Techpreneurship: Strategy Lab 102 — Ready, Fire, Aim!

Jeff Amerine

(Jeff Amerine is an IA advisor, entrepreneurship educator, and officer with the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office. Each Thursday, his Techpreneurship blog will appear in INOV8. Drop him a line in comments.)

Ready, Fire, Aim!  The phrase is often used to describe what happens when inadequate strategic planning precedes a company, product, service, or project launch.

After a barrage of spinning, blind-folded shotgun blasts with high hopes that something was hit and no friendlies were killed in the process, reality sets in and the team decides to…aim.

At that point, all the ammunition may be gone, and the targets have likely been thoroughly scared away.  Kind of reminds me of my deer hunting techniques from days gone by.  Sure made the herds better.  Darwin would be proud of me.

On the flip-side of the impulsive bias for immediate action that afflicts many techpreneurs, is the universe of terminal analysis-paralysis.  In this end of the planning process spectrum, market opportunity is missed, and the gun is never fired.  In many large institutions, the planning process and the scores of minions that support it, truly believe the “process is the product.”

Techpreneurs that have spent time in large companies may well have left to do their own thing to escape the calcified, sloth-like, mantra of ”do no harm and take no risk, but be sure to CYA.”  That environment can turn even the brightest minds into useless autonomic drones of the system, and ultimately the system fails.

These two extreme examples still leave us with the question, how much strategy development and tactical planning is enough?

Here’s my view.  Any new start-up should spend the time required  to really, really understand their target market.  Techpreneurs need to feel their customers’ pain (genuinely).  There is  no viable substitute for doing detailed primary and secondary market research, or for having on your team people that have either been in your customers’ world or have sold to them.  So, short answer, spend the time to understand the market need.

Given a true market need that can be defended by both quantitative data and anecdotal evidence, you now need to identify your competitive advantages.  There is no point in building or delivering more of the same.  Good strategy development can provide the answer.

I am a fan of a simple strategy development framework for start-ups:

1. Define your mission or mantra.  This is the place where you describe in a sentence or two what the company does.  The statements should be timeless, clear, and memorable.  Walmart is pretty good in that regard with the idea of helping people “Save Money, Live Better.”  The mission/mantra defines your value proposition.

2. Define your vision.  The vision statement captures what the company strives to be at some specified point in the future.  “By 2025, we will be the market leader in North America for residential-scale nuclear energy solutions. We will have the reputation for continuously delighting our customers, shareholders, and employees with glowing services and radiant financial returns.”

3. Core values.  To techpreneurs this may sound like just so much big-company crap.  I disagree.  Core values matter. They define your culture by clearly indicating how you will play the game.  I would suggest five to six core values ought to be enough.  Here are some simple and  timeless core values I’ve seen in the past.   I borrowed these examples from American Freightways, a place that had a fantastic culture:

• Take care of the customer
• Take care of our team
• Honor our commitments
• Have fun

4. Once these three foundational blocks are in place, many techniques can be used to build a supporting strategy.  Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) is one of many ways to begin to zero in on strategic direction.  Ideally, techpreneurs would look to build solutions around strengths and opportunities while mitigating weaknesses and threats.  Do some Google searches on strategy development and you will find tons of info on the techniques.

5. From the completion of the SWOT or similar process consider using the Balanced Scorecard as framework for the action plans you need to make your strategy real.  Balanced Scorecard is an ongoing strategy evaluation approach that says success should be measured by more than financial performance.  The approach roughly buckets areas of strategic focus as follows:

• Customer / Stakeholder
• Financial
• Internal Process
• Team Development

6. Once the action plans are properly bucketed within a Balanced Scorecard with meaningful performance indicators, deadlines, and owners, go “git ‘er done”!  It is now time to shoot at will!  No blindfolds required!

With all of this said, I’ll finish with one final quote from the former Chief Software Evangelist at Apple, Guy Kawasaki.  He roughly said of the high-tech strategy for product introduction, “Deliver crap and then fix it really fast, and keep fixing it really fast.”

I think his statement defines a good mix of the techpreneur’s need for action with the idea of quickly iterating the planning process to serve customers needs while staying ahead of the competition.

Too long-winded again this week – yikes!  Let me know what sort of thoughts on “strategery” you all have.

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