Random Actions Don't Lead To A Goal
Activity without direction does stuff but leads nowhere
Welcome to the Gazebo! Take a seat. I’m honored you’re here!
This Week’s Summary:
Differentiating a job from a career
A brief description of strategic planning
A little bit of Yoda wisdom about the future
The business challenges addressed by strategic planning
Never forget that your competition has a major say in your success.
“What have you done for work prior to coming here,” asked a co-worker at the company I just joined as a new hire.
“I’ve done a lot! I worked construction before going into the Army. While in the service, I worked with a team of men to test and repair weapon systems. Then I worked as a stage manager for a few show lounges in Chicago while working my way through school. Oh, I also worked more construction to pay the bills. I have a lot of work experience,” I said confidently.
“Hmm. OK. You’ve had a lot of jobs, for sure. But what does your career look like,” he asked.
Career? I thought that was my career. I had been working for around 10 years at that point, which looked like a career to me. So I said, “I thought that was my career. What am I missing?”
“You have had a lot of jobs, but I don’t see how they add up to a career. Jobs are jobs. They get you from one point in time to another paying the bills along the way, but they often don’t complement each other. How did the jobs you had combine to create a high level of expertise or talent in a given area?” I was stumped. “Not sure.”
Image created by Ed Paulson using ChatGPT.
“Right,” he said. “They don’t except maybe the construction work you did. You’ve had a lot of jobs, but they don’t add up to a career. A career is built over time in a series of work experiences that build on each other. Think about an engineer, or a surgeon, or an auto mechanic who has worked in the same field or types of jobs over a period of time with increasing levels of responsibility and expertise requirements. That is how you have a career. Where do you want to go and why? How do you plan to get there?” I never forgot this conversation and the wisdom of this simple comment has become more profound with time and experience.
I have learned that these can be two of the most difficult questions to answer for many people, including me. Where do you want to go and why? How do you plan to get there? Hard to answer but critical for professionals and companies to ask on a regular basis.
This brief conversation was my introduction to the difference between strategic and tactical planning.1 The “Where do you want to go and why” is the “strategic” part and the “How do you plan to get there” part holds the “tactics” (actions) that get you there.
As the Oxford Dictionary puts it: “Career: the series of jobs that a person has in a particular area of work, usually involving more responsibility as time passes. Strategy: a plan that is intended to achieve a particular purpose.” If you are on a career path then you would only accept jobs that contribute to your knowledge and expertise in your particular field.
For a person wanting a career as an automobile mechanic, taking a job as a shoe salesman would not advance their career aspirations. Taking a job repairing Honda’s for a dealership would. Then their next job might be repairing Toyota’s. Their next could be repairing Mercedes. They might attend a special auto technicians education program at a local community college. All of these contribute to the auto mechanic’s aspirations where becoming a shoe salesman might pay the bills (which is important) but it won’t make one a better auto mechanic.
What Does Strategy Look Like For A Business?
Businesses exist to make enough money so that they can pay their bills and hopefully have some left over for shareholder profit as well as a cash reserve for rainy day or new product development purposes. They earn money by selling their product or service to existing customers while always looking to add new customers. Strategic planning can be thought of as the overarching approach by which a company will manage earning more money than it will spend.
Strategic Planning is a complicated topic with an unlimited number of approaches which will vary by company age, size, market characteristics, industry, economy, and other influences. The “best” plan for each company will be unique to that company so there is no one-size-fits-all. That said, there are some general concepts that will give any company a head start on its competition if considered and applied. 2
My goal here is to whet your appetite to learn more about this powerful critical thinking approach to leading a business, one that many small businesses do not consider at all in the daily rush to pay the bills.
Let’s start with some basic concepts. For someone to buy from you, a few basic criteria must be met. 1) They must have a need for a product or service like yours. 2) They must believe that your offering gives them a better value than your competitors. 3) They must somehow learn about your company and offerings, or they would never have the chance to buy from you in the first place. 4) You must be able to deliver what you promised or you will have a return and refund on your hands, not to mention a burgeoning bad reputation in the marketplace. These are just a few key steps that offer enough substance for our discussion about strategy.
Let’s take a detailed look at #1: They must have a need for a product or service like yours.
Implicit in this statement is that at the time of the sale the customer had a real enough need that they were willing to spend money to solve it and that you had the product or service that they needed. Their need may have arisen today but you would not have had a product or service to sell them if you not had started many months (years) previously developing your offering so that it would be ready to sell. In other words, some time in the past you looked into the future and guessed what your future customers would need, and then invested time and money back then to set in motion the process that enabled you to sell to them today.
This is tough stuff! Like Yoda says when asked about the future, “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.” This means that the planning must be fluid and adapt as unexpected things show up in the future.
Products or services don’t get created overnight which means that someone must be looking into the future to guess as best they can what their prospective customer’s needs will be. Then, a company must set about creating not only the offering, but also the infrastructure that exists around it like manufacturing, storage, shipping containers, sales and marketing materials, salesperson trainings, post sale service, etc. And don’t forget that your competition will also be planning their own changes over which you have no control. Like I said, this is tough stuff!
Never forget that the customers and your competition always play a role in your success, or lack thereof.
This is where strategy comes into the picture. A primary goal today when looking into the future is to determine what you want your company’s offerings to look like at some future sales date and why? This “why” should consider more than “this is what I want” and should always include some thought about “what we can reasonably accomplish.” These future goals set in motion the many processes that will need to come together, over time, to ensure that adequate sales volume is attained in the future.
Image created by Ed Paulson using ChatGPT.
This means strategizing (anticipating) future customer’s thinking processes so that when they realize that they have a need, they look to your company for a solution and (importantly) if they also look at your competition’s offerings, choose yours over theirs.
BTW, this also means that you must also have produced enough of your product so that you can meet the customer’s need within their timeframe. This means ordering long lead time components in the right quantity at the right time to have it on hand to build the final shipped product. More tough stuff!
Having done MANY new product introductions in my time, I can safely say that no matter how much planning you do, things will happen that you did not anticipate. But, and I can safely say this with a high degree of confidence, if you did not do any planning and started investing money and time in a new offering, your success will be more dependent on luck than skill. And, lucky is good when it happens but it is not repeatable which is critically important to longer term business success.
What do you think? Are you one of those who thinks that planning is a waste of time (ready - fire - aim), or one of those who wants to ensure EVERYTHING that can happen is anticipated (analysis paralysis that goes nowhere), or a blend of both (my preference and recommendation). Post your thoughts in the comments.
I recall teaching a business plan writing course to a group of adults and had a student who thought that planning was a waste of time. “I’ve had several businesses of my own, and have to tell you this … I never spent a lot of time planning and just got started getting things done”, he said. “How did that work out for you,” I asked honestly? He thought for a moment, sighed, then replied, “They all went under.” After a moment he sheepishly smiled and said, “Maybe I should listen this time.” True story and he got a LOT out of the class that I hope he applied in his next venture.
Those of you who have followed my newsletter know how much respect I hold for Alan Shugart, who I worked for while at Seagate Technologies in its early days. Next time I will introduce you to Alan’s business planning success matrix which, as usual with Alan, makes the importance of planning very clear.
As always, thank you for stopping by. Peace.
QUESTION: How do you like the new format of using links more than footnotes? The links are more efficient but do not allow me to comment in more detail. What do you think? Do you have a preference or thoughts on when to use each?
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Strategic planning is an incredibly diverse and complicated topic and I will do my best here to simplify a few core concepts. If you would like more posts on this topic please let me know in the comments. It is one of my favorite topics.
If you are looking for more information about strategic and competitive planning, you can’t go wrong by checking out this classic from Michael Porter. “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors.”