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How can you recognize a bad strategy?

Posted by Marbenz Antonio on May 18, 2022

How to spot a Good Strategy

The generally acknowledged definition of great strategy in the delivery of your organization’s value proposition is the purposeful “decision to do activities differently, or to perform various activities, better than market rivals” (Porter 1996).

Customers choose one company over another because of its value offer. It resolves a customer issue or meets a customer requirement (Osterwalder & Pigneur 2010).

A successful strategy, regardless of industry or sector, has a defined set of decisions that describe what the company will do and, more crucially, what it will not do to solve a unified business challenge. A business challenge can be any roadblock, circumstance, or variable that, when overcome, should result in verifiable performance gains.

“If I had one hour to rescue the world, I would spend 59 minutes identifying the problem and one minute addressing it,” Albert Einstein famously said (Spradlin 2012). Many plans fail to be executed despite the best efforts of dedicated employees, owing to most organizations’ inability to understand their business concerns. They also fail to recognize which are the most important to their employees who are in charge of achieving new strategy objectives (Vermeulen 2017).

A good strategy is about managing a rapidly evolving technological future, and successful strategy design is critical because it guides the attention and activities of the entire business, rather than just a portion of it. Simply said, it’s a solution to a problem, a strategy for conquering a barrier, or a response to a business issue. If the business challenge is not stated, the actual strategy adopted may differ significantly from what was intended, planned, or thought.

Because it is the strength applied to the most promising business opportunity for the business, a good strategy is simple, uncomplicated, and easy to understand. In this scenario, far too many companies claim to have a plan when they actually don’t. As a result, companies pay less attention to external strategic challenges such as rival actions, consumer requirements, and/or increasing technological debt and trends. Instead, companies promote “poor strategy,” which isn’t merely the lack of excellent strategy (Rumelt 2017).

A bad bad thing

“It is far easier to spot a minefield when you witness others straying into it than when you are about to do so (yourself),” says Nobel Laureate Kahneman (2011). While successful strategy implementation is improving, Speculand (2020) found that ‘48% of organizations are still failing to achieve more than two-thirds of their own strategic objectives.’ This is exacerbated by the fact that only 28% of executives and middle managers in charge of executing and communicating strategy can explicitly list three of their company’s strategic priorities, and why only 5% of employees collectively responsible for strategy are able to do so (Nieto-Rodriguez & Speculand 2021).

According to Rumelt (2017), bad strategy misses the power of choice to expressly focus on the most important business challenge. Instead, with different degrees of success, businesses strive to implement a multitude of contradictory, disconnected, and disjointed strategy papers, objectives, and interests. Despite the clamor for associating strategy with ambition, leadership, vision, planning, or the economic logic of competition, successful strategy is essentially none of these things (Rumelt, 2017).

According to Pijl (2020), bad strategies come in all shapes and sizes. To begin, a bad strategy is one that lacks a defined goal. This is the case when firms avoid making difficult decisions and are unable or unable to articulate and describe the nature of their business challenge. To avoid doing a terrible thing with strategy design, Rumelt (2017) recommends looking for one or more of its four primary trademarks. They are as follows:

  1. Fluff: A type of nonsense that tries to present strategic notions or arguments. It creates the illusion of strategic thought by using anodyne, verbose, bloated, and needlessly complex language, as well as esoteric concepts.
  2. Failure and face the challenge: A bad strategy fails to recognize or identify the organization’s and its business model’s challenge. You can’t analyze or modify a strategy if you can’t describe the business challenge.
  3. Mistaking goals for strategy: Many bad strategies are just declarations of desire rather than strategies for resolving business model challenges. A business model explains how an organization generates, delivers, and collects value for its customers and/or public services (Osterwalder & Pigneur 2010).
  4. Bad strategic objective: A leader establishes a strategic objective as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are considered “bad” when they fail to address important challenges confronting the business or are unrealistic.

Bad Strategy vs. Good Strategy

According to Rumelt (2017), “the core of the good strategy is always the same.” It is about identifying the important aspects in a situation and developing a strategy for coordinating and directing visible activities to address those issues.”

A plan that fails to identify a number of realistic and achievable activities is missing an important component. There will never be a good strategy if no one accepts there is a business problem. A good strategy needs attention and, as a result, a decision. “People make decisions,” Ozark’s Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) once stated. “Choices have consequences.” Choosing implies putting certain strategic objectives on hold to achieve others. When the difficult option is not taken, the outcome is a weak amorphous strategy design and strategy implementation (Rumelt, 2017).

When businesses attempt to implement more than ten strategy objectives, or worse, numerous strategy documents, less is accomplished, and in certain circumstances, none of the strategic objectives are achieved effectively. Because no organization can do it all at once, it is important to understand the technique of ‘addition’ and ‘subtraction’ in resetting strategic objectives. Focusing on three to five objectives at a time provides a clear and powerful message to the business and its employees about what is most urgently needed (Nieto-Rodriguez & Speculand 2021).

A bad strategy, on the other side, is long on goals and short on action. It thinks that objectives are all that is required. It proposes strategic objectives that are inconsistent and, at times, completely unrealistic. It covers these flaws with high words and phrases. The requirement for good strategy is episodic, rather than yearly or biennial (Rumelt, 2017). As a result, any changes to the business model should be viewed as modifications to those decisions: what your products will be, when decisions are made, who makes them, and, most importantly, why.

The major differences between bad and good strategies are taken from (Sørensen 2020).

  • Bad Strategy = Thinking the organization needs a digital strategy  /  Good Strategy = Strategy for a growing digital economy
  • Bad Strategy = Long  /  Good Strategy = Short
  • Bad Strategy = Complex and abstract  /  Good Strategy = Simple and concrete
  • Bad Strategy = Aims to do too much and scattered  / Good Strategy = Focused and Directional
  • Bad Strategy = Focuses on ambition and vision  /  Good Strategy = Action and results orientated
  • Bad Strategy = Anticipates rationale and idealistic world  /  Good Strategy = Coordinates effort
  • Bad Strategy = Static  /  Good Strategy = Flexible
  • Bad Strategy = Unclear management anchoring  /  Good Strategy = Clear management anchoring
  • Bad Strategy = Delegated to experts  /  Good Strategy = Takes culture into consideration
  • Bad Strategy = Minimal involvement  /  Good Strategy = Broad involvement

Strategy Implementation

According to Pijl (2020), “a strategy that is not carried out is as useless as no strategy at all.” If your business is having difficulty demonstrating outcomes, particularly from strategy implementation, follow the advice of (Proctor, 2018):

  • Those who said, “That’s a good (strategy) concept,” had a 10% possibility of changing their ways.
  • Those who committed and declared, “I’ll do it,” had a 25% chance of changing their ways.
  • Those who said when they would do it had a 40% possibility of changing their minds.
  • Those that created a specific plan of action had a 50% possibility of succeeding.
  • Those who promised someone else that they would do it had a 60% likelihood of succeeding.
  • Those who scheduled a specified time to communicate their progress with someone else had a 95% possibility of changing their ways.

Summary

In conclusion, bad strategies exist of all kinds and sizes, and they are those that lack specific attention to the business problem and the resulting action. This happens when businesses avoid making difficult decisions and are unable or unable to articulate and explain the nature of the business model issue, especially in the digital society. A good strategy, on the other hand, analyzes the business challenge and develops a plan for a developing digital economy. According to Kane et al. (2020), “organizations make a constant error in strategy design by attempting to adapt their organizations to the digital infrastructure as it now exists.” Any quarterback, football player, or hockey player will tell you that if you want to strike a moving object, you must lead it rather than follow it.”

As a result, far too many businesses forget the fact that by the time their strategy is fully implemented in today’s context, the digital world to which they have adapted will have changed dramatically (Kane et al. 2020). This is why mature businesses identify technology as a shifting target and begin to adjust their business models and working methods to the future infrastructure. “Only after a plan is successfully executed do you know if it was a good strategy,” says Speculand (2021). Customers only notice the difference when it’s done well. Only successful execution has a positive impact on shareholder (and customer) value.”

 


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