Why is strategy evaluation so important for business growth and survival?
Strategy evaluation is critical to a company’s business growth and survival. We live in a dynamic, constantly changing environment. Both external and internal changes have an impact. Change is around - internationally and at home. Customer preferences, needs, and wants are also evolving.
What do companies do to sustain business growth?
Successful companies periodically undertake strategy evaluation of their business strategies. In some extreme cases of distress, they may want to look at their business models. Companies also examine their marketing strategies and develop and tweak existing marketing plans.
Nimble companies with dynamic leadership successfully steer their companies by regularly adapting their strategy and marketing plans to evolving business environments. These companies build successful, sustainable, and constantly growing businesses.
How are companies responding to growth challenges
Let me illustrate the above-enunciated concepts with a few examples.
Infosys, the Indian IT services company; Big Bazar, the Indian retail company; Spicejet, the airline; and Facebook, the social media giant, went through turbulent times.
Strategies and organizational changes made in Infosys helped the corporation reverse a declining trend. The company is now surviving and flourishing. Big Bazar was unable to make the strategic changes and went down under. Spicejet is unable to restructure and re-invent itself and is struggling to survive.
Facebook is in the process of downsizing and strategy resetting. The company is taking a close look at privacy and data security. The case of Facebook probably is a case of re-invention and re-imagining the company. Strategic changes in the company are probably timely. The social media giant is facing headwinds coming from changing customer changes.
Twitter is another example. The strategy evaluation and restructuring process are ongoing in the case of Twitter. Strategy change was delayed in this case, and the company was struggling. It required a change of owners for Twitter.
How does the future for these companies look like
Each of the cases listed above as examples is different. Facebook will continue to flourish because it took timely action. Twitter’s strategic changes too will also succeed.
Spicejet, I suspect, was too late to bring about strategic changes and may ultimately see a change of hands or even go down under. It is a case of a company needing help understanding the importance of periodic strategy evaluation and re-invention.
In my experience, the success of corporate re-invention is often thwarted by the leadership in the organization. The role of boards becomes critical in such cases. Leadership changes made in time often help in rapid turnaround. But these are delicate matters and have to be handled with care.
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