Winning Moves Blog

What choices will you make for your business? What path will you choose to take?

The strategic choices a company makes greatly influence success. That’s why the phrase “Strategic Choices for Successful Business Growth” is on my website banner, and has been there since my site went live almost five years ago. Success comes from making the right strategic choices, which entails choosing the strategic moves that become Winning Moves.

Strategic choices are something that a company can control. This is attractive since external conditions may not always be controllable, especially in times of uncertainty. But, whether it’s success patterns from my research or from the findings of others, businesses can choose to follow the principles of success. They can do so regardless of what happens to external conditions. Often, these choices can successfully grow the business. Yet, when the business is hit by really dire times, the choices may merely pave the way for handling the challenges most effectively. With the right strategic choices, the business can bolster its performance to the best extent possible, despite the external conditions.

There are many strategic choices, such as choices about general business direction, choices about target markets, choices about how information and knowledge are applied, choices about innovation and risk, choices about how and when to change the business, and about how fast to grow. All of these can greatly impact how well the business performs. Thus, understanding what kinds of strategic choices succeed and why provides a business with major advantages.

Today, there is so much information available about what works and what does not. This knowledge can prepare you to make the right strategic choices that turn your strategic moves into Winning Moves. But, as I said in my previous blog post (which talked about going back to basics to revitalize a business), there is confusion out there about exactly how business success principles apply. So, I see a need for the kind of clarification and explanation I am providing in this blog. In fact, an example of the possible confusion about how to make the right choices surfaced in a post on yesterday’s Harvard Business Review Blog. That Harvard post expressed concern that Jim Collins’ latest best-selling book, which happens to be about choices, doesn’t pay enough attention to the principles of strategy guru Michael Porter.

According to my 25+ years of research, success comes from taking the kinds of success principles described by Collins (which, as those of you who have been following my website for quite some time may know, share some similarities with my findings) and making sure these principles are reflected in strategy. There are effective ways to do this. Yet, the Harvard post seems to overemphasize Porter, which may add to possible confusion about how to apply Collins-like principles.

It is important to break through the confusion and make the right strategic choices. That’s why this blog and website offer research based material to clarify what business success principles mean and how to apply them. As a result, you’ll be better prepared to make the right choices. And, you’ll also be better equipped to understand how to integrate the kind of material Collins produces (which does share similarities with my own research findings) with strategy.

In my previous post on this blog, I described how even well known business success principles can easily be misunderstood. I’ll use an example I recently came across to help illustrate this, since explaining and clarifying how business success patterns work is a major mission of my blog. The example comes from a recent Marketing News article about how the CEO of Gap plans to revitalize its brand by going back to basics.

Going back to basics can be an excellent strategy for breathing life into a struggling business. On the surface, going back to basics appears to be pretty straightforward, not something that would be easily misunderstood. But, although it looks like a simple principle, going back to basics may not always be as obvious as it seems.

The main reason going back to basics works is that it places a renewed emphasis upon a company’s strengths. Building on strengths leads to business success. Thus, a back to basics attempt at revitalizing the business generally will work only if it taps the strengths of the business. It will not work if it merely goes back to something in a company’s past that no longer has the potential to be a strength.

Revitalizing a business by going back to basics often entails returning to something the business has strayed away from, but was doing when it was previously successful. Or, it can involve something similar to what was once successful, or something that fits well with what made the business succeed. It may also involve building upon pockets of existing success in an otherwise troubled business. These kinds of approaches can often work well, unless drastic change (e.g., major new technology, new regulations) virtually destroys the back to basics opportunity.

Yet, going back to basics does not necessarily mean returning to what a company did or was at the time of its founding. Too much may have changed since then. Since companies generally evolve from their founding to more current times, what was a strength at the founding may no longer be a strength today. So, efforts to go back to basics must be shaped for today’s world if the business is to be successfully revitalized.

For example, Apple and McDonald’s are companies that were revitalized essentially by going back to basics. For Apple, this meant returning to its roots with a certain type of innovation at which the company was particularly strong. For McDonald’s, this meant concentrating more closely on its core business. In the process of revitalizing their business, neither Apple nor McDonald’s returned to what they were at the time of their founding. Instead, both returned to their basic strengths that had evolved over time.

This very same issue must be considered for the Gap example. The Gap was founded to sell jeans in 1969. Gap now has a line of jeans called 1969, named for the year of the company’s founding. The Marketing News article gives the impression that Gap’s move back to basics seems to be emphasizing that the company was founded in 1969 to sell jeans. The extent to which that can be a strength today will impact whether Gap can succeed, unless Gap also builds upon wherever else it can now be strong.

In conclusion, the lesson here is that even something as seemingly straightforward as going back to basics can be misunderstood. Success generally comes only when back to basics takes a company back to its strengths.

Although the recent economic environment may be tougher than in the past, businesses today have access to much better knowledge about what succeeds and what does not. So much more is now available about the principles of business success, not only here on this website, but also from other sources. This includes the information about business success and failure patterns that I have unearthed in my 25+ years researching Winning Moves. In addition, over the last several years, there have also been various research studies by academics and business gurus, some of which are related to or confirm my findings. And, all of this may be augmented by a company’s own information or its outside resources.

A considerable amount of the available information about business success was highly misunderstood as recently as fifteen to twenty years ago. Some of it has been misunderstood even more recently. And, there are signs that some of the available knowledge about business success is still not widely understood today. This can be the case not only for lesser known principles, but even for some of what has been popularized via media and best-selling books.

Sometimes, ambiguity can result when a study or book mentions a research finding, but doesn’t include an in-depth discussion of what it means. Thus, it may easily be misinterpreted by those who avail themselves of the information. Sometimes, people just have trouble applying the research findings in a setting far removed from the information source. Sometimes, a finding may be difficult to grasp when it goes against what people expect. Sometimes, by its very nature, a research finding has some underlying, yet not so obvious, complexities that can make it seem more ambiguous.

Thus, many factors can contribute to the ambiguity and lack of clarity about business success principles. So, as a result of factors such as the above, there seems to be a need for better examples and explanations of the principles behind business success. These kinds of explanations will not only present new perspectives, but will also go more deeply into clarifying what is already known so it can be applied more effectively.

And, there seems to be a real need for clarification. For example, an article may discuss a misstep a particular company made and say that the results were unpredictable in today’s environment of uncertainty. Yet, the misstep they describe is so typical of patterns that repeat themselves over and over again that anyone who understood the patterns would never have attributed the misstep to uncertainty. Those patterns have a high probability of repeating themselves. And, anyone paying attention to the patterns could probably have easily predicted the misstep. Still, the misstep was essentially considered uncertain and unpredictable in a relatively recent article in a prestigious publication.

That’s why, despite greater availability of information about business success, it appears that more examples and explanations would be beneficial. This website and the Winning Moves® Blog are designed to offer that kind of help by providing further explanations of available information about business success, as well as new insights. With those further explanations and with clarification of common misperceptions, the material here helps businesses apply all that information now available about the principles of success.

My research studies the moves companies make. To find the Winning Moves, I look at the difference between successful versus unsuccessful moves, and I have been doing so for more than 25 years. My methods contrast with some very well known research that studies successful versus unsuccessful companies, rather than studying moves like I do. But, I have been studying moves because it has advantages.

Yet, well-known research that studies companies, rather than moves, has produced several best-selling books. The bestseller “In Search of Excellence”, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, was based upon research that studied the differences between excellent companies and not-so-excellent companies. Jim Collins’ bestseller “Good to Great” looks at the difference between great companies and not-so-great companies, as does Collins’ most recent bestseller “Great by Choice”, with co-author Morten Hansen. Collins’ earlier bestseller “Built to Last”, with co-author Jerry Poras, studied the difference between companies that endured over time and companies that did not.

Despite the preponderance of bestsellers spawned by studying companies, a bestseller based upon studying moves is Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Kim Chan and Renee Mauborgne, which came out in 2005. Like my research, the research for Blue Ocean Strategy found no evidence that there are great or excellent companies. They concluded that the appropriate unit of analysis is the strategic move, rather than the company. Thus, they studied moves, not companies. So do I, and I have been for more than 25 years, looking at a broader range of issues than what was covered in the book Blue Ocean Strategy.

Studying moves has a major advantage over studying companies. I find that all companies, no matter how successful, generally make some moves that fail in addition to those that succeed. And, even the most exceptional companies can experience stellar success for a while, but may also have periods of mediocre performance, and even major failure. As a result, companies classified as great or excellent can lose their luster, or even end up in serious trouble. In fact, whether it’s companies classified as great/excellent, or it’s companies awarded recognition as top performers in a particular area, big trouble shortly after being crowned the best is not unusual.

According to my findings, this happens because no company is inherently great or excellent. A company is only as successful as the moves it has been making. Some companies make a longer string of successful moves, or what I call Winning Moves, than others do. If a company starts making too many unsuccessful moves, the company will not perform well and will not retain any positions of distinction (e.g., great, excellent) it has attained. Likewise, when a company starts making numerous successful moves, it can achieve stellar results even if it was previously in trouble. And, those kinds of reversals of fortune are exactly what happened to some companies in the bestsellers that are based upon studying companies, rather than studying moves.

As authors of those bestsellers may explain, the companies were studied during a particular time period, and a company’s performance can change over time. While this is true, it’s also why studying moves, which is my approach, can work better than studying companies. It’s the moves that determine how and when a company succeeds. So studying them sheds insights into what succeeds and what does not. By studying moves, we also reduce the potential for mislabeling a failing move as successful merely because the move is associated with a great company.

Yet, though studying moves has its advantages, either research method–studying moves or studying companies–can provide valuable information. In fact, some of the research findings from studying moves are the same as findings from studying companies. But by studying moves, we avoid the confusion that occurs when a company that is great today is failing tomorrow. And, we focus upon understanding the reasons for business success.

The Winning Moves Blog helps businesses turn strategic moves into Winning Moves. With insightful commentary that reflects findings from my 25+ year study of business success and failure patterns, the Winning Moves Blog helps companies make the choices that lead to the right strategic moves.

Guided by my research findings, the Winning Moves Blog dissects and explains various business situations to illustrate how the patterns of success apply to making strategic moves. The analysis and insights presented in this blog can help you more clearly understand the difference between successful versus unsuccessful strategic moves, and give you a better grasp of how to apply this knowledge. As a result, you will be better equipped to make the right strategic choices and turn your strategic moves into Winning Moves. And, you’ll be better prepared to take your business down the road to strategic success.

My 25+ years of research studies the moves companies make. Some of those moves are successful; others are not. A company’s overall success is greatly affected by its mix of successful versus unsuccessful moves. To thrive, a company must make a series of successful moves. Yet, all companies–even those perceived as “excellent companies” and those perceived as “great companies”–generally make some moves that fail in addition to moves that succeed. So, it is important to understand the moves and to learn from them, regardless of whether the moves succeed or fail. Understanding those moves is a key step toward turning your strategic moves into Winning Moves.

Valuable lessons for business success come from understanding those moves. Apply those lessons to your business. Let those lessons guide your strategic choices. By doing so, and doing it effectively, your company will be making Winning Moves. And, the Winning Moves Blog serves as a resource to help you do just that.