideposts
Hi-
I had a Zoom chat with a colleague that I’d see at a lot of conferences in the before times.
She’s trying to make her team act more strategically, but struggling because the nature of her business is very tactical.
And, to top it off, most people in the industry she’s in, tickets, have decided to ostrich and YOLO their way to this period of time by pretending everything is cool and that the way things were is going to be the way ahead…only better than ever.
In light of that, I jotted down some quick strategy hits to help elevate your strategy thinking and acting.
You define a strategy by the actions folks take. Not what they say. Trust me, if I judged people by what they say, DC would be the most productive and utopian place in the world.
Strategy is about choice. You can’t do everything. So you have to make a decision on what you are unwilling to do.
The jumping off point of your strategy is a definition of what your ambition is.
Don’t get too trapped with analysis. All of the data we have is from the past and we can’t guarantee that the future will look the same. And, in fact, right now, we can’t guarantee much of anything.
Realize that the need to be able to guarantee that a strategy will work due to this reality. A good strategy has a feeling of “what might be possible” to it. This doesn’t give you the freedom to throw caution to the wind, but it does give you the freedom to understand that there are limits to your ability to predict how people will act going forward.
Know that if you focus too much on predictability that it comes with stagnation because you are going to be unwilling to take prudent risks.
What happens when you don’t innovate and focus only on exploiting your current offerings: obsolescence.
A strategy needs to focus on balance…not perfection, but progress.
Become comfortable with the idea of abductive reasoning which is a focus on the possibilities raised by the combination of you knowledge, your analysis, your intuition, and your belief in your ability to impact the market you serve.
Let me know what you think on these.
Do you have some guideposts for your thinking?
Dave