Seeing Beyond The Obvious

Having got a PhD in business strategy, I must know what I'm doing, right? More accurately I spent three years trying to teach a computer to think strategically. Bad idea! The problem was seeing the bigger picture and having a holistic view ain't something that bits and bytes find easy to do. Neither is it that simple as an organisation gets bigger and more than one person has responsibiliy for driving things forwards. If this rings true for you, then tune into our webinar series that will kick of with a session on Business Planning for Growth on the 16th September.

Running a business is all about having a bigger vision that the various 'factions', however you have diced and sliced the pie operationally, can understand, buy into and get behind without necessarily being 100% happy. In my experience, a decision that one department loves and another hates in invariably the wrong one for the organisation as a whole. This is what you get when silo mentality and operation detail dominates. But if decision makers don't know what the overall strategy is or what constitutes success in the longer term, i.e. the organisation is rudderless and going nowhere fast because there is no bigger picture, then all they can do is make the decision that's best for them, right here right now.

Unfortunately, the correct strategic decision can be often less than optimal tactically or indeed downright wrong from a short-term perspective, so devolved decision making has its risks. Seeing beyond the obvious and doing the right strategic thing is what differentiates the long-term winners, but equally empowering employees to make decisions is also crucial to success. So not surprisingly this is a tricky balance to strike - and if you are running a business it's your job to do this!

After once canning a development project because it was the right strategic thing to do, my technical manager said to me at the time: "We are the thoroughbreds in this space and this decision sucks. Apparently, horses can't vomit, so pardon me for the cliche but I am as sick as a very refined parrot".

Remember, if you are a business leader, feeling bad that you have had to make the right but difficult strategic decision is better than feeling good about making the obvious and easy tactical one. But if you ain't got a clear long-term business strategy, do the latter then sign up to our webinar on the 16th!