Tag Archives: Strategic management

December 14, 2016 · 10:51 am

Willfully Ignorant

At the risk of being redundant, I’m going on a bit of a rant today about ignorance. It’s a topic I’ve touched on before but it seems as if something happens each day, either in the business world or elsewhere, that makes me feel as if I need to get this off my chest.

The hardest thing in business these days is seeing over the horizon. I think the people and enterprises that “win” are the ones whose horizon is just a bit further off, allowing them to see a little more of the road in front of them. I also believe that the way we can extend our horizons is through information. That impels each of us to seek out information about anything and everything that can help us improve our vision. Information about our market. Information about our customers. Information about our competitors. Information about the world around us.

What has me ranting today is the amount of willful ignorance I see. It’s one thing not to have information. It’s another thing if the information doesn’t exist. It’s absurd, however, to know that information is out there and even to have it offered to you and to decline it. Even worse is to hear about what the information source has to say and to challenge its reality based on nothing other than your own gut feel. That’s insane.

The worst part is that some of the folks who participate in this insanity do so out of hubris. They are the personifications of “let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story” or in the way of their own ignorant beliefs. That’s not to say they’re stupid. Many of the folks I’ve met who act this way are quite intelligent. They’re just too smitten with their own success to date to believe anything but their own guts.

I wrote about the role of intuition in business (there is one!) a little while back. Intuition is NOT “I know better than anyone.” It’s not throwing out factual information because it conflicts with your world view. It’s certainly not being willfully ignorant.

So today’s bit of business advice is to choose knowledge. Rather than willfully ignorant, be aggressively knowledgable. See further over the horizon and you’ll make better decisions. OK?

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Huh?, Thinking Aloud, What's Going On

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 12, 2016 · 11:40 am

Bursting The Bubble

Would you buy from you? Knowing what you know about your product/service and the team behind it, would you invest your hard earned capital in your company? Hopefully, the answer is yes, and it’s just as important that your response is based on real-world experience and not some vision you conjured up of your business as seen through a Vaseline-coated lens.

I raise this today because I read the chart you can see over there which summarizes the results of a study as reported by Marketing Charts. 200 Chief Marketing Officers were asked, by the CMO Council and Deloitte, how they prefer to spend their time:

When respondents were asked where they would prefer to spend their time as marketing leaders, a leading two-thirds said they’d rather team with leadership on global business strategy (66%), while a majority would also want to innovate and implement new approaches, products, and strategies (58%). Just 1 in 6 would prefer to spend their time in meetings and only 1 in 10 would want to review budgets and campaigns.

How this relates to the question I asked initially is simple. My questions put you in the position of the consumer. They imply that you’ve actually used your product or service and have done so as a consumer would (sort of like a secret shopper). The survey responses feel to me as if the CMO’s would prefer to live in a bubble, dreaming up new strategies and products while not particularly wanting to get their hands dirty in the real world activity of listening to customers.

You might wonder how any CMO can strategize without keeping the customer front and center. What’s interesting is that only 6% report that they are tasked with driving routes to revenue across all facets of the business globally. That reads like life in a bubble to me.

Each of us needs to burst whatever bubbles keep us away from our markets and our customers. Planning new products is fine but they can’t be solutions to problems that don’t exist or for which there won’t be demand once consumers realize they have a need (and hopefully they already do). You with me?

Leave a comment

Filed under Huh?, Reality checks

Tagged as , , , ,

December 5, 2016 · 12:28 pm

Where Do Business Ideas Come From?

I participated in a business forum last week for veterans who have separated from the service and are looking to start businesses. One question that came up is about the origin of business ideas. Where do business ideas come from? Why do businesses fail? What are the best businesses to start?

Gnomes' three phase business plan

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were a number of folks like me in the room who tried to provide some answers and perspective. I think where we all came out was that the best business ideas are those which solve a problem worth solving. How does one know if it’s worth solving? Well, if it’s a problem that only you have, it probably isn’t. If a lot of people have this problem you then might have a market. If it’s a problem that keeps needing solving, then you have a really good market. If people care less about the cost of solving the problem than they do in just getting it solved, you have an excellent market. And if you’re the only one with a solution that solves the problem in a way where the cost to do so is outweighed by the value you’re providing, you just might have a great business idea.

It was interesting to hear the responses as we went around the room and heard about the businesses these veterans either had started or were contemplating. Many fell nicely into the paradigm, above. In some cases, they needed help expressing their idea succinctly and clearly and in a way that demonstrated they understood the problem they’re solving and the market presented. A couple stood out as being fantastic ideas while a couple of others clearly needed more refinement and thought.

I’d encourage you to try that exercise. What problem are you solving? Is it a problem shared by enough people to make it worth solving? Who else is solving it? Why is your solution better? With those answers, you’re well down the road both to a solid business plan and to finding people who will invest in making that plan a reality. You in?

1 Comment

Filed under Consulting

Tagged as , , , ,