Are you confident that your planning won’t end up one of the dreaded strategy mistakes?
This week Kevin and Brad discuss the Seven Strategy Mistakes from Michael Porter and how leadership teams regularly make these common strategy mistakes.
Michael Porter is one of the greatest strategy thinkers from the last century and has developed a simple checklist we can all use to ensure our strategy won’t be a mistake.
The 7 common strategy mistakes from Michael Porter
Episode 84 – The Growth Whisperers
The Growth Whisperers is a weekly podcast hosted by Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence two advisors to mid-market businesses, one Australian, one Canadian, who each work with CEOs and Leadership Teams across the world with a mission to build enduring, great companies. Each weekly episode covers interesting situations and questions from the world of strategic planning, leadership development, talent and hiring in high growth entrepreneurial companies where real results matter.
Podcast shownotes
The 7 common strategy mistakes from Michael Porter
Brad Giles 00:13
Welcome to the growth whispers where everything that we talked about is building enduring great companies, companies that last companies that are rewarding companies that people, owners employees love to work in and are very proud of. Today, as always, I’m joined by my co host, Kevin Lawrence, Kevin gray. And how’re you doing today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:37
I’m doing great, Brad, as always, you know, there’s always good things happen in the world. But it was a stunning, stunning, beautiful day here in the Okanagan region of Canada. And Sunny, although incredibly cold. It was just great. Great, great. It’s a great Sunday here in Vancouver. Well, actually, in just outside of Kelowna, a place called peach line.
Brad Giles 00:58
Peach land,
Kevin Lawrence 01:00
you take land.
Brad Giles 01:02
sounds, it sounds like a lovely spot. Yeah, I’m good. I’m good. Very, very good. We’ve, yeah, where we’re hopefully beginning to see the end of some border restrictions and some vaccine increasing over here. So little by little, as every week passes, there are things that are opening up which is, which is, which is positive, of course comes with a lot of challenges, but yep, positive, in a sense, and something to look forward to. So as always, we do like to start with a word or phrase of the day, Kevin, any word or phrase that you’d like to kick off with today?
Kevin Lawrence 01:44
Yeah, today it is America. Because, you know, I’ve got four trips to the US plan in the remainder of this year, probably to by airplane, and to at least two, maybe three driving, because the land border opens up, and I’ll be able to drive back and I, you know, I grew up 15 minutes from the US border. And we would go across literally to buy gas and get like milk or something like that. When we were kids. Or we my mom would asked me to pick up the milk. I wasn’t going to buy milk. But yeah, so it was like it was almost like a right to us. This is the longest period in my life. I think I’ve not been driving across that border that I can see from my place in Vancouver. So I’m excited to get back into the Great America. I love the US. And I’m really excited to get back there.
Brad Giles 02:33
Awesome. Awesome. I cannot imagine going to a different country to get milk. It’s so far, it was
Kevin Lawrence 02:41
so much cheaper. They have such a subsidized like a low, I believe whether it was this scale, I think there’s a lot of subsidies for dairy in the US. But it was literally both gas and things like milk, cheese, eggs, and that would be half the price. Wow. Literally just incredible, incredible differences. Just across the border, right? We used to not even need a passport. We were just crossed with our driver’s licenses when I was a kid. Wow. Yeah, yeah, totally. What’s your Word of the Day? Simple.
Brad Giles 03:12
Simple. Sometimes, we try to make things so complicated. We’ve done podcasts on this before. But yeah, it’s just once I’ve reflected on what’s been going on in my world, the work that I’ve been doing with people being able to make something complex, simple, or alternatively, avoiding making something too complex for no real reason and keeping it simple. The power of simple is so important. Well, it’s
Kevin Lawrence 03:40
so important. And it doesn’t work otherwise interesting. I had an executive asked me some feedback on some presentations, or maybe they’re new an executive in a company. And that was the one thing I said, I said, at the end of the day, I don’t know what you need to do to do it. But you need to boil things down and make them dramatically more simple. Yeah, because your intent is good. But both your communication and the process you’re using is incredibly complex, and confusing. And I explained how sometimes I will spend depending on what it is. First time, I’m facilitating something one or two hours figuring out how to make it really simple. Yeah, goes back to my favorite quote from Mark Twain, which may or may not be from him, but I’m going to give him credit anyways, which is, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time. It’s hard to be succinct. Yeah. And mastery is simplicity. Mastery is making things look easy and be easy to understand. I love it. So part of American simple as some are simply Americans simply American maybe can be the theme of
Brad Giles 04:47
American simply American. That’s very good. So what are we? What are we talking about today, Kevin?
Kevin Lawrence 04:54
We’re talking about one of our favorite subjects. It’s a cartoon book actually really Cartoon books. Yes, we both have our copies. So we will book on. It’s Michel Porter’s strategy concepts put into a cartoon book, thank you written by Joan Maga Rita, and illustrated by Emil Homewood and conceived by Henrik Zimmermann. So it’s simplifying Porter strategy work a strategy is simple. Speaking of simple bread, this book goes through all the simple concepts of strategy. And a lot of people know the word. Even more can probably spell it. But very few actually really get strategy and are good at it. A very small, small portion of the executives that we work with are good at strategy.
Brad Giles 05:47
Yeah, for those of you on that, sorry, for those of you on the who are only listening, who don’t have the visuals, Kevin, Kevin and I both held up a bright red book with cartoon characters on the front. And then in the title is, what is strategy and illustrated guide to Michael Porter. So there was originally a Harvard Business Review article that came out entitled, What is strategy and we’ve read that all of the people that I work with have read that what Joan among Greta has done, has been able to turn that article into, effectively a comic book that is so simple and powerful.
Kevin Lawrence 06:29
Yeah. And so that’s what we’re gonna dig into today. And in this, he has a section saying the seven most common strategy mistakes, and I tell, you know, talking about strategy is hard, because we have to really, you know, pry people’s brains away from what they think they know. And one of the things that we’ll get into his even the distinction between marketing and strategy, we’ll get into that in the show today. But why don’t we just jump right in great book, highly, highly recommended? Brad, you want to kind of walk us through number one, and we’ll kind of alternate back and forth.
Brad Giles 07:01
Of course, I do so and the first one is competing to be the best. So the teams that I work with, have heard this at every single quarterly and annual workshop that we’ve done. So rather than competing to be the best, our job is to compete to be unique. So going down the same path as everyone else, and thinking that somehow you can achieve better results. And what we’re really trying to do rather than competing to be the best we want to compete to be the unique and so that means that the reason that we write revenues is so that we can reinvest those revenues to become more unique relative to the competition.
Kevin Lawrence 07:50
Right. So give an example. We were at Costco today. And you know if you look Costco has got deals on everything and you know on the course they encourage you to buy a lot. Well, jelly in your mind, what is a normal coffee mug worth bread, a coffee mug $10 $10 For a normal one. And if you go to $1 store, you can get them for $1 or for two. So they’re they’re in many ways a commodity item. So there’s a brand called look who say and I’m probably saying it wrong, but they make some of the best pots and pans and kitchen things. So when we were at Costco today, there’s a box of eight mugs. Now at Costco, if you were to buy eight mugs, eight glasses, you expect to spend about 20 bucks, because that’s kind of a commodity price. Well, look who say has their beautiful stuff and coffee mugs and it was about $80 for eight mugs. So it was about the price that you had guessed. Maybe you’re used to buying more expensive mugs than I would buy I don’t know. But the point is, is that I know normally, you know probably 15 to $20 is what they would be in a box of eight and look for say monks are the probably some of the most expensive you can get and they probably normally would probably be $25 A mug and at Costco, you get 10 of them for 80 bucks, and they’re beautiful. But why would you buy $80 mugs when you can buy $2 mugs? Well, because it’s a brand that does something very different. It’s a very, very high end kitchenware brand and they are beautifully finished. They’re just stunning. And so that’s the idea is it’s not about competing to be the best it’s competing to be different. They also had two just basically bowls that they were selling at Costco under $200 for two bowls, but that’s because it’s low krusei under it’s a premium brand that stands for the gourmet chef basically it’s you know, it’s considered to be chef quality and that’s the idea. What is that you doing being different same with tests. Tesla, you know, Tesla just didn’t come up with a car with a battery engine in it. Although it did initially, it took a lotus and put a battery, the first one, but the Model X and all of those other cars, they are very, very different than what’s on the road. And they have, they have been different for a long time. So it’s about being different, not going to try and just have be a better version of a basic coffee mug, yet being a more premium brand for a different reason.
Brad Giles 10:31
To your point, I have this, this awesome image of all of the SUVs on the market, let’s say all of the main ones, and there’s probably about 24 SUVs, you know, the Volvo, the Toyota, etc. And then they’ve got the Tesla cybertruck. And they’re all great, they all have been kind of grayed out, so they all look the same. And then you’ve got this completely different looking thing. But you know what the problem here is that as kids were taught to play sports, and to compete in sports Crenn, then as we grow up, maybe we compete in sports in adults, or we watch sports and in sports, we think that everything that we need to do is to compete to be the best, we need to run further, we need to just hire, we need to score more points. And people intuitively think that that translates into business, but in actual fact, that works against us in business if we compete to be the best, because by being better than the competition, there is a cost that’s attributed to that. And that cost ultimately comes from the bottom line.
Kevin Lawrence 11:46
Yes, and it may not get you, in some cases that can get you a premium price. So for it can, but it’s a really slippery slope. Because if you’re being the best, and the customer can’t see a normal difference, they’re not going to pay anymore, right? If you’re taking just normal glasses, and this normal glass and you’re gonna make a better version, but it looks the same feels the same and everything else, you can’t charge more. Again, you have to do something notably different. So it’s great to be good at what you do. But you need to make sure that somehow it’s unique in a way that the customer cares, not just the best, because the best is only worth so much more. Alright, so the next one, and this is a favorite of mine, it’s substituted substituting execution for strategy. And what will happen in a lot of businesses is that they will benchmark and they will do what I call best practices, which are generally mediocre practices, because everyone does them. But they will go along and me to their business and refine execution, and they will get lower cost per unit, and they will get more efficiency, or they will get more yield, or they’ll get you know better, faster, cheaper, they will really polish the whole machine and make it run incredibly well their execution will be so strong. And that’s wonderful because the business does perform better. But if they’re executing the same things that everyone else does, it kind of relates back to number one is that they may enhance and just by focusing execution, or roading their differentiation in the market. And one of the key things is listening to customer feedback. If you listen to your customer feedback a lot, you’ll get some really good ideas to improve execution. But your customers don’t tell you how to be different. Your customers generally tell you about the gaps in what you deliver. And they know those gaps because they’ve experienced different things with your competition. And they will often advise you on things to commoditize yourself because you will become more like everybody else, which is very different than strategy where you’re thinking about being different. So yes, you can be more efficient, better results and execution pays. It’s just it can be a short run or a short life. Because you could be eroding your strategic advantage. Oh, look,
Brad Giles 14:13
you you need good execution you if you have poor execution, you simply won’t make the profit. But strategy is a different lens. So imagine that you’re wearing a pair of glasses, that is the execution lens, we need to manufacture or execute or sell at the right efficiency we need to sell at the right profit, we need to have minimal returns or problems. And all of that is through one lens. But then you take off that lens and then you put on a different set of glasses which is the strategy lens. And then it’s a completely different way to look at it because the execution should be working and the execution should be awkward. Writing efficiently. But over here, when we put on the strategy lens, the objective is to create a unique and valuable position in the market that is different from your competitors.
Kevin Lawrence 15:12
And so another way of saying is execution is doing what we already do better. And strategy is doing better things. It’s doing better things in the eyes of the customer, or different things in the eyes of the customer. And in many cases, like I have a client recently, we’re talking about this, and we’re looking at where the their industry is going. And we can see how it’s going to get more and more commoditized. Well, they went, well, let’s go over here, they’re going to keep the existing business, they’re going to do something very different and actually compete with themselves to do something that’s notably different, and very different than what the customers getting. And gives them a value chain advantage that they wouldn’t have in their existing business, which will come up later when we talk about marketing. So execution is seductive. And why Brad, why do you think people get lost in execution sometimes?
Brad Giles 16:07
Because that’s what they think they’re supposed to be doing. Because they, because they, they just think I’m a manager, I’ve got to get these units out. And, you know, I suppose they never, they never stopped to get outside of their role. And to ask that question, you know, what is beyond execution, they never have the ability to stop. And, you know, we do it through our quarterly and annual planning workshops, where we’re working on strategy, but every week, every month, every quarter, every year, they’re just, they’re thinking that their whole job is to produce at any level in the organization where in actual fact, the production is one lens, you remove that, and then you go into a separate one, which is how are we going to, we’re going to build this strategy. So number three, let’s go through number three.
Kevin Lawrence 17:05
Love this one,
Brad Giles 17:06
yeah, confusing marketing with strategy, focusing on customers and their needs, but missing the need for a tailored value chain. So just like I spoke about with the lenses a few moments ago, with execution and strategy, once you have a strategy, and it informs you on how you will have a unique and different position in the marketplace that is different from your competitors, and you’re executing that, well, marketing is a different lens again, altogether. That’s like taking off the strategy glasses and putting on the marketing glasses. And you know, who struggles the most with this, in my experience is marketing companies, because they think that marketing is, is everything in they think that the brand is everything. And it’s very important. But just like marketing isn’t execution or sales. strategy isn’t marketing.
Kevin Lawrence 18:06
Yes. And the thing is, with marketing strategy and marketing firms and marketing people, they don’t reach back into have operational advantages. Marketing finds a way to better tell her story and match it with needs of customers. They’re, they’re perfect for that. But your strategy comes first. What is it that we do that gives us a competitive advantage. And again, whether it relates to suppliers, or gaps in the marketplace or other strategic levers, financial pieces, unless you’ve at understand all of those things and take those into account, you’re going to you could potentially have a weak strategy. So I look at it as its strategy first. And then marketers can help us figure out, the more the go to market? Well, we got to find the gaps because the strategy is often seeing unmet needs in the market or under service needs in a market or we’re creative ways to service those needs. For example, if you go intake, I think it was it was Hilty. It was one of the tool companies Hilty. And they went from a pricing model of selling tools, both layout drills and Hilty, which is basically puts something like a bolt into existing concrete. Yep, has like a shotgun shell and pushes it into concrete blasted into concrete. Well, what they went from is pricing from some of the tools and the parts to a per hole or per use. Instead of you buy the unit for 500 bucks and buy some supplies. It was a buck per and then went on that kind of pricing. Yeah, that guy which dramatically changed it in the eyes of the customer. The customer no longer had the responsibility for the tools and the maintenance and all of this other stuff. It was the suppliers responsibility, and they could just have a PR price which they can easily account for in their estimating. marketing’s never gonna figure that out. No marketing is never going to figure something, which is completely changes a business model that never existed before.
Brad Giles 20:14
Yeah, marketing isn’t ever going to figure that out. That’s exactly right. They provide a really important service. But marketing is not strategy. Marketing, doesn’t consider the tailored value chain, it doesn’t consider correctly the inputs, and how we can alter the inputs to provide difference within the market don’t have to. So
Kevin Lawrence 20:36
marketing is critical. And I love marketing, and I come from marketing, I love marketing people. So don’t get that wrong. It’s just strategy sits above it. It’s the CEO and a couple executives thinking it through and you might involve marketing or anything else. But it’s not a marketing activity. Marketing is closer to the execution, and coming up with a value prop based on who we are or based on what we understand. So separating strategy and marketing, they’re very instant. Because what it is, is people have a marketing strategy. So they think that their strategy and it but that’s we’re talking business and business models, strategy, versus marketing strategy. Yep. Awesome. The next one is, is chasing the wrong goals. And, you know, we get lost in the latest and the greatest and making people happy. When in reality, the job of a business and the number one measure of a CEO is return on capital. Right, and it’s looking at, what can you do with the capital, you have to get the best return you get, those are not easy decisions. Those are very, very hard decisions. So it’s about being crystal clear on the stuff that matters most. And this requires a lot of debate. And it requires analysis. And generally, it goes back to what is going to give us a unique or sustainable competitive advantage. And of course, you’re going to allocate money to execution and optimization, we want to make sure that there’s enough to enhancing our strategy, versus just enhancing our execution.
Brad Giles 22:17
Yeah. So for example, you might figure out a way to create a position in the market that is unique and different. It is a completely unique and different position, and it will begin to separate you from the pack. That is the commoditization within your market. But you can’t do that in 90 days. And then you might look at it and think, well, at best, we could probably do something in about three years. In about three years, we may not have fully executed it, but we would be having organic growth because of that position. And it’d be fantastic. And then someone in the leadership team might say, Yeah, but we want to make more profit this quarter, or next quarter or this year, like, let’s focus on the problems of here. And now, rather than chasing this other kind of area. And that’s what they’re kind of suggesting that financial analysts encourage zero sum competition, by pushing everyone to look like the current market favorite. So trying to rather than chasing something that’s kind of there knowing that it’s gonna take a while to enact your strategy, and the right strategy isn’t chasing the wrong goals. Yeah, and it’s
Kevin Lawrence 23:42
easy to do, we just we easily get sucked into goals, forgetting that we’re probably chasing our competent competitors or chasing the latest fad. Alright, good one.
Brad Giles 23:53
Okay, over estimating strengths is our number five, or I do love this one. So you one might be in a strategy off site, and one might be talking about. So tell me, what are your core competencies? What are the things that have made your business successful so far? And an answer could be, oh, well, it’s our CRM. It’s our hard work. It’s the time that we’ve been in business. It’s our name, it’s your name in the market. And these might be very good, but they might not be strengths enough that you could build a strategy on a real strength has to be something that company can do better than any of its rivals. And better because you’ve chosen a different configuration or activities or technologies.
Kevin Lawrence 24:49
Yes, it’s not that you just have bigger muscles, if you know how to use them better or you use them better. Yeah, right. And that’s, that’s a big part of what it is and if you can, if you Again, this is all about strategy. People think that strengths alone can push them into a market. And, you know, it’s interesting I have a client that I worked with in the US. And their strengths were like they had an incredibly strong sales team. Yeah, like, they just muscled it. And they and they had incredible, they did have the best service, probably in their industry. And they probably did have the best salespeople in their industry. But we had a meeting and we went and did a value map, where we mapped out their value creation versus their competitors from Blue Ocean Strategy. And we went through it, and we finished it, the CEO and I looked each other and eyes went wide open. Because they had no differentiation left,
Brad Giles 25:51
no.
Kevin Lawrence 25:53
Differentiation was all gone. We were winning only because of our strengths in service and sales. And those aren’t bad strengths to have. But we quickly had to work on some differentiation. Because at some point, even if you can continue to win, it’s a dangerous way to do it. Yeah, because it’s not it’s, it’s only sustainable if that team keeps up top performance. And it’s, it’s too much based on muscle. It’s not bad. And so but so while we continued with that, then we tried to come up with and did come up with some different differentiation, to have some different things in the market that would be more appealing to customers and make it easier for the salespeople to sell. Not just muscle.
Brad Giles 26:35
Yeah, because what happens if your sales manager resigns and starts a business competition? Or what happens if an someone uses a new technology to compete against you? So there are many, many ways. But yeah, so really what we’re saying there is, it’s, it’s something that we, it’s, it’s the way that the strengths come together? Is it a real strength? Or is it just, you know, your confidence? Or because you’re proud of the company? You know, is it a real strength that can give us an advantage? Kevin, you want to take us through number six?
Kevin Lawrence 27:15
Yeah, absolutely. And this one is interesting, because it’s getting to the definition of the business role. And generally, people sometimes define themselves as being a business this wide, they think of their core customers as being you know, everybody, whatever it happens to be, versus zooming in, on what the business they the business, they are really, really in and understanding the dynamics of it. Because sometimes what you think you’re doing, you’re not doing and on Porter has this awesome tool called the Five Forces that has you break down and look at the different industry forces of the forces acting on your business? And has you really understand where you’re at? So it’s in? Yeah, it’s missing the business that you’re really in? Because you’ve thought about it generically versus zooming in, and that five forces tool is a great way to do it.
Brad Giles 28:12
Yeah, so for example, you might be working with an electrical company. And you might say, so what industry are you in, we’re in the electrical industry, okay. So which segment because the electrical encompasses everything from your power line distribution through to installing solar panels in your roof, through to working on a nuclear, nuclear power plant, so and then installing a light in your house, everything within there. So if you get that definition wrong, and you are in the business of putting in lights in people’s houses, or distribution, and then you can go into what area you are in there, because suddenly all of those strengths and activities that you undertake, can change remarkably, depending on how you define that business. And a part of that is who’s your core customer who’s the customer that you serve, that will pay more profit? So let’s move on to number seven getting the geographic scope wrong, usually defining industries as global when their national or regional using the value chain to define business scope, wherever you require a largely separate value chain to compete, you have crossed a defining boundary. So yeah, so we can our ambition may tell us that we’re in an international market, our ambition may tell us that, yeah, we’ll just switch over to the US or we’ll just switch over to I don’t know the Chinese market when in actual fact, it’s a completely different market with different customers, a different value chain suppliers, everything is different in there. So knowing I mean, we used to say the sandbox, what is the sandbox? Where is the edge of the sandbox exactly in which you’re going to play?
Kevin Lawrence 30:14
Yeah. And where people get in trouble is when they expand into another market. And think of it as an extension of what they’re doing versus actually starting a new business. So I have one of my great clients that started a new business no bought a business in a country in Europe. They’re a US based. And there was great aspiration around it, but the reality is running a business in another country. It extended so far, or their geographic scope. And, and they thought that they would be able to do it. And it was impossible for a lot of reasons. That’s, that’s not, that’s a more obvious one. But even people going from Canada into the US, like we can see the US from a lot of places in Canada. But the reality is, is it’s often completely different value chain. Different partners, like different customers, like a lot of the customers are not the same on each side of the border, and different ways of doing business. And when people expand, and they don’t give it the respect it deserves, they don’t really they don’t treat it as it’s outside their geographic scope, they get destroyed. Because there’s so many new variables. For example, I’ve got one client that is going to be setting up in the US, they’ve thought about it very thoroughly. But they are setting it up like a brand new independent business in a brand new independent legal structure. It has to have a separate executive team, all of these things. And that’s still gonna be really hard. But they’re setting it up as its own little hub in its own little space. Because they know it’s way outside their geographic scope, although they could probably throw a rock at it and hit it from where they are encountered.
Brad Giles 32:01
Yeah, I’ve been watching this show on Netflix called high score. And it’s about the video game industry and how it evolved from I guess Pong, to where it is today. And this is one particular point in time, when Nintendo were had introduced new 16 bit technology compared to all of the previous eight bit technology. And it was 16 bit yeah, it was huge. But it was unheard of in the time, everything was just blocks that were moving around like Minecraft that we see before that. And so they had a gaming console that they’d launched in Japan. But it was as ugly as a dog’s breakfast. Like it was just terrible to look at as a physical component to sell but very successful in Japan because they had a different market. And so they had the advertising marketing manager from the US in Japan, doing everything that she could to have it rebranded for the American market. And apparently, several people quit their jobs because she was so dogged that your product that’s successful here won’t success because it’s the ugliest read you’ve ever seen. It’s got all of these instructions on the box, like it’s a different market. And so they believe that the geographic the things that work in Japan would work in America, but it didn’t work. The outcome of that was the NTS or the Nintendo Entertainment System, which be which went on to get 97% of the gaming market for home gaming. But if they would have gone with the original, there’s a very good chance that it wouldn’t have
Kevin Lawrence 33:53
was a funny one on that one. Brad is back in the 70s Chevrolet, the carmaker had a car called the Nova. Yeah. And then as they went to, you know, share the American Dream around the world. They took it to I believe it was Spain. And then they wonder why the Nova wasn’t selling? Well, Nova in Spanish, I think means no go. Almost like it didn’t run, I may have botched that story. But I remember that from years ago, is you got to understand and respect a different market. But more than that’s about market differences, what we’re talking about is the bounds of where your competitive advantage stops. Yeah. And that’s really what we’re talking about your geographic scope is where your competitive advantage is not longer valid, where you have to rebuild it differently. And that’s where it gets dangerous. So getting the geographic scope wrong and forgetting that you’re not going to be just there. They’re just like you are here know another client that did a massive expansion and you know, it was way outside their geographic scope and they didn’t have the right people and so painful, but it was long story, I guess
Brad Giles 35:01
to close that one out. I love the last sentence there, wherever you require a largely separate value chain to compete, you have crossed a defining boundary. So it’s the value chain that is the trigger for getting the geographic scope,
Kevin Lawrence 35:17
right? Yep, absolutely. And I got another client that’s based in your great country, and they export all around the world. So the value chain is all in Australia. So them moving into a new country is hard. But it’s not as big a deal. Because they just need to have a local partner and someone who distributes their product. And they’re, you know, they’re just no shipping versus operating in these other countries. Awesome. All right, so great. Let’s so just to kind of do a quick review of this. And again, we highly, highly recommend this book. What is a strategy Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter, Great thinking he is one of the great greater greatest thinkers on strategy. But you know, the things are, as you know, competing to be the best versus competing to be unique. Substituting execution for strategy thinking you can do it better, faster, cheaper, to get your way to a competitive advantage in the long term, confusing marketing with strategy for ad, you want to pick up the last four, they’re
Brad Giles 36:21
chasing the wrong goals. Your job is not to make current shareholders happy. Your job is to build a unique and variable position in the market that is different from competitors. Number five is over estimating your strengths. Your CRM, or your sales team might not really be a strength, you may you need to filter what you deem to be your strengths through the pride that you have in the organization. Every company looks at their peers and says they’re not that great. They’re terrible. And they’re saying the same about you. Number six is getting the definition of the business wrong. Understanding the industry that were in, we’re not in the broad definition of the industry. We’re in the narrow definition in which we play. And then finally, number seven is getting the geographic scope wrong. As we just said, making sure that our strategy depends on our value chain. Well, what a good chat we’ve had today,
Kevin Lawrence 37:26
cuz I love this around strat strategy, strategic thinking and strategy is so powerful and it’s, you know, it’s work to get teams to get there often unless they’re in a crunch. All right, well, thanks for listening. This has been the growth whispers Podcast. I’m Kevin Lawrence and I’m here with Brad Giles, as we always are. For the video version, go to youtube.com and search for the growth whispers Brad can be reached at evolution partners.com.au and I and my firm can be reached at Lawrence and co.com. Hope you have an awesome week. And we will see you next week.
38:01
Bye
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