On October 11th, we introduced the idea that Winning in a Down Economy does not start with blindly cutting costs. Instead we outlined a strategy for tuning in that market leaders have adopted. In the ten weeks that follow, we're covering the ten steps to getting your organization aligned quickly to a new market reality. This post is the sixth of ten. Steps 4-6 address the areas of product and portfolio planning with an emphasis on increasing the relevance of your solution offerings.
Step 6: Refine Your Roadmap
"The key to life? It's just one thing. All you have to do is figure out what it is." - Curly (Jack Palance) to Mitch (Billy Crystal) in City Slickers
Does your roadmap reflect the changes in problem priorities and buyer preferences that have occurred in the last 90 days? Do you have a clear mission to communicate around how your business will generate a positive outcome next year? Is it based on the things your buyers value most from you right now? Is your organization aligned top to bottom and bottom to top around these priorities?
Our research with Tuned In leaders over the past 60 days has surfaced a remarkably consistent time-line and focus for the companies they are running ... they're charting a new two year roadmap. Two years is a perceptive and pragmatic choice that acknowledges a number of practical realities. It's long enough to enable their teams to think strategically yet also short enough to create a sense of urgency. It aligns well to the length of prior downturns. And it acknowledges the likely period of uncertainty throughout 2009. The strategy they are employing is simple:
Create a roadmap that forms a foundation for a building a new belief system about outcomes that matter and getting 'everyone' on the same page.
Unlike many roadmaps that are built in a vacuum, this one needs a dose of pragmatism and buy-in from a broad set of stakeholders. The key requirement is an outlook that narrows the focus to projects that you can both execute and afford. The ones that have these five ingredients:
- Addresses a #1,2 or 3 priority problem in the market that is relevant today.
- Emphasizes solutions that provide measurable incremental value to your core customers.
- Invests only in areas where you own a distinctive competence.
- Utilizes resources and capabilities that are proven and available today.
- Provides positive profit/cash flow throughout the two year horizon.
The successful roadmap will serve as a catalyst for action across your organization and align all of your stakeholders (employees, partners, customers and influencer's) to your plan of attack. The best leaders we talked to took a highly collaborative approach, involving these networked teams in the full assessment, analysis & design, planning and implementation processes. They used a broad set of perspectives to help them score and weight priorities and options.
The net result of this exercise is that decision making was crisper and more timely. Communication was frequent and out in the open. And alignment was quick and decisive. For the participants, they were almost shaking their heads at the speed of the process. 60 days was not an uncommon time frame for teams to go through a comprehensive realignment. Their advice:
- Narrow your focus.
- Think incremental and service-oriented.
- Go 'all in' to create maximum force.
- Focus on tangible outcomes.
Your company's success will rise and fall based on the ability of your organization to align coherently. The best part of engaging on this process is that if you've completed Steps 1-5, you'll come into it prepared and confident. Your roadmap will be data-driven vs. opinion-driven!
