3 Strategic Planning Decisions To Propel Economic Recovery
When your business emerges from the recession, it may be tempting to return to pre-recession activity and hope for pre-recession results. Unfortunately, many economists are saying that this may not happen, at least for a very long time. But even if it does, is this a sound argument for returning to the status quo?
I believe not. It is the very nature of owners of small and mid-size businesses to seize on a vision and work relentlessly toward it—this is how they succeeded in the past. I suggest that they forge a new vision to create a better future with these strategic planning decision areas.
Here are three critical questions for a business owner to consider to help re-vision the business of the future:
- Will you play the same game, or will you change the game?
- Will you return to normal, or will you create a new normal?
- Will you limit the way you monitor your business to old systems, or will you add new ones?
Change The Game
The game is business. It has rules and standards, leaders and followers, rich owners and the not so rich owners. You may find comfort in playing the game the way it has always been played—work harder than the competition and earn a bigger slice of the pie.
Today, however, the pie has shrunk, and it may not get much larger very soon. Now is the time to change the game and make your competition irrelevant, or at least less formidable. You can create a new, bigger pie and keep it to yourself.
1. Begin by rewriting the unwritten rules. “…unwritten rules form what you and all your competitors implicitly agree to and fight along. These rules are typically set by the current market leader who educates the customers—who then force the rules upon new entrants…” (Inbound Marketing Halligan and Shah).
2. Next, think differently about your business. For example, look for new combinations. Kim and Mauborgne, in their book Blue Ocean Strategy, suggest six strategies: “Look across alternative industries, across strategic groups, across buyer groups, across complementary product and service offerings, across the functional-emotional orientation of an industry, and even across time.”
In other words, think about how you may have restricted your actions by restraints that do not exist, or which exist in the mind more than in reality. What rules do you feel bound by? What are the sacred cows? What competitive demons exist like dragons under the bed? Clear them all from your mind.
3. Next, use technology to help break down old but vulnerable barriers. Consider these classic examples:
- Apple changed the game of music sales by introducing the iPod (which simplified downloading, storing, and playing music) and enabling its distribution with iTunes technology.
- Gary Vaynerchuk changed the way wine is sold by changing how people learn and experience the world of wine. His change vehicle is the video blog called Wine Library TV, which has a cult-like following of more than 80,000 viewers a day. It is as far as you can imagine from the stuffy world of “conceited sommeliers, snobby shopkeepers, and mystical conventions. His business grew 10 times in 5 years to over $50,000,000 largely through his only efforts.
- eBay changed the way buyers and sellers collaborate. No longer do you need auction houses like Christie’s. Live auctions are held online and even the smallest items can be exchanged.
- Legalzoom changed the way common legal services are provided. By focusing on a segment of services that can be easily customized via online activity from home or office, Legalzoom offers convenience, speed, and low cost. Conventional law offices cannot compete.
Businesses of any size can produce superior results when they commit to changing how their game is played.
Summary: Change the game by
- Discarding old ways of thinking
- Looking for new combinations
- Using technology to guide you
Mission: To help small and mid-size businesses capture the power of big-picture marketing.