Strategic everything equals strategic nothing

Business is now awash with strategy and almost none of it has anything thing to do with strategy.  The word strategy or strategic is just put at the front of existing terms to make them sound mystic and important and it is all basically bollocks.  Goodness knows it is rare enough to find actual strategy rather than check box exercises or the annual rewrite of the mission, vision and values (and I'll return to organisational values in another blog soon as that is an interesting aside).

This morning on the business news site I subscribe to I saw the following headline -

APN New & Media, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, has appointed Deutsche Bank to undertake a strategic review of its media assets.

If we take the word strategic out we have -

APN New & Media, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, has appointed Deutsche Bank to undertake a review of its media asset

And so the question is of course what is the point of the word strategic except to make it sound important and justify the appointment of very expensive consultants.

Unfortunately if this was an isolated example it would be interesting but when I saw this it was the straw that broke my blogging back and I just had to write about it as the business community is now inundated with strategic everything.  I went to Google news and typed strategic business and this is what the headlines (all from the last 9 hours) say:

• Harnessing Strategic Business Growth
• APN undertakes strategic review of its NZ assets
• While we have already taken significant strategic steps to transition our business to the new digital media landscape, we are excited about the financial ...
• The first in the industry to link both business strategy and portfolio strategy with transaction management and execution, PortfolioCommand(SM) combines ...
• Supertankers Delayed in China as Nation Fills Strategic Reserves
• Bar Harbor Bankshares Announces Strategic Acquisition of Border ...
• The company selected GlobalEnglish after an exhaustive search for a strategic communications partner capable of providing a global, scalable solution that ...

Admittedly a couple of those stories are strategic but the rest use the term for aggrandisement and the bottom line is the word is now generically used instead of the word 'important' when it needs to be used at all.  

I plan to double my charge out rate as a consultant in the future as I no longer plan to read anything, I will be strategically reviewing documents.......

The importance of knowing what you don't know

Being an expert and knowing a great deal about a subject area is an advantage, a big advantage.  In business you may know a lot about accounting (if you're unlucky) or law and you can both use this to advantage in your own company as well as for others as a director/advisor/consultant.

It is stating the obvious however that an expert in one area is not therefore an expert in all areas.  It does beg the question why we ask our accountant or lawyer for advice on business in general.  Especially accountants who have somehow become seen as more general business advisor's when they remain a limited expert in one area only, an area that faces towards the past and not importantly the future.

Letting that go for a minute, I think what is very important is to know what you don't know in areas of business that we sometimes think wrongly are more like common-sense.  Marketing and branding, human resources, IT and (god forbid but yes) strategy and governance are just a few examples where people often like to have a go rather than get someone who actually knows what they are doing.

The problem is that we can't know how badly (or well I suppose) we have done because we can't turn the clock back and see what would have happened if we had actually paid for someone to do the job properly or at the very least provide us a little bit of advice and at least get us pointing in the right direction.  By not using experts we think we are saving money and the only way this logic works is that we have to assume that the expertise will be no better than our own 'common-sense'!!!!!  Yeah Right!!!!!

Strategy and governance (my own areas of interest) are to me the most obvious.  A company run by inexperienced, often owner/directors, that isn't running well would benefit hugely by replacing the directors with an experienced, knowledgeable and balanced board.  Yes you may have to pay them more than you pay yourselves but always remember.........

IF YOU PAY PEANUTS, YOU GET MONKEYS..................

Strategy - decision making V implementation

It has been a little while since I have added to this blog, mainly due to business and keeping my more regular blog updated.  I may import these blogs into my main blog over time, we'll see.......

It is quite an interesting area of strategy, just how connected or disconnected are the processes of decision making (working out what to do) and implementation (actually doing it).  In the real world of course they are just two parts of ultimately the same question/problem and viewing them as separate doesn't seem on the surface that helpful.  But.......

If a strategy fails to deliver the intended outcomes is it a fault of the strategy or the implementation?  Even if a strategy has been fully implemented it may have been done in a sub standard manner.

It creates this paradoxical position for the creation of strategy.  Do we limit the position we want to be in the future by our known (or assumed) ability to get there or do we set the "right" strategy knowing that we haven't got the organisation to get there?  And that raises a number of other questions about what are we actually trying to achieve bearing in mind that an organisation doesn't exist separate from the people inside it.  No point in developing a rocket that can take people to Mars if it can't keep them alive for the whole journey.........

Strategy, as Mintzberg eloquently argues, is more a craft than a science and often it is the experienced managers and strategists who develop strategies that feel right.  They make sense for the organisation and they are within the capabilities of the organisation, or at least not a bridge to far as some form of stretch is often positive for mobilising resources.

Like all matters in the strategy sphere, there isn't black and white and often even a huge debate about which shades of grey we are actually talking about!!!!!!

Hope is not a risk management strategy

I used to tell people - hope is not a strategy but I heard a financial analyst on TV and he added the words risk management and I kind of liked it so now it is - Hope is not a risk management strategy.

Quite simply, if any of your strategy is based on hope then it is time to rethink your strategy.  Hope and optimism are good things but you can't rely on them and therefore your strategy(s) need to be far more robust.  A client of mine recently experienced a significant change of policy from a key supplier, one that impacted directly on key aspects of their growth strategy.  Their reaction seemed to be 'lets carry on and hope they don't implement' mine was to attack and get that policy changed or change our strategy.  Hope just isn't enough.

Imagine a military leader writing a report saying 'we were outflanked but we carried on and hoped we would win the engagement anyway'.  You would expect, as would his/her troops, that the leader would react to this change and develop a sensible and sound response, one that took positive steps in resting back the advantage.  Writing that it reminds me of the trench warfare military tactics of WWI, that seems as though it was essentially a hope based strategy, one that turned young men into dead men at an incredible rate.

Their are two key words in that previous paragraph, react and advantage.  Strategy is essentially about gaining advantage relative to your competition and when the environment changes or new information is available that materially effects the situation you must react.

I love the saying - Hope is not a risk management strategy!!!!!!  

The annual strategic planning retreat

More synonymous with food and drink than thinking and planning, the annual strategic planning retreat is etched onto many organisations calendars.  It is meant to be the place where the company's future direction is discussed, debated and the outcome is a well crafted plan positioning the organisation in the attractive industries of the future....

The problem is that business, opportunities, threats, moments of crisis etc don't wait until you have had your strategic planning retreat.  They come up at random moments and require reaction if the organisation is not going to miss the turn off to the future.

Imagine strategy in a military sense, lets wait for an annual planning session to determine how we are going to fight this war!!!!  It just doesn't work does it.  Strategy is more a constant process than an episodic one with information constantly being checked and input into the thinking process.  The key question that should always be in every strategists mind when information comes is - so what does this mean? So what does this mean??

I have a hunch that strategists in business may be rarer than you think and though there are many people out there who have the word 'strategy' in their title, this may be a little illusory.  I was once employed by a NZ Govt. department with the very posh title - Regional Strategic Planner.  I lasted three months before resigning as only the word 'Regional' was accurate, certainly there was no requirement for strategy or planning, concepts that didn't seem to be understood at all.

My research is going to look into this very area, what and where are the 'real strategists' and what skills and competencies do you need to be a 'real strategist' and not a well dressed impostor..........