Become a Strategist!

In this eighth article, we will examine the next issue in a series of 10 key challenges to growth and how successful owner-managers may overcome them.

The late great management guru Peter F. Drucker famously observed that a business leader needs to address three basic tasks: running today's business, making today's business better, and creating a new business for a new tomorrow.

Running today's business. In the last article, we looked at the behavior of the boss. The behavioral diagnostics used at Cranfield suggest that most owner-managers—most of the time—are engaged in the first activity that Drucker identified. They are busy running today's business, all too often either solving other people's problems or interfering in the jobs that they pay others to do. A moment's reflection, however, will tell you that neither activity is conducive to growing the business. A leader adds real value to the business through improving the current set of activities or through refashioning the enterprise to address the challenges of the future. That is what strategy is all about.

Making today's business better. Improving today's business is generally a matter of making incremental changes (eg, delisting old products or services, upgrading information systems to enhance employee productivity). In well-managed businesses, incremental changes—driven by senior management or employees who see opportunity to make improvements and are given the discretion to do so—take place all of the time.

We observe the top performers closely on our Business Growth and Development Programme (BGP) at Cranfield. Those who go on to achieve significant growth entrust such activity to their staff. One highly successful participant handed over every aspect of the routine business management to his team within 2 years of completing our program. He then took over as Executive Chairman, and he now spends his time either as a roving ambassador in the marketplace, or coaching and mentoring his staff. In the 6 intervening years, net income has quadrupled.

Creating a new business for a new tomorrow. Strategy derives from the Greek word for generalship. Military leadership is, by and large, concerned with planning and deployment, with the focus split between winning the battle and winning the war. The best generals never lose sight of the bigger picture. Thus, the ambitious owner-manager should constantly look forward, scanning the horizon for the next opportunity or the emerging competitor. It is perhaps no accident that one of our most celebrated BGP entrepreneurs, Karan Bilimoria, is the son of a distinguished Indian general. Raised and steeped in military tradition, he meticulously planned the growth of Cobra Beer, Ltd. (London) from a niche tandoori restaurant proposition to a global brand over the past 17 years.

Until fairly recently, the worst that most owner-managed businesses had to fear was competition from the business down the road. Today, down the road could well be thousands of miles away in Bangalore or Beijing. Even the protection from foreign competition that service businesses have traditionally enjoyed is under threat, as India flexes its muscles in medical services, for example.

The businesses that will survive and flourish are those that adapt rapidly and flexibly to a changing world. From our perspective, we describe this as the ability to work on the business, rather than in it. The boss must be able to detach him/herself sufficiently from the day-to-day business and instead fashion a new business for a new tomorrow.

Of course, to free yourself to become a strategist, you need a team you can trust. In the next article, we will focus on how you can get the best from your people.

For more information on BGP and Cranfield's other programs for owner-managers, visit www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/groups/enterprise/credo/index.asp.