I’ve been talking with a number of product and services leaders in North America about the state of their recovery from the COVID period and I’m hearing several persistent themes.
One that stands out? The sheer workload and deep fatigue they are experiencing.
It really feels for all the world that you are doing the right thing: people are busy, products are getting designed, sales are happening and the financials look good.
So why is it that everyone feels like crap?
Here is the short answer: through no fault of your own – you are running on a deficit of human capital.
When we dig a little deeper, we find that the pandemic pushed even the best firms into a deep state of reactive activity. At first it feels great to be working in an ad hoc way to address the crisis…you get really tight cycles of observe, orient, decide and act.
But in turn, this personal prioritization approach pushes us into a transactional level of individual heroics that leaves precious little space for recovering a more strategic approach.
The common core of a group that makes up the shared understanding and approach – which enables scale – is set aside and rapid, decisive solutions get sidelined.
This shift is subtle and addictive.
Good Strategy Builds Human Margin
When a firm is subject to the kind of trauma brought on by the pandemic, it is very easy to tip into a phase I call persistent discovery. What I mean by this term is that every endeavor is approached like it’s never been done before, and we expect human effort to supersede process learning.
We question the underlying assumptions, we question our processes and we never quite give ourselves permission to “lock” it down. When we as humans are put in a perpetual cycle which erodes our margin (without the hope of getting to a position where we can “recharge”), deep fatigue results.
This works great (in a focused way) when a firm is seeking its initial repeatable and sustainable market – or discovering the next one.
It is unsustainable when applied to a firm at large. Opening the entire firm to that level of iteration is exhausting (and hybrid workforce challenges make this even more difficult).
It’s easy to lose sight that there are two more necessary steps in the strategic journey: consolidation and scale. It’s in these steps where we take the learnings from discovery and build a value chain that delivers the products and services in a way that serves our client and creates a virtuous cycle of value delivery without the sustained cognitive load on the humans in the value chain. Said another way, if your business scales directly with human assets, you are going to have a very hard time creating returns for stakeholders in a consistent way.
Much like an airline pilot puts the plane on autopilot to reserve their energy, skill and insight for those moments where they are demanded, firms need to build engines of leverage that provide a tangibly better future.
You Need at Least Two Insights
To get back on track as a business, we need to reconnect our firm to two insights that drive this level of value creation. These are core elements of strong strategy, and when well deployed, multiply the value of the firm geometrically (Think of the Chick-Fil-A drive through experience vs. that of their competitors):
- The first category is the market distinctiveness that the client receives from our product or service. In a product with a highly-structured distribution channel, a key distinctive is providing the distributor with better tools, training and products that create an easily replicated ownership experience.
- The second is the internal distinctiveness, which is how we are able to create this product or service in a way that creates increasing leverage of our people, processes and technology. This is where digital transformation has (and will continue to have) a huge impact.
The Secret to Getting on Track is in “the How”
The established firm has a huge advantage over its start-up competitors during the great restart post pandemic, as these firms can take advantage of their deep pool of insight to co-develop their internal and external engagement approach.
The path for this work is cross-functional, diagnostic and focused. It creates a virtual circle as we talked about above, and in doing that, gives you the best and brightest experience, growth and hope.
I Can Help
In helping firms take a coordinated approach to leverage up their deep insights, I’ve discovered an efficient and proven path that can get you to the performance that your team deserves.
If you’ve read this far, you know implicitly that you are on one of three tracks. The first track is you’ve kept this material at arms length in an academic way, and you’re going to repeat what you’ve been doing. This will result in drift, and not get you closer to your goal. The second path is to take bits and pieces of this note and append them to what you already know, which will likely tweak your results, but not lead to the breakout that you were hoping for. Finally, you can hit the link below and start a journey that could geometrically improve your results.
Here’s the bottom line: you’ll never be closer to better results than you are right now. Keep in mind that with time, those three paths get increasingly more divergent – and a jump from one level to the next takes more and more energy and effort.
If you’d like to know more about the strategic assessment and the implementation framework, please select a time on the calendar with this link for a personalized 1:1 call with me.
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