WatsonStrategic
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WatsonStrategic
About
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Strategic
Development
Everybody knows that "strategy" refers to a large-scale plan. What most people don't know is that it also implies the use of stratagems, which (literally translated) were the “tricks” or “devices” that Roman generals used to deceive an enemy and accomplish a mission. "Strategic" maneuvers are different from operational or tactical maneuvers in that they are literally the large scale tricks that get the mission accomplished. Great strategies can usually be stated in a phrase or two:
"Divide and conquer."
"Hire the brains, rent the labor."
"Give away the razor, sell the blades."Here's a recent example of brilliant strategy from YouTube:
"Give infringed-upon copyright owners the choice of: (a) having their video removed from YouTube, or (b) sharing in the ad revenue that the content generates."
It's such an obvious solution in retrospect, but nobody thought of it during YouTube's early years when they were being hammered for copyright infringement by the major content owners. It wasn't until after Google bought YouTube that they came up with this simple strategy for getting permission from content owners to keep illegally posted content on YouTube. By saying, "Sure, we can remove it . . . or, we can just split the ad revenue with you", YouTube spoke to the very reason why the content owner owned the content in the first place, which was to monetize it.
All of the above are brilliant strategies that have been responsible for great wars being won, great fortunes being amassed, and great assets being enhanced instead of eroded. Our objective will be to develop strategy for your business that is equally as brilliant.
Strategy is not a plan, or a financial model, or a business plan document; it is instead the game-changing device (or devices) that enable you to accomplish your mission. It is also what convinces investors to write checks. Investors are, by nature, strategic first (then product/financial/ops-oriented second). If your strategy isn't great, your success at attracting capital won't be great either. Without great strategy, it's hard to have a great business because the business plan, the product plan, the financial plan and the operational plan all follow the strategic plan.
The Process For Creating Great Strategy
Developing strategy is a creative process, and because of that, the outcome is not so predictable. The process we use involves five basic activities: discussion, thought, visualization, validation and decision making. It starts with some pretty intense Strategic Discussion, which we will begin with our very first meeting and continue on a regular basis throughout the project. After discussions, we will then split up and do our own individual Strategic Thinking on the ideas that were generated during the discussions. Visualization is where we work together to try to “see” or "create" what the company (or the project) could be, at its highest and best value, even if it requires adjustments in scale, scope, skills, resources and direction. Validation includes the research and field work needed to validate our various hypotheses on what could be successful, and Strategic Decision Making is where we discuss, debate, argue and eventually decide upon the strategy.
The development process continues throughout the execution phase because we may articulate a mission, set strategy, and begin executing, only to discover that the mission, or the strategy, or the other players involved are not viable, or not exactly what we wanted; in which case we will adjust, adapt and repeat the process using what we’ve learned.
As we proceed, you can expect us to continually be thinking "outside the box" and to be regularly contributing great ideas and insights to the process. The truly brilliant maneuvers, however, almost always come from team efforts – the result of essentially building an idea “staircase” that suddenly makes the brilliant move at the top recognizable.
