Strategy — art of the general

WHAT is strategy? The simple answer is that it is one of the most overused, misused, and abused words in business.

Well, in fact, in most parts of our lives, sports, politics, relationships. If we haven’t got that right, then let’s hope what we’re doing is well thought out tactics.

We’ll examine both these terms briefly and then bring them into the data context. But one thing is certain: “Hope is not a strategy” as author Rick Page elaborates in his book of the same title.

Both strategy and tactics have their origins in Ancient Greece.

“Taktikos” means arranging, manoeuvring into place, moving forces, and going into the heat of the battle at the front line.

“Strategos” is the Greek word for general.

Strategy then became “The Art of The General” or the art of setting up the plan and forces before the battle begins.

So, what is the objective of strategy? In the business world, it is to develop the right plan, targeted at the right business improvement opportunities (BIOs), supported by the right type and depth of data, with the right people in the right place, time, under the right conditions.

Plans and direction to successfully execute to meet specific business objectives.

It needs patience and often calls for tactical wins to help sustain the longer-term strategy.

Strategy and Tactics have equal importance. They work hand in hand. One is almost useless without the other, but a BIOs based strategy must come first.

A roadmap is then built with tactics to support BIOs along the way, always aligned with strategy.

Here’s a not so simple question to consider.

Are you a sales company or a marketing company? So, what’s your overarching strategy?

There are other equivalents to that question such as are you an engineering company or a projects-oriented company, but we’ll stick to the sales v marketing question to keep things simple.

The sub-strategies under the overarching plan are extremely important, here are a few of several examples.

Do you focus on what the salesperson needs to move the product? Or do you focus on the consumer and the process to support salespeople to satisfy customer needs?

Satisfy customer needs – you’re a marketing company.

Are your decisions based on internal information with heavy weighting on the company’s needs, at times way more than customer’s needs?

Or are your decisions based on external information, keeping tabs on customers’ wants and needs as needs change, tabs on what the competitor is doing, and economic factors.

Internal information - you’re a sales company. Deal with inefficiencies like the kind of issues caused by inaccurate sales projections. Tendency to extrapolate from recent history and miss changes in the market but plug away with the moving product?

Or do you insist on keeping a keen eye on the market and play an active role in the company’s relationship with customers?

Are you armed with up-to-date information, to stay relevant and responsive to current market conditions and consumer needs?

The answer to that should be obvious in placing yourself in the sales or the marketing camp.

The sub-strategies that fall out of these considerations help answer field execution questions like how heavily you should invest in your sales force. Just enough to focus on customer service?

And how much should you invest in marketing besides marketing communication (advertising).

A common response is, well, we need to do both. Agreed, but which one is your focus? Does it support strategy, tactics, and BIOs?

There are several of these considerations that feed into prioritising your BIOs, and tactics to sustain the company strategy.

Here’s an Australian banking example I’m intimately familiar with: The bank is delivering projects to improve the customer experience and make it easier to do business with them. They actively manage ageing technology to improve the stability and security of their systems. Disruptive forces have created more competition, but the bank is embracing the disruption with innovation, including an innovation centre that is mostly cloud-based to enable switching on and switching off resources almost at will – less costly. Strategy: They have redefined a vision, objectives and goals under a refreshed strategy. All done in light of the changing regulatory, competitive and COVID-19 disrupted business environment. Their vision is to be Australia’s and New Zealand’s most respected bank. Their objective to deliver superior returns to shareholders, goals to turn customers into advocates, engage their people and generate a positive return on equity. Their general direction or strategy is to focus on priority segments, deliver a great customer experience, execute flawlessly and relentlessly. Their people’s values are a passion for customers, having a will to win, being bold without fear, have respect for people, and to generally do the right thing.

Their foundations are the balance sheet, managing risk, and data technologies.

So, moving on from that example and reflecting on data it is a no-brainer that Financial Reporting and Management Information produces both external reporting submissions for financial and regulatory reporting, and business intelligence and internal reporting services across the enterprise, and should be part of an ongoing Management Information Transformation.

Otherwise, you will have to overhaul everything every so often, just to get what you were already getting, no new value, known in the data industry as “just keeping the lights on for huge budget spends”.

Investing in data analytics will return far more value, well beyond bulimic spending in existing capabilities.

New, innovative, and scalable (usually cloud-based) technology to collect, host and analytically process the huge amounts of data gathered.

It’ll help you derive real-time business insights that relate to your strategies and tactics and support consumers, effective risk management, profit, performance, productivity management and enhanced shareholder value. Strategy and tactics aligned to business improvement opportunity is the key.

COVID-19 has ensured that for the remainder of the decade at least, data analytics in whichever form is going to define the difference between the winners and losers in any market space.

Which will you be?

Picture: SUPPLIED The writer shares “strategos” was the Greek word for general. Strategy then became “The Art of The General” or the art of setting up the plan and forces before the battle begins.