Assess your own as well as your opponent's strengths and weaknesses to come up with a way to win.
Jack Welch worked at GE for 40 years, 20 as an engineer and manager and then 20 years as CEO. It’s a company of companies and for 20 years he had to assess the strategies of each division. So he has lots of experience planning and identifying successful strategies.
In his book “Winning” he boiled strategic planning down to 5 succinct questions to be answered;
1 what does the playing field look like now?
2 what the competition has been up to?
3 what you’ve been up to?
4 what’s around the corner?
5 what’s your winning move?
I love question 5 - it’s asking "how do we beat the competition?"
Not time to read? Here's a link to 1 hour talk by Jack Welch - link
I can't tell you how many meetings and workshops I have sat in where this wasn't even on the radar - what a boring, pointless waste of time!
Hours can be wasted discussing things like;
- fixing letters people don't want to read
- fixing processes that should be made redundant or bypassed
- working around systems and people that should be gotten rid of
This question is more relevant than ever because change is happening at an accelerated pace all the time. What was cutting edge 10 years ago my 13 year old daughter is studying a school. Disruptive technology is talked about by people who barely know how to turn a computer on.
Asking "how do we beat the competition?" focusses you on what is key to survive. What are the right goals and standards to aim for as well as how do we achieve those. If you’re the best and there’s a downturn, you stand a better chance to survive that as well.
If you haven’t asked yourself this question it's time you did. Take the time to make your own luck.