A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how distressed brands really shouldn’t be thinking about strategy.
Seems counterintuitive, but the fact is that brands looking to stabilise typically need to sort out their basic day-to-day tactics, instead of indulging in some grand vision for a future they probably won’t even live to see.
Today, I’m going to talk about something equally counterintuitive.
I’m going to talk about the brands who need strategy the most:
The successful ones.
Yes, my logic is a complete inversion of what common sense would dictate. I would suggest broadly that:
Failing brands -> Forget strategy
Stable brands -> Strategy optional
Flying brands -> Strategy essential
How can this be?
Why would the need for strategy increase as your business works better – rather than the reverse?
Well I’ve already explained why failing brands don’t need strategy. Their issue is that they are failing to even achieve mediocrity, and so they should focus on the ingredients of mediocrity first (i.e. best practice tactics).
That should be pretty clear.
Next we move on to stable brands – the ones that aren’t exactly flying, or growing, but are at least functional. Isn’t strategy critical for them?
Well, that depends on your motivation.
Yes, these are the businesses who have most to gain from strategy. They could go from being an average performer to a stellar one. But equally… maybe you can’t be bothered?
Maybe you’re sort of fine ticking along.
Maybe you don’t want the disruption.
Maybe you don’t want to scale at all costs.
Maybe this is as far as this business goes, and that’s actually OK.
We know from psychology that the desire to gain something is far weaker than the desire to avoid loss. And that’s why these kinds of businesses typically just can’t be bothered to think seriously about making progressive moves.
I’ve worked with many such businesses, and frankly they are emotionally satisfied to use strategy as a sort of housekeeping exercise (tidying their thinking, adding clarity and focus), rather than as a growth driver.
And you know what?
That’s fine.
But what isn’t fine is when you ignore strategy as the last category of business. The successful ones. The growing ones. The accelerating ones.
These businesses must prioritise strategy at all costs.
Why?
It’s very simple:
For them strategy is now a game of avoiding loss.
You see what happens with fast growing businesses is that the company tends to move faster than the vision of the leadership. It takes on a life of its own, and gets traction for reasons the CEO is probably only vaguely aware of.
This is an exciting but incredibly dangerous moment, because as the business sweeps upwards the team start to get cocky.
They relax. They think they’ve cracked it. They think this trajectory is a natural state of affairs, when in fact it is merely a temporary positive signal from the market, which they haven’t yet deciphered.
It’s at this moment – the growth moment – that the race actually begins.
The race is to understand the nature of this traction, capture it, and codify it into a strategy that enables them to accelerate it, and start “doing it on purpose”.
If they don’t do this, one of two things will happen:
- They will hit a growth plateau, and won’t know how to push through. Things will suddenly slow down and they’ll be totally mystified as to why, and how to get things going again.
- Market conditions will change, their advantage will disappear, and they’ll start to erode. The growth will slip away as effortlessly as it arrived, and again they’ll never quite understand why.
In other words, the business will suffer serious losses – a danger that doesn’t really apply to their failing and stable counterparts.
So if your business is growing, here are the questions I want you to ask yourself:
- Do we know precisely why this business is growing?
- Is that reason objective, and not self-flattery?
- What is the hard differentiation that is driving this growth?
- Have we codified that into a clear practical strategy?
- Do we have specific plans to accelerate it?
…or are we just riding a wave with a blindfold on?
Growth businesses invariably have something special.
They have fire.
But just like actual fire, this is more threatening than useful until you become its master.
Don’t let it burn you. Don’t let the flame die down. Become a student of your own business, observe it with humility, and discover what is really going on.
Then you can light it at will.
