If we agree on nothing else, let us agree that Trump’s first 100-days have produced significant changes in the conditions in which you operate. Shame on you if you don’t re-assess your next 100-days in the context of those changes.
The prescription is to re-look at your customers, collaborators, culture, capabilities, competitors, and conditions. Then filter those insights through revised SWOT and key leverage points and business implications on the way to changing what you do over the next 100-days.
Customers, Collaborators, Culture, Capabilities, Competitors, Conditions
Conditions
While analyses like these should generally start with customers, in this case, begin by looking at changes in the conditions in which you operate. In particular, look at how political changes are impacting and are going to impact the economic situation. Those will have knock on effects on social, health, and climate trends, and on your customers.
Collaborators
Collaborators include your suppliers, business allies, and people delivering complementary products and services. What links all these groups together is that they will do better if you do better. So it’s in their best interest, whether they know it or not, to help you succeed. Think Microsoft and Intel. Think hot dogs and mustard.
Just as these relationships are two-way, so must be your analysis. Dig into the inter-dependencies and reciprocal commitments and the impact of the changes in conditions. Whenever these dependencies and commitments are thrown out of balance by changes like those, the nature of the relationships will inevitably change.
Competitors
Competitors include anyone that your customers could give their money or attention to instead of to you.
It is important to take a wide view of potential competitors. Amtrak’s real competitors are other forms of transportation like automobiles and airplanes. The competition for consumer dollars may be as varied as a child’s college education versus a Disney World vacation.
In analyzing these competitors, think through their objectives, strategies and situation, as well as their strengths and weaknesses to better understand and predict what they might do next in light of the changing conditions.
Customers
Customers include the people your business sells to—direct customers who actually give you money. It also includes their customers, their customers’ customers, and so on down the line. Eventually, there are end users or consumers of whatever the output of that chain is. Finally, there are the people who influence your various customers’ purchase decisions.
Take all of changes impacting these people into account including changes in conditions, collaborators and competitors.
Culture
Culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage – BRAVE Behaviors, Relationships, Attitudes, Values, Environment. This should not change in response to changes in conditions, but should, of course, evolve over time.
Capabilities
The changes in your capabilities, the last of the 6 Cs, should flow from the changes in your SWOT. So, let’s look at that.
SWOT
At one level, SWOT is a framework for looking at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. People tend to understand that strengths and weaknesses are internal. They do often trip up on “opportunities,” leaping to things they could do instead of how SWOT was originally designed with opportunities being external things you might capitalize on and threats being external things to worry about.
In this case, think through how the external changes you highlighted in your 6Cs re-look create new opportunities and threats.
Then, cross your internal strengths with external opportunities to re-assess your key leverage points. And cross your internal weaknesses with external threats to re-assess your business issues.
Do a change management triage:
- Not getting distracted by minor changes with temporary impact
- Dealing with major changes with temporary impact
- Evolving in the light of minor changes with enduring impact
- Hitting a restart button to deal with major changes with enduring impact.
This leads directly to what you must do over your next 100-days:
- Shore up glaring weaknesses exposing you to new short-term threats to protect your base.
- Tactically adjust existing resources to better leverage your strengths to take advantage of short-term opportunities.
- Invest to build new capabilities to mitigate longer-term threats and take advantage of longer-term opportunities.
It’s certainly possible that Trump’s first 100-days will not require you to change your next 100-days. But, it’s unlikely. In any case, you’re going to be happier and better off going through this assessment so you’re making a deliberate choice to change or not and what changes to make.
John Hall
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