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).
“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:
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).
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):
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.”
Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.
For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com