In this episode we discuss: The depths of strategy. We are joined by Steve Spall, Board Advisor. 

We chat about the following:

• What are the hallmarks of a good strategy? 
• Do complex strategies hinder rather than help?
• How can leaders ensure that every employee understands and aligns with the strategy?
• Can leaders without a natural strategic mindset still drive a company's success through strong execution and team alignment?

References: 

• www.linkedin.com/in/stevespall

Biography: 

Over the past 15 years, Steven Spall has driven scale-ups through successful exits to FMCG giants, most recently serving as COO at tails.com after his tenure as Group Operations and Strategy Director at innocent drinks. Prior to this, Steven spent a decade in various senior operations, change, and strategy roles at British Gas, Tesco, and Kingfisher. His early career included positions as a supply chain project manager and distribution centre manager at Whitbread Beer Company and as an operations consultant at Ernst & Young.

Steven is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Cardiff Business School in the Logistics and Operations Management Section. He is now focusing on Non-Executive roles within operations-heavy smaller businesses.

Steven has been happily married to his delightful wife Kate for over 30 years. They have a grown-up daughter who creates the special effects for the London Dungeons and a son who is a co-founder of a deep physics tech start-up. In their leisure time, Steven and Kate enjoy travelling across Europe in their VW camper.

To learn more about Beth and Brandon or to find out about sponsorship opportunities click here. 

Summary:

• Work-life balance and happiness in the corporate world. 0:05
• Hosts discuss seasonal affective disorder and London weather.
• Brandon and Bethany discuss the idea that success and happiness are not always directly linked, despite achieving career milestones.
• Strategy development, communication, and adaptability in business. 3:10
• Bethany: Good strategy has a clear purpose, vision, and market problem to solve.
• Brandon M: Strategy should be framed up on paper, adhere to OKRs, and be communicated effectively.
• Strategy should be enduring, but OKRs move faster to adapt to changing market dynamics.
• Brandon and Bethany discuss their company's strategy and OKRs, ensuring alignment and communication across teams.
• They prioritize listening to employees and adjusting the strategy based on market changes and feedback.
• Vision, purpose, mission, and strategy in business. 10:42
• Bethany defines vision as "what the company needs to look like in 5 years" and purpose as "why am I getting up on Monday morning" (12 words)
• Brandon defines strategy as "how the company will solve a problem in the industry to achieve its vision" (14 words)
• Strategy defined as understanding scope, figuring out unique solution, and aligning with values.
• Strategy development, execution, and alignment. 14:33
• Steve: Well-defined success and understanding situation are crucial for effective strategy.
• Identifying a unique solution to overcome challenges or leverage opportunities is key to successful strategy.
• Bethany: Strategy and vision are often conflated in businesses.
• Steve: Clarity of strategy is crucial for success, but often lacking.
• Business strategy, vision, and product development. 20:37
• Bethany and Steve discuss the importance of having a clear purpose, vision, and market strategy for a business.
• Brandon M. adds that the product strategy should be aligned with the business strategy and should have a clear roadmap.
• Steve defines strategy as identifying business need and clever way to achieve it.
• Strategy involves all components, including business model, operating model, and product strategy.
• Strategy, moats, and organizational alignment. 26:17
• Speakers discuss the importance of understanding the operating model and business capabilities to execute a strategy.
• Walmart's success was due to its ability to adapt and innovate, rather than relying on a single strategy or moat.
• Effective culture and leadership are crucial for staying ahead of competitors and maintaining a competitive advantage.
• Strategic planning and communication in business. 30:33
• Steve discussed the importance of open communication and regular updates on the company's state and strategy.
• Steve emphasized the need for clear and simplified communication of the strategy to the workforce, using examples from innocent and tails.com.
• Steve: Strategic thinking is essential for business success.
• Bethany: Few people are strategic thinkers, but it's okay if they're not.
• Strategy vs. execution in business leadership. 34:53
• Steve: Strategic thinking is overvalued, implementation is key.
• Bethany: Good leadership doesn't require strategic thinking, but understanding the strategy is important.
• Framing and understanding the situation is key to effective strategy and execution.

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Brandon M 0:05

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the operations room a podcast for CEOs. I am Brandon Mensa. And as always joined by my lovely co hosts, Bethany Ayers, how are things going, Bethany?

Bethany 0:17

They're just raining, aren't they? Are we ever going to get a summer? Are we ever going to get a spring? Anyhow, I'm just I'm really tired of living in London. This happens. I think every year around this time, I've been in a bit of a funk and quite low for the last couple of weeks, but then also contemplating life and time on the planet. And then it just rains again. London is an absolutely amazing city. And every time I walk across Waterloo Bridge, and there's the Houses of Parliament on one side, and there's St. Paul's on the other. And even though I've been here for 24 years, I'm still just like, wow, I am so lucky to live in the city. This is just unbelievable, all inspiring. And then I wake up in the morning, and it's pissing down. And it's grey again. And it's 13 degrees out which a for American listeners, I don't know, like 52 Fahrenheit or something. And I'm just like, Fuck sake, is this ever gonna get better.

Brandon M 1:18

It's funny, because coming from Vancouver, this feels wonderful. Because in Vancouver, beautiful city, everyone loves it. But nobody ever talks about the fact that a rains eight months of the year, I mean, up until the same thing up until June, July, you don't actually get sunny weather that with very little rain until the summer actually hits. I

Bethany 1:35

have one highlight on Wednesday, went to a COO roundtable dinner and sat next to a I don't know if this is condescending or not, but a superfan and it was really nice. So Rich, who hopefully is listening to this says that every Thursday, he waits for our podcast to come out and then goes for a walk and has a listen and loves it. Because you know, sometimes it's a bit of a grind. And as I've mentioned, life is sometimes difficult. And I was like oh, and then he's like, Oh, it's all worth it in the end. So thank you rich. And also I think that I mean, maybe this is just entirely my own personal experience. But I'm going to guess that it's not given some feedback that we've had around the podcast is there's a certain element of you grind, you grind, often see, oh, those are high achievers, academically, very good. You reach a certain point in your career, and you've done all of the right things. And now you've made it and now you should be happy. But instead, you're sitting in the C suite, you're like, life's not actually much different than it was before. I'm no happier or less happy than I was before I earn a lot more money, but I spend a lot more money. And I'm a lot older, what am I going to do with my life, shit. And so I think that there's a certain element of appeal of, it's not always about how to do the best red lines, it's also sometimes about how to live the best life, where you've gotten to a point where you think, Ah, if only I do this, and if only I do that, then my life is gonna be amazing. And you do all of this, if only is and you actually still feel the same way you did when you were 25 and very confused. Alright,

Brandon M 3:09

so we have an amazing guest for this, which is Steve spall. He is the former CEO of tails.com. He's the former Operations Director of innocent drinks, and is also the former head of strategy for British Gas. So quite a number of big brand names behind Steve's fall. So before we get to Steve's conversation, I just wanted to start with you, Bethany. With that question. What is strategy?

Bethany 3:33

So I'm going to try and rewind and talk about, maybe not what is strategy, but what for me, is hallmarks of a good strategy. One of that is, you can put it on a page, not every single intricate bit of it, but you can explain on a single page to people where you're going, what are the major milestones to get there? And why? I think those would be my, my points. And I feel like people think it needs to be a lot more and a lot more complicated. And super, super detailed. And that's like all of the appendix of how we got to where we got to and the strategy is the crystallisation of everything. And all of the analysis that you've done,

Brandon M 4:23

what is the situation that this company is and what's the surrounding space that we live in? And when I say that, what I'm really talking about is, what are the market dynamics? What are the competitive dynamics? What is the founders vision of the future? What is the purpose that he's outlined for us as to why we get up every morning and do what we do? And then also looking at whatever quantitative data makes sense to look at in that kind of company level strategy space, and also some of the qualitative stuff that I can kind of weave in there as well. And ultimately, what should be coming out of that is, what are we solving for? What is the problem space in which this company needs to exist and actually solve a kind of a market problem or a market opportunity in this case? And ultimately what you should be doing is, on paper framing up what business? Are we actually in? What business? Are we not in? And, to me, the litmus test of a good strategy in that case is, does the OKRs set that developed from that? Does it actually adhere to or flesh out what the company's strategy is in that respect? And can you see the connection between what that strategy is and what the actual OKRs are, that are being set within the company? And if you see that, and it makes you happy, then you're on the right track. Ultimately, when you do that next pulse survey, you want to be asking this question before and after, which is, Do people understand what the strategy of the company is? Previous after, and if the after Mark is increased, because you've actually communicated this? Well, and also really, quite simply, then again, you're on the right track.

Bethany 5:54

So I think an element that we should make explicit is timelines. So for me, I view a strategy, you may adjust the strategy annually, but because we're in fast growing companies with markets that are shifting, it could make sense. But even so I think a strategy should be something that can last three years, five years. So when you identify those actions that need to be achieved, they're not actions that need to be achieved in the next three months or the next year. It's something that actually is a fundamental shift in the business or a growth and reinforcement of advantages you see, that are much longer lasting. And then the OKRs is the translation of what are the next most important things we do in order to achieve that strategy. And that's why the OKRs move much faster. And the strategy should be enduring. You're basically just checking in to make sure that your strategy is still make sense, with the new competitor around the corner with the new fundraise with a new piece of technology that might fundamentally change your strategy. But if you've not had those really big movers, your strategy should last a few years, as strategy is not just you looking at your company and thinking everything is awesome. Hope is not a strategy which any sales leader listening knows, says on a regular basis. It's about understanding your market and outside dynamics, as much as what's happening inside and using both of those. So the first part of strategy is a huge amount of data crunching, reading, talking, looking at the chessboard of your market, and where do you fit in it, and then you distil that and synthesise it into a plan.

Brandon M 7:50

Oftentimes, what companies end up doing is shortchanging the market dynamic, the market context and the market situation thinks solely about themselves in that respect. And what they end up doing is really creating a wish list of priorities or things that they think they need to be focused on. So here's like, our 12 things that we would like to do. Well,

Bethany 8:09

it's not a strategy, those are goals. So the goal is 12 million and arr. The strategy is, how do we get there and really is 12 million actually got like that sort of vision. And it's not our ultimate plan is to have 12 million, it's presumably part of a bigger plan and a bigger vision. And these are just metrics that help you identify whether or not you're heading towards that bigger plan, a bigger mission.

Brandon M 8:35

So yeah, all that makes sense. And then once you have a strategy, how do you best communicate the strategy

Bethany 8:40

over and over and over again, you start with your one pager, so that everybody can understand that and get behind it. And then you explain how you got to that one pager with some of the most important and compelling pieces of information, but as high level as possible. And then you talk to your direct reports about it, and you talk to the company about it, and you talk to the company about it again, and you talk to your direct reports about it, and you make sure that your direct reports talk to their teams about it. And you just keep communicating it until it sticks.

Brandon M 9:14

What I used to do in my former company was the once a month kind of all hands where we talk about our progress related to our OKRs as the OKRs related to the strategy or in fulfilment of the strategy over time, we would make those acknowledgments as part of that, to ensure that there was a clear connection and reinforcement between the strategy and the okera set that we're focused on. Because you can imagine for employees, what they see and do every day, should be in for our company lease was very much focused on the objectives and the key results of the different teams we're trying to accomplish for them to where we call why they're doing it wasn't always there. So we would kind of do it for them in some sense with the all hands and make those connections or at least highlight them as a bit of a showcase.

Bethany 9:56

And then also, not just Communicating it, you know directionally, but because we are in businesses that are moving very quickly, and you have people that are much closer to the market on a day to day basis than you are, is to ensure that you actually listen, when people question the strategy. It's not aligning with reality, something big has happened, that means that we may need to look at it and revisit the strategy. And so being open to hearing that there is change, and not just saying, No, I've created a strategy for the next five years. And I don't want to know that it's not working, we just have to, like, stick with it a bit longer. Because of where we are, that's not always the reality because it is so fast moving.

In your view, what is the difference between vision, purpose, mission, and strategy?

I don't know the company needs a vision and admission, obviously, other people feels that we really need both of those. Because for me, they just kind of mushed in together, like, we want to build an enduring company that cares about human rights and is sustainable and doesn't mess up the environment that solves this problem. Whatever that problem is, is that a mission? Is that a vision? I think it's probably both? And why can't it just be one sentence? I can give you the textbook reasons why like, What is the vision versus a mission, but it's just like, in reality, they end up getting quite mushed together. Purpose is kind of the same as mission. And then strategy is divorced from those because if like the mission, or the vision, or the purpose of your company way, way far out in the future and why you exist. The strategy is, how are you going to get there in the next three to five years of this enduring infinite timeline? Because all businesses are infinite, right?

This is my definition the way I've kind of ascribed to it so myself, to me the vision is, what does the company need to look like in five years? Where do we want to end up? What does that five year kind of goal look like for the company and being able to describe that in a very visceral way? And that's where the usually the founder comes in to describe that in fabulous ways, then the second part of it is the purpose, which is different. And that is, why am I getting up on Monday morning to do what I'm doing right now? What is that purpose? Why is that meaningful, I need to hear something that's crisp and clear, to motivate me in that sense. The vision is always a beautiful thing in terms of being super compelling, and really inspiring and whatnot. And then the mission really is, how are we going to get there. And this is where I blend the mission with the strategy little bit, because the mission of how we're going to get there is kind of a strategy, which leads me to my definition of strategy, which is, the company has a problem that is trying to solve within the industry that it's in. And you've diagnosed, that you've understood that you scope that and you're trying to figure out where you sit in that world, and how you're going to solve that problem uniquely, from your point of view. And then hopefully, with a set of fresh revelations around that to make it unique and special and quite compelling to your buyers set. And that, to me, is the definition of strategy. I

quite like that. EOS just has called a different things. And Simon cynics starts with why. And I'm just not convinced that we need missions purposes, visions, and we need to be so distinct with all of them. I was listening

to a short clip from his strategy, bad strategy. And he had a similar opinion, which is like he's kind of said he doesn't care about purpose, mission and values who like whether it's there or not doesn't matter. But you do need to have a strategy. And that seems quite true.

I 100% agree, although I disagree maybe on the values because I find value is very helpful for selecting people in and out and self selecting people in and out. And just owning those values and finding people who are up for acting in the same way that you want to act. When values are trust and love and harmony or whatever, like probably not, but Monzo versus revolute, you're gonna have values that aligned to one of those businesses or the other. And so therefore, you're gonna choose which one you want to work with.

Alright, so let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk with Steve spall and all things strategy.

I would say in a nutshell, I wonder why I think it's arranging things in the best way possible over the medium to long term to maximise your chance of achieving a well defined success or a well thought through feasible, sustainable way of achieving a thing you want to achieve. In the military. It's probably a little bit different. Or in government, it's probably a little bit different but kind of in business that feels like The nub of it really, a potentially achievable way of overcoming a key challenge is another way of thinking of it, knowing how to do the thing you need to

do. So if we take that idea of, you need to get somewhere and he have mid long term sustainable way of making that to bring that to fruition. Can we break that down into if you had to think about three or four chunks to consider to make that come alive? What would those chunks be? Do you think

it's that well defined success is crucial to actually have a sense of what you're trying to achieve or what your ambition is. And then I think it's understanding your situation, and framing it really well as critical enabler to any strategy work. And people I think, often charge into following a process. But without knowing why they're even doing the strategy in the first place, what it is they want, what success looks like. And then secondly, without understanding where they're at, and maybe what's, what's a way of really framing that simply, so you have a problem to overcome or competitors to win against. And so kind of knowing that, before you plunge into the kind of more detail work of thinking about opportunities, and how to tackle them, I think is probably the key thing. And then organising for execution, once you got through that is also super important. Obviously, great executions needed a winning strategy, really pretty useless. And unless it's actually implemented. So I suppose for my mind, to actually be a strategy, not just a pipe dream is something you desperately want to happen, but don't really know how to get it to combat. To add value to a business, it normally has to have that sort of smart element, some kind of innovative element that unlocks a challenge, or a limitation or some kind of key problem, or create some kind of leverage or multiplier effect that allows something to punch above its weight. And a bit like maybe it can be like in martial arts, where you're using a stronger force, competitors strength against themselves, or some kind of asymmetry, like in guerrilla warfare or something like that. But realising you've really understood the situation up and you've been able to sort of synthesise or frame it down to an understandable challenge. And then you've spent the time to think of a different, slightly smart way to overcome it is often at the heart of a successful strategy.

We talk often about speak to businesses who complain that they don't have a strategy. And it's not usually the CEO who complains, they don't have a strategy. It's usually kind of VP level and below. And yet, sometimes there is a strategy. But it's just that either people don't know it, or people don't understand what a strategy is, or the company is not aligned behind that strategy. So how do you diagnose and I suspect there are some CEOs here who have been told our company doesn't have a strategy, whether the strategy is the problem, or some of these other issues are the problem. For

most effective, if you're in that CTMC, suite, whatever you want to call it, and you knowing and living where the company is, you'll know for sure whether there's clarity of a strategy, or not. If you can't articulate in two or three sentences, the key way that you're going to win, then you probably haven't got a at its core. The problem if there isn't a strategy is probably true. It's unlikely there isn't a strategy, it may either be that the strategy is not good enough, or that it's not understood, or that lots of people are asking for a strategy, who really wants and plans in much more detail on what you're working. You're in one of those situations, perhaps where you're one of those CEOs who's working alongside some inspired but perhaps inexperienced founders who have a really clever idea, but don't know how to turn that idea into something that's actionable within a business. So then you know that if people don't get it, it's an issue of being able to explain to them, what's the job of strategy versus what's the job of planning versus what's the job of understanding the proposition versus what's the job of the operating model, the business model or all these other components? And the strategies sort of the minimum viable, framing and limitations on your degrees of freedom that enables the organisation to be able to answer the question is, is this something we should do? Or is this something we should not do? That to my mind is its heyday if I go back further to times, like working in Woolworths, there was unquestionably not a strategy. There were many competing strategy. I worked for three years it was seven managing directors over that period of time. I think we probably had about 15 To be honest, because certainly some of those MDS had several ideas that they wanted done. They were very much ambition led, so I think there's an awful lot more to strategy than just being able to envision a space that you want to get to and to manifest it to get there. And that was happening in that sort of large organisation,

I think happens sometimes in businesses is strategy and vision are conflated. So you might have like, the whole massive, changing the world, which I guess is the mission, and then your vision is, and you're going to be the biggest company serving these people. And that is like, the end of your strategy is your vision, but not the entirety of the strategy. But a lot of people stop there. Oh, no, and we're awesome. And we're gonna build a product. And what I see missing a lot is the external, looking at the market, looking at competitors, looking at technology changes, and figuring out, what are we going to use? Where's our place in the market? How are we going to get to be the biggest widget maker in the world, which means that we're going to transform the world because we're not gonna use plastic anymore?

So purpose is why are we even doing this? And vision is what will it look like when we get there? And I think that's really important for me with vision is you need to be able to paint literally either a visual image, or a pen picture of what will it be like when we get there? And that's different from mission, which is, it's very similar to purpose, which is what are we trying to achieve values are, how will we behave and all of this together, but with some numbers around it, as well as what those guys call aspirations, is to start to put some boundaries around what what you will or won't do, and geographically where you will or won't play, what channels the market you might be in or not being what kinds of customers you might chase or not trying to chase. And then they'll they'll go into how to win. And that's the bit where you need to do the kind of analysis that you were describing just now of understanding who the other players are, and what technologies are all these other areas that you might do. But you need that spark of inspiration to say, how can we create a situation in this? How do we win, where you're going to be able to find a way of getting a better result than those competitors around you or disrupt the market, if you haven't, you're not really going to have a strategy, you're just going to have a framework of all the things you're going to ask people to do, but with no guarantee that you're going to win. The other kind of thing that I like to offset against that is, if you think like Richard runouts book, good strategy, bad strategy, his basically spends a lot of time really articulating that point that you've got to have a smart bid in the middle. Otherwise, it's not a strategy at all.

From my point of view, there's three kind of slices of the pie that I tend to present as a complete pie. Which is, what business are we in? What business? Are we not in? What is our market strategy? And these are segments and audiences that we're going after? And some level of clarity around that? And then we have the third piece of the pie, which is the product strategy? And what is that product strategy? And how are you going to get to that in terms of our product roadmap, and the layers that are sitting there that are outcome based and problem based in that sense?

What's the scope for which we want to apply strategy, if I assert that strategy is fundamentally about having a smart way of achieving the thing you want to achieve, it's actually going to let you win, then taking that definition, you can apply it to all kinds of different levels, you can play a whole company level, which roughly I think is what your three slice pie model it was doing, I guess, you're trying to solve for customers, you've got a clever way of fulfilling that, that allows value creation, I think that's probably close to your product strategy. You've got hopefully a brutally clear proposition and product or service and route to market. That's another part of your slide. But those fulfil that need, you've figured out a business model that's sustainable. So basically, you can do that in a way that ultimately will generate money over time rather than burning money over time. And you've got an operating model that organises it all, so that it's possible to deliver that on a sustainable basis. So in my mind, those are the components, there's the kind of kernel of the idea of what the business is trying to solve for, and a smart way of fulfilling that in a way that's gonna do value creation, that then you've articulated into a brutally clear proposition. So if you want to think of strategy at the top level, as in like, knowing I'm defining success as the business works and wins and my strategies, I need to know how to do it, then yes, you're going to need to know what all those components are and how they interact. But all of that work will be futile. If you haven't got a clearly identify business need and a clever way of fulfilling it. type of battle, because you'll just end up being a mediocre kind of company operating really well, but not winning, because you just the same as the next guy

you started with the strategy is, what's the vision and how we're going to do it. And yet, as we've discussed it, it's become much bigger to encompass the operating model to encompass the business model.

I personally wouldn't call strategy, all of those things. For my mind, the strategy is just that little bit of a very top really, as I like to think of it, which is identifying the business need and the clever way of achieving it. But that's useless on its own, you do need all the other components. So it's equally valid to describe that as your business strategy. And if you want to apply the word strategy, if you want to say that's my proposition strategy, and that's my product strategy. And that's my operating model strategy. And it's kind of fine, isn't it? People use that language in that way. Because in each case, hopefully, you've identified some kind of thing that needs to get achieved some idea of what success looks like. And now you're going to, in that next level, work out a smart way of achieving that. And often those five steps that that come out of playing to win are not a bad way of going through and saying, for successful business as a whole, you definitely need all those components. And they need to be mutually compatible, right? When

businesses say they don't have a strategy, quite often, I think it's comes down to this definition of what a strategy is, I'm more aligned with you that a strategy is the vision, the clever thing you're going to do, how you're going to do it, but like, high level, how the very top principles and then all that other stuff is the operational strategy or operationalizing, the strategy? And that's what's often missing where people think it's a strategy.

So answer that question, when people say there's no strategy, they may well mean, I don't understand the operating model, or we don't have an operating model, or we're all just like we painted a vision, we even got a smart idea. And now we've all walked off and just assume that the people in ops or the people in marketing, or folks somewhere will just magically make this happen. What folk might be alluding to is that it's the arrangements for linking and coordinating the different parts of the business to maintain balance and coherence in the organisation as a whole, how you actually create and sustain those business capabilities required to deliver the strategy. It's often a coherent understanding, and control and management of that that's actually interesting that people might say this, right.

But often in fundraising, everybody talks about your moat investors, like, what's your moat? What's your moat? What's your modes, and I think this is actually what they're talking about. And it's not just we can develop faster than anyone else. It's what is your clever way of winning the market. So

you could be in a position where you simply recognise that you have a highly fortunate, positive set of circumstances, like, you've got a set of assets, a set of resources, a set of technologies, that just means that you have a sustainable way of winning, just by disciplined execution, you don't need something smart, because you're mega powerful, you can be lucky sometimes. But and so a strategy might just be, hey, we're in this fortunate position, let's make sure we really exploit it smartly. The example I like from good strategy, bad strategy is the one of Walmart, where you go back all those years to last century, and Walmart were competing with target, they all just had separate stores, and every store had its hinterland. And what defined, whether you could have a big store or not, was how many people you could reach in the hinterland. And that would then make you large enough as an entity to be able to purchase and have a decent range and have enough consumers to sell to and all the rest of it. And the kind of smart idea that Walmart had back in those days was to replace the idea of every store has to have its hinterland with making all the stores into a network, and saying that if the network as a whole is strong enough, we can move materials around that network and balance them off, we can use the strengths and weaknesses of the different stores and their different geographical pieces. So now will enable us to then expand the store network into places, which previously weren't large enough to have a network. And then there's all the capabilities that have to go behind that. And so then the question is all what makes that defensible, it was literally probably just first mover advantage, and then being very good at supply chain management. And then it starts to be the fact that they bring all their supplier personnel into do vendor management, inventory, and all the rest of it, then so the only only the moat then is just always being ahead of target and the others in how far they develop that concept. So the concept itself isn't the moat, but the fact that they're just ahead of everybody and stay ahead of everybody else becomes the moat. I think in that example. It's

interesting because it comes down to culture, doesn't it? Because so often, it's whether or not you can move quickly and adjust. And so our target looking at Walmart and saying, Well They're stupid, we have a much better way of doing things, let them go ahead until they realise Oh, no, they weren't stupid, or are you looking and in a position to be agile and nimble from the start?

Absolutely. And if I think about my time at Tesco, for example, in just the beginning of the century, it was about alignment, discipline and control, allowing faster responsive innovation. And keeping things simple and doing things leanly, and having sufficient discipline in the organisation to make people then just respond to that, rather than it turned into chaos. Was their winning secret sauce.

How do you give strategy lift off in the company in terms of each and every person in each and every role that you have in the company, they truly get, what the strategy is as to how we're going to get there. And what that looks like, and how that informs their function forms that role. How do you make that come alive for folks in a way where they get, it's

massively helped if you've one of those organisations, where communication about the state of the company, the state of the market, what's happening, what's going well, what's going badly, very open communication is part of the regular feature. So if I think, to innocent and tails.com, that was a feature every week, good news, bad news, as a matter what is and trusting their employee base, not to go and spill that to competitors, or so forth. So having that regular heartbeat and cadence and expectation of knowing what's going on. And what's happening means that you've, you're likely to have in most of your workforce anyway, especially if it's a if it's a knowledge worker, tiny company, not so much a factory company or something, you're likely to have folk who understand enough of the background to have a fighting chance of understanding the strategy. The second point I put is the steps and the process and the work that you go through to arrive at the strategy, and to really refine it down is quite boring and technical and grungy. And if you use that to describe it, you're probably aren't going to explain it very well. So making sure that you've got great communications folks, maybe it's your marketing team, if they weren't there, there was great comms, whatever it might be, being able to take that idea and then translate it into something really simplified, and then pushing it out. consistently saying it over and over again, I remember innocent, Federico Giles, Carter, a great guy. And he was responsible for the European businesses for a while. And every Monday morning meeting, he would stand up, and he would repeat how it was that we were going to win here, he just say it over and over and over every month, and then he would stand up. And he sort of say, it's about great comms and simplifying it, there were five things that we had to succeed in, in store if we're going to win, you know, and so it's the prices are great, the aisles are clear that people are going to smile, I can get what I want. And I don't queue right. So as a customer, those are the five things that that we felt people wanted in the store, your job was to make those five things happen. And they hired a former editor from the Sun newspaper, to take their strategy, and then turn it into a language that 300,000 people could understand. So I think the answer is, you have to do it professionally. If you want people to understand it, not just kind of, you can't just take your five steps of playing to win and share it with everybody and think you're gonna understand what's going on everything that

you have in businesses, everybody wants to save their strategic, very few people are strategic. And that's okay. When you were talking to like, if they're smart enough. And I would say that is not the most important thing. There are lots of people who are super smart, who just are not strategic thinkers.

I think what I meant there was, it depends where you are in your scale up journey, if you have a senior team of a dozen or 15, folks, and then there's another 40 or 50 underneath them. And that probably is the group that you need to be doing with if your earliest stage. And actually you've got a couple of founders and maybe one of the senior person you hired in and then you've got a bunch of graduates beneath that, it may not be the best use of time to drag them in when they perhaps don't have the context or experience to do it. But you're right, I think the ability to to do the the analysis and synthesis, I suppose of the technical words for it. But to understand that, like I say, to understand the situation you're in and then create a frame, work a way of seeing it. And then bring all those people from their own faces of the cube and turn the cube around in front of them so they see the other faces, and then align on the face of the angle, the approach that you're going to take, how are we going to frame this problem? How are we going to tackle it? You've got to have in the room folk who are able to see those different perspectives and then land on the one that as a business you choose to pursue if you're going to succeed. So the ability to see in that way is probably much more important than technically being smart. I would have thought that Yeah,

and also I, at least in my experience, although everybody thinks that senior leaders need to be strategic, I have very come across very few who truly are a lot of operators who are very good operators and very good leaders and can create a vision. But their strength is not analysis and synthesis. And you only need like one or two who can do that, and it can actually carry an entire company. Yeah,

I think that's absolutely right. You don't need a lot, but the others need to understand the value of that job having been done. And you often don't understand the value of that job having been done if you don't have that skill set. This

is true. I get a lot of people come to me saying I need to be more strategic, how am I more strategic? How do I think more strategically. And for me, you can go and do some research. But fundamentally, either your brain is good at taking vast amounts of information and synthesising it into something simple that other people can understand. Or it's not, but that doesn't mean that you're not a worthwhile person, or that is going to stop your career from developing. I think there's like an over people are too into and awed by strategy and strategic thinking. Firstly,

I agree with the main principle, which is that it's overvalued and other more importantly, other things are undervalued strategy is literally useless, unless it can be implemented. And so being able to get from strategy to implementable plans, that are in an operating model, that work building an operating model, much harder, much more important than just being the person that can do the strategic thinking, in my view, an operating model that works that people understand that's coherent, that's sustainable, or all those kinds of things. But then just being able to get groups of people to align behind whatever that saying, and to then consistently implement that and be motivated and to look, that's really hard. And it's super important.

And that's good leadership, you don't have to be strategic to be a great leader, you

do have to understand what the strategy is and to have confidence in the person that's kind of coordinating the group around that, that analysis and synthesis. I think the other point, though, is I'd say that I do you think people can learn that kind of stuff? Yeah,

I mean, I guess everyone can learn, but it's whether or not your brain works that way. I think whether

you know, you naturally works that way. I think that's right, and being able to explain to people that this is how you orientate your thinking, to really hone down on what is the one problem we're trying to solve. This is how you create a framework, or a framing of that into maybe using problem solution trees or something along those lines. This is a way that having done that, you can choose between these different things and then blow it back out and apply it to if you can teach these techniques if I think and we should believe that people can learn this.

If our listeners can only take one thing away from today's conversation, what's the most important thing, understanding

the situation and framing it really well, to be able to get a kind of smart way of winning has been a crucial aspect of strategy. But then that it's much more important, even if you've only got half decent strategy today to put that into the complete ecosystem that we talked about for the organisation as a whole, and finding a way of being able to translate that into language that helps coordinate the different teams so that they know what they need to do and can go and plan and deliver it is way more important than 20% better strategy.

Although when you get the brilliant strategy and the brilliant execution together. Those are the companies you want to work for I

can share this on the magical elixir of strategy and execution coming together we wrap for the operations room. Thank you Steven small for joining us and we will see you next week.