"The challenge in this new, uncertain environment lies in your ability to expand your mind, creativity and horizons , in order to get out of the limited way of thinking, because if you do not achieve this, you will be unable to see and address the challenges of everyday life from a perspective, which would allow you to discover doors where before you only saw walls"
WHAT BUSINESS ARE WE IN?
On one occasion in a company that is in the graphic arts industry (which we will call IAG) and during the process of designing its strategic plan, I suggested as a strategy, offering clients an integrated service, that is, not only offering them printed material, but also providing them with design and/or review of your marketing plan, graphic design and finally printing; Today, this company enjoys an extraordinary competitive advantage because, instead of selling printed material, it offers creative solutions to its clients.
Click on the image above this text to see the video clip
Strategies are the foundation of the competitive advantages of an organization and, in this case, offering comprehensive solutions to customers, makes a difference with the rest of its competition.
Examples:
THE OBJECTIVE OF A COMPANY
NEVER OFFER PRODUCTS, INSTEAD YOU MUST OFFER SOLUTIONS
The Objective, is the main activity or business that the company operates. This concept must be clearly and explicitly defined and, if necessary, reviewed and redefined again and again.
There is no one way to define a business, the trick is to identify a definition that matches the special abilities of the company or what the organization is intended to be. By doing so, the company maximizes the impact of those capabilities over its competitors and gives it the competitive advantage it needs to be profitable.
"The Objective of a company is the prelude to its Mission"
For example, the case mentioned at the beginning of this article of the graphic arts company "IAG", to define your "customer orientation" (vertical downward integration), you first had to define what your business is:
To design the strategy, the first thing to do is ask yourself what business are we really in? and thus achieve a response that allows the company to maximize the impact of its special capabilities in relation to those of its competitors.
There is no single right or wrong way to define a business, nor can you know in advance whether a given definition will be accurate; Success is finding a definition that exactly fits the company's unique capabilities.
Click on the image above this text to see the video clip; it is in Spanish
About the word Strategy and citing the book "Focus" by Daniel Goleman, the author tells us the following:
"The meaning of the word “strategy” comes from the military environment and originally referred to “art to lead”, that is, to the scope of action of the generals. The strategy focuses on the way to use one's resources, while tactics deals with the way of fighting in the battle. Today, leaders need to generate strategies that make sense in all the systems in which they operate, a task typical of what we have called external focus.
A new strategy means reorient, with a new approach (reinvention = incremental innovation), but, to find a radically new strategy (innovation), we need to perceive a new position that our competitors have not noticed. And, although everyone has access to winning tactics, only a few, however, take them into account.
Although entire armies of advisors offer us sophisticated analytical tools to refine strategies, all of them frethey stop short when faced with the big question "Where do winning strategies come from?". A now classic article on strategy (Michael Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, November-December 1996, pp. 61-78) makes the offhand comment that the winning strategy "requires creativity and intuition"
In any serious business school, when topics on strategy are taught, a clear differentiation is made between exploitation (reinvention) and exploration (innovation) .
Therefore, when redefining the business we must take into account the two options raised above:
a) The exploitation strategy, which consists of perfecting and learning to improve (reinvention = continuous improvement = incremental innovation) a certain capacity, technology or business model.
Companies with a winning strategy try to refine their current operations and offerings without introducing radical changes.
b) The exploration strategy, which consists of testing innovative alternatives (disruptive or radical innovation) to those they currently employ; This strategy does not guarantee finding better ways to compete, what is sought is to find different ways to compete and know that these possibilities exist.
In strategic terms, a world-class company is one that maintains a healthy balance between its present and future focus, as Albert Dunlap said:
“There are three types of executives in the world, there are those who can obtain short-term results without having an idea of where they are going to take the company in the future, conversely, there are those who have a great ten year plan, but they will be out of business in ten months and then there are those who can achieve short term results along with a vision for the future. These are the good ones, but they are incredibly rare.
The balance and focus between the Organizational Present and Future is an act of balance that involves combining exploration (disruptive or radical innovation) with the exploitation of what already works (reinvention = continuous improvement = incremental innovation).
Based on the research carried out and my experience, it is known that companies capable of exploiting and exploring simultaneously are, as Daniel Goleman says, “ambidextrous” and to be a "World Class" (or ambidextrous) company, the leader needs to contrast a possible strategic decision with everything he knows. And, once the decision is made, he must be able to transmit it with passion and skill, appealing to cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. In the absence of strategic wisdom, however, these personal skills also fail.
As Daniel Goleman says about Strategic Leaders: "Those who make the best decisions are, in this sense, ambidextrous and they know perfectly well when they should move from one modality to another. They can lead organizations alternating both strategies, encouraging growth through innovation and cost containment (continuous improvement), two very different but complementary operations like the left and right sides of the brain.
Click on the image above this text to see the video clip
REINVENTION (SELF-TRANSFORMATION) ON A PERSONAL LEVEL
“If you want to reinvent yourself, focus on what you want and not what you fear”
🦋 The challenge in this new, very uncertain environment lies in your ability to expand your mind, creativity and horizons, in order to get out of the limited way to think, because if you do not succeed, you will be unable to see and address the challenges of everyday life from a perspective, which would allow you to discover doors where before you only saw walls.
For this it is important to raise awareness that the World is governed by multiple principles, one of them being polarity: cold and heat, sadness and joy, threats and opportunities, etc.
We must take into account that in the face of the threats that we all face in life, such as problems and obstacles, there are two options:
Paralyze ourselves and do nothing, thus committing the worst of mistakes: assuming resignation, which means accepting what apparently “we cannot do anything about” and, effectively, we end up, doing nothing to resolve the situation that is presented to us. Resignation leads to painful inaction when considering that there is nothing one can do to turn things around.
The antidote to resignation is acceptance, which allows us to admit the problem or obstacle that is presented to us, create strategies (concrete actions) to correct it Acceptance drives one to action, to take responsibility, to be fully aware that one is capable of giving a response to what happened.
What it is about is that, in the face of an adverse, threatening and unwanted situation, develop skills and actions:
To correct our weaknesses and maintain our strengths.
To confront threats and exploit opportunities.
🦋 Underneath many of the deepest fears we have, there is no real inability to face them, but the conviction that we are incapable, and this is where we must enable our potential that is deep within each of us (the unconscious).
Ignoring our potential is like when we don't see any power in a glass of water, but when it turns into steam, it is capable of moving the pistons of very powerful machines.
This is why the power of the word is very important, because words are not carried away by the wind, but rather they create realities, to stimulate the growth of ourselves and others ; This is why in our internal and external language it is important to look for words to help and not to nullify. The results are surprising.
🦋 The world is leaving behind those who wait for others to solve what they themselves have to solve. The time has come for the brave, for those who dare, for those who replace the "is that" with the "we must", with enthusiasm, courage and determination
«If one man conquered, in a battle, a thousand times a thousand men, and another conquered to only one, to himself, this would truly be the greatest of conquerors »
The Dhammapada
References:
Porter, Michael. What is Strategy? Harvard Business Review, November-December 1996, pp. 61-78: https ://es.scribd.com/document/500359598/2-What-is-Strategy-Michael-Porter-en-es
Erdozáin Rivera, Juan Carlos. The Art of Discovering from Within: Intuition. Omniverse - eaBC. 2023. https://en.eabc.website/post/intuitive-thinking-beyond-rational-one
Goleman, Daniel. Focus. Ed. Kayros.
