Developing a Compelling Business Strategy

Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton

As I sit down to write this article, I cast my mind bank over twenty years to when I was headhunted for the position of Head of Corporate Strategy by a bank that had no idea where it was going. I was recruited because I knew little about banking but lots about managing change. The bank was all but broke, had been doing the same thing for sixty years and the shareholders wanted rid of it. My job was to turn it around and sell it. I spent the first few months talking with all the key people and, when I was done, I presented a strategic plan to the Bank's Board. They were stunned... in all the wrong ways! They wanted detailed financial projections and the plan had none - deliberately. "What kind of business plan doesn't have detailed financial projections?" they objected. "The kind of compelling business plan that focuses the mind!" I replied.

A great deal has been written on how great businesses move forward on gut instinct and how so many bad business decisions are borne out of over analysis. Indeed, if you take a closer look at the word 'analysis', you'll realize that the first four letters provide a vital clue as to what part of their anatomy accountants generally look and talk through! Don't worry, it's a joke - I started life as a practicing accountant - but I'm getting over it!

Seriously, seventy years research in psychology has determined that the normal mind is all over the place, is almost incapable of achieving focus. And fifty years psychological research in the field of team dynamics proves that the senior management teams of almost all organizations are dysfunctional. This should come as no surprise if the majority of the team players are normally-minded. The point that I'm making is that you will never get anything more than 'more of the same' out of a team of normally-minded people unless they are galvanized, turned on and actually excited by how it would look and feel to be a spectacular success in business. Normal people need an abnormal amount of focus to achieve anything.

Let me give you two contrasting examples of how two very different companies went about turning their people on. A couple of weeks back, I received a 'phone call from a bank that will, for obvious reasons, remain nameless. I was told by the bank's Director of Strategy that the bank was haemorrhaging customers to its competition because "there is no concept of customer service here at all". I was told that the Board had published a vision and mission for the bank that had been designed to develop a customer service culture in the bank but it wasn't working. When I investigated what encouragement the Board had given the organization to behave in a new way, I discovered that the Board's efforts all boiled down to a mission statement that said - and I quote - "we will exceed our customers' expectations, by providing a delightful and memorable service experience." What's the point in saying something like that to a group of people who don't give a damn in the first place?

Contrast that with a small fledgling company that was trying to establish itself, some years ago, in a highly competitive and already crowded market. This small company only had one mission - to crush the then market leader. Do you think that such a challenging goal might focus the mind? Is it possible that this small team of people were on a mission - as compared to simply physically turning up for work? The market leader as Adidas - the fledgling was Nike!

The subconscious mind needs excitement. The subconsious mind, at its most powerful, is open, excited, focused and determined - just like a young childlike mind. And children are most focused by exciting things. The normal state of the adult mind, however, lack's focus, lack's get up and go, lack's excitement. If you want to achieve the spectacular in and for your business, you're going to have to give everyone an idea, a mission, a goal that they can actually get excited about. Otherwise, forget it. Your business might be successful - but you'll be judging that success against the pathetic norm of normal companies, run by normal crazy people, led by normal dysfunctional teams. So don't go clapping yourself on the back for that kind of success.

You've got to be bold, different, way out there. A few weeks back, a group of business leaders asked me how you'd recognize the difference between true gut feeling and what could be described as conventional wisdom (which is, by the way, a contradiction in terms!). The answer... true gut instinct is brave, courageous, bold. Bin the business management manuals - if the last few years of economic turmoil have proved anything, they've proved that the old way of managing is broken. Forget your MBA courses - it's impossible to become extraordinarily successful when you've been taught by normal crazy people in a lecture room.

Take a few minutes and think about how it would feel to have it all, to have arrived at the strategic outcome. Consider how you and your key players would feel. What would they be driving? What kind of vacation would you take? What kind of event would you have organized to mark the end-of-year outrageously successful outcome? What would people come up and say to you at business conferences? How would your friends in the tennis club look at you? How would you feel about yourself?

These are the things that excite the subconscious mind. If you cannot concentrate the mind, focus the subconscious, you're never going to achieve anything of any great value.


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Willie Horton enables his clients live their dream. His acclaimed Personal Development Seminars have been running since 1996 - for clients like: Pfizer, Deloitte, Nestle, KPMG, G4S & Allergan. An Irishman, he lives in the French Alps and travels the world as a much sought after speaker and mentor. He is an author and the creator of Gurdy.Net