Does your business have little idea? Not a question most businesses ever ask of themselves and if you did, how could you tell.

Here are two quick sets of questions which will give the answer. The first is at the organisational level and the second is more personal, either way you need to remember as Jim Collins would say, it’s time for the brutal truth.

At the business level;

Does everyone seem to believe that the business was so much better/easier in the past? Are there more memories than ambitions?

Are there lots of ‘outside; reasons for the current performance which management believe they have little control over? Has everything, staff, I.T, legislation, competition and customers for example, become a threat?

Is there are a lack of clarity, agreement and debate about the way forward? Has management lost both its insight and ambition?

Do management believe the way forward is tighter targets, micro-management and more rules? Is there more exhortation than meaning?

Does management feel they are fire-fighting all the time? Are important meetings cancelled because something urgent came up?

And at a personal level;

Do you feel pushed from pillar to post?

Do you feel stale, frustrated or are you now just keeping your head down?

Have you planned a potential escape route in your head?

Do you ask yourself often, ‘What’s the point of this?’

When was the last time you told anyone what an exciting job you have? Would you recommend your business as a great place to work to your best friend?

If you have been honest, brutally honest and have answered ‘Yes’ to more than a couple of these questions you are probably working for a business of little ideas.

The great news is that you can do something about it and next time we’ll look at just what that might be.     

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll know that I’m hooked on understanding why so many businesses find that their strategy isn’t winning for them.

I’m convinced that what many of us perceive as strategic thinking is no longer good enough to produce that elusive big win, not even close in fact.

As I said last blog, strategy isn’t just about delivering cheaper, better, faster or selecting the right target markets. It is much more too than seeking advantage in scale, costs and margin. Everyone is trying to do this and for many it simply doesn’t work.

In an increasingly winner takes all world, it seems to me that whilst not ignoring the above, the truly great go further and blindside the competition with Big Ideas that reshape the future.

You all know who I mean and what Ikea, Google and South West Airlines etc have in common is a truly Big Idea that rewrites the rules of competitive engagement. Yet for every one of these there are thousands of also-rans locked into a race of competitive convergence to the bottom. Tom Peters quotes Fortune magazine on what these also-rans look like and it goes something like this.

They play safe, they avoid change and they believe that defending the status-quo is the safest bet.

They don’t challenge the chain of command or for that matter the conventional wisdom and accepted market practice.

They aim low, content with hitting this year’s relatively safe bet target.

In my words it’s a strategy of little ideas.

All the passion, integrity and authenticity have been lost. So has the emotional connection with the customer, in fact the customer has become the enemy, an enemy to be exploited, taken advantage of and even lied to. Business has become only an economic function to be managed by an increasingly large set of rules and targets.

Recognise any of this in your business? Next time I’ll show you how to spot the danger signs.

A riff for business strategists everywhere.

Last week I asked two important questions, firstly does your business feel like its winning? and why is it two thirds of all business strategies fail?

The answer put forward by many is that the world has changed and that is hard to refute.

When I grew up, there were just three T.V stations, I bought music on vinyl, I made phone calls from a big red box in the street, did maths on a slide-rule, looked up information in big books in a big building and dog poo was white.

As Seth Godin suggests that when you tell people this they nod, maybe reminisce a little… and then carry on with an approach to strategy that hasn’t changed in twenty years.

Twenty years ago a strategy of showing up, some good enough ideas and hard graft was 95% of success. But no longer.

Ask the management of so many businesses currently failing but it goes much deeper than that. In his great new book ‘The Future of Management’, Gary Hamel says this.

“Today its not just the occasional company that’s get caught out by the future but entire industries”

Hamel lists traditional airlines, American car-makers, French winemakers, newspapers and record companies of whole industries blindsided by the future. The point is why did Apple come up with iTunes and not a record company?

These people are clearly not stupid and they have access to the same research, consultants and best practice as everyone else.

So what’s the problem?  

The former writers of the iconic Fast Company publication, Taylor and LaBarre have got it about right I think. They say something like this, “Strategy used to be about delivering cheaper, better, faster, nicer, about selecting target markets, demographic segments, seeking advantage in scale, costs, margin and pricing to create superior performance”

Still important of course but not enough any more because the world has changed and as they point this type of thinking is being replaced by a radical new thinking. I like what they have to say on this point. It goes a bit like this.

“Who can redefine a sector by challenging the accepted practices before someone else does it for you.”

“Who has the most persuasive and original strategy for their business that clicks with the new world view emerging.”

 “Who can unleash a strategy of big ideas that reshapes the future?”

And why wouldn’t we want to do that?

Does any business actually set out to be an also-ran?

Who made that decision in your business?

Why on earth would we put in all those hours, put up with all that stress to settle for mediocre?

Look in the next couple of weeks and I’ll try and point us in the right direction.    

After all why wait until a crisis forces us to rethink our strategy?

Does your business feel like it is winning?

Or are you, as so many business managers tell me, simply working the old model harder in the increasingly desperate hope that obsessive repetition might produce a result?

Or maybe you are benchmarking your way to competitive convergence, blindly following market convention, coming up with similar ideas, similar messages and similar products as your competition.

Or simply running on strategic empty, managing a short term economic function where the future has been relegated into the annual manipulation of numbers into a budget spreadsheet?

Of course not you say, we have just returned from our annual two day strategic brainstorm at a nice country house hotel with a new plan to restructure. (what again?)

But spot any of these danger signals in your business and you may have more to think about than you might believe.

Is work just getting harder and harder, working longer hours to meet ever tougher targets? Do you feel trapped in a short term financial objective “Groundhog Day”

Does work seem to involve a growing number of fires to put out?

Are important customers getting more and more demanding?

Are many of your people, (including you?), only there because you have a mortgage to pay not because they love their job?

But the biggest give away is this. Does everything and everybody seem like a threat? When you speak to most business managers you can expect a long answer to any of these questions.

“What’s wrong with our employees?”

“What’s wrong with our customers?”

“What’s wrong with market conditions?”

And yet ask,

“What’s wrong with our strategy?”

and you’ll get either fierce denial or stony silence. So why is it two-thirds of all business strategies fail?

Stay with me as I try to find some answers.