When we talk about the strategy to apply at international level, we realize that some nations have more tendencies to plan their actions over the long term than others, often for cultural reasons.
Similarly, a small business will certainly not use the same strategic planning models as those used in large groups, those models found in books and management schools. Having worked for both, large multinational groups or start-up of 5 people, we think that we cannot plan for the long term in SME. But that it is necessary to do it in the big ones.
Planning is a powerful management tool. (As in the former USSR…)
Management by objective derives directly from this. But it’s an illusion to believe that you can control things. In small companies, talent that gives results, expertise, the ability to federate. Not the ability to manage. Later, during the development, the management capacities will be essential.
We are often amazed to see new entrepreneurs, managing their business on instinct, with annual growth rates of 100% to 200%, without having completed the slightest 5-year business plan. It is precisely thanks to the short term, to their agility to surf on opportunities that these companies have generated millions of euros and hundreds of jobs, but people do not take this into account, figures are needed, tables are needed. We will lend more money to a start-up selling vacuum on paper than to a craftsman or a genius inventor.
We pay for raw numbers, not expertise. That’s a shame. The same goes for training in entrepreneurship, for example. No one is interested in your talent, your strategy, your ability to communicate your expertise. We teach you about forecasting, insurance, bankers, legal form… But not about your added value and the optimal way to convince your core target.
Long-term planning is good. Constantly adapting is better.
The objectives give a direction, a target. The problem is when these goals become unattainable (in 90% of cases). We agree that management by objective works. But at what cost.
If we find excellent visionary managers, a large part are not able to give roadmaps that hold the road and swing outlandish, unfeasible figures. Where is the motivating factor for a salesperson, supply-chain manager, or purchaser when they realise that the goals are too high and impossible to achieve ?
The result is proportionally inverse to what it should have been. A shitty atmosphere in the teams, criticism in low mass and the productivity, the creativity of the teams at low level. We tend to forget in this type of management that kindness, compassion and cooperation are also appreciated qualities…
These forced planning methods (ultimately close to the communist methods of the Cold War) limit the vision of the company by restraining the collaborators, discourage the necessary adaptation in the short term and demotivate the actors of the international teams.
There is not one method better than the others.
Everyone can improve the system and processes. Thinking that a strategy is good because it is the one from the general management would be suicidal. The world is too complex for us to afford not to imagine that there are other, better methods that will have to be adapted to correct the strategy in place.
In large companies, the legitimate obsession with control is permanent, leading to behaviors of fear of risk. A small business cannot afford to hesitate to seize opportunities, to analyze all the factors. On the contrary, they should adopt creative ideas and immediately make the necessary adjustments. Be a master of change, now, not later. They must know how to manage the unpredictable, the irrational. The daily life of an entrepreneur in an attempt to put things in order.
“Most Japanese companies only have strategic goals but no explicit action plan. They lack confidence in business planning in general. For them, planning is about identifying major issues and creating an atmosphere for creative ideas and hard work that fosters a strong internal culture. Most major American corporations are run like the Soviet economy.”
Professor Shuji Hayashi
To export, be like bamboo.
Leave yourself some liberties despite a certain degree of rigor in the process. Being able to change plans at any time, being flexible while seeking stability. Like Bamboo, remember that what looks flexible is strong.
In today’s economy, you don’t have to be the biggest. Rather, be the most flexible, the most mobile, able to adapt at any time, to bend without ever breaking… and always become straight again after having faced adversity, in harmony and with humility.
Bamboos are among the fastest growing plants… Internationally, whatever your size, there will always be growth potential to look for.
The economy in profound change, but only at home.
It is dangerous to persist in too rigid strategies, to be unable to correct oneself. Difficult when our ego is too strong. The greatest strategists explains that the economy is moving, that this is times of turbulence, the economy is going through profound changes. But think about it, the world is ultimately in full compliance with the wishes of strategists on the other side of the world. Will there be missing elements in the analysis that we have of the world here at home?
Analytical errors have serious consequences. Unfortunately, those who pay the price for our strategists’ errors are not the strategists themselves. They are the ones who had good ideas and who were not listened to. People tend to attribute success to their own efforts and failures to external factors.
Seeing the future in the entrails of a chicken.
Ultimately, great planners of big numbers and objectives are like the marabouts of primitive tribes. They create the future they want. Plans are lists of wishes, good resolutions to take. They live in luxurious offices and predict their goals by reading the entrails of a sacrificed animal or the shoulder blade of a Pig.
How can we predict international data over 3 or 5 years in our globalized economy? Who can predict the appearance of new ideas? Who can predict the major innovations that will disrupt our professions and the world? Who can predict crises, wars, tsunamis? Don’t expect the plans to be exact, nor the goals that go with them.
Paralysis through analysis.
Action is disconnected from thought. A small business should not invest all its energy in conceiving on paper what the future will be, in essence unpredictable unless you are a diviner or a magician. Otherwise, the real necessary actions will never be undertaken due to lack of time and resources.
You have to act in real time, connected to your ideas, not imprison yourself and realize that the established network of contacts is rusting a little more every day. The survival of entrepreneurs in export depends on its actions in a concrete present since the future is abstract.
Thought must precede action and follow it very closely, in line with reality. Combine analysis with intuition.
“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind. Life is never stagnation.“
Bruce Lee
Happy CEO 