The power of strategic abandonment
The power of strategic abandonment
9 Questions to ask yourself and your organisation every 90 days...
There is no greater tragedy than doing well that should not be done at all.
Yet, we fall into habits that are unfruitful at best or dangerous at worst - in business and life.
Taking stock every 90 days enables us to evaluate, eliminate, and make room for what must be done to accomplish our objectives.
This allows us to constantly refocus our time, energies, and resources.
Strategic Abandonment is best achieved by considering three key dimensions: Purpose, People and Performance.
PURPOSE
If we were not doing what we are doing right now, what should or would we be doing?
Is what we are doing maximising our comparative competencies to create value in the current environment?
What is the opportunity cost of our current pursuits? In other words, what pursuits should we abandon for more productive or profitable ones?
PEOPLE
Who would we not have on the team if we started again today? How could we appropriately exit them?
Who on the team is taking up a spot best served by someone else?
Is anyone negatively affecting our culture or not living our values despite their results?
PERFORMANCE
What parts of our operations have become blithe, lazy, and inefficient?
What are the disruptions, noise and silly rules that need to be abandoned?
What are the bottlenecks that are holding people back from performing?
Atrophy
We are all susceptible to atrophy.
However, as Peter Drucker noted, “In turbulent times, the enterprise has to be kept lean and muscular, capable of taking strain but capable also of moving fast and availing itself of opportunity.”
And these, indeed, are turbulent times.
In our experience, typical constraints to accomplishing this include tradition (we’ve always done it this way), routine and inertia (avoiding conflict and change), and familiarity (being too close to the problem or the people).
In such instances, there are few better approaches than having an external consultant facilitate the process. This ensures thoroughness, avoids conflicts of interest, and eliminates bias.
Personal Lives
Even in our personal lives, spending half-a-day every quarter, going through our possessions and splitting them up into three groups:
The first - items that we still use and need to keep;
The second - things that we no longer use and need to trash;
And third - stuff that we’re unsure of - which we put in storage...if we don't use it over the ensuing three months - dispose.
If we purchase something new, it must accompany the disposal of something redundant.
Abandoning bad Habits
We need to constantly focus our time, energies, and resources on what is important. Otherwise, distractions creep in and dilute our abilities.
We start by asking a very simple but powerful question: With the information we have today if we weren't already doing this, would we engage in such an activity?
What habits have I formed that are unhelpful or damaging?
What relationships have we fallen into that are not in our best interests?
Opportunity Cost
Only if we stop doing certain things and free up our resources can we effectively chase new opportunities.
Sometimes, of course, it’s about doing ‘less of’ or ‘more of’ certain things—reducing the investment of resources and people on certain projects or, conversely, increasing time and effort on others.
Now is as good a time as ever to run a ruler across everything in the organisation, be it purpose, people, product or service, process, department, capital investments, or even suppliers and customers.
Financial Planning
Financially, we suggest including A Divestment budget and an Opportunities Budget in our planning.
The former puts every activity on trial, asking questions such as: Is this really necessary? Does the cost justify the results? Is there a better, more cost-effective, efficient way to achieve the same outcome?
The latter considers opportunities in the environment and the financial cost or investment required to deploy the organisation’s comparative competence in pursuit of them.
The rule here, as Drucker put it, is to “feed opportunities and starve problems”.
SSML - Stop/Start/More/Less
A useful tool is the Stop/Start/More/Less framework from a personal and professional perspective…
What should we Stop doing, Start doing, do More of, do Less of?
When we use this tool, we uncover tremendous insights, not only from board members and managers but from those on the front line - whether they are working on the factory floor, engaging with customers, knowledge workers, players on the court, support staff, or even suppliers and partners.