The Impact of Anti-Strategy on Market Effectiveness – Part IV

Anti-Strategy causes a negative impact on Market Effectiveness and your customers know it.  Let’s start with a couple of definitions before we get into the meat of this article: Anti-Strategy: Conscientious employees trying to do the right things without the guiding principles of a clear strategy.

Market Effectiveness: Those functions and processes that translate strategy into products and demand creation.

Note: This article is the fourth in the series on Anti-Strategy.  The entire series can be found here.

Often, Anti-Strategy results from external pressures causing short-term tactics to supersede long-term strategies. Some examples might include:

• A company trying to keep up with explosive growth, its only plan being “fill orders and add capacity as quickly as possible.”
• Given the recent economic downturn and intensifying global competition, many companies and their employees strive simply to “survive the day”.
• Failing to revise sales approaches and product roadmaps despite recent dramatic market changes because “that is what we have in the plan or the budget.”

The preceding are examples of no strategy at all. Do any of the following examples of Market Effectiveness Anti-Strategy sound familiar?

• A company commits to “launching a large number of new products” while their targeted customers push to prune lines and dramatically reduce inventories.
• A salesperson diligently chases a “big opportunity” that his company will never be able to support profitably or will not increase sales.
• A pricing manager doggedly quotes at extremely high margins in a new category with explosive growth potential and many potential competitors.
• A product manager with a 90% market share in a mature category feverishly and futilely tries to “grow the business” instead of harvesting it to fund other growth opportunities in the company.
• A product engineer spends most of her time and extensive resources designing new products for a category reliant upon technology that will soon be obsolete.
• A product development leader believes that what works in the US must work in Europe.

Every company we have worked with suffers from Anti-Strategy to some extent. Frequently it is because strategy isn’t used as the basis for setting company, functional and individual objectives and using these as a common platform for a healthy, accountable culture. A company’s Market Effectiveness is driven by the relationship among its business strategies, product development and demand creation as portrayed below.

It is critical to have a strategy that is grounded in market and company reality, is current, and is well understood throughout an organization. Such strategy needs to be the product of the company’s senior leaders working together and parts of the greater organization collaborating to craft related plans. Group50® has the tools, experience and know-how to review your company’s strategy and help ensure that it delivers needed results going forward. Consider Group50’s Market Effectiveness Assessment as a step in gauging how well your company’s sales-oriented activities mesh with its strategy.

If you want to find out how you can eliminate Anti-Strategy in your company, you can reach us at (909) 949-9083 or send a note to info@group50.com or request more information here.

The following articles provide more insight on the impact of Anti-Strategy at the functional level.

1. HOW CAN ANTI-STRATEGY KILL YOUR ORGANIZATION? – PART II
2. “ANTI-STRATEGY”:  A DEATH KNELL TO THE SUPPLY CHAIN – PART III
3. THE IMPACT OF ANTI-STRATEGY ON MARKET EFFECTIVENESS – PART IV
4. ANTI-STRATEGY – HOW SALES COMPENSATION CAN ACCELERATE IT – PART V
5. FROM “ANTI-STRATEGY” TO ACTIONABLE STRATEGY – PART VI
6. ANTI-STRATEGY AND INFORMATION GAPS – PART VII
7. “ANTI-STRATEGY” AND THE COMMUNICATION CONUNDRUM – PART VIII
8. INOCULATING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AGAINST ANTI-STRATEGY – PART IX

Feel free to share this link to the Anti-Strategy series with colleagues who might find this of value to them and their organization.

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About the Author:  Jim Gitney, CEO and Founder, started Group50^® Consulting in 2004 with the focus of working with companies to significantly improve their performance by leveraging people, process and technology as part of developing a company’s strategic plan 5.0.  In 2013, he created Group50’s Business Hierarchy of Needs® change management framework, a fundamental strategic planning and strategic execution guide to senior leadership teams, and was granted a trademark in 2015. This framework eliminates the existence of Anti-Strategy.

Jim has held C-suite and Board positions in large and small companies (GE, Black & Decker, Sunbeam, Rain Bird, Pankl Aerospace and others) both privately and publicly held. He is considered a subject matter expert in strategic planning, strategic execution, operations, supply chain and restructuring.  He has taken best practices from around the world, worked closely with clients and other Group50® consultants to create Group50’s full suite of strategic planning and execution tools. Group50® consulting consists of consultants from every functional discipline who have spent their careers in corporate America developing strategic plans and rolling up their shirt sleeves to get it done.

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