Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Moving Target
Now let us continue with the sporting analogy. In soccer, the aim of the game is pretty straightforward or so it seems. The team that scores the most goals wins the game. Consequently it wouldn't be a long stretch to assume that in a league, the team that scores the most goals throughout the course of the league wins, right? Wrong because there is the other side of the coin which is that a team not only has to score goals it equally has to prevent the opposing team from scoring the most goals. So now we are getting somewhere. A team has to a) score goals b) limits goals. Is that all it takes to win? If so then the correct strategy for winning a league is to a) assemble the most prolific goals scorers combined with the most stingy of defenders. Common sense dictates that such a team would inevitably win. But is that the case in real life? Some of the most expensively assembled teams go through seasons without winning any silverware. And if you assume that expense equals talent then our conclusion above should have been sacrosanct. Why then the disconnect. Well because the game is actually not static. Each team brings it own particular flavor which changes the game. So a one size fits all does not work for a league in which you are playing 20 different teams with 20 different characteristics. The teams then that win are the ones that read each game correctly and align their strategy accordingly. This may involve changing players depending on the opposing teams strengths, and may even include sacrificing some of those prolific scorers or defenders! For a team to win the league then is no small feat. It becomes even harder for a team to win multiple seasons. The analogy to successful corporations is unmistakable. Strategy can not be static but must be fluid, changing with the ever evolving landscape and relative moves of its competitors.
Monday, April 18, 2011
The right game
I am an amateur boxer. Nothing very serious. Just a couple of guys in the gym fighting against one of nature's inevitability-a bludgeoning waistline. But rated amongst my peers in the gym, I am pretty good. I have won a few fights lost a few. Mostly won more than lost. But that wasn't always the case. When I first started boxing, I would always start strong. I would throw rapid fire punches as soon as the bell rang, landing few but secure in the strategy that if I landed one good one it would be lights out for my opponent. Inevitable, I would get tired right around the two minute mark of the scheduled four minutes and would end up losing the fight. So what has changed?
While I have certainly built a little stamina over time and my skills have definitely gotten better, none of those improvements are so marked as to justify my increased winning percentage. Rather it is my change in perception of the game of boxing that has contributed to my winning. You see like most boxing enthusiasts, I was taken in by the knock out hype. A Mike Tyson or a Manny Pacqiao happens by once in a generation but then that is what most of us amateur enthusiasts get drawn to. So in my case, I envisioned myself a Tyson like fighter-with a hard right that would floor my opponent in 60 seconds. In reality boxing is nothing like the one off greats make it out to be. It is a sport of timing, of pacing, of carefully managing your reserves and waiting out your opponent. An endurance race. So while I was thinking of the sport as a sprint, it is in actuality a marathon. You don't have to take my word for it. Think about what a prime boxing event between elite fighters entails. Two top-notch athletes that are extremely well conditioned. It would be very hard for one to knock out the other. That is why according to boxrec only about 28% of fights end in knock outs.
As soon as I realized that, my whole outlook to boxing changed, I no longer worked to muster that killer punch but instead worked on increasing my endurance and stamina, my main strategy being to outlast my opponent as opposed to knocking him out. And I saw immediate results. So what was I doing wrong? It is my misconception of the sport that was the problem. And because I had the game wrong, the set of skills that I was mustering were not giving me the advantage I sought. Until I figured out the correct game, I could have worked on that killer punch for eons and not seen any improvements.
Almost every company nowadays has a sizable corporate strategy division filled with top-notch MBA's from the best business schools and with gigabytes of impressive power point slides about where the company is heading strategically. So why are they all not succeeding? Part of the problem lies with the identification of the game. There are whole host of strategy road maps created to enable a corporation understand where it stands. Five Forces, Value Maps, Net Maps all help plot an organizations place in the industry. But an important corollary to this is the assumption that the industry or game is actually the right one. Should a company make an error in identifying the nature of its game as I initially did in the game of boxing, then no amount of power point presentations can improve its competitiveness.
While I have certainly built a little stamina over time and my skills have definitely gotten better, none of those improvements are so marked as to justify my increased winning percentage. Rather it is my change in perception of the game of boxing that has contributed to my winning. You see like most boxing enthusiasts, I was taken in by the knock out hype. A Mike Tyson or a Manny Pacqiao happens by once in a generation but then that is what most of us amateur enthusiasts get drawn to. So in my case, I envisioned myself a Tyson like fighter-with a hard right that would floor my opponent in 60 seconds. In reality boxing is nothing like the one off greats make it out to be. It is a sport of timing, of pacing, of carefully managing your reserves and waiting out your opponent. An endurance race. So while I was thinking of the sport as a sprint, it is in actuality a marathon. You don't have to take my word for it. Think about what a prime boxing event between elite fighters entails. Two top-notch athletes that are extremely well conditioned. It would be very hard for one to knock out the other. That is why according to boxrec only about 28% of fights end in knock outs.
As soon as I realized that, my whole outlook to boxing changed, I no longer worked to muster that killer punch but instead worked on increasing my endurance and stamina, my main strategy being to outlast my opponent as opposed to knocking him out. And I saw immediate results. So what was I doing wrong? It is my misconception of the sport that was the problem. And because I had the game wrong, the set of skills that I was mustering were not giving me the advantage I sought. Until I figured out the correct game, I could have worked on that killer punch for eons and not seen any improvements.
Almost every company nowadays has a sizable corporate strategy division filled with top-notch MBA's from the best business schools and with gigabytes of impressive power point slides about where the company is heading strategically. So why are they all not succeeding? Part of the problem lies with the identification of the game. There are whole host of strategy road maps created to enable a corporation understand where it stands. Five Forces, Value Maps, Net Maps all help plot an organizations place in the industry. But an important corollary to this is the assumption that the industry or game is actually the right one. Should a company make an error in identifying the nature of its game as I initially did in the game of boxing, then no amount of power point presentations can improve its competitiveness.
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