Friday, August 26, 2016

The lure of strategy over other functions

The other day I endorsed a friend on LinkedIn for 'Business Development'. I did this because, having observed the stellar role he played in developing a new category in the Indian marketplace, I had been thoroughly impressed by his perseverance and effort which had resulted in an above par performance by his company, financially.
No sooner had I done this, pat came his message: "Business development??? not strategy?"
I can understand his perspective. 'Strategy' looks great on one's profile. Business development or Operations appear foot-soldierly. And this is a problem that has seeped into professional life: Valuing strategy over every other function. So when a company meets their client, it's not uncommon for the client to seek out the planner for special treatment during the meeting, while the operations team are given the last 5 minutes to discuss all pending work. This reinforces the unstated belief that strategy is most important and this over time becomes a part of the organization's and the industry's culture in which operations, business development and execution are considered 'not-cerebral' and dismissed as hygiene even as fat pay-checks and plum posts go to strategic thinkers.
This post is not to negate the function or need for strategy, no way. It is simply to draw attention to the fact that other functions too are equally important and in some situations perhaps more useful than strategy. It's also time to separate the genuine strategic thinkers from the non-performers who adopt the guise of being strategists to escape performance evaluation criteria. I've had the good fortune of working with genuine thinkers. They're as business oriented or operations focused as anyone else. For genuine strategists know that the real mettle of great strategy is not applause for a power-point presentation but market-share gained in the real-world. Genuine planners are unafraid to roll up their sleeves and jump into operations for that very reason. Which is why strategic function needs to perhaps be the last stop in a professional's career and probably not their first. Strategy needs to be built ground-up, only when market-knowledge and consumer behavior is understood from years of first-hand experience.
This made me reflect on the reasons why strategy has been given pride-of-place over other functions. It's probably a mix of many reasons some of which are: The view that strategy is the genesis for all businesses. MBA courses are lopsided in their focus on strategy. The belief that strategy requires brains and so anyone in that area of expertise has more of them than the others. Lastly the role of popular cultures in which we credit sages, ascetics and visionaries as being know-it-alls due to their deep strategic understanding of things.
Perhaps its time for us to clear this erroneous perception and acknowledge the importance of other functions too. That strategy does not get in the bucks alone. In fact it gets nothing. Last of all any guarantee of success. A great strategy needs a great business development, operations, finance, systems and other functions to get to anywhere close to implementing its plan. However, quite a few organizations have succeeded based on the strength of their other functions as well without any great strategy.
Lastly in support of business development, I'd say, take a survey of any number of CEO's asking them what would they consider their most important need-of-the-hour...I wouldn't be surprised if it's unanimously in favor of business development and growth. For all of them would know first-hand how difficult it is to sustain growth and business in tumultuous times.
(So my dear friend, you've got your answer, I suppose :) )

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