A Strategy Shift
Many years ago, I consulted to a leadership team that was making a BIG shift in the company’s business strategy. They decided to bring an end to the corporation’s role as the market leader in a particular technology sector. Instead, they were going to start over with a new technology offer in a vastly different market. Why? They saw the future.
The company had achieved success by being a technology leader, but the competition caught on, as they always do. Repeat – the competition caught on as they always do.
Side Bar
This will happen to your business as well. It’s a reliably repeatable phenomenon. In fact, it should be included in your strategy. Other companies will copy and paste. So plan for this at the outset. In fact, plan for it before you set out.
Back to the Company and the Strategy Shift
Without a change to their technology offering, the client company would soon have to compete in a commodities market, just to survive. But they were too wise to do so. They defined their core expertise as being technology leaders and did not tie their success to a particular technology. Brilliant. They knew they were not suited to play in the commodities space. Brava!
But that is the background context and not the main point of this post, which is:
Be careful about being right too often. There is a price to be paid.
THE END…
of this post on Business Strategy and the The Wrong Side of Being Right?
Not really.
THE
A funny thing happened on the way to publishing this post.
It published itself. I think of it as the day my laptop burped a post.
How did this happen?
When it’s very humid, the track pad on my laptop moves of its own accord. Sometimes it opens programs. Sometimes the cursor moves as I’m typing. Sometimes letters I didn’t type appear on the screen. At other times the cursor doesn’t follow my touch commands. I have absolutely no control over what it does or doesn’t do.
Apparently, while I wasn’t looking, the wandering track pad published this post. Then it went to everyone on my mailing list. It wasn’t until the next day, that I realized what happened. I took the post down and sent an apologetic humorous explanation to people on my mailing list. The subject line read “My Track Pad Burped”. Some replied with “LOL” “You put a smile on my face” “Made my day,” and the like.
It gets weirder.
Some folks read the post before I realized and corrected the error. It seems some of them liked it and sent the post along the social media channels. Among the senders was Wally Bock, who writes about leadership, business and the art of writing. I respect Wally…a lot, so I am delighted when he chooses to retweet a post I’ve written.
So, here it is – half baked, a burp of sorts – and to some people’s liking.
If you have any way of making sense of all this, please leave a comment. I am curious, mystified and, as always, loving this strange and wonderful life.
The original intended ending will appear in a future post….
Maybe.