Patrick Daly's Strategic Context: Selecting Strategic Alternatives

In the last number of this?Strategic Context?newsletter, we looked at the importance of tying long-term and short-term thinking together explicitly when selecting strategic initiatives for your business. Doing this effectively, helps to get the balance right between vision and action and to integrate what we are intending to do in practical and pragmatic ways that people can relate to, engage with, and commit to.

At a recent board meeting with a client company, we were discussing the merits of a major new strategic initiative for the business when this apparent tension between the long-term vision and short-term action arose.

The initiative is well aligned with long-term business trends of decarbonisation, productivity, and the removal of bottlenecks in the supply chain. There exist numerous precedents for success of similar initiatives in other jurisdictions. Market need has been determined and explicit statements of intent from significant, prospective customers have been obtained. The long-term perspective is very compelling in terms of sustainability, growth, and reputation.

However, to reach the ultimate expression of the future vision will take several years and it will require multi-million-euro investments. Active engagement and support will be required to be garnered from multiple internal and external stakeholders and a consistent commitment of time, resource, energy, and focus will be necessary over an extended period. It will require new skills, new people, and new ways of working both commercially and operationally.

Evidently, if this opportunity is to be pursued, there are others that may have to be passed over. Additionally, the question arises of how and where to start. We are living through times of uncertainty and turbulence, so how should we go about moving forward practically and pragmatically to create positive momentum while avoiding over commitment to a course of action that cannot be corrected in the face of unforeseen shocks and changing conditions.

Our challenge now is to find a way to move forward without losing sight of the overall vision while avoiding this risk of over commitment. We need to identify and take actions that will fulfil the following:

• Provide momentum to move energy towards action and away from deliberation.
• Demonstrate viability and practicality of the concept to internal and external stakeholders.
• Provide upside benefits to success that?far?outweigh the downside risks of failure.
• Succeed or fail quickly.
• Are aligned with the longer-term objectives and goals.
• Provide learning through the resolution of practical issues and customer needs in the field.
• Inform and prioritize next actions.
• Generate feedback into the long-term vision to confirm, enhance or modify it as required.

The Achilles heel of most strategy work is not the quality of the vision or the formulation of the strategy, but rather the pragmatic implementation of the selected initiatives in the real world. It is at this critical juncture that most business strategies succeed or fail.

Further refinement and deliberation of the vision in the absence of action can be a recipe for paralysis. Do it right first time might be great advice for churning out widgets, but in strategy work it is often better to shoot first and then correct your aim rather than try to hit the perfect shot first time.

If you would like to discuss how I can help you to think clearly tying your short-term actions together coherently with your long-term objectives, contact me directly on +353 86 811 6030 or?[email protected], wherever you are in the world, to start the conversation.

You may also like to listen to my?Interlinks?podcast here?Patrick Daly Interlinks Podcast (albalogistics.com)?or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other main podcast platforms where there are over 100 recorded interviews on diverse topics related to all aspects of supply chain and logistics with business practitioners from all around the world.