Piecing Together a Winning Strategy
Posted on 16. Oct, 2009 by Jason Chan in Strategy
If there’s one thing I hear time and time again from clients, it’s that they want a “game changing” experience that takes the market by storm (virally, of course). More often than not, they will point to a competitive product already out there and say, “we want that, but better.” Adding to the challenge, they’ll typically want to build it in 6 months, something the competitor often takes years to develop. It’s a tricky position to be in because you need to balance risk/reward scenarios, make something worth talking about and gain some traction at the same time. Provide too little and no one cares. Swing for the fences and you risk striking out.
If you look at Google, they were competing with Yahoo, Excite and other burgeoning portal sites. Instead of coming out with an entire suite of services like email, calendaring, and other non-core features, they focused strictly on search. And did so for 5-6 years before expanding into email and other services. Many Google competitors have sprung up in the meantime and have fallen by the wayside because they’re either too complicated to use or simply aren’t as good. Since then, they’ve introduced a number of other complementary products that are logical extensions of each other and have the hallmark Google speed, understated design and reliability.
This philosophy need not be limited to web companies. We’ve all heard the companies that were “too big to fail,” but this piece by Ron Ashkenas adds that they might be “too complicated to succeed,” adding another viewpoint into the discussion. Proctor & Gamble acted quickly and nimbly and turned a small win into a big result.
Given the right organizational alignment and more importantly, discipline in product management, this could apply to all kinds of industries. Instead of the “go big or go home” Big Bang approach to product, service or site releases, consider releasing a small pieces of experience that are done really well. In software, we call this iterative development and with the right people, you can apply it to business too. A few things to keep in mind:
- Certain things should be fairly concrete, like strategy. You can’t keep iterating on it because the downstream implications of product development depend on the strategy staying relatively firm.
- In order to prioritize what to do, come up with 2 or 3 business goals for which your new offering ought to do. If it doesn’t meet the criteria, toss it out or move it out to a later release.
- Ask yourself, if your offering actually improves upon the competition or is it a “me too” product that isn’t sufficiently differentiated.
- Keeping your release tight will keep your strategy tight to your chest. Competitors will want to know what you’re up to, which is a good thing.
- Customer reaction to your initial release is critical. By gathering their feedback, you can make adjustments to the other parts of your approach that will be informed and more likely to gain acceptance.
Once you’ve got the first few pieces in place, the rest of your strategy fall into place and become clear to your team and your customers.
Great article. Strategy is so critical for being effective and efficient with time, and ultimately, staying on top of the competition.