How Much Are the Strategies Behind Your Business and Products Really Worth?

Too interesting to do all in one post.  In the last few months, I've been routinely running across this topic in everything from business blogs, conversations with entrepreneurs, to business books.  It's the topic of business strategy and whether a significant amount of strategic planning for our business, product marketing, product development, etc., as we know it, is really worth a...  I couldn't do the topic justice in one post without making your eyeballs bleed from gray font.  So this is just the beginning.

A good starting point is this video.  If you can get past the cheesy intro on this short interview with Michael Raynor, author of the The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure, and questioning why the interviewer's side of the room looks like it's midnight and Michael's side 9am, what Michael explains about business strategy is worth listening to and pondering.

His analysis points to the basic question of risk. How much do we really know?  How certain are we about that which we're guessing about?  The idea is to embrace the fact that, generally speaking, we don't know a whole lot about the business environments we face and we can't be certain of much beyond what we do know, so what good does having a masterful business strategy and executing it perfectly do if the outcome is based on many factors out of our control anyways?

His comments on Microsoft developing multiple strategic options and possible product offerings in the 80's gives us a great example  of how Microsoft enabled itself to dominate the personal computing software space no matter which direction the market went.  Some companies have hit home runs by coming up with a great strategy and executing it flawlessly.  But the percentage of these is likely to be miniscule in comparison to those companies who have done the same, but failed miserably because the market went an unforeseen direction.  In an age where market shifts are occurring more frequently and quickly than ever, variety of options and flexibility may win supremacy over commitment to a strategy in the early stages of starting your business and getting your product out there.

Does your business strategy allow for flexibility to go the right direction when the market gives you feedback?  When developing your product line, are you creating a variety of products that will test various niches, offer different solutions or combinations to the problem your product resolves, or allows you to push it out through various channels to see where it does well?   

Another good interview with Michael Raynor on this topic can be found at Guy Kawasaki's popular business blog here.