It’s easy to tell what your strategy is
The purpose of this email is to share my learnings and unlearnings, with the expectation that some will be of value to you. This email was 100% written by me – not by AI. When you send me an email, my response is 100% written by me.
What has been my most valuable learning in the past three months?
I’ve had countless confusing discussions about strategy. I’ve concluded that it’s easy to tell what your company’s strategy is. Let’s assume your board of directors approves your strategic plan.
- You have a slide at the beginning of your strategic plan presentation to the board. The slide states “Asking for the approval of ….”
- The minutes of the board meeting document: what exactly was approved; who is accountable for the benefits; what are the metrics for measuring success; what facts and assumptions would have to change in order for the benefits to be unachievable and the board would need to approve something different.
- The above two points illustrate that approving a strategy is a combination of a decision-making process and a learning process.
What is my personal update?
- On the mentor roster at The Hatchery, Department of Engineering, University of Toronto, Department of Engineering.
- On the mentor roster at the Health Innovation Hub, University of Toronto,
- Continued my long-term fundraising for the Geoff Carr Fellowship at Lupus Ontario. Over the past 20 years family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues have contributed over 284,000.
- Continued as a member of the Angel Capital Association in the US and the Institute of Corporate Directors in Canada.
- Continued to share with you, and on my website, some of what I’ve learned and unlearned, with the intent that some of you will find value. The learnings and unlearnings are applicable to any size company, ranging from early-stage startups to large global enterprises.
- Continued as Board Director at a private company.
I continue to focus my time to maximize the value and impact of my two professional purposes: #1 Enabling current and emerging business leaders to succeed, #2 Enabling business leaders to have a positive impact on society.
Sharing my learnings
Below are links to my website containing new and revised articles since my last update in September. The critical learnings from each article are included. Each article designed to enable discussion among founders, owners, shareholders, investors, CEOs, and boards of directors. The learnings and unlearnings are applicable to any size company, ranging from early-stage startups to large global enterprises.
Links to my points-of-view articles:
Does everyone agree on what strategic planning is?
- There is no broad agreement regarding the definitions of: strategy; strategic plan; and strategic planning process
- There is no broad agreement regarding the components and metrics of a strategic plan.
- There is no broad agreement regarding a strategic planning process.
Traditional strategic planning dooms your company to failure.
- TSP (Traditional Strategic Planning) evolved in a slow changing world. The future could be forecast, and decisions (and decision-making processes) were expected to be valid for several years.
- The result of TSP was that few companies survived and most delivered poor financial results.
- Today’s world is totally different: future is impossible to forecast, multiple sets of fast changes, multiple unpredictable crisis.
- Strategic planning must be rethought to determine which decisions and decision making processes have a lifetime longer than a year.
Is your company actually a startup? V2
- Most companies need to become a startup again but don’t realize it. As a result, the wrong type of talent is in place, taking the wrong actions.
- Most companies don’t last long. Most companies have poor value creation. Most transformations and major business changes have poor results.
- Companies need to get into startup mode to validate and invalidate their assumptions regarding: customer needs and problems, and the number of customers willing and able to pay for a solution.
- Board directors and C-Suite cannot learn startup mode knowledge, skills and decision-making processes because their brains have hard-wired biological responses and cognitive biases.
https://koorandassociates.org/avoiding-business-failure/is-your-company-actually-a-startup/
How will startups destroy your company? V2
- The startup is a temporary organization designed to search out a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model with lots of potential customers who are willing and able to pay to solve their problems and needs. Startups are not building a solution. They are building a tool to learn what solution to build.
- Startups begin by making assumptions about the problems customers are willing and able to pay for, and about how customers would perceive the value proposition they’d achieve from the startup’s solution.
- The startup is driven by immediate and ongoing understanding of the customer based on face-to-face interviews supplemented by surveys.
- The assumptions are quickly validated or invalidated. Invalidation results either in a new set of assumptions or the startup stopping.
https://koorandassociates.org/avoiding-business-failure/how-will-startups-destroy-your-company/
AI is not accountable for benefits.
- AI is not accountable for benefits. I have seen countless articles start out with AI not delivering benefits. AI is not accountable for benefits.
- Management is accountable for benefits.
- The way to solve this return on capital issue tis two-fold: First, improve the processes used by management to make investment decisions (including AI) and to achieve benefits. Second, improve management.
What is a startup? V3
- There are no commonly accepted definitions regarding startups.
- There are no commonly accepted definitions of a successful startup.
- Each of the 5 US universities I looked at has different definitions, metrics, and processes for startups.
https://koorandassociates.org/the-startup-journey/what-is-a-startup/
How will undergraduate founders destroy your company?
- Founders first go through a program to validate that cash paying customers believe they have a problem which needs a solution.
- The first step is to have face-to-face interviews with cash paying customers.
- There should a multi-disciplinary set of founders e.g. business, technical, social sciences people.
- Program, mentor, and founder problems are addressed by AI.
- The programs have a structured learning process to rewire the founders’ brains over a period of several semesters.
- The program is part time, with the founders taking other courses during the semester.
Koor and Associates 