Common Scaleup Mistakes #2 Aspirations Plenty, But No Cohesive Plan! Failing to Create a Realisable Strategy
Amit Vaidya
Executive Board Advisor & Consultant. International scaleup. Go-to-market options. Optimising international scaleup through distributors. Improving business development success in complex sales for B2B service providers.
More fantasies about strategy consulting and setting strategies are written in business textbooks than fantasies in children's kindergarten books!
Much of this work is written by folk with little or no track record of having defined and realised corporate-life strategies in a corporate life supported by metrics. Much of it, in my opinion, and considerable experience, is textbook "consulting nonsense", sometimes from academia who never ran a business or consultants who may not have a track record of setting and delivering strategies for their employer. They often use cliched and hacked phrases from MBA curriculum textbooks:
And so on.
I have a confession.
Father, I have sinned.
I have mocked plenty of managers, seniors and consultants who spout textbook jargon in their mistaken belief that "bullshit baffles brains" and "bullshit impresses". It does not. I tell them, "Never take your clients to be fools".
I will recite a hundred Hail Marys for your forgiveness.
I forgive you, my son.
Now that I have that off my chest, let's return to the topic.
Strategy Consulting is a buzzword. Consultant profiles often describe their work as "Strategy Consulting." But what is "strategy consulting"?
One source defines it as:
"Strategy consulting is when businesspeople — generally executives, boards, or management — bring in a third party to offer an outside, expert perspective on their business challenges.
Strategy consultants must have considerable industry knowledge and are expected to assess high-level business issues objectively.
They should take a holistic look at specific problems that companies are experiencing and advise/propose how they may be addressed through tangible, discernible actions to address those issues."
My view on strategy is clear:
"Every business needs a strategy for success that sets out a clear strategic direction"
"A five-year strategy document must be clearly written and supported by a separate one-year detailed tactical or operational plan with actions and timings with owners".
"The options for strategy, in my view, begin with action verbs"
The outcomes from a strategy review, whether by internal teams, external consultants, or a big consulting firm, typically result in a thick document that looks impressive. Some documents are so remarkable that I could be fooled into believing the person who wrote it could walk on water. But alas, the last guy who could do that died over 2000 years ago.
The strategy document has impressive diagrams, charts, and abundant correlation and scatter graphs. It is liberally sprinkled with the consultant's popular matrices, such as the Ansoff matrix (new/old markets vs. new/old products) and 2 x 2 matrices charting high/low price versus high/low volume and "Force Field Analysis," highlighting driving forces for change versus restraining forces.
Many of these documents need more simplicity and a detailed one-year tactical plan of actions and next steps with timings and ownership of the actions by a specific person or group.
Strategy documents must be concise. I do not subscribe to peddlers who sell the overly simplified nonsense of "strategy in a single or two pages."
A five-year strategy document must be clearly written and supported by a separate one-year detailed tactical or operational plan with actions and timings with owners. Some may incorporate the one-year plan as an Appendix to the Strategy document. This one-year plan is derived from the five-year strategy plan.
Some SMEs use a combined strategy and tactical plan in a single document. At the same time, an MNC tends to use a five-year Strategic Plan supported by a separate detailed tactical one-year operation plan. There is no right or wrong. The key is that strategy must have tactics, just as a piano must have major and minor notes (ebony and ivory).
The Plan—Do—Review Process (PDR).
This PDR often falls by the wayside after the first one or two sessions and is rarely carried out to a high standard.
Often, attendees view these PDRs as "just another wasted meeting where nothing is agreed upon," and the business has no way to move forward. Apathy drives the PDR to be abandoned.
Back on topic, companies wanting to scale have many aspirations—higher revenues to be achieved, new markets to be entered, new products, and so on.
In other words, they have aspirations aplenty, but many lack a plan for delivering those aspirations.
A senior leader once gave me a strategic plan from a Big Five consulting firm called "a deep dive exercise" carried out for a large six-figure sum titled "The Africa Opportunity."
It was a thick, heavy document with around 300 PowerPoint slides (very visual) and many pages written in Microsoft Word (text-rich). He asked me what I thought.
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He laughed at my reply and said:
"This is unworkable and has given us zero value. None of it makes any sense, nor does much of it relate to our specific needs in our business. We want a simple facilitated discussion on a 5-year strategic review with my senior team given that we are shifting from high volume/low price primary care products to low volume/ high price oncology and immunologic products".
Every business needs a strategy for success that sets out a clear strategic direction, but I still see examples like this from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland":
My 1st Simple Strategy Setting Exercise with Clients: The options for strategy, in my view, begin with action verbs such as:
When creating a strategy, a business can only do one or more of those action verbs across different aspects of portfolios.
For example, to enter the immunologic market, or a business could consolidate its primary care portfolio. However, consolidating primary care may also be one of the "how" to enter the immunologic market. Or its strategy may be to limit sales erosion from the loss of patents.
In my workshops and consulting projects, I always remember Rudyard Kipling's quote:
"I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew). Their names are: What, Why, When, How, Where and Who"
Any senior team or group responsible for scaling up needs to satisfy me against these six honest-serving men. After my persistent questioning and exploration, if they pass my credibility test, I can pat them on the back and tell them they have a cohesive, realisable plan to deliver a strategic direction.
BUT: It needs to be rigorously executed and implemented.
A common mistake is having a plan but poor execution skills and capabilities across the organisation.
If you commission me to help you with a strategic review or create a new strategic direction, this is how I will begin:
Decide your strategy action verb - enter, exit, consolidate, grow, etc.
Then, we refine and focus your thinking through facilitated discussions and processes:
If your staff cannot address all these questions with compelling reasons and explanations that withstand rigorous scrutiny, then perhaps you need to do what's in the photo of this Newsletter:
How I Can Help:
From my corporate life at AstraZeneca, I am a Cap-Gemini-trained facilitator who ran big change management projects in my corporate life, both in the UK and internationally, through matrix teams and structures. I have an extensive toolkit of processes and techniques to help the audience participate in discussions and facilitate consensus to arrive at THEIR plan, not mine.
I can provide a high-value strategy consulting service in life sciences. Scaleup requires a well-thought-out, well-constructed, implementable strategy with robust and impeccable execution skills.
With my help, clients create an implementable plan with buy-in across the stakeholders and a tactical plan of actions and timings, with a specific person assigned to each action to be completed by a close-by date.
The greatest value is to retain me as an advisor to oversee progress, conduct the PDRs and identify issues and slippage early for the Executive Board's consideration. Slippage identified early can be corrected. Left ignored, it cannot be corrected. Execution is important. No plan will be delivered without strong execution capabilities.
Execution is often the weakest link in an organisation. More projects and strategies fail through poor execution than Executive Teams realise.
About Samkoman Consulting Ltd:
I started SCL after a stellar career at AstraZeneca. I am focused on helping my clients succeed in scaling up in their home market and expanding into new markets, unblocking the factors stopping them from delivering scaleup after numerous attempts in existing markets, and advising senior Boardroom executives on international and domestic business commercial challenges.
I'm happy to chat to you at no cost or obligation about how I can help you without talking nonsense and jargon but truthfully telling you how it is, with straight-talking from a senior executive who has been where you are, has faced the issues and challenges that you face, and successfully addressed them. You can book a free, no-obligation Teams or Zoom call directly into my diary using the link below.
Book a free consultation with me: https://calendly.com/amitvaidya2021