Meerkat Strategy - A Metaphor

The Meerkat, the Groundhog, and the Pink Elephant – A Strategic Metaphor

The Meerkat is the unofficial mascot for Cascade Strategy. This animal is clever, curious, and relentless. Meerkats are collaborative, team players, protective (they will post a guard while other’s carry out their day-to-day activities) and quite entertaining, see Meerkat Manor. They are also rare – you can only find them in certain parts of the world. When we talk with prospective clients, we find very few Meerkats.

We are more likely to find a Groundhog. The marking for groundhogs are easy to spot. They leave big mounds of dirt; and they rarely come out of the ground to see light. The most famous groundhog is Punxsutawney Phil who has been making predictions for 131 years. Every Groundhog Day, February 2nd, the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has a big celebration on Gobbler’s Knob to see whether the infamous groundhog will see it’s shadow. According to tradition, if Phil sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of winder. If he does not, there will be an early spring. And for some reason, people come every year for this party to see what the Groundhog will predict for the future. At the big moment, the Groundhog Club President will pick the groundhog up and “listen” to hear the news. If he predicts a shadow, everyone moans. If not, everyone cheers. Soon thereafter, everyone goes back to what they were doing and barely remembering whether the Groundhog saw its’ shadow or not. Because the weather is going to be, what the weather is going to be.

The Groundhog metaphor is the Annual Strategic Retreat for many organizations. Every year, executives, directors, and managers go to an annual party to plan for the next year.  The management team with potentially the help of a strategic consultant will spend a lot of energy gathering the team to perform a SWOT analysis and develop a One to Five Year Strategic Plan. Yet, many Strategic Retreats are not Strategic – nor are they predictive.  Six weeks later most will be lucky to remember one of the Strategic Focus Areas. This is because they go back “underground” working hard on their work – making lots of markings – but without much clarity and purpose.

On other occasions, we run into the invisible Pink Elephant. The Pink Elephant Strategic Retreats tend to be the most entertaining. Although the Pink Elephant is hard to see, they are there. This group chases their customers to where ever the wind blows. Sometimes, they go in circles and barely make a profit, sometimes they are incredible efficient for years on end. Yet, the Pink Elephant never goes away. These organizations tend to be blind to the future and they are surprised when the Pink Elephant turns out to something real. Like Amazon who has taken 40% of their market share.

Our job is to learn from the Meerkats. The Meerkats are the best at Strategic Planning and Execution. We love running with the Meerkat. They have a clear vision, core values and 3 to 5 focus areas designed to move in the direction that they want. The focus areas cascade down to clear organizational goals with key performance indicators to validate whether they are moving in the right direction. The supporting projects have purpose and clear leading indicators to determine whether they are moving towards the key performance indicators for success. This by itself is not what makes the Meerkat unique. Many Groundhogs will have wonderful Strategic Plans and occasionally, the Pink Elephant will deliver its first Strategic Plan with great thought. 

What separates the Meerkat apart is clearly seen by its physical attributes – it is physically fit – especially compared to the Groundhog and Pink Elephant. The Meerkat’s secret is they CHECK on their progress of their Strategic Plan on a disciplined and recurring basis. We call this Meerkat habit, Strategic Governance. Meerkat leaders monitor strategic priorities at least quarterly. They will ask tough questions to the leadership team of whether they are working or not. Does management have enough resources? Are there any obstacles that need to be cleared? They will also START tracking goals that have become priorities. Most importantly they will STOP doing things that are NOT making a difference. 

The only problem with Meerkats – is their antiquated tools. They are still using Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Whiteboards, Google Docs and they put A LOT of work into managing their progress with dull tools from the 2000’s.  They are only Meerkats after all – not cloud-based software programmers. When they see Cascade Strategy, it is not a matter if they will buy Cascade but when. Our tool helps them save a tremendous amount of time reporting, keeping progress, staying aligned and updating their goals with simple easy to use dashboards and snapshot reports.  Meerkats spend a lot of time figure out WHAT is going on. However, the significant effort to get the data can be exhausting and Meerkats don’t always have the time to ask WHY is it going on. Cascade eliminates time wasted efforts on one-time out-of-date batch reports with real-time data that syncs with strategic and operational data.  Meerkats get smarter with Cascade and continue their lead in the marketplace.

When the Groundhog looks up from the Annual Strategic Retreat, they tend to follow their annual habits. The Groundhog has traditionally built beautiful Strategic Plans with expensive consultants and it shows up in a glossy-3-ring binder. Today, the 3-ring binder may also show up on their internet site. And six months later, the binder has collected dust and the 5-year strategic plan has no updates. A year later, the Groundhog returns and its Groundhog Day all over again.

Sometimes, Groundhog management will find a tool like Cascade and get very excited. The Groundhog sees the Meerkat and see how fit they are, and they want to be just like them – just without the work. If they buy the tool and don’t change their habits – the tool will be just like the home exercise bike that has becomes a very expensive, space wasting towel rack. It is a cruel daily reminder of how out of shape they are. The funny part is many of them will blame the exercise bike. We hear things like – it is difficult to use, or we started to see we weren’t losing weight fast enough. So, they stop using it. It must be the exercise bike’s (or Cascade) fault. Back to the hole, back to comfort.

The parable is simple. They do not have Strategic Governance and they get caught up in the day-to-day business of running a business. Back to operations, back to serving customers, back to status-quo. They are shocked when that are not on-track with their strategic plan in six months. Read Why 70% of Strategies Fail and resistance to change, lack of rigor and accountability is on that list.

We often see Groundhogs turn the corner when a new leader with a strategic AND operational mind joins the management team. If the leader has the right knowledge and the right skill, they partner with Cascade for two things. We help guide them with best practices to Strategic Governance and we work with them quarterly to provide insights on how to develop the skill. It is not an overnight process. In fact, it may take up to 3-years for an organizational Groundhog to shed all the fat and transform into a Meerkat. The first year they initially see 25% progress – because they often put too much on their plate. The Groundhog eats A LOT during those Annual Retreats and takes a long winter nap. When we work with a client, we ask the tough questions:

-       Is that strategic?

-       Will that project make a difference?

-       Why do you have 37 focus areas?

-       Do you have enough staff to complete all those goals?

-       What should you STOP doing?

With hard work and good work ethic, we see these organizations get closer to 50% successful by the end of Year One. After Year One, they start learning, develop SMART goals, become more strategic and get better and better. Strategy is a muscle like any other management tool and it must be practiced becoming great at it. We like to see organizations get to 70% to 80% successful with strategic planning. Organizations who are 100% successful are sandbagging and not stretching themselves to be better. We want to be a Meerkat – not just a trimmed down Groundhog.

Then, there are the Pink Elephants. Just to clarify, we run into amazing 40-year old organizations who are Pink Elephants with great customer focus. They tend to be operationally, and project driven. Sometimes they are a well-funded start-up. They go where the customer takes them. They go where the owners take them. However, they often have no clue who is around the corner. The Pink Elephant is scary. Sometimes it is Amazon, or Google, or a new upstart from Australia who is changing the face of Strategic Planning…

Good news. Pink Elephants like to buy things too. Change happens to Pink Elephants when they finally see the Pink Elephant. They look in the mirror and realize things are not the same that they used to be. What drives them to consider Cascade Strategy is the fear of not being around tomorrow. In many cases, the Pink Elephant adopt Cascade faster than the Groundhog because fear is a powerful motivator.

We often partner with consultants who are working with the Pink Elephants to find their vision, mission and values which will ultimately drive the foundation to a great strategic plan. After the plan is put together, we then partner with the consultant to help the Pink Elephant develop the necessary habits of Strategic Governance. A well-motivated Pink Elephant can become a Meerkat quickly with strong vision and the proper leadership to drive them to a focused goal. 

So, who are you? 

Are you a Meerkat, a Groundhog, or a Pink Elephant? 

Contact us and we will evaluate the situation, define the core strategic issues, and help you on your way to be a competitive and smart Meerkat.

Don’t waste time wondering what could have been.

www.execuestrategy.net

Until next time, Be Strategic with your Reading…and Your Actions!