Summary
The Quality of the Objectives is a primary factor for the fulfillment of the plans.
The Strategy addresses the resolution of this issue by concentrating the objective statement on what is essentially its fundamental work object: Sales. All the others that the Organization pursues must be subject to these objectives.
The Strategy achieves Quality in the objectives by subjecting them to a basic but deep purification process. The strategos calls this process "targets under fire."
Development
Business organizations frequently face failure (or "partial success," which for all intents and purposes does not matter), of carefully crafted plans to guide their actions in the marketplace.
These organizations devote significant effort and care to the planning processes. They turn to elaborate techniques and capable professionals to do so. They invest financial resources and substantial time to reduce margins for error.
However, the cases in which these plans are not fulfilled satisfactorily are statistically higher than the successes.
The explanation of this phenomenon does not go through questioning of the technique. We must admit that planning techniques have evolved a lot in the business world, they have acquired degrees of sophistication that in many cases make them impervious to criticism.
Currently, most higher education centers take great pains to train professional resources who are fully proficient in these techniques and who have the necessary skills to develop them.
The problem actually has a Conceptual origin:
Every Plan is made up of two essentially different stages: the plan development stage and the plan execution stage. The first stage is based on Reflection and the second stage is perfected in Action.
Most of the cases of ineffectiveness of the plans are explained by failures in the second stage: the Action, the implementation of the Plan. It is much easier to develop a Plan than to execute it.
The Master Plan for all business activities is the Sales Plan. Sales explain the basic character of every Business. The rest of the plans in a Business must be subordinated with absolute clarity to the interests of sale. If the Sales Plan fails, all the others can be successes and even so we must refer to a general failure.
The dynamics of Sales in the market is subject to the existence of a huge set of variables, a good part of which are completely uncontrollable for the organization. And to complete the picture, many of these uncontrollable variables are precisely under the control of competitors, who are in fact intentionally seeking to make their plan prevail and the rival plan to fail.
All plans face an ontological problem with Time. They are designed precisely to anticipate situations in time, they are human conceptions that try to anticipate and "calculate" the "future" of things. And although this desire to attack the uncertainty that is intrinsically linked to the future reduces risks, it simultaneously generates the greatest weakness of any plan. The longer the period of time the plan considers, the greater the weakness of its foundations and the greater the probability of its failure.
The conceptual nature of these factors warrants that the subject be approached by resorting to the vitality of other motor concepts, just as simple, and for the same reason, just as forceful:
The only structure of ordered knowledge that man has developed to transcend the division between making a plan and executing it is strategy.
A fact that requires crystal clear understanding lies in recognizing that Strategy IS NOT just a plan. The Strategy works in the elaboration of the plan with the same vigor that it applies in the dynamics of its execution. The Strategy incorporates Reflection and Action efforts into one, and interacts longer with the dynamics of the latter than with the former.
Etymologically the word Strategy comes from the Greek word “strategos” which means “general”. Both in the business world and in any other where it may be applicable, the Strategy should not mean anything other than “the role of the strategos”, “the role of the general”.
A General is not only responsible for preparing the Plan, his main responsibility lies in Directing the Action.
This issue of "responsibilities" contributes in its own way to reducing the gap between reflection and action, because there is a completely different orientation towards reflection on the part of who, in turn, has the responsibility of putting it into practice. A very different story arises when those responsible for making the plan are distant from the responsibility of executing it.
The concept of Strategy demands that both activities be the responsibility of the strategos.
The Strategy is the essential element of Business management, and since the latter fundamentally involves the Production and Sales functions, (the first being conditioned to the second, since it is assumed that nothing is produced that cannot be sold), the strategy Basic, essential, fundamental, is the Sales Strategy.
The Sales Strategy should direct the rest of the tasks that exist in the organization.
By nature, the Strategy seeks to have one's interests prevail over the interests represented by the opposite Strategy, the competitor's strategy. Competition represents a Conflict and the Strategy seeks to resolve the conflict in favor of one's own interests. Only in this way does it qualify itself. There are no “relative” criteria for the Strategy, its essence does not share “partial successes” or “partial failures”. The conflict is resolved for or against.
In this lies a fundamental difference with the Plan, since it is not necessarily subject to such a close evaluation of the results and for this reason it does not have the appropriate protection mechanisms. For the Strategy, the Action must guarantee the premises established in the Reflection, and the Reflection itself must be developed with the logic that can guarantee the Result through the Action.
In order to achieve this, the Strategy demands Quality in the statement of Objectives. Ultimately, the quality of the Objectives is the best guarantee for a Plan to be fulfilled. The Quality of the Objectives defines the Quality of the Plan and in fact defines a successful Strategy.
No Strategy should move from Reflection to Action without having refined the objectives to the point that they are of "first quality".
This process of “purging” the objectives is also in practice the link mechanism or the main bridge between Reflection and Action. In this transit it is necessary to place the targets "under fire" until they reach the highest possible purity.
Interestingly, the mechanics to place the objectives "under fire" is dramatically simple, it uses basic questions, those that due to their elementary logic have little propensity for bias.
The essential questions to which the proposed objectives must answer are: What? Why? How much? When? Where? Who? Against whom? How?
Let's see a bit the power of these questions to achieve quality in the objectives:
- What do we want to sell? The answer to this question is more difficult than it sounds. Business organizations (in many cases due to their own magnitude), can no longer specify exactly what they want to sell. While it is true that the very process of the sales transaction is explained (or perfected) with the exchange of a specific good or service, many business organizations try to achieve this by selling the customer "an added value", a image, a concept, a need, etc. All of this is absolutely legitimate and probably effective, but often undetermined and unclear. It is not the same to sell a specific product than the image of the product, the need to acquire the same or the function that this product fulfills.Probably the same example that many marketing professors used in the past is very useful: "A company that produces drills does not sell drills, it sells holes." Well, if we sell holes and not drills this must be clear in the Strategy. If Coca Cola sells "the spark of life" and not just the well-known soda, this should be clear as a sales objective for the Strategy.
- Why do we want to sell this? Try the kind reader to answer this question in your business and you will do an incalculable favor to the quality of your organizational objectives and the possibility of having an effective plan. It is a legitimate question and the answer must be clear. They say why? is the favorite question of the wise. In fact, it is also the case of the Strategy, because it allows you to have a forceful logic, a way to amply justify all the efforts that must be involved to obtain the results.
- How much do we want to sell? This question should allow rationalization of the objective. It is another of the typical elements that undermine the effectiveness of the plans. There can be huge differences between how much we want, how much we can and in some cases how much we should sell. The closer the logic between what you want and what you can, the more effective the Plan will be. And effectiveness is also a DEMAND of the Strategy, because a basic strategic principle requires a balance between ends and means.
Many times the "How much" is a reason for harshness between the sovereign and the general, between the top management and the strategos, precisely because no expectation has limits.
- When do we want to sell? The appropriate answer to this question links the business to the Opportunity. The only opportunity that exists is the one that is seized, and the opportunity has a precise moment. Before and after the precise moment, there is probably nothing.
- Where do we want to sell? Properly answering this question will optimize the use of the organization's Strategic Resources, and their performance greatly conditions the effectiveness of the plan.
- Who do we want to sell to? This is as difficult to pin down as the one we want to sell. The answer poses an essential conditioning to the Strategy. And in this case again it is worth recognizing that the question is simple and deserves a simple, clear, concrete answer.
The paradox emerges precisely from the simplicity of these approaches, because it is precisely in them that business organizations become more complicated.
- Against whom do we want to sell? The Strategy never neglects the answer to this question because the competitor is involved in it, probably the only agent among all the market variables that is determined to prevent its own objectives from being achieved. Many business organizations tend to overestimate their criteria and want to understand that they hold the premise of the future of things. On many occasions, only setbacks in the market help us to understand that this game is not only about "what we want to do", it is also about "what they let us do."
- How do we want to sell? This last question is the final link between reflection and action. Your answer essentially compromises the Strategy. Many people argue that this response actually begins the Strategy, but in fact its approach is simplified if the previous questions have collaborated to achieve quality in the objectives, which, of course, is a fundamental interest of the Strategy.
The simple exercise of answering these questions can be meaningful to kind readers who are tied to the destinations of a Business. If the respective answers have not generated any kind of difficulty then you are in a well focused business. If, on the other hand, despite this they recognize ineffectiveness in their organization's plans, understand that the solutions are simpler than the problem, because they are among the scarce 10% of organizations that have already focused strategically and are walking the narrow path of excellence, a path in which pleasant difficulties do not cease to exist.
Given that in these circumstances it is difficult to expand further, because of all that has been said, I also remain meditating with the rest of the readers on the appropriateness of the title of this document. Definitely there are ways to avoid that the plans are ineffective and for this very reason this fact must seem unbearable.
