Why you need to strategise realistically, and stop whacking off thinking about Jeff Bezos!
In your construction company, or your garden centre miniple, your hairdressing chain, your building society, whatever it is, be prepared to acknowledge that ‘breaking the mould’ of your business sector may be impossible for you. Don’t worry about that, either – here’s why.
A favourite ex-colleague & I caught up a while back after a gap of several years. A company guy. One of the things he bitched about was what might be termed ‘corporate planning by catchphrase’.
Attending a future-scoping session, it seems, he had been bemused by the facilitator’s opening instruction to participants. Specifically, attendees had been told,
…“we have to find out how to make (this company) more Tesla.”
(Full disclosure – this article originally appeared before Tesla stopped being metro-elite professionals brand of choice…)
In what feels like a tech-driven world, quite possibly a colleague of yours will have a bee in their bonnet like this. Tesla or not, there’s a well-known shortlist of ‘Tech Companies Everybody Admires and Wants To Be Like’.
In each case, it’s because they are ….disruptive. And there’s a problem, with that, many don’t recognise.
Admit it – in the 2020s, it’s harder to get promoted rapidly, or get venture funding, if you suggest that you basically want to do things pretty much how they are done right now. Much better to declare “I want our company to be more like Uber – and quickly”.
My worry, as someone who helps companies find advantage in their markets, is this.
That bar is probably too high.
For most of us, exciting, part-increasing talk of massive disruption/180° pivoting/ground-up-reinvention is not only unnecessary, but unrealistic. Just as you cannot kick a football like Harry Kane, you also can’t run your business like Bezos.
The brands in my headline are poor role models for most businesses.
Take Google and Amazon. Both are highly unusual, near-monopolies. They spotted opportunities to fulfil existing need with completely new technology and followed the advice of General Nathan Bedford Forrest to ‘get there firstest with the mostest.’ For example, Amazon bought smaller, equivalent bookselling competitors early on, deploying capital reserves others clearly did not have.
Crucially, and very unusually, these brands triumphed by becoming conduits, not originators, of things (goods, information) for which demand already existed. That demand was created by others.
The tech bro’s dominated their markets because they quickly became best at filling this role. Amazon, Google, even eBay at one point, rapidly made competitors not just ‘also-rans’ but actually redundant.
Think about that. If you are a highly reliable, convenient conduit for something totally separate which I want, why would I look elsewhere? I don’t ask myself why there isn’t a different local newsagent that might deliver The Economist to my house.
However, whilst all this reflects admirably on the companies just mentioned I’ll bet the sort of scenario described above doesn’t apply to your company, does it? Maybe Tesla is a fairer role model, as they are an actual manufacturer investing in R&D; but even they were still a very well-funded start-up aimed at a relatively new opportunity.
Does that describe you?
Arguably, out of all the ‘usual suspect’ brands we get told to emulate, the most laudable, in terms of broadly-applicable business lessons, is Apple. Whcih is no help, alas. Because if employees are sick of being asked to look at Google for best practice, they are double-sick/ head-down-the-toilet-sick/ I-don’t-remember-eating-that sick of hearing about fucking Apple.
I’d be a hypocrite to suggest no one can learn from them, but expect groans from the board meeting at which you try to get colleagues to do so.
Why try at all, though? Why do we do this?
Why don’t we all, in our own markets, have companies whose strategy and practice we already quietly admire and wish to emulate, or preferably to beat?
A big reason is our love of novelty and Big Claims. Like I’ve said, ‘nothing will ever be the same again’ is a regular chorus. And brave is the person who says “oh, I don’t like the sound of that”. The tech giants epitomise our forward-progressive notion of human development. We actually want, even need, to admire them.
Truth is: most of us actually work in areas that lag somewhat behind the cutting-edge. In my core activity, in the marketing arena, there has been decade-on-decade change but, for all that, I increasingly see brands returning to TV, and I still get hardcopy catalogues in the post from clothing companies.
Hmm. I’d argue, scratch below the surface of our constant talk of disruption and radical change and a lot is just hot air. Impossible to live up to. Take the pandemic. What we have mostly seen since covid is white-collar, office based businesses changing their workspace, and working practices, to a mixed model.
That’s it. Graduates being at home more, with their over-attentive cats, and saving big on takeaway coffee.
There’s no doubt that said disruption is genuine. But let’s not pretend that the businesses involved in hybrid work-models have embarked on the equivalent of founding Amazon in a garage and turning it into the world’s most valuable brand. Give Jeff B a bit more credit than that.
Should you indeed worry your company isn’t disruptive enough, then, and try harder?
Should you embark on an Apple-isation drive, in other words?
Well, I recommend a cold shower and some hard thinking, first.
No one hates wasting effort, firstly. And no one likes corporate initiatives that flop. But a search for an elusive disruption model for your particular industry, in your particular sector, could lead you down all sorts of paths of, ultimately unproductive, discussion. If this fails, the overwhelming likelihood is that your company or brand will return to its previous business as usual.
The 90% of your colleagues who at heart are interested in turning up to work, doing what they did last month and going home will be well served by this. But you, as a brand or business owner or director, will be no further forward at all.
Happily there is a brilliant alternative which many of you might like: don’t try so hard. Just build a decent strategy.
True strategy derives from comparison. And intelligent assessment of options.
You compare your offer with that of the competition, working out your areas of existing strength, or those where you could make yourself stronger. You look for areas where these strengths can have specific effects that help you beat the competition.
Your preferred strategic option then metaphorically ‘puts your eggs into a basket’ of your choice; a high-level plan that can translate into strong market interventions and product/service developments.
Following this, implications are agreed and actions rolled out. Certainly, at this point change, even a teeny bit of disruption, is common. Choosing a strong new strategy may well result in organisational evolution. You may wish to dial up certain aspects of your heritage, brand, or service, or to encourage a new culture that supports your particular approach.
But the new plan, you enact, needn’t be designed for a super-disruptive, totemic brand, one fit to share a Colorado jacuzzi with Amazon. Frequently, such a strategic ‘basket’ will not even exist in your market, for reasons already suggested.
Instead, a differentiated, insight–based, committed strategy will almost certainly be enough to assure your future.
Go develop such a strategy, (if you like, I can help with this), and you can forget all about Amazon. At least until you need some drain cleaner in a hurry.
To sum up: this article is not intended to mock ambition. The focus we are encouraged to make, by the lazy media, on a tiny number of exceptional businesses that are truly groundbreaking, or culturally remarkable, can be a healthy one. That is, if it makes you ambitious for positive change and gets you thinking.
But in your construction business, or your garden centre miniple, your hairdressing chain, your building society, whatever, do be prepared to acknowledge that becoming the new Tesla doesn’t actually seem possible. That’s fine, if so. As just stated, the key is to build a focused, clear strategy for the future. My career experience tells me you’ll be in a minority of companies simply by having one of those. And you certainly don’t have to be Elon Musk.
