Business & The Holy Grail

Like many notions these days, the idea of 'NOW' is a fleetingly helpful frame of reference.

For the business 'now' mostly means our current context - a wide definition of now! And yet 'now' must always consider NEXT. The gap between now and next is the plan of how to get there and requires us to think about a few critical things. There is no short-cut to this.

We have to bend our collective minds around the following at least:

1. What outcome do we want?
2. How would we measure that?
3. What's stopping us getting to these outcomes?
4. What would NEXT look like?
5. What is vital/imperative to have in place to get there?
6. What are our strategies and tactics to get there?
7. How must we re-think our operation and approach to get there?
8. What does our roadmap need to look like to get there?

Within these major headings comes the more subtle questions around - everything we have to know about our markets, our customers. Conversations about communicating the value, our decision criteria, the distinguishing values, the processes, the systems and the culture we need. Add to this the myriad dimensions/flavours of everyone in the teams opinion and it is a rich discussion.

To make the crucial decisions about strategy in all of this we have to place some bets.

We also have to be as creative as we can be to think beyond how our competitors might think about the same topic. We may even be better off thinking about a better topic.

Just making a better version of the thing that we did before is far less valuable than re-imagining what the better outcome might be anyway. For a better outcome for the enterprise then we need to ask significantly better questions and that demands an open mind and the jettisoning of our prejudices on everything.

To plan a strategy on what we have today and what we know is foolish.

The stuff we do today is probably a commodity. The stuff we think we need to do is probably also fast becoming a commodity. The future strategy has to bend its mind around what really is next. Can we create a new category and vastly out think the competition. Innovation demands we think differently. We have to become alchemists. It's tough.

For example - we need to consider the stuff that gets missed between other stuff. We have to go beyond the stereotypical safety of what we know. Become evangelists for what we can dream that lives outside of our current boundaries. The edge.

So in today's world think long and hard about these three questions.

• Your customers probably don't know the full extent of what you do so what do you think they think you do? Is that the most valuable – will that keep you ahead?
• If you could imagine the 'bits' in-between your product and your competitors product - and describe the gap between that and what your customers would REALLY like - what would that be?
• If we could create value in-between the spaces created by our products and our competitors products what would we call that category and can we own that/build that before everyone else?

More on this topic here: http://johncaswell.posterous.com/ask-a-silly-question-go-on

PS: I wanted to share this - most recent visual tour through what we are up to about all this. "Changing the way business thinks and works to maximise opportunity in the 21xt Century." Nothing small and yet a rapid, simple and logical approach that works.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!