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Combining Long-Term Thinking With Real-Time Action

January 15, 2009 By

The growing challenge that companies face these days is the real-time stream. News, information, developments, feedback, et cetera are increasingly available and confronting you in real-time. Real-time information often requires real-time action, but how does that affect long-term planning?

Long-term strategies—or strategies in general if you will—have always focused on achievements, objectives that needed to be reached by a certain point in the future. A more real-time focus on business would dictate objectives to be around a shorter time cycle and could be detrimental to long-term strategic planning.

However, I disagree. While the real-time stream does stress more real-time action, action must be focused on protecting the future. This does call for an adjusted approach to business. Achievements should focus more on shorter-term objectives but should contribute to a longer-term goal. Policies need to be created to deal with real-time interferences and processes need to be ironed out to improve responsiveness. The strategy should become more of a philosophy, a way of doing business with certain goals or ideal future situations as targets. Tactics and operations should become more agile and should focus more on short-term measurable results that can be continuously tweaked.

Prepare yourself to deal with the real-time stream but don’t lose sight of the future.

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Exit Strategies

June 17, 2007 By

Things stop working. Your TV for instance. That’s when we move on and buy a new one. Similarly in business, products/services stop working. Not everyone can be a Coca Cola, living off the success of a single, unchanged concept for decades.

Products/services come to an end for a multitude of reasons. Most common ones include:

  • Consumers don’t buy them anymore leading to losses
  • Margins have been cut due to competition
  • Companies divesting in a certain product/service
  • Substitute products/services have entered the market

Whatever the reason for the end of a product’s lifecycle is, have you thought ahead? Do you have in mind what to do once that moment comes?

Some questions to bear in mind are when considering future options are:

  • What would you want to do? Put motivation behind the direction you’d like to take.
  • What would your customers want you to do? Think about your target audience, your value proposition and your business model.
  • What can you do? Choose a direction that emphasizes your strengths and competences.

Think ahead. Stay ahead.

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Let Your Goal Be Your Pilot

September 17, 2006 By

Frequently, pilot projects are initiated to test new products/services. When the pilot is successful, companies prepare the product/service for wide-scale launch.

However, there are also instances where the product/service is killed after the pilot wasn’t successful.

Re-evaluate. Re-adjust. Re-think. Re-design. What went wrong to warrant a pilot failure? Was the concept thus flawed that an unsuccessful pilot could be predicted? Did the pilot produce new information about the product/service that was overlooked? Success can be unpredictable but shouldn’t be discarded after a setback. The pilot isn’t an end in itself. It’s merely another means to an end.

Let the end guide you.

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