Why strategically the high street is still king

Average CEOs spend their time in meetings, staring at spreadsheets and engaging with shareholders; winning leaders are too busy dealing with real customers to be distracted by activities that are far less important.

Strategy is the art and science of carefully selecting an arena on which to compete and having a clearly defined approach as to how to win more business from customers that the competition.

Because customers cannot be controlled, strategy work involves a significant amount of uncertainty and conjecture, that weirdly far too many executives feel reluctant to address (they are more comfortable sitting at a desk or in yet another meeting). What many have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, is that in business there is nobody more important than the customer. And figuring out how to win their favour is really the only job of a CEO.

Because of this there is no better innovation lab than a high street store.

Right in the heart of a busy town square, the high street store is found without the physical barriers that typically accompany the leasing of space in a mall. It's a stark, raw, vulnerable offering without a filter. But in that cauldron of complexity the greatest strategic insights can be gleaned from customers.

BTW - before turfing this idea out because your business isn't categorised as retail, perhaps consider the term 'high street' as a metaphor for a purposeful de-optimisation of your customer engagement process. A deliberate rejection of customer analysis courtesy of data presented as a ratio.

Back to the beginning again

Just this week I sat down to have coffee with two successful founders - who after selling their previous business for many many millions of rands are now back to square one with a new start-up project. This weekend they're going to a trade show, just like they did 15 years ago.

They're going to set up a stand, put some products on a simple shelf, hand out flyers, talk to customers.

Even though they are massively successful, they're not above banging nails into a wooden board and getting told by a teenager to 'go to hell'.

You cannot innovate via remote control.

The high street is the greatest business school there is. Enrol today before the comfortable spectre of 'the corner office' strikes again.