Is Strategy difficult? I don't think so. After all, Porter and most others would say that there are only a few ways you can get competitive advantage. What is difficult is sustaining competitive advantage, which requires 'executing like hell', but also knowing when it's time to adapt.
This requires a strong culture in two areas around execution - the right people and the 'executing like hell'. This is where many organizations struggle. It’s interesting to look at two industries - the FMCG world and compare those old rivals, P+G and Unilever; and the newer recent Internet rivalry of Google and Yahoo!
Unilever has not seemed to lack strategy over the last decade, and it is difficult to see much difference with P+G's articulation. But Unilever has been inhibited both in execution (lacking a culture of discipline to implement) and courage to do what their strategic insight probably told them: drive hard where you lead and change the game where you don't. Sometimes adoption means seeing beyond current markets and reassert where competitive advantage. Their Deo business is a great example of where they can do this, launching the Axe brand in the US; an aerosol in a non-aerosol market and creating a whole new sub-category. While in the Hair category, their caution and reluctance to adapt has kept them behind P+G and L'Oreal.
Meanwhile, Google's supremacy in Search is well documented, and their purchase of Doubleclick opens up a new front and is very much in line with their articulated strategy. Yahoo! still seems in the middle of transformation and it is difficult to know yet whether their management has clearly confronted the brutal facts and chosen the route it can execute. The division of Audience and APG makes a lot of sense to serve their two customer bases; but I wonder how clearly they have take the long view and envisioned what future this brings and therefore what decisions can be made now to focus the business on delivering competitive advantage in that future.
By the way, while I have the utmost respect for Google's achievement to date and believe that their minds are currently very clear on the future, I look forward to seeing how they deal with their first major hiccup to come.
Regarding execution, I think one of the biggest (dis)advantages for companies is information flow. Often a company gets caught in the intellectual exercise of planning. In the worst case, it spends too much time making up numbers (planning) when there is not even agreement on one set of performance metrics. And by one set, I mean one common language in all corners of the company. Information flows can be too functionally driven, and an executive team must take a clear and firm stand on how the ship will be navigated and remove all duplication and excess. Lets be clear on the purpose - to link action to financial outcome, and in that regard the CFO must not only understand the drivers of a business, but control the flow of metrics for marketing, technical, product, sales etc.
Regarding the right people, Leaders/Managers (since I agree with Mintzberg on stressing the interchangeability here) need to take action on these areas. One common thread I see through Good to Great, Jack Welch, Mintzberg and others is that effective leaders are not those who distance themselves from the detail of the business “…but quite the opposite; they are the ones who immerse themselves in it, while being able to abstract the strategic messages from it”
In my experience, there is much subtlety in these comments, because different leaders have different strengths. This means a dual ability - to be able to grasp the big picture but then able to understand the part we each play as an individual in implementing it. It does not mean micromanaging the business asking for weekly revenue updates or more forecasts, with which the most a leader can do is optimize, and that is not their job.
This requires both humility and will. Welch would lean more to will, Collins and Mintzberg more to humility. But you need that combination.
This requires a strong culture in two areas around execution - the right people and the 'executing like hell'. This is where many organizations struggle. It’s interesting to look at two industries - the FMCG world and compare those old rivals, P+G and Unilever; and the newer recent Internet rivalry of Google and Yahoo!
Unilever has not seemed to lack strategy over the last decade, and it is difficult to see much difference with P+G's articulation. But Unilever has been inhibited both in execution (lacking a culture of discipline to implement) and courage to do what their strategic insight probably told them: drive hard where you lead and change the game where you don't. Sometimes adoption means seeing beyond current markets and reassert where competitive advantage. Their Deo business is a great example of where they can do this, launching the Axe brand in the US; an aerosol in a non-aerosol market and creating a whole new sub-category. While in the Hair category, their caution and reluctance to adapt has kept them behind P+G and L'Oreal.
Meanwhile, Google's supremacy in Search is well documented, and their purchase of Doubleclick opens up a new front and is very much in line with their articulated strategy. Yahoo! still seems in the middle of transformation and it is difficult to know yet whether their management has clearly confronted the brutal facts and chosen the route it can execute. The division of Audience and APG makes a lot of sense to serve their two customer bases; but I wonder how clearly they have take the long view and envisioned what future this brings and therefore what decisions can be made now to focus the business on delivering competitive advantage in that future.
By the way, while I have the utmost respect for Google's achievement to date and believe that their minds are currently very clear on the future, I look forward to seeing how they deal with their first major hiccup to come.
Regarding execution, I think one of the biggest (dis)advantages for companies is information flow. Often a company gets caught in the intellectual exercise of planning. In the worst case, it spends too much time making up numbers (planning) when there is not even agreement on one set of performance metrics. And by one set, I mean one common language in all corners of the company. Information flows can be too functionally driven, and an executive team must take a clear and firm stand on how the ship will be navigated and remove all duplication and excess. Lets be clear on the purpose - to link action to financial outcome, and in that regard the CFO must not only understand the drivers of a business, but control the flow of metrics for marketing, technical, product, sales etc.
Regarding the right people, Leaders/Managers (since I agree with Mintzberg on stressing the interchangeability here) need to take action on these areas. One common thread I see through Good to Great, Jack Welch, Mintzberg and others is that effective leaders are not those who distance themselves from the detail of the business “…but quite the opposite; they are the ones who immerse themselves in it, while being able to abstract the strategic messages from it”
In my experience, there is much subtlety in these comments, because different leaders have different strengths. This means a dual ability - to be able to grasp the big picture but then able to understand the part we each play as an individual in implementing it. It does not mean micromanaging the business asking for weekly revenue updates or more forecasts, with which the most a leader can do is optimize, and that is not their job.
This requires both humility and will. Welch would lean more to will, Collins and Mintzberg more to humility. But you need that combination.
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