10 Strategy...Suggestions...for 2020.

There’s no such thing as generic strategy. Nonetheless here are 10 recommendations — ok fine, resolutions, if you must — as you plot your course for the new year / new decade. Thinking mostly about growth-stage B2C businesses here, per usual, but much like a random walk through Target, there’s probably a little something here for everyone. As always #YMMV.

1. Focus more on customers than competitors. Old-school strategy was all about outsmarting and outmaneuvering the competition. (Also: chess imagery.) Now it’s fundamentally about understanding and serving your customers. Mostly because the whole notion of “competition” became annoyingly blurry and confusing, what with all the digital disruption going on everywhere, and meanwhile customers became super-empowered with smartphones, social media, Gucci delivery apps, and the like. Details notwithstanding, you can’t control what shenanigans your competitors are up to (not legally anyway), but you do have some agency over your customer relationships and interactions. So focus there. Because ultimately your customers, not your competitors, will determine your success.
2. Make bigger moves, more often. As companies get bigger, paradoxically, it often becomes harder to actually do big things. (There are exceptions obviously. If you’re a big company that can do big things, you probably don’t need to be talking to me.) But as companies grow it’s easy to fall into analysis paralysis, and the tendency to protect hard-won gains by playing it safe. Eventually this becomes a problem because the world changes, technology evolves, competitors figure out your schtick and customers move on. To stay relevant – let alone lead – you have to keep moving and innovating. Not the cliché of “fail fast, fail often” (which quickly becomes expensive and demoralizing), but: keep dreaming up big things — and then actually do those things, within a relevant time horizon. Turn strategy into execution. Don’t jump halfway across the chasm. Don’t hire 2 engineers if you really need 20. Don’t ask for “NBDB” ideas and then 10 case studies to prove those ideas will definitely work (this happens a lot, weirdly — maybe it’s just me). Swing batta batta. But don't skip batting practice.
3. Look international. U.S. companies have it easy, in many ways…we’re a big, wealthy market that’s pretty well-integrated and business-friendly. We’re sort of known for that. But there’s an entire rest-of-world out there, with an increasing amount of pocket money to spend, and better-than-ever infrastructure to support trade and commerce. Thanks to advances in technology (and, for that matter, air travel) it’s easier than ever to access. (This applies to talent as well as product markets by the way.) So when you’re thinking about growth, don’t forget to look beyond the next ocean, mountain range, or (gawd fuhbid) border wall.
4. Admit that you’re not a tech company. I mean, unless you actually are a tech company. But most companies are not, and don’t need to be – despite what you may have read in HBR. Not everything needs to be a “platform” or have a “flywheel” or serve “free lunch”. Perhaps you really want to be seen as a tech company, but what you actually are is a media company, a food delivery company, a real estate leasing company, or an exercise bike company (speaking hypothetically of course). It’s fine, and it’s enough. The world needs those things too. Focus on figuring out how to be a great one. And if you can avoid burning billions of dollars a quarter while you’re at it, so much the better.
5. Learn to love #collabs. No one company can do everything, all the time, for everyone. Plus cross-pollination can be fun. So don’t forget about partnerships as you build your master plan for world domination. The fashion industry is great at this. In luxury it’s been a decade of noteworthy collaborations, between haute and mass fashion (Dior x Adidas, Balenciaga x Crocs), between fashion and technology (Hermès x Apple), and even between and across seemingly random product categories (Vêtements x DHL?). Another category that does this well: craft breweries. Here’s a favorite example of mine from a couple years ago. (Ski jeans!) Each brand expands its audience; customers get cool new stuff. You’ve probably heard that it’s all about ecosystems nowadays. So make interesting partnerships a pillar of yours, right alongside suppliers, channels, and customers.
6. Stop forcing people to come into your outdated physical office all the time. This sounds like a squishy HR type of recommendation, but in fact it is strategy – because real estate is really expensive. And the era of expressing your corporate tumescence through giant gleaming office towers and the like is over. For one thing employees don’t like it. Young people in particular (and by that I mean anyone under, say, 45) generally prefer to be productive and comfortable on their own terms — whether that’s in a Starbucks, a co-working space, or flopped out across their own beanbag chair (which is probably rented because they prefer “experiences” to outright ownership of physical things). The labor force of the next decade wants mobility, flexibility, and a modicum of autonomy. Also open office plans have been pretty much proven to be a bust. Meanwhile, the tools for virtual collaboration have never been better, and maybe we could all burn a little less fossil fuel while we’re at it. So trim back on the square footage and use the savings to train your managers on how to lead a virtual work force. If you can get out of your lease, do it. If you own it, sell it. Yes, that black granite tower by the river is a symbol of your prestige and longevity. We get it. That’s what the pyramids were to Old Kingdom Egypt, and look how that turned out.
7. Put sustainability at the center of strategy. Not for the dubious benefit of greenwash marketing, or as a “personal virtue” as the poet Dick Cheney once so inspiringly put it. No….do it because the planet is legitimately, actually in trouble – warming inexorably, expectorating hydrocarbons, choking on indestructible plastic, etc. etc. — and everybody needs to get on board. The business community needs to do its part because, let’s be honest, we’re responsible for a huge chunk of the problem. On the flipside, we could be a big part of the solution, if we expand our definition of business viability to encompass environmental sustainability as well as profitability. (p.s. Customers are starting to demand this explicitly, because as much as they like your awesome products, they like unflooded cities and breathing oxygen even more.)
8. Ditto diversity. Because the world is multinational, multicolored, multi-gendered, and fluid across these and many other dimensions. To the extent that your communications, your talent base, and your leadership don’t reflect that reality, it’s not only not a good look – and potentially reflective of systemic bias, unconscious or otherwise – it’s suboptimal for business performance (there are studies). While we’re at it, check your supply chain, your partners, your cap table, and your board. There are so many places for diversity to flourish. Let’s push them all forward.
9. Don’t believe everything you read on social media. Especially from people offering unsolicited advice on New Year’s Eve. But most importantly:
10. Rediscover your mission. And by that I mean something that doesn’t include the words “shareholder value”. If you don’t known what your mission is, beyond making money, then either figure it out or consider closing up shop and finding a new hobby. (I hear scrapbooking is nice.) Because the future belongs to businesses and brands that have a clear, useful, nonfinancial reason to exist in the world. Figure out how to be one.

Happy new year.

tim