Success impulse: You need to get out the door!
When working on strategies with his clients, the author sometimes feels like a dad who says to his children: "You need to get out in front of the door to gain experience and test your ideas!" He thus criticizes the fact that many corporate strategies are not tested enough on the market and gives tips on how this can be improved.
Maybe you know when parents encourage their children to go outside and play instead of always sitting in the living room. Why do they do that? Because they want their offspring to gain experience outside and experience something. Because we know that life experience never comes from studying in a room, but from getting your hands dirty.
Get out the door
I also sometimes feel like dad when I'm strategizing with my clients, saying, "You need to get out and experience and test your ideas!"
What do I mean by that? For most leadership teams, there is a big dip in the strategy process when it comes to transitioning from strategy to execution. Often, they have developed great new value propositions and new business models, or have come up with new structures and requirements for the team, or other innovations.
Turned in the wrong direction
And what happens next? Many are now trying to perfect these results with additional people. More stakeholders are involved in the discussion of business models, or HR managers in considerations of cultural change. The discussions are becoming more difficult because more and more details are being added.
It drags on and often comes to a complete standstill at some point. That is a pity! Because the results were excellent in the first step. Then you just took a turn in the wrong direction: Because instead of finally "going out to play", one has continued to occupy oneself "in the room".
Testing ideas in real life
But as I said at the beginning: You can only gain experience outside. That's why you need to get your new strategy hypothesis out into the market and into the reality of your culture as quickly as possible. This is the only way to avoid getting lost in the madness of discussion.
Here are three ideas on how to do that concretely:
- Once you've decided on new value propositions and associated offerings (almost always an important part of the strategy), try to sell them to existing trusted customers - doing the following before you develop them or even produce them! You can offer favorable entry conditions for this or whatever else fits your market. Only when the first customers express serious interest, you know that you are on the right track.
- For culture change issues, start the changes with a few teams or areas. See how it goes. You almost always need to make adjustments to communication and the exact design. But you won't know until you test your ideas in real life.
- Shrink the time for everything, that is, give challenging timelines. For example, you might expect your people to have tested a new value proposition on 10-20 customers within 2-4 weeks and come back with suggestions for adjustments. Many people wait far too long and then wonder why nothing is progressing.
With these ideas, I hope to be able to encourage one or the other to bravely try them out. So then: What are you waiting for?
To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch
