FROG BLOG

Template thinking leads to under-prioritized laundry lists of to-do’s.

If you’ve been in the business world for more than a few months then you have probably experienced the damage such thinking causes. Lots of work being done, nothing truly important to the organization being accomplished.

Sound familiar? My favorite solution to this problem occurred in a senior management retreat for a major company. The Corporate President asked his team to put together a list of priorities for the coming fiscal year. The list that came back was a staggering 20 points long.

He sent it back. “Shorten it.”

It came back 18 points long. Every point strongly defended.

Bob said, “Fine, we’ll go with this.”

The list was carefully typed up. The first page included our mission and the first three priorities. The second page the other 15 priorities. His team approved the two pages.

Bob then proceeded to forget to copy, distribute or refer to the second page.

Objectives were built off the first page.

Programs were budgeted according to the first page.

People were hired according to the first page.

No organization can have 18 life or death priorities. That’s like being at sea with a compass that stops at North every now and then. Forcing a short list helps everyone fit their personal, team and product concerns within the key priorities of the organization.

What happened to the other 15 priorities? Many of them were accomplished because they were important to a division or a product line. Some of them were key to accomplishing the first three priorities. Some of them disappeared because they sounded more important than they were. They were sorted according to the top three priorities.

To break down template thinking you have to force difficult decisions that prioritize what is truly important for your organization.

Share This

What started as high concept MBA territory and led to today’s templates and $200 boilerplate, strategic business plans have been adopted throughout organizations of all sizes. Unfortunately this infiltration often becomes filler for three ring binders (or misplaced PDF files) and a neglected memory until the next cycle - instead of the dynamic driver it can be.

Template thinking is often the cause for this mismatch. Choose any of the hundreds of outlines available and you create the need to fill in every bullet point with a jargon filled sentence about how your company is going to be so much better than the competition.

• Of course we’re going to outflank competition through the leveraging of of superior human intellectual capital and technological innovativeness.
• Of course we’re going to increase market share without price discounting by increasing emotional value and value-added strategic alliance formation.
• Of course we’re going to meet customer needs and improve relationships through advanced communication, use of the web, and the empowerment of line employees.
• Of course we’re going to win by simply being better than everyone else.
• Of course, Of course, Of course.

The result can be a document that is unimplementable (We’re going to run in every direction at once!), laughable (If you think you can beat your competitors in every way imaginable this year, why didn’t you last year?), or simply a restatement of business basics dressed up to look like strategic advantage. If your strategic business plan lays out the principles of running a good business and reads as if the title could be ‘Your Name Here,’ it will not have meaningful impact on your business. (Ok, I’m assuming that that principles of running a good business are not earth shattering news at your company.)

Strategic Business Plans are where you have to differentiate yourself. This helps focus resources and decision making. Items where you are going to be just as good as the competition are still important but put them somewhere else. The high concept strategy for each level/division/product category needs to be simple enough that everyone in your organization understands its direction but deep enough that tactics are difficult to reproduce by outsiders and/or secret.

So, to improve usefulness, blow-up the template. Make each section and sentence earn its place. Take the ‘of course’ fundamentals and stick them in an ‘of course’ appendix so that they are out of the way (but not forgotten). Choose which competitive baselines you are going to shift to provide the bulk of your wins and focus your efforts on them.

Share This

There is no greater enemy to uncommon opportunity than common knowledge.

Years ago as head Easter Bunny for spring specialty products at Hallmark I was asked to redefine the business in a way that would start it growing again.

As I put together what we knew about consumer behavior at Easter I came across an interesting tidbit that had been foundational to our thinking in the past and, to be honest, was a roadblock to what I wanted to do in the future.

Everybody knew about this interesting tidbit. In their minds it was a fact. The tidbit appeared in business and marketing plans for as far back as my files went - without providing a source. I asked our librarian (oh, the benefits of big companies!) to see if he could dig up where it might have come from.

He searched quite a bit and finally found a reference to the tidbit in a Hallmark research summary. It referenced as a source an industry magazine ages old. The magazine article had been based on, keep your hats on, information provided by the Hallmark PR department. The Hallmark PR Department didn’t have a record of where the tidbit may have come from, but it sure made a lot of sense….

So in the end we had years of business plans that had in various ways relied on this tidbit presented as fact. It was accepted as fact because it had been referred to in many legitimate documents. It wasn’t questioned because it seemed to make logical sense. How true was the tidbit really? It didn’t matter. For me the lack of underpinnings allowed my team to move past its limitations.

So, beware of what everybody knows. Often you’ll discover that few people know why they know what everybody knows. And that makes what everybody doesn’t know an opportunity!

Share This

Differentiating and prioritizing opportunities is a primary function of the strategic plan. This is important to remember because we so often get sidetracked with all the different sections and points that typical outlines demand to be part of a ‘finished’ plan.

Remember that plan templates were developed over time by two sorts of authors. The first is the inspired, successful company that discovered a form that works. The second is the academic who has studied the inspired, successful company that discovered a form that works. From those two sources come all sorts of ‘proven’ processes and plans.

Funny thing is…The run away successes almost always deviate from the standard. They succeed specifically because they blaze an inspired trail.

So where to begin? 3 pointers:

1. Start Simple and Straightforward. If your strategy feels foggy then your people will be lost in it.
2. Let Your Strategy Limit You. If your strategy offers nothing but far off horizons with unlimited opportunity, then it will not help you make difficult choices when confronted with tactical decisions.
3. Let Your Strategy Be About What You Do, Not About Your Competitors. You never pass a competitor by following them.

Share This

Have you identified the project in your organization that will shift the ground all your competitors compete on?

Have you protected it from suffocation under layers of corporate security blankets?

No matter what kind of organization you work at, there is a good chance the idea is there — In a business plan, maybe in development. And, more than likely covered in security blankets.

Alice Rawsthorn identified corporate security blankets as a prime culprit in a recent article, Why The Overwhelming Number Of Design Flops? (April 8, International Herald Tribune). Included in her list of blankets was ‘My Competitor Did It’ and ‘Design by Committee.’

Ground shifting innovation is moved by two key forces within any organization: Vision and Fear. When conceptualized, vision drives truly innovative ideas. It attracts key talent in your organization. It drives energy and excitement that something astounding is working its way through the pipeline.

But then the concept needs to be operationalized. Here come the security (or should we say in-security) blankets.

Read more

Share This

Sometimes an industry faces a long term threat that appears so overwhelming that the long term strategy appears to involve sticking management’s collective heads’ in the sand, hoping the problem goes away.

Now, it turns out that an ostrich does not stick its head in the sand. An ostrich is smarter than that. An ostrich learns to lay low, head to the ground, blending in with the scenery until it is time to jump up and run. Or jump up, kick and run. Or bite, kick and run. An ostrich keeps its options open.

Many strategic plans appear to do the same thing with long term threats. The threat gets mentioned, maybe a study group is formed, maybe a bit of research is assigned. True believers in the importance of the long term threat might even be given a ’special project’ to concentrate on.

Truth be told, this is just a different form of sticking your head in the sand. The long term threat is separated from the day-to-day operations of the company. The company isn’t ‘laying low’ waiting for the opportunity to run. It has segmented the issue, hoping something will come running to the rescue when needed.

A recent examination of U.S. automakers’ difficulty with battery technology highlights the issue. Back in the 70’s they let more fuel efficient autos in the door when fuel supplies became expensive and unpredictable. Today, once again they are behind in technology that improves fuel efficiency and it appears that competitors may have locked in years of advances in battery technology critical to catching up.

Where was the point in the strategic plan that said, “With a spike in oil prices our entire sales model will be disrupted and we will have to improve fuel efficiency because customers demand it?” You know it had to be there somewhere. They spent millions on research. They’re not idiots.

In the end, the issue was relegated off somewhere. The opportunity costs of being caught flat footed were not factored into their existing line development. The costs of playing catch-up in a world where falling behind can be terminal were ignored.

Your products face long term strategic threats. It may be environmental, it may be technological, it may be social. They exists. There are examples of great companies facing these threats head on. Building the fact of disruptive change into the day-to-day operations of their firms.

So, if you’re going to mimic an ostrich, make sure you know how an ostrich actually deals with threat — because sticking your head in the sand does not work.

Share This

As you may have read at the end of March, Dominick’s has turned me into a Yogurt Fanatic. This is not to say I enjoy yogurt more than I had before, it’s just that now I must make a separate trip to find the brand to which I had become attached (Lifeway Kefir). It’s been about two weeks and I’ve discovered Trader Joe’s. It’s a nice place. They have kefir. They also have baked pea pods (yum). To date I’ve made two trips for kefir, spent about $60 in doing so, and have found a store with a bunch of stuff I can’t find at Dominick’s.

Who Cares?

Back to shelf optimization and the trade-offs you end up making. Dominick’s missed why I shop their yogurt display. They didn’t get it. I now am buying all my yogurt elsewhere, other things as well. If there are only a few of me, Dominick’s probably wins overall from increased yogurt sales. if there are a lot of folks like me… well, they just made a great hidden contribution to their competition.

Share This

All too often I find core business strategy buried under mounds of things marketers have decided every strategic plan must say.

Enough already.

A great business strategy must be easy to understand, drive decisions at every level of your organization and survive attempts at imitation or attack from your competitors.

Boil your strategic plan down to what you will use to give you an edge. Make it a declarative document. Include only the enlightenment, leave the specifics of ‘how’ to those spectacular employees you’ve hired.

Put the twelve pounds of supporting research somewhere else. Your strategy speaks for itself. It is direction. it is decisiveness. It moves budgets, deletes sku’s and initiates innovation.

Share This

Until last week I was not a yogurt fanatic.

Then my local Dominick’s optimized their yogurt selection.

During this process I’m sure they looked at sales, product attributes, profitability and synergies. Unfortunately my milkshake-like kifer drink didn’t make the mix. The matrix they developed seems to cover every possible known and unknown yogurt need…regular, low fat, no fat, sugary, sugar free, kid flavors, cartoon characters, real fruit, mashed fruit, desert flavor, medicinal, snack….

My product didn’t make the cut. It was expensive, in a large bottle, and I’m sure low volume.

And now I am a yogurt fanatic. I am making a special trip to find my old favorite, strawberry-banana Lifeway Kifer. I was so used to grabbing the familiar milk bottle shaped package, that I didn’t even know the brand name until I looked it up on the internet.

What does this mean? Well for Dominick’s, I’m sure their sales in the yogurt display will increase significantly. But for a few of us, there is a lost synergy that may not be noticed. I’ll be trading a trip to Dominick’s for a trip to a store that has my yogurt. Just one trip a month (the beauty of long shelf life). Probably just a quick trip. But as you can probably guess, no trip into a store ends with just one item being purchased.

This is the danger of a shelf optimization program that does not truly comprehend variety. To me, the display looks like it has less variety than ever creating one lost trip a month. Yes, there are 8 varieties of Peach. But no, there is no Lifeway Kifer. The value of that to Dominick’s is much more than the price of my Kifer.

On the other hand. It may be worth the trade off. Maybe there are so few yogurt fanatics out there like me that my decreased shopping will never be noticed.

Share This

Have you pulled out this year’s marketing plan to see if you are still in the right ballpark and still in the game?

Next week is the last week of the first quarter. Set some time aside to pull your performance reports together (especially if this isn’t done automatically) for your programs and overall performance. Gather your team together and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did we do what we set out to do? If no, why not?
2. Did we perform the way we expected? If no, why not?
3. What worked and didn’t from a program perspctive? Why?
4. Have there been any changes internally or in the marketplace that means your plans for the next quarter need to change? If so, what & why?
5. Do all involved teams know your plans and expected performance for 2Q07?
6. Do you have good communications flow internally and externally to build toward maximum effectiveness?
7. Does your management know what you know and have the same expectations you have?
8. Do you have the resources to do what you planned? If not, have you adjusted your plan and expected results?
9. Have you published any changes to your plan for 2Q07 so everyone is playing with the same rules?

Taking a half-a-day to gather and review your performance will improve what you accomplish during the next quarter. Ask yourself the hard questions and make the changes. Adjusting now will save a lot of resources and explanations later on!

Share This