Your Strategy Will Fail. And This Is Good News
We need to re-evaluate the criteria for success
– Nothing personal, Svyatoslav, – said my boss, frowning, – But we have to admit that the strategy you proposed a year ago doesn't work the way you supposed. And this is your fault.
It was 2010. I was the CEO of a large company. The founder and the only shareholder invited me to lead the business 18 months earlier because, as he said, he wanted to "step away from operational management." So I spent the first six months studying the company and the market, and then we, me and my team, proposed a strategy.
I need to mention that:
For the team, it was the first experience devising a strategy;
Our strategy was innovative, so we were planning to disrupt our business model.
Some of our strategic assumptions came true, and some did not. I was content with the results, but my strict boss wasn't. He graciously didn't fire me that time, but I left the company before long. Unfortunately, our visions of strategy and success diverged.
The future
Every day we build many plans, and most of them fail.
You were going to kick back and relax on Friday evening, but your biggest customer called you, and you spent the whole night at the desk.
Your flight was delayed, so you missed your son's football game.
At Christmas, you promised yourself to read more books, but today is the 17th of April, and you're so overwhelmed with work tasks that you haven't read a line.
Such things happen, and if you get frustrated, you only harm yourself. We, humans, are squeezed between two contradictory mindsets:
We seek stability and predictability;
We believe that we are the ones who are responsible for any of our failures.
Stability and predictability
Evolution designed our brains to accept new things and notions as dangerous. It's balanced with natural curiosity, but we feel uncomfortable learning something new or adapting to an unfamiliar environment. So why do you think small kids ask so many questions? They make the world around them less dangerous. If I know what it is, I am less afraid of it.
So, that's why we love our routines, rituals, schedules, and habits – they bring a drop of stability to the ocean of uncertainty in which we live. We love our homes because they feel like solid rocks in the raging sea.
This is why we love to build plans – they give us the illusion that our lives are under our control. And every time they fail, we get upset.
We are responsible for our failures
Thousands of years ago, our distant ancestors believed that a human being is nothing more than a toy in the hands of gods. People believed in fate and providence.
Modern people believe in Google Calendar, electronic task planners, and their ability to foresee the future. But the future has always been and will always be unpredictable for us. And humankind hasn't invented a way to fix the problem.
We believe the media heroes who claim they had a dream, a plan many years ago, and followed it for years to become successful. That's not true. If you read any celebrity's bio, you'll find out that their road to the top was winding and full of unpredictable accidents.
A second-rate movie actor's photo caught the eye of Steven Spielberg. An inventor's aunt's sister happened to work as a secretary at the major investor's office.
But we believe that we, and only we, are responsible for our faults. So, we build plans, fail, blame ourselves, and get upset (or sometimes get drunk).
Business strategy
A business strategy is not just a plan for a company. It must consider the following:
Hundreds of external factors, such as competitors' strategies, customer needs, and their development, social and economic trends, climate change, etc.
Dozens of internal factors, such as workers' motivation, corporate culture, level of competencies, etc.
And we mustn't forget that every step we take and every move other actors in the market make changes the situation. So, the prerequisites we base our strategy on become obsolete faster than it may seem.
If a CEO managed to take all this into account and reach all the long-term goals, it would be a miracle. Or coincidence.
If we can't build our plans on the weekend and make them come true, how can we expect a five-year strategy to be accurately implemented?
Strategy means doing things we've never done
When my son learned to walk, we fell hundreds of times. And this was natural because he tried to do things he had never done before. We always make mistakes in such situations.
But any strategy means change, creating new products or business models, building new distribution channels, and transforming our business. Even if you've done it somewhere else, you do it for the first time at this particular company and with this particular team. So, it's a new experience for you.
How can we expect that this process will go flawlessly?
We need a strategy anyway
But our inability to envision the future doesn't imply that we don't need a strategy. On the contrary, strategic discussions help us unite our team around long-term goals and choose a focus. Without a strategy, we can't be sure that our subordinates' efforts move the company in the same direction.
We need a strategy to think and act strategically.
Having a strategy increases our chances of reaching our long-term goals but guarantees nothing. But if we think and act strategically, we draw lessons from our mistakes and failures because we can compare our actual results with the planned ones and study the gaps between them.
And if a company is moving in the chosen direction, if it develops and makes its customers happy, it is enough to assess its success. So it is not worth paying attention to minor fluctuations.
So, your strategy will fail, but this is good news. The more strategies you devise, the stronger your team and your business are.
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