Three Things That Industry Experts Do Not Want You To Find Out About International Tactics Communications
When everyone in an enterprise is working together toward the same goal, they tend to strongly identify with each other. People think, “We’re all jointly responsible for fulfilling the goals we’ve set, or we will let each other down.” A differentiated capabilities system depends on this quality. People have to recognize one another’s contributions and how they can rely on these contributions, or they will be vulnerable themselves.Setting a strategy gives you an active role in planning for your company’s future. Without it, too many of your actions will be focused on the short term—reacting to every potential threat, meeting goals that may not have long-term impact, and focusing too much on the day-today operations and problem solving. What’s more, without an eye on the big picture, you may miss the larger shifts in your industry—shifts that require early planning in order to respond and thrive.
Successful strategies often owe a great deal to the inertia and inefficiency of rivals. For example, Netflix pushed past the now-bankrupt Blockbuster because the latter could not, or would not, abandon its focus on retail stores. Understanding the inertia of rivals may be just as vital as understanding your own strengths.
In business, it has become more and more important for organisations to be both local (or regional) and global, to be centralised in some ways and decentralised in others, to rely on people to be innovative and use their own expertise, but also to collaborate as part of a team, to plan for the long term yet remain responsive and flexible.
The Right Combination
As you think about your own company’s identity, keep thinking about what you do and who you are. You may be tempted to define your identity in terms of what you sell—your sector, category, or industry: “We are a leader in Asia,” or “We are at the top of the energy industry.” But your people already know that you do something more specific than that.The role of the strategic decision-maker is a pressured and lonely one, often with lingering uncertainty as an occupational hazard as the decision plays out. Developing personal strategies to handle this pressure is important, but ultimately, delivering decisions that achieve success is immensely rewarding. It is certainly worth remembering the words of Marie Curie, a particularly pressured, unconventional but effective decision-maker: One never notices what has been done, one can only see what remains to be done.
People make strategy much harder than it needs to be. For some, the problem is that they focus too much on the tools: environmental scans, SWOT analyses, customer analyses, competitor analyses, financial modeling, and so on. Other people get into trouble because they think it’s all about the broad, conceptual, future-oriented, big-picture stuff — not to be confused with tactics. Still other times, people think that strategy is what happens when we think about changing directions.
Good strategy is the exception, not the rule. And the problem is growing. More and more organizational leaders say they have a strategy, but they do not. Instead, they espouse what I call bad strategy.
Leading Teams
In a world driven by tech giants that are locked in the digital distribution pipelines to reach billions of people across the globe, the gatekeeper hypothesis states that small businesses will need to pass through those nodes to reach key customers. Thus, those gatekeepers become the enablers (or perhaps deterrents) for small businesses across the globe.Visions must be achievable and leaders must be capable of ensuring that they are achieved. An organisation that has an unrealistic view of its strengths and its market may find itself in trouble. Furthermore, it is not simply the vision that matters, but how that vision is developed and whether it is kept grounded in reality. Scenario planners can help an organisation keep in touch with reality both internally and with the external competitive environment.
If we are adventurous yet disciplined, the result may be extraordinary and possibly unique in creating value and competitive advantage. People and organisations now recognise that paradoxes can be reconciled, and they are more enabled to reconcile them than ever before,partly because of technological progress.
An anomaly is a fact that doesn’t fit received wisdom. To a certain kind of mind, an anomaly is an annoying blemish on the perfect skin of explanation. But to others, an anomaly marks an opportunity to learn something, perhaps something very valuable. In science, anomalies are the frontier, where the action is.
Strategy Involves Choice
We should not let the simplistic but comforting dualism of strategy and execution deceive us. Execution should be as varied, as thoughtful, as subtle, as diverse, and as intertwined with strategy as is necessary to get the job done, and that will vary according to the specific challenge at hand. In short, your execution needs a strategy.There’s nothing wrong with having a quarterly target; cash is the oxygen of a growth business, and it needs to be managed very carefully. But leaders, especially those who are still learning to navigate their market, must have a deep, unwavering focus on how they will win over the long run. Doing anything else is like driving across the country while looking only five feet in front of your car.
The functions within your company are likely to operate in environments that call for differing approaches to departmental planning. It’s easy to imagine, for instance, that within the auto industry a classical style would work well for optimizing production but would be inappropriate for the digital marketing department, which probably has a far greater power to shape its environment (after all, that’s what advertising aims to do) and would hardly benefit from mapping out its campaigns years in advance.
To benchmark your success, you can calculate certain financial and operating ratios that look at both your income statement and balance sheet, giving you an indication of your financial health over time. You will also want to compare your numbers against your competitors’ and the industry standard. For most industries, it is possible to compare your ratios to the industry standard to get a sense of how financially competitive you are as a business. You will certainly want to strive to be in the top half, or better yet, the top quarter.
Become Agile And Resilient
Because you cannot do everything, you need to concentrate on those few things that you can do well and that represent the greatest potential for business and financial results. All business strategy revolves around massing your powers. You need to focus and leverage your strengths to achieve maximum advantage in the marketplace.High-growth companies don’t feel limited to their current playing field. Instead, they think about whole ecosystems, where connected interests and relationships among multiple stakeholders create more opportunities. But these firms don’t approach ecosystems haphazardly. They let purpose be their guide.
All industries are subject to external trends that affect their businesses over time. Think of the rapid rise of the cloud or the global movement toward protecting the environment. Looking at these trends with the right perspective can show you how to create business opportunities.
Managing risk can too often inspire a defensive mindset that misses one of the most valuable outcomes of resilience thinking: innovation that creates new business opportunities while simultaneously benefiting stakeholders and the environment.
Turning Vision Into Action
Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes. One form of poor strategic objectives occurs when there is a scrambled mess of things to accomplish.If you were to survey the people in your company and ask them what values your company stood for and believed in, what would people say? Would there be clarity and unanimity among your employees about your company values? Or would there be contradictions and disagreements?
When most people hear the word profit, they think of accounting profits. Accounting profits are the total amount of money taken in from sales (total revenue, or price times quantity sold) minus the dollar cost of producing goods or services. Accounting profits are what show up on the firm’s income statement and are typically reported to the manager by the firm’s accounting department.
There is a significant and unnecessary gap between strategy and execution: a lack of connection between where the enterprise aims to go and what it can accomplish. We have met many leaders who understand this problem, but very few who know how to overcome it.
Overcome Resistance
Benchmarking is the art and science of setting a standard of performance by looking at what others in your industry do. It’s straightforward and, when properly focused, highlights the important tasks that operations must accomplish. However, benchmarking doesn’t automatically set the right goals.Overcoming pitfalls requires thinking of capability development in a different way: as an integral part of strategic execution. The key is to link each strategic priority to the capabilities needed to drive that opportunity and to frame accountability for each strategic priority around both results and capability development.
Digital technology and the more specific technologies to which it gives rise fundamentally change the sources of customer value and the cost of delivering it. The way to address digital is to think through and lay out all the fundamental assumptions you have about how your company works and ask yourself if they are still valid. And that’s what strategy has always been about.
Employees are changing their attitudes to work, and the nature of loyalty and duty in society is changing. The impact on strategic decisions requires an understanding of the forces driving these trends and an acceptance of the responsibilities and priorities that emerge.
Tyranny Of Practicality
Bad strategy tends to skip over pesky details such as problems. It ignores the power of choice and focus, trying instead to accommodate a multitude of conflicting demands and interests. Like a quarterback whose only advice to teammates is “Let’s win,” bad strategy covers up its failure to guide by embracing the language of broad goals, ambition, vision, and values.Knowledge and information have to be collected, protected and effectively and intelligently managed if they are to be valuable resources that guide and inform every stage of decision-making. There is increasing recognition of the benefits of using not just some but all employees’ knowledge, by developing simple and robust systems that allow information and expertise to flow to key points in the organisation. When information is withheld or poorly managed, it often causes suspicion, frustration or resentment. However, introducing systems to control and direct information can be disruptive, causing additional work and pressure.
To develop situational awareness, form teams and task them to develop alternatives based on different views of the same situation. For example, what if new competitors enter the market earlier than expected? What could they do that would surprise or outmaneuver us? What if they are delayed; what types of things might they do to try to recover and penetrate the market more quickly?
What are your key weaknesses? There are many parts of your business where you are active, yet you can never become the market leader in those areas. The cost of achieving market dominance is too high and/or your competition is too deeply entrenched with high-quality products and services.
Right Or Wrong Decisions
It is hard to show your skill as a sailor when there is no wind. Similarly, it is in moments of industry transition that skills at strategy are most valuable. During the relatively stable periods between episodic transitions, it is difficult for followers to catch the leader, just as it is difficult for one of the two or three leaders to pull far ahead of the others. But in moments of transition, the old pecking order of competitors may be upset and a new order becomes possible.When developing a business strategy, first work to discover the very most promising opportunities for the business. Those opportunities may be internal, fixing bottlenecks and constraints in the way people work, or external. To do this, you should probably pull together a small team of people and take a month to do a review of who your buyers are, who you compete with, and what opportunities exist.
It is not just about a process that drives company and stakeholder value. Resilient business strategies are an essential pathway to achieving a just world and an economy that delivers truly inclusive and sustainable prosperity.
Our strengths are our core competencies—those things we do better than any of our competitors or that really tie together all the products we offer in a unique way. What internal structures or expertise do we have that are a special source of pride? This becomes the center for determining what we will do in the future. We want to constantly build on the things we already do particularly well.
Business Units Working Together
The concept of positioning relates to how a product is perceived by customers relative to its competitors. It originated in the advertising industry as a way of identifying those attributes of a product that should be placed in the buyer’s consciousness. For example, a product may be positioned as inexpensive, innovative, old fashioned, prestigious, high quality or any of a multitude of other attributes. Positioning influences attitudes to and perceptions of a product or company brand, rather than changing the product itself. The value of positioning decisions is that they increase awareness of a company’s or product’s capabilities.A characteristic of successful decision-makers is their commitment and enthusiasm. These virtues usually engender support as people generally respond well to the infectious nature of enthusiasm, provided it is not overwhelming or inappropriate. People also like to help, and enthusiasm often provides an opening for help and support to be offered.
For global operations, your structure must be able to support your worldwide products, but at the same time you have to take into account different geographical preferences. In this case, a matrix organization is a good structure: You can focus horizontally on your products and focus vertically on the different geographic markets.
When everyone is looking to you for answers, you may feel you need to provide them all yourself. But your employees must own this change, too, and they need to feel competent in the new regime. If ever there was a time to delegate, it’s now. Encourage discussion, collaboration, and creative thinking among team members around specific problems or challenges that arise.
Comments
Om bara livet kunde vara lite ömmare och ämnet lite mer robust.
Više o ovom članku molim!
Ihmisillä on tapana mystifioida kirjoittamista ehdottamalla, että sinun täytyy harjoitella. Teitkö sinä?
Stav je da živimo i pustimo da živimo. Ovo je zapravo nevjerovatna promjena vrijednosti u prilično kratkom vremenu i to je primjer slobode.
Terima kasih atas pemikiran Anda tentang topik ini.
Много информативно. Благодаря за тази прекрасна статия.
Có bằng chứng khoa học cho thấy rằng ai đó cực kỳ khó thực hiện đa nhiệm và đôi khi là không thể.
Hoe verklaren we dat wat we geloven over de betekenis van onze smaak, reacties en interesses verandert?
Rád čtu tvůj blog! Děkujeme za zveřejnění cenných informací.
Esses posts do blog ficaram maravilhosos.
Καλογραμμένο άρθρο. Η ευγνωμοσύνη μου δεν έχει όρια.
Lai arī kā es dažkārt ilgojos pēc zināmas drošības un konsekvences, es izbaudu, ka mani apgrūtina. Es tiešām nezinu, kas dažkārt notiek nākamnedēļ, nemaz nerunājot par šo gadu.
Yazınız büyük bir güç. Onu kontrol ederseniz, tüm dünyayı hareket ettirebilecek bir güce dönüştürülebilir.
Jeder muss diesen Inhalt lesen.
Creo que tenemos que cortar esta abominación de raíz.
Nevím, co bych si bez tebe počal, a doufám, že to nikdy nebudu muset zjistit!
Goeie blog om die ervaring en kennis te deel.
Tôi thực sự muốn cảm ơn bạn vì bài viết của bạn vì nó thực sự hữu ích.
Jeg ved godt, det lyder lidt banalt, men jeg synes, din blog er en af de bedste der findes. Tillader du gæsteindlæg?
No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer'.
Eu sou pai e não vejo mais uma maneira de meus filhos herdarem o dinheiro que estou ganhando, muito menos sair por aí, ter uma ideia e criá-la em sua própria vida.
나는 당신의 피드에 가입했고 당신의 멋진 게시물을 더 기다립니다.
Senin de benim gibi bu konularla ilgili partilerde çeneni kapalı tutma konusunda pek iyi olmadığından ve çevrimiçi ortamda kesinlikle utangaç olmadığından şüpheleniyorum.
Uw artikel biedt zulke geweldige informatie met goede kennis.
Hartelijk dank voor uw steun.
감사합니다. 매우 인상적입니다. 정말로, 나는 당신이 당신의 일을 계속할 것을 촉구합니다.
No podemos recordar demasiado a menudo que cuando observamos la naturaleza, y especialmente el orden de la naturaleza, siempre somos nosotros mismos los únicos que estamos observando.
N'est-il pas étonnant que le futur réussisse à créer un passé approprié ?
Rītdiena pieder tiem, kas tai gatavojas šodien. Un jūs man palīdzējāt to izdarīt.
Di luar kata "terima kasih," saya harap Anda akan merasakan rasa terima kasih dan penghargaan saya untuk waktu yang sangat lama.
Mojí oblíbenou činností o víkendech s prohnilým počasím bylo zůstávat doma u ohně s jedním nebo dvěma nesmyslnými záhadnými romány.
Kaķis vakaros rāpo man blakus manā mīļākajā krēslā un saritinās murrājot. Mīkstas siltas kažokādas un dārdošas dūkoņas kombinācija vienmēr rada mieru.
Bu yazılar akıllara durgunluk verdi.
Thank you so much for letting me express my feeling about your post. You write every blog post so well.
Bilgi ve ilham, blogunuzun her yerinde.
Tengo esta teoría de que, dependiendo de tu actitud, tu vida no tiene por qué convertirse en esta farsa ridícula que parece que tanta gente termina viviendo.
Котката вечер пълзи до мен на любимия ми стол и се навива, мъркайки. Комбинацията от мека топла козина и гърмящо бръмчене винаги носи спокойствие.
Wow nó là một bài viết rất tốt. Thông tin do bạn cung cấp thực sự rất tốt và hữu ích cho tôi.
Ważne jest, aby obalić mity wokół tego tematu i wykonujesz kawał dobrej roboty.
모든 것에는 아름다움이 있지만 모든 사람이 그것을 보는 것은 아닙니다. 나는 그것을 이 기사에서 본다.
Cảm ơn vì đã chia sẻ những thông tin tuyệt vời như vậy. Nó thực sự hữu ích cho tôi. Tôi luôn tìm kiếm để đọc những nội dung chất lượng.
Die lewe gaan daaroor om 'n prentjie te skilder, nie om 'n som te maak nie.
See ajaveeb tõstab üles koha, kus loodus lõpeb.
あなたは私の人生でこの新しい章を始めるように私にインスピレーションを与えました。私はあなたなしではそれを成し遂げることができなかったでしょう。
Kon geen genoeg krijgen van deze inhoud.
Byl jsem schopen začít svůj den ve světě, který se zbláznil, s ujištěním, že tam venku je někdo, kdo mi pomáhá tomu všemu rozumět.
Este artículo me asombró.
Да изпратиш светлина в мрака на мъжките сърца – такова е задължението на този блог.
ボリュームは、作家が毎日、毎年、一人で部屋に座ることができたかどうかに正確に依存します。
Det här blogginlägget är 1900-talets största konstform.
Jouw aandacht voor detail zet jou aan de top.
Dette innlegget er veldig nyttig.Takk for denne nyttige informasjonen.
Words can’t describe how thankful I am for this article. It has cleared a lot up for me.
Ich möchte, dass Blogs mich zum Nachdenken anregen. Um das zu tun, kann es mich verärgern oder mir Unbehagen bereiten. Das fördert das Bewusstsein und die Veränderung oder zumindest einige Diskussionen.
Tyto blogové příspěvky byly senzační.
Este post foi extremamente interessante, principalmente porque eu estava procurando pensamentos sobre este tópico na semana passada.
Realmente tomas la realidad por sorpresa en este artículo. Bien hecho.
Voi luoja rakastin tätä blogia.
Расскажите всем об этом контенте.
あなたは静的な情報に非常に多くのエネルギーを与えることができたので、あなたの場所に旅行した後、それがすべて一瞬ではないかどうかはわかりません。
コンテンツはこの世のものではありませんでした。
Posting blog ini mengejutkan.
Fascinantan unos, Ronni, i ja se moramo složiti sa prvim komentarom na tvoj prethodni post. Ovdje je knjiga.
Kiitos niin upeasta blogista. Jaan sen kollegoilleni. Toivottavasti kaikista näistä tiedoista on heille apua.
この記事は私を驚かせました。
В молодости, даже если я собирался посмотреть спектакль или фильм один, я не чувствовал себя одиноким.
Διαβάζω στιγμές που με κάνουν να τσιμπάω τον εαυτό μου, μερικές από αυτές με κάνουν αρκετά συγκινημένο.
Dankie dat jy jou kennis deel.
Ach můj bože miloval tento obsah.
Az írásodra büszkének lehetsz. Nem kötsz kompromisszumot.
Tôi nghĩ đó là một sai lầm to lớn.
Wir alle lieben Ihre Texte – daran gibt es keinen Zweifel.
As escolhas quando a renda não é um problema são incontáveis.
Îmi spăl mâinile de cei care își imaginează că vorbăria este cunoaștere, tăcerea este ignoranță și afecțiunea este artă.
Az egyszerűség és a nyugalom azok a tulajdonságok, amelyek az írás valódi értékét mérik.
Mi è piaciuto così tanto leggere questo argomento.
Tu escritura apunta a la Eternidad. Me encanta.
Denne blog er en stor kraft i at forklare mand til mand.
Aceste articole au fost uluitoare.
Vi har demonisert aldring i USA når det i virkeligheten bare er en annen æra av livet som barndom, tenåringer, voksen alder og nå alderdom.
Ces articles étaient géniaux.
Acesta este un articol util. Mulțumiri.
Ik zou liegen als ik zou zeggen dat ik op sommige dagen niet boos was over wat je hebt geschreven. Maar ik heb echt hard gewerkt om veel van de woede en teleurstelling in het verleden te laten verdwijnen.
Beru v úvahu všechny myšlenky, které jste ve svém příspěvku diskutovali. Jsou opravdu přesvědčivé a rozhodně mohou fungovat.
O tomto tématu vím velmi málo a čím jsem starší, tím méně toho vím.
Naprawdę jedno z najbardziej nieformalnych miejsc w sieci. Znalazłem wiele świetnych wiadomości. Idź tak dalej.
นักเขียนทุกคนเป็นมือสมัครเล่นมาก่อน
ข้อมูลของคุณน่าสนใจมาก ขอบคุณสำหรับการแชร์.
Ik liet mijn collega's deze blog zien, het inspireerde me.
완전히 놀라운 콘텐츠.
Superzvaigzne raksta šajā emuārā.
Niemand sonst kann Risiken für uns eingehen oder unsere Verluste in unserem Namen tragen oder uns Selbstwertgefühl geben. Niemand kann uns vor den Schleudern und Pfeilen des Lebens bewahren, und wenn der Tod kommt, begegnen wir ihm allein.
Tu blog nos permite encontrarnos y perdernos al mismo tiempo.
De inhoud raakte mijn hart.
Moram odati priznanje gdje treba. Ovo je promijenilo moje mišljenje i ne događa se često.
Napravili ste sjajan posao - tako izvrstan članak.
给我的同事看了这篇文章，它启发了我。
Ich denke, es ist ein ernstes Problem, sich über solche Themen Gedanken zu machen. Vielen Dank, dass Sie uns darauf aufmerksam gemacht haben.
Blogunuz hakkında büyüleyici olan şey, makalelerinizin ayrıntılı yapılarıdır.
Need blogipostitused olid sensatsioonilised.