What Are You Doing...
… to stay ahead of the competition?
Business requires us to be competitive and offer some kind of “edge” if we want to survive. For some, this may be easy if they’re a monopoly or a market leader and have no real close competition. As the advance of technology (to give one example) has shown though, today’s stars may become tomorrow’s also-rans.
As leaders, our job is to be thinking 5-10 years ahead whilst letting our direct reports concentrate on running the day-to-day business. This is easy in a large organisation, but in a small business where the owner is often Chief Executive Office, Head of Sales, Finance, Marketing, IT and HR, the time left for being Head of Planning is limited.
That said, the future’s important. Asking these questions may help us decide what it’ll look like:
- What do I/we do well compared to the competition?
- What do the competition do well compared to me?
- Where could I/we improve with minimal effort/cost?
- How can I do it?
- What might/could the competition do to hurt my business?
- What other opportunities might help my business?
- What other events might hurt my business?
- Where might new threats come from?
- Who do I need to develop or hire to take my business to the next level?
- What skills are becoming redundant?
One of the main goals of continually improving our businesses is to keep our customers aware of us as a leading player (and therefore willing to continue buying our product or service).
A secondary goal is to keep the competition just slightly off-balance and always looking to catch up. The changes don’t need to be huge (although people seem to expect quantum leaps in everything these days). Many organisations see small changes over a period of time, with the odd “major breakthrough” at intervals.
Apart from keeping the competition off balance, the process of asking all the questions above also helps us understand our business, markets and environment. What better way to improve ourselves as business people?
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Strategy
posted by William Martin @ 15:41
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