Open Warrior

The title of this post is obviously a play on the cliche, “the road to success.” The point I’m trying to make with the title is simple – the road to success is anything but straight.

To have a successful business strategy you need to start with the end in mind. The end should be big – don’t think “opening a restaurant,” think “create a successful brand which becomes internationally synonymous with great food and a great time.” My understanding of a business strategy is that it is a series of processes and systems to get to the bigger picture.

The notion of a detour to success is about the fact that it’s never a straight and simple road to achieving success, and following the processes and systems as set out in a business strategy is never a linear task. A lecturer used the metaphor of an air flight: ultimately every flight has a destination and there is a direct route which can be taken to get to that destination. However, because of external factors such as wind speed and bad weather the plane never ever flies a straight line directly to its destination. Instead the plane goes off and flies in the wrong direction for parts of the flight. However, as long as the pilot keeps adjusting and correcting the flight direction, the plane will eventually arrive at its destination, even though it went slightly off course at times.

A business is like a flight and a business strategy gives you your direct flight path. External factors, such as legal and economic ones, cause you to go off course at times. However, you ultimately know where you want to end up at the end.

A business strategy is going to go off course, and it takes leadership and critical thinking to bring your business journey back on course. However, it can be done, and I believe that the ability to do this is what differentiates a great business leader from an average one.

I’ve just started an honours course on business strategy, and one of the requirements of the course is that at the end we write a reflective essay on our initial views on business strategy, and how they’ve changed over the duration of the course. I’ll use this blog to reflect and think about business strategy, and track my changes in mindset over time.So far we’ve only had an introductory lecture, so up till now, most of my thoughts and views are mostly my own and largely uninfluenced.

So what do I think of business strategy?

Well firstly I think that many separate business processes come together to form a business strategy. Some of these business processes are tried, tested, proven to work and can be implemented in a systematic way. However, I think that in many cases, these tried and tested processes need to be adapted to suit a specific business environment. At this stage, a level of understanding of the business is needed, and a critical and logical leader needs to take charge and move forward.

Sometimes however, some of the business processes which form part of the business strategy are not tried and tested. At this stage I think that the business leadership needs to draw on past experiences, case studies and a bit of a “gut feeling” to determine the way forward.

I guess the type of thinking required to form a business strategy can be learned and that’s the motivation for a business strategy class.

I’m sitting in my second lecture and writing this from my phone, so now it’s time to listen and come to understand how business works and how to think critically in developing a business strategy.