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.
