Strategic success depends on clarity and focus. But strategies often include so many projects that nothing is a priority, and no one can focus.
It’s an epidemic! The number of projects that organizations include in their “strategic plans” is exploding. My clients are no exceptions. As an advisor, I always argue for severe reduction.
But, when they insist that this or that initiative must happen, it is hard to dissuade them. Later, I always regret failing to do so.
The Precision of a Shotgun
Have a look at this strategy map. It belongs to SaaS client of mine.
Notice all those orange boxes, each representing a project.
The company has fewer than twenty-five employees.
On average, everyone should be responsible for at least two major projects—on top of their day-to-day tasks.
With this explosion of priorities, how does anyone know what to do next?
Strategy FOMO
At least once or twice a week I have a dream in which I am late and about to miss something; a flight, a train, an exam. In the dream I’m running and panicked; racing down a hallway, sprinting toward a closing train door, hobbling onto a jetway and attempting to leap a gangway as the ship pulls away.
It does not take an analyst to diagnose the anxiety of “missing the boat”.
Torschlusspanik. This German compound term includes three words: gates, shut, and panic. It originated in medieval times when high walls encircled villages. The gates locked at sundown to protect villagers. Being late meant getting stranded outside the village wall, with neither warm hearth nor weapons.
In my nightmares, I have Torschlusspanik–a literal fear of the gate closing.
The same anxiety plagues founders and business leaders.
They might fear missing the market, the competitors, or the deadline set by the funders. So, they pile ever more goals and projects onto their plans—and onto their teams.
Not Crazy, Just Human
At a glance, leaders think they can get it all done. That is because we humans are terrible at estimating what it really takes to do things. A combination of optimism bias and the planning fallacy gets in the way.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Fortune 50 CEO or a new owner trying to housetrain a puppy, everyone underestimates how long things will take and how hard they will be.
In start-ups, that is supercharged.
Along with the innate biases, founders are under pressure from stakeholders to whom they have (always) overpromised.
While founders may over-promise, they do so in response to the investor culture which has absurd standards for growth, revenue, and product development.
These forces—cognitive bias, stakeholder pressure and Torschlusspanik—create bloated plans.
- The goals are unattainable.
- Employees feel doomed to fail.
- And CEOs fear board meetings.
People are frantic – unable to identify the highest value work because everything is high value.
But it is not just start-ups. Strategic restraint is rare and precious.
Over-Caffeinated
By 2008, Starbucks had expanded to over 15,000 locations, 180,000 employees and a startlingly long menu. That sounds like success. But the stock price was down 78% to $8—from a high of $37. Its sales growth and reputation were in decline.
Founder, Howard Schultz, had left the CEO role 7 years earlier but remained Chairman—steering the company toward expansion. But the poor results in 2007 convinced him that something serious had gone wrong, leading him to return as CEO.
Starbucks had lost their focus. As a remedy, Schultz made a vow that there would be no sacred cows. Everything was under review. That yielded two key strategic principles to guide the turnaround.
1) Transform retail store performance (including assessing underperforming locations).
2) Rekindle the customer emotional connection to the brand.
From his standpoint, only one thing would fulfill those intentions: Coffee.
If the coffee wasn’t excellent, the stores couldn’t succeed, and customers would never come back.
To support that singular commitment, he reduced the aperture so that the company could focus on just those two aims.
Schultz slashed the menu by 30%, streamlined operations and shuttered six hundred underperforming stores.
Then, in February 2008, he closed every Starbucks on Earth (7800) for one day and re-trained 138,000 baristas to make perfect coffee.
That day cost Starbucks $6m.
But it launched a turnaround borne of one clear and undiluted aim.
By 2012, Starbucks had recovered. Profits were up to $1.6b (from $315m in 2007) and the stock had risen to $56.
Reality
How do you emulate Schultz and reduce the aperture to one or two key objectives—and an equally small number of projects?
First, embrace the fact that excellence demands focus. No individual or team can concentrate on multiple demands.
Everything may be important. But only one thing is urgent: The one on which your entire strategy depends. Subtract everything else. [Click to tweet this short thought]
Trying to do everything to beat the closing window of opportunity is anti-strategic.
Subtraction
Attacking the bloated plan takes willpower to start. But once you are in it, it gets easier—like cleaning a closet. You may struggle to let go of that Armani jacket, though you had forgotten you owned it. But by the 10th discard it becomes joyful. Think of it as KonMari for your strategy!
Start with the question of what is the most urgent issue that your strategy must successfully address?
Anything that is not a direct, first-degree input to that must go.
Tabled Not Tossed
Those subtracted projects are not gone. Put them on a spreadsheet or even in your calendar to consider next year when you do the annual plan. They may have risen in urgency by then. But for now, forget them.
Attack the subtraction as though you owned the Mona Lisa and wanted to display it well. You would remove every other thing from its vicinity so that it stood alone, commanding all the attention.
Nothing is more precious than undivided focus.