Strategy, Sales, Sustainability & Leadership

Do strategic platforms take into account marketing and sales as well as long term customer engagement and success? 

For me this is a core question, but the more you dig into the detail, the more complicated it becomes.  In this post I will briefly address key issues, concepts and current challenges.  I am trying to provoke your thoughts, and ask you to answer many of these questions, as I do not have all the answers, just my own perspective and viewpoints.

Whilst most strategies agree in principal on what they are trying to achieve, implementation and execution become an issue.  People get lost in the framework, but forget about the core principal of why they are in business, and what has brought them success thus far.

Let’s face it, marketing and sales must have done something right to create the success over the years, or was it purely luck?  In a strong economy when things come easy, any sales person can succeed.  They virtually become order takers.  Marketing will produce great glossy art to make everyone feel happy.  However, as we see today, in tougher market conditions the true champions are starting to shine through.  It is the individuals who have built strong networks, have the trust of their customers, can offer advise beyond what is required, are seen as experts, and are persistent and not scared to pick up the phone or visit a client.  All this supported by a good organisation, with quality products and a focus on adding value to and for their customer will provide success in the future. It’s that simple; right? Is that true?

But are our leaders forgetting about these core people that have brought the results in the past?  Are they just focused on numbers, and not on fostering the relationships with their customers and supporting them through the tougher times?  You tell me.

I believe some organisations are getting this right now, others are failing miserably.  The results are not going to be seen this or next year, the real outcomes are five or more years down the road.  So which leaders have this vision and support of the board / shareholders to ensure the long term success?  Anyone you know?

In our current market conditions, too many executives (especially in public companies) are worried about pleasing the shareholders in the short term.  Decisions are being made that make them look good right now, but the impacts of their decisions will be felt way beyond their reign, by that time they have taken another senior role to try and emulate their recent success.

So why are these executives making these decisions?  Is it purely self-preservation and pleasing the investors, or do they actually believe that they are working in the best interest of the organisation, the employees and greater community?

I addressed the challenges of short term and long term strategy in a previous post and will not re-address them here, but many of the issues raised there, translate into this post.

Maybe taking a closer look at some strategy maps will help.  Take a closer look to what always sits on top – maximise profitability and create shareholder value.  How come customer value and your own people are down the bottom?  Yes, you can argue you need them down the bottom to create the solid foundation to achieve what is on top (like a brick wall you want to make sure all brocks are properly in place), but are we forgetting about this core as the processes are implemented?

I have had a look at many strategy maps and have included some here as pictures (Kaplan, Mobil, Rockwater, Blue Ocean, etc).  They all focus on the same areas; some go into more detail, some are vague.  But what does it all mean?  Anyone can come up with a map.  The challenge is on how do you relate this to your organisation, your people, and how do you execute the strategy?

Focus areas commonly are:

• Your workforce, how to train them and engage them
• Internal Processes to achieve the above
• Creating customer value
• Focus on products and services
• Growth, growth and more growth

As mentioned earlier, these maps are frameworks.  Often very complicated, but they all want to achieve the same outcomes.  It is like asking the question of what is the world’s longest formula.  The reality is that we can create more and more complex (but still correct) equations without bound.  So we get the same results by overcomplicating simple issues.  Essentially any equality can be made longer by adding identities.  Isn’t that what we are doing?  Isn’t that what I have done in this post?  I have taken a whole lot of questions, and provided many answers and more questions, that in the core all lead to the same results.  I could have probably done this in five short bullet points, and I’m certain that there are many people out there, much smarter than me, who could provide us with these :)

So, to summarise I will try to at least address how we can avoid some pitfalls in my opinion.
If we are considering a total strategy revamp, the transition phase is where we will come up with most challenges, and this is often where the biggest failures occur.

The failures may start in the design of the strategy, but are often failures in the process. Kaplan and Norton (The Strategy Focused Organization) address these failures with a direct link to balanced scorecards.  However the two first points mentioned are “lack of senior management commitment” and “too few individuals involved”.  These two arguments will resonate with many of you.  Strategy is often set a high level, without consultation of the people who make the organisation tick.  Since these individuals are not involved in setting the strategy, they do not own it, and as such will struggle to buy into it.  People get extreme satisfaction of being involved in a process and having their idea heard, and some of them implemented.  By owning the project, the individual will work for the project and with the team towards success; the individual can be measured and held accountable, creating a win, win situation.  Easier said than done, right?  Well, why don’t you give it a go, and let me know how it worked out for you.