{"id":128,"date":"2014-01-27T12:30:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/?p=128"},"modified":"2014-06-08T08:01:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-08T12:01:28","slug":"there-are-bold-moves-and-there-are-strategic-moves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/?p=128","title":{"rendered":"2014-01: There are bold moves, and there are strategic moves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"no\"?--><\/p>\n<div>I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague of mine about how we would think about the various directions that a particular project could go. The conversation stemmed from a rather brutal conversation with a senior leader of our organization. \u00a0We discussed with him and other leaders a project that we had been working on for a few months, and suddenly, the whole project was being put into question, and our department\u2019s strategy put into question.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The senior leader in question was keen on making big strategic moves based on our experience from the past 3-4 years. \u00a0After this particular meeting, my colleague and I, spent quite a it of time talking through context and intentions, and really what this particular leader meant.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It came down to, we found, a bit of a misunderstanding on the difference between bold moves and strategic moves. The two are not mutually exclusive, but as we talked through we discovered that often people erroneously use them interchangeably.<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>A bold move does not need to be strategic, but it can be. A bold move is flashy, visible move.<\/li>\n<li>A strategic move does not need to be bold, but it can be. A strategic move is a move supporting an existing or new strategy. \u00a0When a move supports a new strategy, it can come across as a bold move.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div>So we have 4 categories, and this could be confusing\u2026 \u00a0So let\u2019s talk through real or theoretical examples (I would welcome any real examples that you may have):<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Bold and strategic:<\/b>\u00a0Ron Johnson\u2019s move to change the ailing JC Penney but radically changing the internal layout and coupon-ing that the brand was known for was a bold and strategic move. \u00a0Unfortunately that was not a successful move, but it was both a bold move (change format for new customers) supporting a new strategy (revive brand and access a new &#8211; younger &#8211; market).<\/li>\n<li><b>Bold and not strategic:<\/b>\u00a0I can\u2019t think of any example here, but if you were to use a POI (Portfolio of Initiatives), this would be a move that would be unfamiliar (to the company) or uncertain (to the industry), with very short term (burst, flashy), with and very large market cap at stake.<\/li>\n<li><b>Not bold but strategic:\u00a0<\/b>Promoting people from within an organization suffering from staff attrition, low morale due to market instability, or active M&amp;A activity or rumors. \u00a0Also acquiring small startups to create a portfolio of IP that may not be easily noticeable (i.e. head of the market understanding). \u00a0These also could be the moves that allow to continue to build up on a strategy.<\/li>\n<li><b>Not bold and not strategic:\u00a0<\/b>Probably too many fit here. \u00a0These are the day to day to activities, that at an organization may do. \u00a0Revisiting vendor contracts, hiring junior colleagues, etc&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div>As I write this, I can\u2019t stop to think of the ties back to the POI (which I reference above). \u00a0If you are not familiar with the POI, you can read more about it on the McKinsey.com website (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/insights\/strategy\/enduring_ideas_portfolio_of_initiatives\">http:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/insights\/strategy\/enduring_ideas_portfolio_of_initiatives<\/a>). \u00a0Maybe there\u2019s more there\u2026 \u00a0What do you think?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague of mine about how we would think about the various directions that a particular project could go. The conversation stemmed from a rather brutal conversation with a senior leader of our organization. \u00a0We discussed with him and other leaders a project that we had been working [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[78,1],"tags":[79,80],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategy","category-uncategorized","tag-bold-moves","tag-strategic-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yPko-24","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notyourtypicalmaps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}