The Long Lost Silver Bullet in Corporate Arsenal that could Define, Disrupt or Devour You.

Early 2016 when Reliance Industries market cap was $55Bn, I made a prognosis “Reliance will be India’s first $1 Trillion Brand”. For a period of 3 years, the market cap remained flat. I maintained my view and reinforced it through a LinkedIn post of 2019. Today, with a consensus emerging, friends and followers are curious; “How could someone predict such a mammoth move, so early in the game?” 

Under the pretext of answering this question, I would like to address a fundamentally sensitive issue ailing the corporate sector. The one I believe, is the single largest cause, challenging the survival and dominance of corporates in the world of business and innovation. 

The missing piece I refer to is “Strategic Thinking”. Sadly, many theorists, organizations and practitioners read this as synonymous to strategic planning, strategic programming and strategy making. In my view, they are very different. 

Strategy Planning is an institutionalized analysis that helps anticipate the consequence of already evolved data in a known environment. It works on the premise, tomorrow will be a reflection of yesterday. It works on pre-defined systems; the same systems that tried to institutionalise innovation and failed. A rear-view mirror approach to strategy, ostensibly setting the course once the ship has sailed.

Strategic thinking, on the other hand, is a proactive, intuitive, creative act of synthesizing discontinuities, random nuggets of data and occasional events into foreseeable trends. A process of intuitively envisioning change much before it hardens into interpretable data, consumer habit and research documents. An attempt at reading the seismic waves with a strategic purpose enabling a goal-driven-visioning process

In support of my view, I borrow a quote from Henry Mintzberg, noted author and thought leader, “Strategic Planning is not Strategic Thinking. One is analysis and other is synthesis”. In his article on The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, he goes further to explain “strategic planning not only impedes strategic thinking it causes managers to confuse the real vision”

This best explains the missing link on why organizations of today are getting disrupted and not being disruptive? Why the fortune 500s fall harder and faster. Why entrepreneurial organizations are torchbearers of innovation and corporates, despite deep pockets and battery of resources mere followers and victims of change.

Let me clarify this further by answering the question “How could I foresee the tea leaves in the Reliance cup?”. If one connected the dots on reliance’s activities through 2016-17 and evaluated in the context of its compulsion for reinventing itself through a new age business model, the idea had to be a minimum $100 Bn revenue potential. Bigger than the much-reported telecom story. 

The next-generation, 6G upgradable fibre-optic network with investments across content and retail could not be random, isolated events. My hypothesis, “Reliance is not just building the world’s largest digital-highway, it is planning to democratize data and control everything that rides on it”. Primarily controlling the future of consumerism, the supremacy for which will eventually playout on the digital battlefield. While the world may see this as a story that has played out, I see it as the beginning of my $1 Trillion prognoses. A typical strategic thinking model at play.

The objective of linking strategic thinking concept with the Reliance story is because it is easy to relate and contextualize. Also demonstrating Strategic Thinking can be applied to any and every scenario with a simple belief that any activity, consumer behaviour, market change or competitor move are never isolated. More often than not they are an early warning of an emerging market shift. The point is, do YOU see this coming? 

Strategic Thinking is one such critical solution lost in the corporate mayhem of quarterly performance. It is not about corporates surrendering the edge on innovation to entrepreneurs. It is the inability to predict, prepare and plan for one lurking around the corner. Smart thinking organizations have all the resources to adapt, align or buyout such innovation. Smart thinking organizations also have the wherewithal to steer any seismic activity of change to their advantage. The question is do they have a mechanism to forewarn themselves of the approaching meteor threatening their past, present and future.

Strategic Thinking is one such Smart Solution for Smart Organizations. The one silver bullet that could Define You, Disrupt You, Devour You. It is time, corporates Rekindle, Imbibe and Master this magical art of Strategic Thinking, The First Response to corporate well-being.

By: Raj Grover, Founder & Director Neurons Advisory.

Raj is a global CEO and entrepreneur turned thought leader and mentor working alongside promoters, business leaders, corporate boards and start-ups helping incubate, accelerate and realise their vision of exponential growth and transformation through personally designed and practised thought leadership principles on strategy, business innovation, entrepreneurship, and digitalization; one’s that truly define and differentiate new age thinking and leadership principles for success in the new age world