Managing Strategic Change in a Continuously Evolving Landscape
More than 95% of businesses in the United States never grow to $1 million per year in revenue. Of those that do reach $1M, 90% fail to make it to $10M. What separates those companies who succeed from the ones who fail is often a solid strategy that differentiates them from their competition. A key skill set is a company’s ability to incorporate strategic change in their execution plan when they encounter a landscape of continuously evolving circumstances.
Strategic Change is “a restructuring of an organization’s business or marketing plan that is typically performed in order to achieve an important objective,” according to the Business Dictionary.
Strategic Change Example
A unique retail company I worked with grew to three stores in their home market with a completely local supply chain as one factor in their differentiation from a crowded market. One of their 3-year strategic priorities at that point was to grow into a 2nd market yet be branded as a local business. Their execution plan allowed for a year of relationship-building before opening in a new territory. They experienced what you have likely also experienced, the unforeseen happened. In their case, a lease became available in the perfect spot and just a few months into the year, they were faced with a problem. The solution was a strategic change to their execution plan. If they didn’t move quickly, they’d lose that location, likely for ten years or more and what’s worse, it was possible a competitor would swoop in and claim their ideal location instead. If they did secure the location, they’d be on the hook for paying rent long before the plan said they were going to open a new store. So, we changed the annual plan. The strategy of being local was still deemed correct, they just had to make some trade-offs in their annual priorities to move up the timeline and get that store open in year one instead of year two as originally planned.
Today this company has more than a dozen stores in four markets, all with local supply chains and they are branded as local businesses. Strategic change won the day.
Do you need a new or revamped strategy? Do you need to learn how to execute strategic change? Reach out to one of our coaches and get access to our free organizational health checkup to evaluate the health of your organization.
