Ten Insights To Consider For Your 2021 Strategy
Ten Things We Believe Will Shape Your Future Thinking
It’s been a year like no other. We’ve spent the last few months speaking with executives about their experiences leading organizations through the extraordinary challenges of 2020 and what it means for their 2021 strategies. Reflecting on the past six months they shared what they had achieved, where they fell short and how they are preparing for the road ahead.
Coupled with our years of experience in leading teams to create actionable strategies, here are the ten insights for you to consider as you plan your future strategy.
Take Time to Reflect and Even Celebrate
Now more than ever, our desire to get through today and move on to the next thing on the “To Do” list can feel like a production line. Take a definitive pause and with the cold light of hindsight, reflect on the prior six months. Firstly to recognize (especially with your teams) just what you have achieved, but secondly to begin to reflect on the new capabilities, opportunities and threats that unfolded. Only by taking a pause can you most effectively help the past shape the future. Make sure to include the whole team, capture what comes out and, most importantly, feed it directly into what you will do next.
We all like to focus on speed, but this is one area where you need to drastically slow down and look in the rearview mirror.
Questions to consider:
What did you achieve over the past six months that was previously unthinkable?
What barriers and obstacles did you overcome to do things at scale and speed we never thought imaginable?
Prioritize Your People
Never before has the intersection of what we are doing and how we are showing up been so closely tied together. Crisis levels of activity, uncertainty, anxiety, business model shifts and remote working have upended many of our norms in business. Re-establishing a clear common purpose for your team that reflects the ambiguity of the times we live in is critical. Make sure you can clearly articulate exactly what is important right now, where you are going and how your teams are part of the journey.
All-staff Zoom calls were so very spring/summer 2020. Your communications and engagements need to be relevant to your audience. Remember that everything that is concerning you about the world concerns your team too. Empathy is a popular word these days - so maybe let's just say “stop for a moment and imagine what it's like to be on the other end of you”! Adjust accordingly.
Questions to consider:
How are you motivating and mobilizing your remote employees around a common purpose?
How are you adjusting how you communicate to actively express empathy and openness?
Take an Honest Look at Where You Stand
Taking a hard and honest look at where your business stands can be a very painful and sobering process. If 2020 has taught us anything, it's to expect the unexpected (and then some). If you haven't already done so, set back and look at your future business. Think about what parts of your business are growing, gone forever, or changed permanently or temporarily. As you go through, don't seek perfection, but be real - It will really help shape what comes next.
Questions to consider:
What should you “Shut Down” - What has changed in your industry or market that will never come back?
Where should you “Hold The Fort” - What might eventually come back just as it was before?
What’s “Not The Same” – What will come back but in a different form?
The “Brand New” - What new trends are emerging that we need to embrace?
Brute Force Won’t Build Your Strategy
Hands up if you think several days of 10-hour Zoom meetings with your leadership team is a good way to plough through strategy? Didn't think so.
Planning retreats can be tough at the best of times with everyone in the room. However, to expect the same format to work remotely is at best unrealistic. We believe it’s critical to build in a discovery phase of conversations that helps understand individual perspectives, identifies key issues and frames the questions to be discussed. This primes the pump for when you do bring the entire team together - you get to the important matters faster. Only do together on Zoom what needs to be done together. Not only does this engage everyone more in the process, but it helps materially accelerate decision making and the move into action.
Questions to consider:
Instead of just migrating existing formats online, how can you rethink the strategic planning process for a virtual environment? What kinds of things can you do online that you could never previously do with in-person sessions?
How can you spend the time upfront to better uncover individual perspectives and insights so online sessions hit the ground running?
Strategy, Alignment, Execution - In Equal Parts and at Speed
Now is not the moment for grand 5 or 10-year strategies. It is time to get out of the day to day reaction mode and look ahead 18 - 24 months to create a clear direction and framework for choices. With the levels of uncertainty that still exist in most industries, speed is more important than perfection and developing plans should be measured in weeks not months. Has your planning process truly adapted to the realities of 2020? Use your strategy and planning process to help align your team behind a clear set of priorities and move into execution quickly and then be prepared to adjust.
Questions to consider:
How can you adopt rolling detailed quarterly plans that align with annual strategies?
How can you compress the planning cycles from months to weeks?
How can you use the strategy development process to align your team and get them ready to deliver?
Adaptability For Good and Bad Outcomes
You have built a great plan for the next 18 - 24 months. Make sure that part of that planning process is to identify key opportunities to scale up and scale back depending on the external environment. Certainty has never been in such short supply. Building a playbook that enables you to pivot more quickly and respond will provide greater confidence to the business and help you position for both good and bad outcomes.
Questions To Consider:
What if you blow past your best-case scenarios, how would you massively scale up parts of your business to capitalize on market conditions?
Conversely, if the sky falls and your market collapses, how can you scale down your business to survive?
Simultaneously Play Defense and Offense
Time for the requisite sports analogy - 2020 feels like we’re all playing a fast-paced end-to-end game of {insert favorite team sport here). So its time to think about how (and who) to play defense and offense.
Defense is about protecting the core. It’s about ensuring the safety and wellbeing of your team, finances and business. This is probably where most of your organization has focused their time and energy.
Offense is about capturing new opportunities that have been presented during this crisis. How can you pass your competition as they stumble? What strategic investments or acquisitions can you make to long-term success?
Both defense and offense requires you to be proactive in your preparation but also reactive or opportunistic to whatever comes your way. Consider creating dedicated teams that work together, but have a clear focus on if they are either executing defensive strategy or offensive strategy.
Questions to consider:
Who do you have on defense dedicated to crisis response on key issues? Who is stress-testing the organization to monitor your financial health?
Who do you have on offense that is focused on future-planning? How do they have the space to develop possible scenarios and identify opportunities to act now?
Become a Digital-First organization
Many of us have had digital as part of our strategy for a long time - some of us even did something about it.If you don't know what being digital-first for your organization in your industry means, then now is the time to get to grips with it. Like many of our insights, don't let perfection get in the way of the good. Be realistic, externally focused and honest in your assessment of where you are and where you need to be more digital.
For many of us, our engagement with the outside world has been reduced to a screen. While you can never duplicate the in-person experiences, you must consider how to transfer some of that magic online. What is it about your value proposition that now must be recast digitally. More than ever, this is about what your customers are buying versus what you’re selling.
Start with what you have learnt since March of 2020 if nothing else - who is winning and who is struggling. It's time to put digital in the center of your thinking.
Questions To Consider:
What is the DNA of your organization that must be recast online?
How can you reimagine a virtual customer experience that manages to escape online commoditization?
Nurture Trusted Relationships
In times of uncertainty and anxiety, trust and confidence matter more than ever; of staff in your leadership team, of customers in your offerings and of your partners and stakeholders. Building a plan, with clear priorities and honest choices will help to instill confidence. Now is also a time to reach out, connect and develop collaborations.
Pre-COVID, great leaders knew this was why we had the water cooler and meet-ups for coffee, lunch or drinks. It's why business travel with colleagues cemented relationships into friendships. By default, this is missing in the weekly or monthly Zoom update call that starts and ends on time. While highly efficient, there’s precious time for anything other than the prerequisite superficial ‘how’s everyone doing’ conversation. You need to create space for reflection, sharing and connection.
Confident leadership is about helping others navigate these unusual times but it doesn’t mean you have to know all the answers. Be vulnerable about what you know and don’t know. Share your concerns about what is and isn’t going well today but always bring it back to your vision for a better tomorrow. Inspire trust and hope through your tone, candour and availability.
Questions To Consider:
How are you making time to listen (not deliver updates) directly to your staff, customers and partners?
How are you ensuring your interactions focus not just on the challenges today and tomorrow but also where there is opportunity and excitement?
Bake Social Justice and Sustainability Into Your DNA
The current environment has shone a light and lit a fire on how much further we all need to go. Many organizations have gone from feeling like leaders to laggards as communities, employees, and customers demand better transparency and accountability. This means moving beyond committees, reports, media statements and vague policies to fundamental changes in strategies, budgets and executive decisions.
This is a business imperative and a social imperative. If sustainability, diversity, equity, inclusion are not an honest and real part of your thinking now - It's time!
Questions To Consider:
Does our workforce, leadership and board truly represent our community and customer base?
How does your strategy, budget and metrics reflect your sustainability ambitions?
As you build out your 2021 strategy, Karvai can be with you every step of the way. We help leaders and their organizations rapidly draw out insights on what is and isn’t working today and then quickly develop a practical strategy that aligns leadership teams to execute on their priorities and deliver measurable results.
