You’re not as strategic as you think you are

I’ve been involved with more than a few “strategy” meetings in my time and they all tend to go the same way… owners and managers trying to figure out how they can improve their business by doing exactly what they are doing right now (or some slight variation of it).

At a stretch they might swap one underperforming tactic for another… direct mail isn't doing so well for us anymore, I know lets run a radio ad.

Here’s the problem… if you knew how to improve your business wouldn’t you have done it already? As Arthur W Jones famously said, “All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get.”

Everything you are doing now is perfect to get the results you are getting right now.

Of course, the corollary of that is if you want to improve your business you’ll have to do something different… and most owners and managers aren’t good at different (at least not until everyone else is doing it).

If different isn’t always better but better is always different… than logically different is the obvious starting point for better.