Find Time (and More) for Strategy to Take You From Transactional Loop to Transformational Leap

Most companies are stuck in a loop. Whether it's financial, operational, annual or philosophical, these loops limit you and your company to transactional doing instead of transformational thinking.

Transactional with customers, suppliers, partners, and even employees. Transactional in planning, budgeting and spending. Sadly, the goal is simply to increase sales or cut costs, and leaders are incentivized to perpetuate this transactional loop. That doesn't take much strategy, it mostly takes math. Which is why CFOs often outrank CMOs.

People often wake up each day wanting to grow too. They want to grow into that better version of who they can be, to create a legacy, or to change something for the better; themselves, their companies and maybe even the world. But no new version is achievable without new vision, which is true of both people and the organizations for which they work. So if growth, innovation, change and vision are so vital, why are so many leaders so terrible at planning for it?

Make Time, and more, for Strategy.

A recent?Harvard Business Review?article entitled "If Strategy Is So Important, Why Don't We Make Time For It?" addresses some of the underlying and ongoing issues that leaders face when it comes to being strategic; They simply can't find the time for it. Or the budget. Or the support. Or the commitment. Increasingly, these individual limitations and organizational liabilities are redefining B2B as Business to Busyness, where getting things done is more important than getting things right. Until things are done wrong. That's when people acknowledge they were thrown for a loop because they were out of the loop and they need to close the loop. Loop de loop. Over and over.

How can we possibly be strategic? There's a Pandemic going on!

Despite the daily pressures to perform in the short term, companies must make, and leaders must take, more time, money and support to power the long game. Sure, when we were all 'pivoting' during the initial Covid crisis, strategy was the last thing we could find time for. It's not easy or advisable to be planning what you're going to do when you get to harbor when your ship just hit an iceberg. But now, and even before now, businesses are sacrificing long-term strategic business goals for short-term financial gains. It's relentlessly driven from the top by the bottom line. But that's not an investment mindset, it's a spending one.

For Marketing, this results in annual planning done after budgets are approved (backwards), and annual budgets released after preceding year's financials are realized (bewildering). All whilst Marketing is pressured to deliver leads faster and cheaper – without the adequate insight and strategy or time and budget necessary to promote brand and create demand.

This is scary, but it isn't surprising.

In fact, it's an ongoing and predictable pattern of behavior that we discovered in SCHERMER's?recent B2B Marketing Decision-Making Survey?of 160 senior B2B marketers; Companies launch products, campaigns and websites without the insights it takes to adequately understand the intimacies of their buyers or strategically align to the intricacies of their journeys. In fact, our research found that over 1/2 of B2B marketers say they don't have budget for research, and over 1/4 don't have time. All of which makes their strategic planning process look like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Growth comes later because of the decisions you made before.

Business and Marketing leaders must balance both a short and long term focus, not just to survive today, but to thrive tomorrow. Take Farmers, for example. They must simultaneously operate in the growing season they're in while they plan and prepare for multiple seasons ahead. And while they're forced to react to uncontrollable weather and markets without the luxury of time, those same farmers are looking beyond hours, days and weeks, to months and years and even decades ahead. Fields must be rotated as often as seeds are planted, crops must be fertilized before they can be harvested, investments must be made to become more productive, and hedges must be made to ensure the future. They know there are diminishing returns from harvesting the same field with the same crop over and over, year after year, just as companies should know that they can't rely on the same plan, budget and legacy systems to perpetuate their future success. CEOs and CMOs must adopt and apply the same disciplined and diligent 'organic' growth mindset to become stewards of their brand, as farmers are stewards of their land.

Just as farmers are challenged by commodities, your company risks being commoditized as well without a commitment to long term strategy. If your company prioritizes and optimizes only what it can monetize in the short term, it'll be limited to an endless transaction loop. If however you can envision and invest today in creating a more valuable version of tomorrow, you'll unleash an enduring transformation leap. Strategy is the key, budget is the fuel and time is the journey.

As?Jeff Lash?of?Forrester?said on the subject of strategy: "Your budget is the ultimate expression of your strategy".

So define the vision, discover the insights, find the time, unlock the budget and bravely set the strategy in a way no one else in your industry can – and let's see what grows as a result.

////// About Chris + SCHERMER //////

Chris Schermer is founder of?SCHERMER, a B2B Marketing Top 25 US Agency and a Finalist for ANA's B2B Agency of the Year four of the past seven years. SCHERMER helps companies like 3M, ADP, Cargill, Dupont, Ecolab, GE, Honeywell, Logitech, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Red Wing Shoe Co., Resideo + Thomson Reuters take their brands from Relevance to Revenue.

For more info, visit?Schermer.co, follow?@Schermer_co?and?@Chris_Schermer?on Twitter.