Opportunity is everywhere if you know how to look
Leverage points that produce outsized results are usually hide in plain sight, the trick is knowing how to see them.
What's often misunderstood about the value of developing a strategic practice, is that a lot of business leaders think that foresight and strategy are just alternative ways of doing planning, or putting together to-do lists.
Strategy ends up as an annoying annual activity (we all it pageantry) that entrenches the continuation of the status quo.
When presented with a far more comprehensive program of strategic foresight we've gotten the response that 'they are too busy to spend time considering the bigger picture', 'the future is too abstract a concept to have any kind of short-term relevance', 'cutting costs and increasing productivity'...blah blah blah...
There are a million 'logical' reasons as to why strategy is, for some, is simply seen as a 'nice to have'.
But alternatively choosing to show up in a category and going through the same motions as everyone else and thinking that your strategically uninformed actions are going to magically produce the top-line growth you need (while all of your competitors predictably also just twiddle their thumbs and carry on as usual) has never worked for any company in the past. And there is zero chance that history will reverse its predictable course just because of your hard work and wishful thinking.
What strategy work ought to deliver is insight into where an unfair advantage lies.
Winning doesn't usually happen because one competitor plans better, has good to-do lists, works harder, or spends less than another.
Winning happens when one competitor spots something overlooked by everyone else (usually because everyone else undervalues the enormous impact that this seemingly small thing has on the overall outcome of the system) and uses this tiny leverage point to their advantage.
Normally these leverage points are hiding in plain sight.
They are the strange attractors that are universally discounted by 'experts'. The counterintuitive solutions that look like the work of genius after they are proven effective.
Good strategy is the hard work of sitting with the system long enough to identity and take advantage of these leverage points.
Futures thinking, systems thinking an appreciation of the concept of emergence and genuine curiosity are the tools needed to do the work properly.
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Jon Cherry