|
WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: May 04, 2003 Don't Believe the Hype About Strategy (Business 2.0) -- "Under almost all conditions, fast learners are going to outperform even the most brilliant planners."
Reader Comments...
Isn't planning to learn quickly a strategy? "The best way to build a company for the future is to cut back on meetings and get to work." Isn't that just a strategy, too? "Talking replaces action, planning replaces learning by doing. In this sense, strategy -- the creative part of running a business that excites managers, consultants, and more than a few academics -- is overrated." Now we're getting somewhere. It's not that strategy is bad, it's that like anything else, strategy can be taken too far and made meaningless. Being an academic, Pfeffer is all too familiar with analysis, research, and planning taken to extreme. Of course, the dot bomb is an example of the other extreme. See Pfeffer's book, The Knowing-Doing Gap (ISBN: 1578511240).
The Knowing-Doing Gap is a good book. But in this article, Pfeffer seems to be providing his own definition of "strategy", and then knocking it down. That's why Wells Fargo (WFC) CEO Richard Kovacevich once said he could leave the company's strategic plan on a plane and it wouldn't make any difference. "Our success has nothing to do with planning. It has to do with execution." A fallacious argument. While it is indeed true that without proper execution, the best plans are useless, that doesn't automatically make planning a waste of time. You may need the right temperature in the oven to make the cake come out properly, but the flour is required too. "Listen to your customers. Listen to your employees. Do what they tell you." Noble, and I don't disagree with it in principle. But as a marketing recipe, this can be disastrous. How do you introduce revolutionary products when your customers haven't even thought of them yet? Customer requirements ("gimme 10000 features for $49") can also clash with business goals ("need to make money on this damn thing") instead of sitting in meetings and producing fancy PowerPoint demonstrations, develop your strategy by using your company's best thinking at the time, learning, refining, and trying again. Makes the assumption that time, effort, and development resources (money, for instance) are all not a factor in product development. Not so in the real world. Posted by: MadMan on May 4, 2003 04:01 PM
Home | Moving WebWord | Cool Books | Hot Web Sites
URL: http://webword.com/weblog/ ©1998-2005 by WebWord.com. All rights reserved. |