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Why Strategy Fails

Research shows upwards of 90% of all strategies fail. Overrated consultants, gurus and academics blame this on the vague term ‘execution’. It’s a word with no consistent meaning.

The main story goes that anyone can plan. It’s easy. Most people can’t execute. It’s hard. That’s except for the so-called experts. The message is quite clear. It’s that stupid, ignorant or lazy people lead most companies.

No one seems to be able to make a strategy that works. Failure happens all the time. How’s this possible? It’s nonsense. Companies make other plans that work all the time. Something’s wrong. What’s so different?

The answer is simple. Most strategic plans are worthless. They must fail. Deming said it best. Don’t blame the people, blame the process. Most strategic plans don’t focus on what matters most. That’s the products or services you sell. If you don’t focus on your offerings, you can’t win.

Complexity Matters

Herbert Simon once said a complex system has many parts. Some parts you can’t predict. Every offering is complex in some way. You may sell products or services. Frequently a mix of both.

There are many possible outcomes. Some are good and some are bad. Things fall apart the more complex things get. It’s for sure that things get more complex. There are some key insights into the growth of complexity.

You might get confused. Things are not clear to you. You might begin to see contradictions. Things don’t fit together. You might not know what to do that matters most. Things are ambiguous.

To address more complexity, you must keep things as simple as possible. No more or no less. Simplicity with focus is the best solution. You must focus on what matters most and ignore what doesn’t. Don’t waste your time or efforts. Keep things simple, get focused.

The Foundation

The foundation of your business is the products or services that you sell. You may sell a combination of both. Success starts with one winning offering. Winning means you create value and succeed the way that you choose to do it.

To make a winning offering two things must be in place. First, you must have a clear value proposition. It must tell what you promise to provide. It must match what your customer prefers. Second, you must be better than the competition. Keep your promise. Win the right way. You must provide the best choice.

It is not easy to win. You must focus on what matters most right now. It means you must ignore things that don’t matter right now. Ignoring things that don’t matter is the hidden cost of winning. No one can see what you don’t do. To win involves an endless stream of don’ts.

Focus Vs Busyness

The ‘logic of focus’ is quite simple. You must see, share and do what matters most right now. You must ignore what doesn’t. It’s the key to making an offering that creates value and succeeds.

Busyness is doing things that don’t matter when you have things that do. It’s destructive. The more work you do, the less you get. You lose track of what matters. It’s a path to failure.

The fact is that what passes for focus is often just busyness. Most strategy, marketing and operations efforts are just a waste of time as well as money. You rarely get what you pay for. Things tend to get worse.

It’s an open secret. There are endless opportunities for busyness. It accomplishes nothing. You get rid of busyness by focusing on what matters. Busyness leads to failure. Focus is the path to success. It’s a clear choice. Focus or fail.

Questions

Do you focus your attention on what matters most right now? If you don’t, ask yourself why not. The answer is simple. There are distractions. Some things may seem important but you must ignore them to win.

Do you know what matters most right now for your business? The answer is simple. It’s the products or services you sell. You may sell a combination of both. Nothing matters more than your offerings. They are how you create value and succeed.

Do you know the key to having a winning offering? The answer is in the details. First, you must focus on what you sell, who you sell to, where you sell and your expectations. Second, you must focus on how you create value. Third, you must focus on how to beat your competition and meet your expectations. How do you succeed? You win the way you want to win.

The Need For Focus Begins In A Fog

Offerings are the basic unit of value creation. Nothing is more important. To create value and succeed, you must sell offerings that win the way you want to win. You must focus. It’s impossible to stay focused. There are distractions.

How do you know you must get focus? You must focus when you perceive you are in a fog. You don’t know what’s going on. There are three key signs you are in a fog.

First, you don’t understand what matters most right now. There’s confusion. You lack clarity. Second, you don’t see how things fit together. There are contradictions. You lack alignment. Third, you don’t know what actions matter most right now. There’s ambiguity. You lack priority.

If you’re in a fog about your offering, get out now. It gets worse. You must focus on what matters most right now. There’s no other way to cut through the fog.

The Twin Pillars of Offering Focus

An offering is a solution that you sell in a market. It is a product, service or combination of both that you choose to sell to a target customer in a region. The twin pillars of Offering Focus are that to win you must create value and succeed. One without the other is a pyrrhic victory. You need to know what value that you want to create. You need to know what are your exceptions for success. Then you must do what matters most right now.

The Contract

Offering Focus is a contract that you make between you and your organization to win right now. You will see, share and do what matters most right now. You will commit to make an offering that creates value as well as succeeds. To win begins and ends with your focus.

First Principle

The first principle of focus is that you need to make the right choice. Choose to do what matters most right now and ignore what doesn’t. You must seek to do what you need to do at this moment to get the job done. Regardless of your business, the job to be done that matters most is to have a winning offering. One that creates value and succeeds.

The Formula For Failure

There is no set formula for a company to win in the market. Luck is always a factor. Nothing worth doing rarely goes as planned. This is especially true when it comes to your offerings. On the other hand, there is a set formula for failure. It’s when you ignore what matters. The worst thing you can do is to not focus on what matters most right now.

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