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Strategy in a state of uncertainty

Strategy state of uncertainty? Would not it be redundant?

Define a strategy to x years is looking to the future, imagine and build new references, making investments whose consequences did reveal that over time. Is to forecast and then plunge into uncertainty.

I had the opportunity recently heard an officer say: "How do you want me to define a strategy and forecasts to three years if I do not even know if my biggest client I renew his contract next year ...."

Besides the apparent lack of strategy in its business, about concerns me, I saw confusion in his way of understanding the future, between the concepts of forecasting and prediction .

The forecast is based on the past, analogy and extrapolation, it is for a future short-term continuity, extending trends of the curves and using as a tool models.

foresight, she built a new standard on the more distant future, it builds the future based on deliberate choices, it enables innovation, strategy and used as a tool of scenarios affected the probability of realization.

So this leader confused in a crisis of liquidity, the need to review its short-term forecasts (in terms of results especially in terms of cash) with the need to consider a longer horizon. These two exercises are not the same purpose. In the first case it is to provide a short term, possibly to develop alternative responses to an unexpected threat, ie to anticipate a danger signal to be able to respond with agility. In the second case it is envisaged, in a constantly changing environment, an evolution of the company's business model, define a vision, a strategy.

Access to the future and has three doors Input: the past is the prediction by the present is the anticipation and the future is the vision.

The strategy has always been a perpetual journey into uncertainty, which characterizes our times, and now our future is that certain periods are becoming shorter. The number, frequency and sometimes brutal events will produce a challenge increasingly frequent situations acquired:

- Macroeconomic Events: financial crisis, price fluctuations, geopolitical changes, ...
- climatic events: natural disasters, snowy winters strongly, very hot summer ...

- Events Notices: new tax provisions, social or economic ...

- Environment hyper Login: globalization, systemic effects, the internet generation zapping ...

- Competition: new players entering the low-cost, ....

- Innovation: The iPhone has profoundly changed the market for mobile telephony and, more generally, our behavior, Itunes, Deezer or Spotify have resulted in a disruption of business model related to publishing and distributing music. ...

In this context, should we then abandon all the anticipation and build strategy to the dustbin of modern management? No, of course, but how? I do not want to paraphrase Robert Branch , strategy consulting to large groups and author of highly original "Seas of Uncertainty" I had the opportunity to discover recently. For him, the uncertainty is driving the development of creativity, imagination and innovation. To move in limbo, he proposes to think from the future to transform chance into opportunities.

I wanted to illustrate this on the example of the use of a scenario within a company that everyone knows. Imagine (and this is a textbook case) that the Google executives evaluate the concept (strategy or tactics arising from strategy), expire five years, to charge for access to their search engine on the internet.

The idea seemed absurd a priori and do not retain our attention for a moment in complete break with current trends of free services.

Now, we are situated in a future five years, I bring you good news: we are in 2016, access to the search engine Google has become payable, tell me why?

I am sure you will find me then a plethora of reasons for this change of business model:

- search engine much more relevant that required heavy investments,

- translation engine information in a foreign language more powerful,

- automatic indexing and custom of our historical research,

- regulatory constraints requiring the retention of all data,

- etc ...

The approach is interesting, to assess the achievement or non achievement of a goal by placing the Maturity fixed and using a query formulated by a verb in the present force to see larger, imagine all the answers to submit in a way the goal envisaged a "crash-test. This approach, which is only steps to develop a strategy, is curiously not widespread among SMEs.

Reflecting the uncertainty grows to curiosity, to see farther, to the questioning of the status quo. About existing situations, as CFO I always struck me that many companies had expected the Aubry laws on the 35 hours to think otherwise productivity of hours worked, that it took the financial crisis of 2008 for the optimization of working capital and cash culture be a hot topic. The lack of change, continuity, certainty INVOLVE you it at some action?

What do you think?

Let me conclude this post by three quotations:

"Predictions are difficult, especially when they concern the future." (Pierre Dac)

"It's not improving the candle that was discovered electricity." (Gilles de Robien at the filing of the Planning Act for research in 2005)

"It may have already seen wins by chance, but not all of them has never seen a defeat which is due to a lack of calculation (Sun Tzu, The Art of War)