CEO strategy: It’s time to get back on offense:
Then Prime minister Margret Thatcher, after a cabinet meeting in Brighton, was reviewing documents with two staffers. She had just excused herself to visit the rest room when a bomb went off uner the chair she had been sitting in. Her staffers were critically injured but she escaped unharmed. The next day terrorists sent her a message, “you have to be lucky 100% of the time—we have to be lucky only once”. Playing defense you have to beat every challenge. Although there are times when defense is required, over the long hall it is not a winning strategy. These turbulent times forced many businesses to play defense, but to survive and prosper in the shift-age it’s essential to get back on offense. Following are steps to make that happen:
#1 Build a solid foundation that will generate corporate energy
- Revisit or clarify your cultural-values—what you and a critical mass of followers believe
- Focus a vision of the preferred future—based on really living the cultural-values
- Develop a statement of purpose that positions the vision—branding the company inside and out
- Teach employees to describe your company’s cultural-values and purpose—foster buy in
- Create an ethics platform—a line in the sand that establishes behavioral boundaries
#2 Document a strategy:
- Eliminate non productive products, services, assets, activities, and people
- Select everything & everybody based on market demand and alignment with your vision of the preferred future
- Document sales and operating processes that will deliver in line with your cultural- values
- Establish metrics, and introduce consequences
#3 Execute a disciplined operating plan:
- Assign employees specific tasks explained by check lists
- Train, train, train
- Hold people accountable—correct or remove marginal performers
- Engage employees in the systematic elimination of waste and rework
- Learn from experience and modify the strategic plan as required