Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.Emily Dickinson, Success is Counted Sweetest
Effective strategy is the outcome of little decisions. As tempting as it may be to focus on the enthralling big picture, effective execution of strategy depends on the details and the decisions teams make early in the process. Get the right debate running across your team around these little questions and you are a long way to success.
Eight Little Things – 8 questions to answer as a team
There are so many elements to get right in strategy. If you want a valuable strategy framework for every day use and that I have seen work across a wide range of scenarios, then I recommend Playing to Win by Lafley and Martin. The following simple questions are key ones that come from my experience taking organisations through execution of strategy, The tighter the answers to these questions, the better the performance.
Importantly, these are questions that every member of the team should know and understand. Strategy execution is not the domain of an MBA-qualified strategy lead or some fancy executive. Organisations that leverage every person to deliver strategic outcomes drive superior performance.
What does success look like?
Being able to communicate a clear goal for the work makes life easier. Teams can use that goal to track their alignment and also to monitor progress. Clarity of the goal also helps people understand why things need to change and the business needs to do different things to the past. Engaging people in energy around a shared goal will see teams through the challenges. Success needs to be more than customer numbers, financial metrics or some exit event. Ideally it is a rich vision of the future with value for all stakeholders.
Who is your customer? (Segmentation)
The concept of Total addressable market has done many entrepreneurs a disservice. A number you need to raise capital leads people to think they should have every customer on the planet. Delivering a bland mass market proposition without focus on customers is the surest way to fail. Unless your product or service is a pure commodity then you need to be far more specific. Be incredibly focused. Small target segments are better to understand, target and convert. The whole world is comprised of many of these segments.
What are you doing that nobody else can do?
People copy success. Get over it. It will happen. What makes your success impossible to replicate (for a while). What do you do that nobody else can or would do? Long term strategic success demands you continuously assess and enhance this difference.
Why does a customer choose you (over everyone else and nothing at all)?
If you can’t describe in detail why your specific target customer would choose you over a competitor and over doing nothing, you aren’t ready to go to market. It’s that simple. Your sales and marketing teams can’t make this up in market. These reasons need to be built into the heart of your product and be driving your execution. Ideally, this explanation comes from the customers you worked with to develop the product. The reasons to buy need to be so compelling customers are complaining how slow you are in getting to market. Lukewarm interest won’t cut it in a busy world.
What proof points underpin your marketing?
Hype is great. Hype gets attention. Success comes from consistent conversion. Being able to prove your points of difference and hinge the go to market strategy around them is essential. If a marketing director ever asks to change the brand without describing how the proof points have changed ask them to go back to basics. So much effort is wasted on window dressing an absence of fundamentals.
What capabilities do you need to succeed?
When you have a specific target customer and a unique proposition, you need to have the capabilities to deliver. Some might be generic but many will end up being a key part of the differentiation of the business. Understand these capabilities and make sure your work on strategy flows all the way down to people, process, data and systems to make sure you will succeed. You can learn a lot and change a lot as you go, but a strategy helps make sure you have the fundamental capabilities in place when you need them.
What employee experience do you need to drive your customer experience?
Great customer experiences are built on great employee experiences. Design the two together. Make sure that they support each other and you are not asking your employees to pick up the gaps in your customer experience. That’s not sustainable and creates unattractive variation in service. Don’t ever trade off to the detriment of your employees because your customers will feel it immediately.
What won’t you do?
The point of strategy is to make decisions. The most important decision is where to focus your few resources for greatest success. You should not do everything. The most successful business I know can describe clearly all the things they won’t ever do. They have the deals that they have turned down to prove it. Don’t get lured off course or distracted by the quick buck or the moment of hype.
Keeping these questions alive and debated at every level of your business will help your whole team learn and evolve the strategy towards success. It’s very likely the first answer you have to each will be wildly wrong, especially if you are a founder sure of themselves. Over time these questions will be resolved in practice and drive success in execution of your strategy.
If you are interested in discussing further, reach out through the comments or online to discuss.
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.Billy Collins, Questions about Angels
Simon Terry