Overcoming Obstacles to Your Business Strategy

What is Business Strategy?

In order to overcome obstacles to a business strategy, one must first understand what a business strategy is. Business Strategy has been defined as "both the goal of an organization, and the pathway it follows to achieve that goal" (Whitehead, 2012). Simply put, strategy is what a company wants to do, and how it plans to do it. On the surface, this seems fairly straightforward. The problem is that, put into practice, there are any number of obstacles that can interfere with the goals an organization has.

Choosing a Strategy
The very best business strategies are simple, clear, and unambiguous. In the Harvard Business Review article How to Have an Honest Conversation About Your Business Strategy, authors Beer and Eisenstat set forth 6 steps for structuring a conversation about a business strategy:

-Articulate a Coherent Strategy
-Solicit Honest Feedback
-Listen
-Incorporate Input
-Reality Test
-Act (Beer, 2011).

By setting forth an honest, clear strategy, inviting hones input and actually incorporating and acting on the input, and actively following the strategy, a firm is much less likely to encounter many of the obstacles that will inevitably arise.

Overcoming Obstacles
When inevitable obstacles do arise, however, management teams must be prepared to confront, resolve, and overcome said obstacles. One of the best ways to overcome obstacles is to avoid them altogether. This can be accomplished by establishing sound strategies from the start. Initially, the challenges a company wished to overcome must be defined. Rumelt states that, "A strategy is a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge. If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy. And, if you cannot assess that, you cannot reject a bad strategy or improve a good one" (Rumelt, 2011). Remember: strategy is not the same thing as goals. While goals can be abstract and broad, strategy is a concrete set of tactics that will be implemented to achieve a goal. Management must differentiate between the "fluff" that goals can reflect, and the step-by-step, concrete set of strategies to reach them.

Another major obstacle to successful business strategy implementation is the failure of upper management to get input from key players in other parts of the organization, leading to unforeseen concerns and barriers that may not be seen until long after the launch of a new strategy As outlined by Beer and Eisenstat above, half of the steps relate directly to seeking honest feedback, listening to the input, and incorporating it into the strategy (Beer, 2011). There is a reason corporations utilize leaders at all levels of a corporation, not just the top-level management. Each player in the corporate game has a different perspective, different expertise and background, and therefore has valuable input into strategies that will effect a corporation from the top down. Management must be open to inviting input, really listening and evaluating what is said, an honestly including that input in final strategic moves.

The final obstacle that will be discussed here (although this is by no means a comprehensive list) is implementing objective measurement of success of implemented strategies. At first glance, it may seem clear that if a company is making money, then the strategies must be successful. That is not, of course, always the case. A system must be in place for analyzing the success of strategies that have been put into play. Again, as with the previously discussed obstacles, this obstacle is best avoided in the planning process. When strategies are put into play, it should be outlined how their success will be measured. This must be a concrete list of accountable departments/individuals, specifically measurable data and outcomes, and a chain of accountability. If this is all put into place during the initial strategy discussions, there will be no question how the success of the strategy will be assessed.

Conclusion
Business strategy is something that is often discussed as an ambiguous theory about how a company will be successful. The reality is, however, that while goals can be abstract, successful strategies must be concrete, outlined, discussed, and analyzed for success.


Citations

Beer, M., & Eisenstat, R. A. (2004). How to Have an Honest Conversation About Your Business Strategy. Harvard Business Review, 82(2), 82-89.

Rumelt, R. (2011). The perils of bad strategy. Mckinsey Quarterly, (1), 30-39.

Whitehead, J. (2012). What You Need to Know About Strategy. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.