How to Outthink (and Outperform) Your Competitors

(Part 1 of a 2-Part Series)

As Aretha Franklin says: “Think!”

In today’s mile-a-minute, e-connected, global, frenetic, here-today-gone-tomorrow world of commerce, it is no surprise that many of us don’t take enough time to think – and I mean really think, in a deep and focused way – about our business.  We’ve become reactionary experts, essentially sucker-punched by our clients, by our competitors, by 24×7 connectedness, and by the pundits who espouse turn-on-a-dime flexibility as the panacea for 21^st century business success.

Well, the pundits are at least partially right; flexibility is important.  But not at the expense of a well thought strategy and a logical plan of execution.  This is at once both the challenge and the opportunity with great potential to impact your performance and competitive position.

If you are thinking to yourself, “my business is too small to need a strategy” or “I’ve gotten this far without a plan,” you might want to consider whether you are thinking too small.  Acknowledging that what got you where you are today isn’t necessarily going to get you where you want to be in the future is the first step. Committing to some form of disciplined thinking and planning process is the next.  Sustained competitive advantage is linked to continually implementing change and, as both research-based and anecdotal evidence illustrate, the odds of doing that successfully plummet without a well-thought plan.

According to Theodore Levitt, professor and editor of the Harvard Business Review, the job of every manager is to “think rather than just to act, react, or administer.”  The question to consider is: How much time do you actually spend thinking versus acting and reacting?  If you are almost always acting and reacting, what are the potential risks associated with not taking the time to really think?

Although finding the time to think and plan is often posed as an obstacle by business leaders I’ve met, the time commitment for a structured process – similar to the one I will outline for you in this article – can be as little as 16-20 hours. That’s just 2 hours per week to spend working “on” your business instead of “in” your business, spread over 8-10 weeks.

There are 2 major components to understand: strategic planning and tactical planning.

Strategic planning is a thinking process that helps clarify and then merge your concept of what you want your business to achieve with the external realities of the marketplace and the internal realities of your organization.  The result is vastly improved precision regarding direction and focus, and a realistic assessment of your organization’s strengths, limitations, opportunities, and threats.  Tactical planning becomes much easier when a big picture has been defined – not just in terms of what must be accomplished, but importantly why it matters.

Business planning – the combination of strategic planning and then tactical planning -sets the stage for competitive advantage.  It also facilitates the integration of your plan, your people issues, and your processes into a single set of tasks specifically designed to get you where you want it to go.  An effective plan gathers no dust on the shelf.  Rather, it is a day-to-day communication, decision-making, monitoring, and tracking tool to hold yourself and your team accountable to accomplish your objectives.

In my next blog entry – part 2 of this 2-part series, we’ll outline the 5 steps that are required to create a comprehensive and practical plan for your business.