Big Picture Strategy

1Your Strategy, Your Choices

The traditional view of business strategy is that growth requires finding multiple wide-open market spaces, developing a portfolio of diverse breakthrough innovations, and achieving numerous “wins.” But is this really true?

The problem with the “more-is-better” view of strategy is that it is complex and causes businesses to lose focus. Teams and resources are stretched. They are given too many so-called priorities. And, ultimately, they end up with little differentiation between their brand and others in their market.

Blame traditional strategic planning tools. Traditional strategy frameworks lack a systematic way to help businesses narrow down their options. And when it comes to planning and building successful brands, more is simply more, not better.

My work with some of the most successful companies in the world has convinced me that the best commercial plans emerge from constraints – from strategic choices. Some business leaders loathe choice because, in a sense, making a choice means accepting a loss in the hopes of scoring a greater gain. When companies develop customer-based strategy, choosing to focus on a specific group of customers requires that they not focus on others. The loss is clear, and painful to the company that sees each and every customer as a profit-generating opportunity. The gain still needs to be materialized. After all, there are no guarantees that we have chosen the right customer opportunity.

So, rather than developing ...