I talked in the last blog about underlying shifts and the essential need to position your business for where the market is moving towards. If this seems obvious, think of how many brands were late to the party on eCommerce and had to play catch up. Or the unmet needs left on the table by big brands that were seized by insurgents.
I have been struck in my career by the breadth of trend work and its usefulness in supporting innovation. Creative ideation lends itself to fragments pieced together, stimulating development of concepts and ideas. Indeed, one of our key leaders is a trained futurist and leads our innovation practice.
Trends in strategy are somewhat different. Breadth is disabling. It takes you down a path of intellectual observations and high-level c-suite musing. In the worst-cases internal performance becomes rationalized by external variables, the sure sign of an uncompetitive business.
Strategy work always pivots on ruthless prioritization. Boiling down to the few things that matter and addressing those risks and opportunities fully. I have three observations to share that may be of some use.
First, focus on opportunity. Whenever the risk aspects of trends are given emphasis, it is usually because you are too late and are trying to deal with unmitigated impacts. The driver of your strategy should be a proactive, timely and decisive determination to figure out the most relevant positive changes in your markets and position to exploit them. Your ambition should be to do this with more than fair share, so that you create a business tailwind. In my experience these trends are obvious, they need little academic rigor, but they need true connectivity to business analytics. Tangible, fact-based and time-based views on what may happen matched with ideas to exploit it and investment to nurture success. The pivotal axes will always be the consumer and customer.
Second, don’t lead the witness. You must be in a realistic cadence with the importance of the trend, the speed of travel and your business plans. In recent years, sustainability is a great example of mismatch. Very wise investment in lessening impact of the supply chain morphed into consumer preference drivers that simply weren’t real. Purchasing decisions just didn’t focus on sustainability in any robust research. These were niche variables relative to the core drivers of choice, but they often got overwhelming focus with very poor ROI as a result. Leading brands cannot be successful focusing on niche attributes. Be objective and honest in satisfying the consumer and customer.
Third, a trend means it happens over time. It isn’t topical, or urgent. It is something to commit to and embrace the underlying shifts. Adapt your tactics to grow the trend, lead consumer engagement and profit from a deliberate, sustained focus. Do this with competitive leadership ambition so the trend supports share gain and category expansion. Use innovation and investment to create growth acceleration. Interestingly, you don’t need to lead on timeliness, you need to lead on scale of implementation. Apple didn’t create the smart phone, but it won half the market as a decisive “follower”.
Strategy isn’t theory. It is clear choices put decisively into action. Let it pay dividends.