A step back to move the business forward
“Slow down to speed up,” my physical therapist admonished me once, as I injured myself by walking fast and not listening to my body.
This principle of halting the rush also rings very true in the world of business. Leaders are often caught up in chasing after sales targets and implementing initiatives. Amid fierce competition, cost pressures, and rapidly shifting customer preferences, much of an organization’s energy must be put into delivering commitments, and rightly so.
But then, we all hit a wall. My foot gave in after I pushed myself too hard in exercising. For companies, the manifestations are team burn-out, budgets that are maxed out yet the top line and bottom line results are not coming in. All too often, the default response is to work harder or cut budgets, which often leads to counterproductive results. Then board members or shareholders demand clearer explanation and results turnaround ASAP.
“Slow down to speed up” for businesses means that the leadership team must take time off — yes, precious time — to step back and analyze the business.
This is a period to objectively look at what’s working and what’s not. What drives success and the reasons for failure. To get objective data on whether customers still find their product or service relevant, or different enough versus the many other alternatives. To assess competitive position. To forecast what’s up ahead.
These business reviews are standard fare among multinationals and some of the large local companies. From these business reviews, debates on what the better strategy is ensue, and what plans will bring these to life. Budgets are then based on the prioritized plans.
The majority of companies, however, do not invest the time and effort on this “slowing down.” One culprit, as we learned from several home-grown companies, is that the entrepreneurial approach of the founder/s takes precedence over any structured planning process. Most decisions on strategy and plans emanate from a top-down direction — and why not? After all, this is fast, efficient, and the bosses know what’s best anyway, right?
What get compromised in this top-down approach are aplenty. The leaders and managers who get to experience the nuances of the day-to-day business — on what works, what doesn’t, the challenges, the strengths versus the competition — do not get to participate in the thinking process and are not able to bring up all their inputs. And because they were not part of the process, there is hardly any buy-in nor accountability to the resulting plans.
Culturally, we defer to authority, and thus Filipino managers would often say, “sige boss, kaya ’yan.” But then, when the going gets tough and the plans don’t work, they will just rant on the side and drag their feet in execution. And the cycle of non-performance begins.
What’s an alternative? An iterative top-down and bottoms-up approach.
Founders, shareholders, and boards definitely must express their expectations of the business, and the financial results that the leadership team must deliver. Then the rest of the leadership team, and their key managers, must be involved in both the business reviews and in strategy development. This process must be data-driven and rigorous, and thus cannot be just a one-off, ill-prepared, planning-cum-team building session. There must be respectful debates once a data-based business review is underway. In these debates, everyone should wear a company hat versus a siloed mindset.
Strategies must be chosen based on a thorough identification of what truly drives the business, asking themselves, “What really, really moves the needle?”
Often, “presentations” are confused with strategy discussions. The danger with presentations is that the leader would default to justifying their plans or initiatives, without the proper and objective evaluation on whether it worked or not. They hardly review results versus commitments.
This is why in strategic planning, it is worthwhile to tap external facilitators, those with expertise on structuring the overall process, the business reviews, and the strategy discussions — to come up with a rigorous analysis, to facilitate debates, and to sharpen the thinking. Importantly, objectivity is then infused into all the discussions. The leaders are then guided to make choices based on objective data, broad-based leadership input, and robust basis for investment decisions.
“Slow down to speed up” is a must for all businesses wanting to have a healthy, sustainable future.
Pauline Fermin is the president and CEO of Acumen Strategy Consultants, which provides advisory services to Top 100 corporations in the Philippines in the areas of corporate strategy, marketing, and brand strategy, organization transformation, and capability building.