Barrier#4: Lack of internal understanding about customers, competitors, and the market
Overcoming Barriers to Planning and Execution
Over time, every organization will create barriers to success. The very things that made you successful as a startup or growing organization may prevent you from being successful at the next level.
Barriers to Planning Success
- History of only partially developing plans
- History of unreasonable expectations and unachievable goals
- Lack of internal understanding about customers, competitors, and the market
Barriers to Execution Success
- Gaps in management depth
- History of abandoning projects
- History of lack of openness and poor communications
- History of poor delegation and leadership development
- Lack of true accountability
Barrier#4: Lack of internal understanding about customers, competitors, and the market
Developing a strategic plan without a good understanding of customers, competitors and markets is venturing off into the woods, blind-folded, hoping to avoid trees, boulders, and cliffs. Chances for success - slim to none!
Important pieces of information or questions to ask:
- Customers
- What do they like about your current products and services
- Where are the holes in your offerings? What are your customers' biggest problems/needs? How might customers respond to your strategic initiatives?
- Competitors
- What is your competitive position? Can you take independent actions without potential negatives consequences at the hands of competitors (Very few companies can do this)
- How are competitors positioned? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How will they respond to your strategic initiatives?
- Markets
- What are the holes in the market?
- What/Who are the potential disrupters? The category leaders of tomorrow are likely not from your current industry. New technologies, new approaches (think Apple iPhones, Netflix, Tesla) The list of one-time category leaders who were either arrogant or oblivious is lengthy.
What are the characteristics of this barrier in an organization?
- Classic example:" Keep doing what your doing...Just work harder and do it better." The Plan just adds x% growth to revenue and profit without any substantial changes in strategy or tactics
- Employees don't believe it is realistic and don't see it as achievable.
The impact on an organization
- Smart employees will begin to question what the leadership is doing and will not be fully committed to execution.
- Some might leave, or worse some may stay and be half-hearted
Overcoming this barrier
- Establish ways to solicit and review customer feedback on products and services - and review it at the highest levels. This should include win/loss analysis. Find ways to uncover unmet customer needs.
- Regular reviews of the competitive environment. What do customers like/dislike about competitors?
- Reward/recognize employees that are close to customers and competitors to look for and communicate field intelligence
- Conduct scenario planning to identify trends/technologies that might provide early indications of potential disrupters
- Utilize a planning and execution process that validates your approaches with customers, the competitive environment and the market
Identifying the barriers to planning and execution is critical. Companies that have addressed the barriers are amazed at how much more their management teams are engaged and how the process energizes the entire organization. CEOs of companies that have had years of poor planning and execution history, find that their organizations are far more capable than they ever imagined of achieving superior results.
The Mead Consulting Group has helped many companies identify and overcome the barriers to successful planning and execution.
Our Customer Forward TM Strategic Growth & Execution process is simple and effective at uncovering the key obstacles and barriers and developing recommendations for improvement - then laying out the best strategic path. Finally, validating that strategic growth & execution plan with customers and the market.
If you would like to have a conversation about this, please contact Dave Mead at (303)660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com.
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Best regards,
Dave Mead
