22 Nov

How do election results change my company’s strategic, business, and product plan assumptions?

Were your strategic, business, and product plan assumptions based on one candidate winning or did you have scenarios for either outcome?  Did you have a scenario in which one party would control the Presidency, House of Representatives and the Senate?  How dependent were your strategy decisions on U.S. trade policy, corporate and individual tax policy, the Affordable Care Act, immigration policy, the strength of the dollar, student debt forgiveness, a national minimum wage, environmental regulation, etc.?  Will policy and regulatory changes under single party control make your industry more attractive or less?  How will your competitors react to these changes?  Will political, regulatory, supplier, customer, investor, and competitor reactions be positive, disruptive or destructive to your industry and business?

If the questions above left you scratching your head it’s time to pull the strategic, business, and product level plans out and review the assumptions on which your forecasts and decisions were made.  Depending on your industry, you may need to simply update or completely redo your external analysis to determine the political, economic, consumer, environmental and regulatory implications for your industry and business.  Next, identifying what actions your competitors may take in this updated external analysis and monitoring for leading indicators that may signal competitor actions will position your company to be pro-active vs. reactive.

 

Doug Hedlund
President, The Hedlund Group, LLC
doughedlund@hedlundgroupllc.com

Doug provides Line of Sight Group clients corporate, business unit, and product level strategy development and execution facilitation and guidance. Doug’s disciplined approach to strategy development and execution helps our clients translate our industry research and competitive intelligence into focused, actionable strategies and execution plans. Doug has evolved the disciplines and tools he utilizes over a twenty-seven year career in corporate development and strategy leadership roles at Deluxe Corporation, CUNA Mutual Group, and Mayo Clinic. In addition, Doug has taught the Strategic Management Capstone course in the MBA programs at the University of St. Thomas and Augsburg College since 2008 and 2009, respectively and has helped numerous organizations formulate successful strategy and strategy execution plans.

10 Nov

OUR STRATEGY ISN’T WORKING

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Our strategy doesn’t seem to be working.  What’s wrong?  When company and business unit leaders or product and market managers share this question with me I answer with the following question:  Is it your strategy, strategy execution or both?  In most cases, they don’t know, so I take them down a path of a few more questions that include:

First, are your strategy decisions aligned and compatible with your company’s vision, mission and core values?  If not, execution can be very difficult because your company’s mission and core values are foundational elements of your company’s culture.  If not aligned and compatible, Peter Drucker’s statement “culture eats strategy for breakfast” can cause a strategy which looked great on paper to fail.

Second, are your strategy decisions based on a comprehensive identification and assessment of your companies opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses?  Successful strategies exploit company’s opportunities and strengths and mitigate company’s threats and weaknesses.  The absence of comprehensive industry, market and competitive research lead to strategies that can fail miserably.  Absent outside objective research and analysis companies tend to overstate their strengths and underestimate their weaknesses.  When viewed through internal lenses strengths may look like competitive advantages when in reality they are simply table stakes and offer no competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Third, are the required execution levers in place for your strategy to be successful?  The execution lever checklist begins with the right leadership, people, organization structure, systems and processes, and culture.  Keep in mind that current execution levers don’t necessarily work with strategy decisions that include new products, markets, channels, geographies, strategic partnerships and/or acquisitions.

Finally, superior strategy and strategy execution requires focus, discipline and alignment.

 

Doug Hedlund
President, The Hedlund Group, LLC

Doug provides Line of Sight Group clients corporate, business unit, and product level strategy development and execution facilitation and guidance. Doug’s disciplined approach to strategy development and execution helps our clients translate our industry research and competitive intelligence into focused, actionable strategies and execution plans. Doug has evolved the disciplines and tools he utilizes over a twenty-seven year career in corporate development and strategy leadership roles at Deluxe Corporation, CUNA Mutual Group, and Mayo Clinic. In addition, Doug has taught the Strategic Management Capstone course in the MBA programs at the University of St. Thomas and Augsburg College since 2008 and 2009, respectively and has helped numerous organizations formulate successful strategy and strategy execution plans.