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Make small, probing advances with new or modified products, services, capabilities, and business models

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  • Richard Martin
  • July 13, 2015
  • 2:34 pm
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Richard Martin

Richard Martin empowers leaders to outmaneuver uncertainty and drive change through strategic insight and transformative thinking.
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  • You learn more by moving than by staying put. The normal impulse is to stay put and defend your position when you don’t know where to go or what to do. Unfortunately, this leaves you open to rapid change in the market as well as competitive threats. Moving gradually into a new market or a new product or service category gives you time to learn and adjust your approach without over-investing at the beginning. You also get to pull back if, as often happens, you’ve made a mistake or misjudged the situation.
  • Advance on a wide (or wider) front. It’s best to send scouting parties to report back about the lay of the land and the enemy’s positions, then to follow up with more forces if you’re successful. In business, this can mean trying many, small experiments with new products or markets to see what will happen, and then preserving those that succeed.
  • Don’t put all your eggs into one basket. If you can’t make accurate and timely predictions to know what will succeed in the long run then it stands to reason that you need to diversify investments and assets. This doesn’t mean becoming a conglomerate. It is preferable to experiment in a controlled manner at the edges of the business while using profits in existing business lines to fuel that exploratory work.
  • Always cover your moves. When I was a young infantry officer, we were taught to cover our moves with a firebase that could provide support in case we came under enemy fire. It’s better to move gradually over time into a new market or with a new strategy by small steps. This can be done remarkably quickly if you keep up the pressure by making incremental changes in a deliberate and consistent manner.
  • Reinforce success with backup forces. Once you have made it through the enemy’s front lines, apply resources to reinforce the initial breakthrough. The same notion applies to experimental business efforts. Success with one or some of them can be reinforced with new resources or with resources transferred from existing business lines. The result can be better positioning for the future.
  • Maintain reserves to exploit success. All of these principles require some level of resources, first to experiment and then to reinforce success by investing in the winners. This requires the maintenance of cash reserves or access to capital either from an existing business line, by borrowing, or by attracting new investors.
    I’m never too busy to discuss your needs or those of anyone else you feel may benefit from meeting or talking to me. So feel free to contact me at any time!

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Richard Martin, President of Alcera Consulting Inc.

Richard Martin

Richard Martin is the President of Alcera Consulting Inc., a strategic advisory firm collaborating with top-level leaders to provide strategic insight, navigate uncertainty, and drive transformative change, ensuring market dominance and excellence in public governance. He is the author of Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles and the creator of the blog ExploitingChange.com. Richard is also the developer of Strategic Epistemology, a groundbreaking theory that focuses on winning the battle for minds in a world of conflict by dismantling opposing worldviews and ideologies through strategic narrative and archetypal awareness.

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