The prevailing philosophy says that winning teams don’t change their strategy in the locker-room at half time no matter what the score. The same philosophy has also driven corporate behavior since the concept of strategic planning took hold. Strategy isn’t set lightly nor should it be changed lightly. Trust in your people and the process then proceed with the execution. Naturally, you can and should make changes to the supporting cast as necessary. If your strategy depends heavily on relationship selling and your sells force is comprised of order takers that doesn’t invalidate the strategy, get rid of the old sales force or teach them to build relationships. Such adjustments aren’t what we’re talking about though. What we’re talking about is a major change in strategic direction as a result of major changes in the marketplace.

Changing Strategy

Satisfying customers by differentiating your products or services from those of your competitors will require your organization to formulate a strategy and commit to executing that strategy. The downside of making this commitment is that if you identify a game changing trend and try to react to it, you’ll find that making the change can have adverse consequences. You can create stress the organization causing a backlash that may result in some of your better talent leaving and making any major change in strategic direction won’t happen over night. “The most successful commitments, then, are those that are aligned with tomorrow’s circumstances and that is at best a difficult, but most often, an impossible challenge, because no one can predict the future. To further complicate matters, leaders are often required to convince resource allocators of the necessity to make commitments and establish positions to deliver services to customers before the need becomes apparent. In other words, how do you develop a strategy and make commitments during the uncertainty gap before the future ain’t what it used to be?” (“Strategic Flexibility Management Framework with Albrecht’s Law”, Jim Rabon, Paladin Associates LLC)

So if the present is flawed and the future is tenuous how does a responsible company set and execute a winning strategy?

Strategic Flexibility

As hard as it may be for the smaller companies, they have to appoint strategic flexibility. This begins by designating some one, or some group, as responsible for monitoring those industries and/or competitors having the capability to force a market change. With this knowledge they can develop risk mitigation strategies, prioritize possibilities, and plan their strategic response. The strategic flexibility framework (as provided in “The Strategy Paradox”) consists of four steps that enhance a company’s ability to increase control under uncertainty; achieve the results it desires at a level of risk it can tolerate.

The four steps are:

1. Anticipate: Build scenarios of the future.
2. Formulate: Create optimal strategies for each of those futures.
3. Accumulate: Determine what strategic options are required.
4. Operate: Manage portfolios of options.

This framework will not deliver “right” answers; it is intended to organize the results of your analysis so that you can ask the right questions and consider the appropriate choices.

Randomness, probability and “The Black Swan” (Nassim Taleb) are always going to be a force of unknown magnitude.

The Framework

The framework for strategic flexibility provides a formalized process that can be used at any level of an organization.

Anticipate. Creating a high probability, high impact picture of the future. To begin the process define the questions that need to be asked such as timeframe, competitive response, and what the reshaped market will look like.

Formulate. Identify the best strategy for each of the anticipated scenarios. Elements of each strategy developed should be divided into two categories, those that are core to the organization and those that would have to be acquired or developed. Core elements are a fall-out of standard strategic planning, i.e. what business is the company in? Maintain strength in core areas is necessary regardless of the future direction. Elements that have to be developed or acquired will become part of future spending decisions.

Accumulate. Create a portfolio of real options.

Operate. Preserve, expand, execute, or abandon the options contained in the portfolio. This is a dynamic list and should be periodically reviewed and adjusted to fit the dynamic world.

I got out of bed Wednesday ready to face my average day and until early afternoon the average was, well, average. Plenty of work to do at a slightly less than hectic pace but nothing unusual. Then the call came. It was a client in Puerto Rico and they needed help starting yesterday. The race had officially begun.

Now at any pace the work load increased drastically. I had to meet all my commitments for this week and set things up so that I could meet the future two weeks commitments without having all of my normal resources at my finger tips. The there was the new work and I had to make travel arrangements. Everything shifted into over drive.

After wrestling with shifting airline schedules, hotel reservation desk that didn’t speak English and Hertz having no cars available I finally arranged to be on site the next day. Little did I know that things were going from bad to worse starting with my trip to the airport the next morning. Coming toward the finish line I’m officially operating in hyper drive.

At 4:00am I was up and ready to taxi to the airport. In all fairness let me say that the taxi company and my driver were local so I can’t rant about foreign natinals, unless you count Warrenton, Virginia, 50 miles outside of Washington, DC foreign. In any case, the taxi was late, the driver wasted my time and money sitting in the drive way trying to attach his GPS to the windshield. As we approached the airport I thought I was dreaming when I heard someone ask if I was arrival or departure.

After thinking of a wise ass response I found I was too sleepy for all that fun and informed the driver that I was departing. Getting out of the taxi I found that the driver was also unfamiliar with the concept of receipts. What else could go wrong; NTS. I checked and headed for my gate but security stood in the path of progress.

I always set the alarm off with my artificial hip but I don’t always get a total moron as a screener. After wanding me he had to pat me down because he couldn’t trust his instrumentation. I didn’t bother to ask why we didn’t go to the pat down in the first place. Once through it was on to the plane and a nice first class seat and treatment.

The flight went well, for me anyway. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as uneventful for my luggage. I couldn’t find my non-stop flight so I settled for on stop. What could possibly go wrong? As I stood at the baggage carousel until I realized I was alone and my bag wasn’t going around in circles. Fortunately the bag was located when I was only half way to my final destination so I went back to get it.

Back on the road I learned that the GPS and I had a different understanding when it came to turn right. I thought it meant turn right now not later. I was lost in the wilds of Puerto Rico for over 7 hours.

When I go to my hotel I thought, “It sure would have been nice to have someone else to send on this trip or to make my travel arrangements. Fortunately, this isn’t an every day occurrence. I wonder what will make me want employees the next time. I don’t think I can go through this again.

It’s the same old story. Most will go pack to their respective companies with this new found knowledge and they’ll want to apply it. Too bad they didn’t hear the part about gaining senior management support, begin the process well ahead of the proposal and continue supporting the process between proposals.

The problem isn’t Price To Win and it isn’t Shipley. I am a vocal advocate for the Shipley Proposal Process, all ninety six steps. The problem rests on the desk of the very senior manager that we’re looking to for support. It manifests itself as finite resources chasing infinite opportunities and internal organizations allowed to focus on themselves rather than on the company. You can try to institute the 96 Steps, Price To Win, Inventory Control or the latest best accounting practices but no process will reach it’s full potential or return the greatest value until it becomes part of a totally integrated organization.

To play a broken record and pound a familiar drum; the greatest return on investment can only come with a return to the very basic foundation taught in every business school:

• Define the company goal and assign responsibility for their achievement to the lowest possible level.
• Ignore opportunities that are out of line with the company’s vision and mission or pursue them only after much discussion and only with a detailed plan.
• Enforce cooperation between business units by making it an integral part of their performance reviews.
• Hire people that embrace continual improvement and fire those that don’t.

Without an integrated approach those you educate will continue to face a frustrating work-life and you will never find the real weak link.

I recently received a gift certificate to Barns and Noble (the certificate was from Vocus, an excellent product, check it out). When I got the certificate in an email my first thought was that I was caught in a fishing expedition. After I checked it out and found that it was in deed a real gift I went to the Barns and Noble site to put it to use. When checking out the B&N system took the certificate number but didn’t show that the gift was deducted from my total purchase and asked for a credit card. Now I would have bet that I was the victim of a trick or had just bitten the hook.

To ensure all was still well I tried to call the B&N number provided on the check-out form. As you may have guessed I got a recording and the opportunity to select from a number of choices. The first set of numbers led to another set but with a little perseverance I finally got to talk to a human who ensured me that all was on the up and up (I didn’t need the credit card) and that I should call later to verify that the certificate had been applied,

After waiting the allotted time I called back, went through the options drill to get through to a human, and that’s where the second half of the fun began. I was asked to supply the order number, my name and address, the billing and shipping addresses, my email address and the name of something on my order. I would have offered a DNA sample but figured that after that verification fiasco I would probably be too old to read and couldn’t pay someone to read to me because my money was still being processed by the bank.

Yesterday, I tried to set up things so that notice of my blog entries would be posted to my Twitter account. That simple and easy procedure took over two hours and never verified that it had been done correctly.

Generally when you asks someone how to spell a word they’ll tell you to look it up in the dictionary. When you can’t find it the person you asked begins showing you how to use the dictionary. Think about this for a second, I find it one of the dumbest exhibitions of human nature you’ll ever have the opportunity to observe. Chances are that the person receiving the lesson in dictionary use knows how to use the book when they have some idea of what they’re looking for but if you have no idea how a word is spelled finding it in a book organized around proper spelling isn’t a quick task.

To me this is very much like the coach or sales consultant offering to help you increase sales; no one seems to have a plan or program that starts at the beginning. All that I’ve met and talked to offer improvement in your technique, approach or method assuming you have a technique, approach or method to improve.

My email this morning contained a question from a LinkedIn contact apparently floundering around looking for answers to the sales improvement question. They were looking for someone to show them the starting line or someone with a technique, approach or method they could hire to sell their company’s product or service.

I felt compelled to respond to their plea because I’ve been in the very same situation and continue to have many of the same questions. Unfortunately for both of us I had no answer other than to show him how to use the dictionary and ask that he share any rejects that contacted him.

I’m really not following Afghan politics that closely but I couldn’t help notice the difference in the two headlines and how much they resemble the state of some businesses.

For a moment forget all you know about the biased press being on the ropes and focus on the difference in the Fox and Friends headline and the newspaper’s headline. Even with all the advance since the invention of movable type the paper had to go to press long before Fox had to go on the air and that time delta was the difference between reporting what may happen and what had actually happened.

The paper’s overall business strategy may be sound but it has been overtaken by market forces that they failed to recognize, analyze and heed (sorry but I just couldn’t make that last word rhyme). Did newspapers fail to understand the impact that electronic media would have on their overall strategy; assuming that is,their strategy included providing accurate and timely news. Had they not been rigidly myopic could they have switched to a different format that would have allowed then to continue to thrive alongside twenty-four hour cable news?

I can’t accurately comment on the eventual downfall of newspapers except to wonder if their commitment to succeed in a shifting marketplace will lead to their failure, in need of a bail-out as it were. It happened to Sony twice. Once with the Batamax and the second time with the Discman. Both times Sony had a sound strategy and both times the products performed badly. Both times a shift in market demand or technological advancement did them in.

So what does an organization do? Should they change strategy to account for every change in their market regardless of how small? What if the change in the market turned out to be a rapidly passing fad, an annomoly? The Harvard Business Review once quoted a Boeing executive as saying that (because of lead-times and retooling etc)you bet your company with the decision to produce the next generation of aircraft. When you set your strategy how do you keep from betting your company?

There needs to be one person or one consultant inside of every company to act as a devils advocate or disruptive force. It would be their job to identify all the potential seen and unforeseen forces that could lead to a serious puncture wound to your plans, study them to the point that the list could be prioritized based on probability and other common risk variables, a build contingencies based on their occurrence. In this way you wouldn’t be caught by surprise and you would know where to go to get additional expertise to make a rapid, yet well thought out, change. This person wouldn’t necessarily be the best loved guest at the company picnic but they could very well save you a bundle of money.

Don’t get caught setting type when the cable company goes flying by.

I entered the connected world with one of the first entry level Palm Pilots. I moved through the Palm product line, added a cell phone, added an iPod Shuffel and then bought a Trio in order to limit the number of devices I had to travel with and then shifted to the Blackberry. All of these products worked well enough but several friends and associates raved about the iPhone and damned if Apple don’t make the best commercials since the Jefferson Airplane quite hawking 7Up. What did I have to lose?

People that hear me ramble don’t take very long to realize that generally I’m motivated to write and talk about things that don’t work well. Today is different, The first thing I discovered when I took my new iPhone 3GS out of the box is that Apple knows what customers want, they’ve listen to the market and created one of the best products, in any category, that I’ve ever used.

The iPhone takes all of the complications out before they put it in the box. It comes loaded with all the applications you need to become productive in a matter of minutes.  Of course, once you’ve found out how easily it works you’ll want to expand and just like the commercial says; there’s an app for that. You can install an app to calculate your lunch tip and while you’re waiting for you credit card to return you can see just how level your table is.  You can access the internet, look up words in a dictionary that will pronounce the word for you.  You can keep track of your network on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You can track your flight, watch YouTube, check the weather, play chess, listen to music and install a GPS and that’s just the beginning.

If you find yourself thinking about about listening to your friends and becoming mesmerized by those commercials, give in. The iPhone works like what you think a PDA should work like. Working within applications is easy and intuitive as is moving between applications. The Apple iPhone is what people have in mind when they talk about user friendly. If every Apple product works this well, there may be  a MacBook in my future before too long