My personal view about strategy and the universe.
Strategy in action
Get new perspectives on strategic transformation.
Strategic Transformation starts and ends with HUMANS.
We have the data-driven cognitive power giving us answers with mathematical precision. However, every solution to a problem – any product or service – has functional, emotional and social dimensions of the result that is needed to resolve the customer problem perfectly. Any Strategy has to be human-centric.
Combine Innovation and Marketing with Empathy.
The only way to truly reach and win new customers is with solutions that add feeling to innovation and marketing.
Three basic human factors for a successful strategy.
Three essential psychological factors influence the success or failure of STRATEGY and STRATEGY PROCESS.
Mental biases impact strategic direction.
Dozens of mental biases influence decision making - so also decisions concerning the selected STRATEGIC DIRECTION.
What ist Strategy? - Only one answer creates true value for customers, society and business.
The field of Strategy has evolved substantially in the past twenty-five years. Businesses have learned to analyze their competitive environment, define their position, develop competitive and corporate advantages and understand threats to sustaining advantage in the face of challenging competitive threats. Different approaches including the resource-based view, industry and portfolio analysis, the product-market growth matrix and even game theory have helped decision makers develop business and corporate strategies.
HOWEVER, only one approach to strategy creates true value for customers, society and business.
Defining PURPOSE lies at the heart of Strategy.
PURPOSE is WHY a business exists. It is the overarching aspiration of a company - the Compass, the North Star. It determines Mission, Culture and naturally STRATEGY.
What is Business STRATEGY?
Strategy moves businesses forward. With Strategy businesses develop a way how to create superior customer value leading to a strong market position and ensuring future financial growth potentials.
Create a unique, a specific, tailor-made strategy.
There is no Generic Strategy. On the contrary. A Strategy is only a good strategy if it is tailor-made for any individual business - creating a unique market position.
Strategy helps finding a better Future.
Strategy should guide everything a business does and will do. The Strategy Belief is, that the future should be better than the past. There is always a better way. Strategy helps businesses find it. That is the mission of strategy!
I belief great Strategies:
Are guided by PURPOSE
Purpose-led businesses inspire deeper emotional engagement among customers and more impassioned commitment among employees and shareholders. Strategy should incorporate PURPOSE with strong beliefs that attract customers who share those values.
Should make the customer the hero
… not your business. The only source of income are your customers. They are your reason for existence and the people you live to serve. STRATEGY should put your heroes needs, behaviors, and insights into the core of your future direction.
Should solve a key problem
It is not enough to just know your customer. Great businesses have a clear understanding of the customers biggest frustrations and pain points. Only if you can develop your Strategy to solve their real problem, your business will have the chance of resonating with a customer and delivering a compelling reason to purchase.
Should innovate!
In a world of followers – copy cats, benchmarking activists, “me-too” offerings – and traditional strategy approaches, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Only by challenging the conventions that shape the standard approach to business, you can identify new white space creating new, superior value that delights customers and gets your business ahead of the crowd.
Should appeal to the heart
Customers are HUMAN BEINGS. They buy based on feelings, not facts alone. So any winning strategy needs to get to the root of why people buy, why they care about your business and what pulls on their heartstrings. Therefore, any creative strategic solution for helping resolving a customer problem in an innovative way needs to move beyond functional, rational benefits to deliver deeper emotional engagement.
Business types define Strategy.
There are three generic types of businesses: The INVESTOR, ENTREPRENEUR and INTERMEDIARY.
For ensuring the right approach to Strategy it may be of benefit to understand the differences and commonalities of various generic business types.
Liberate Strategy from the TOOLBOX approach!
To get back to the essence of Strategy. Forget the toolbox approach! Get back to the real approach to Strategy. One way of broadening the way one thinks about strategy is to bridge the gap between
business and other disciplines. USE METAPHERS!
Business STRATEGY = Ideas + Implementation
There is no Strategy without Implementation; no Optimization without Strategy! Strategy = develop ideas; Implementation = realising Strategy either through internal measures (Value Increase) or inorganically through M&A.
