In our last episode, I mentioned how Knute Rockne compiled four sophomore football players in the Notre Dame backfield who became football lore. The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame destroyed almost any defense they faced from 1922 to 1924, only losing twice to Nebraska.
In a strange way, their image came to me when reading Richard P Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and his four major aspects of bad strategy. Rumelt writes that you can detect bad strategy out of four hallmarks: “fluff, failure to face the challenge, mistaking goals for strategy, and bad strategic objectives.”
In this issue, we will discuss the second horseman, “failure to face challenge.” As Rumelt pointed out, “bad strategies fail to recognize or define the challenge,” thus preventing any chance of developing a strategy to improve it.
As as CPA, some of my clients have refused to identify a major challenge in their business. This “ostrich head in the sand” habit always frustrated me. These small and medium-sized business owners used many excuses to continue working in their comfort zone. They ignored the “lit fuse.” The fuse ultimately led to crises. Les McKeown in Predictable Success, labelled this as “The Big Rut” where “the organization has lost any desire to be creative or take risks, and is instead solely focused on maintaining and marginally improving how it has done business in the past.”
The problem that seems to recur is the failure to focus on the clients’ needs. Many strategy books discuss this point of view, but many organizations fail to see it. In other words, they have to turn the telescope around and stop looking at themselves. They must stop focussing on what THEY think the client need, and instead swing the telescope to point away from them.
Now, that is not to say to ignore “the elephant in the room.” That giant inefficient product, or process, that is running the company into the ground. But, by focusing on your customer in a strategic process, you may also see that the big expensive, inefficent elephant in your storage room will have to go.
This is why strategic planning is important to businesses of every size. The process offers a view that many businesses fail to even consider. A strategic plan doesn’t have to be a hundred page detail analysis with footnotes that takes a month and costs tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, a simple plan can only take a couple of hours, or if more brainstorming is needed, a couple of hours each day for a few days. The process could lead to a new business and the pasturing of the fourth horseman.
Our next issue will discuss horseman #3, mistaking goals for strategy.