We’ve been in London now for less than 2 months and most of that time has been spent trying to get settled in. But in that time we’ve also seen about a dozen museums, historical monuments, castles, palaces (Hampton Court Palace is my favorite so far) and several other sites. Londoners - and the British in general - like to brag about how much history they have here, and they’re right. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve seen more London history in the few short weeks I’ve been here than your average Londoner sees in their lifetime. But I’ve been just as guilty of that when I lived in the States. Who wants to go to all the touristy spots?

For some reason, it’s human nature not to be interested in what’s in our own backyard. This goes double for companies.

Lew Platt, former CEO of HP famously said: “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.” This quote is often thrown around by Knowledge Management enthusiasts championing the need for KM initiatives at their company. But I want to look at this problem a different way.

One of my favorite contrarian books on innovation is Douglass Rushkoff’s book, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. I don’t always agree with Rushkoff’s books - I agree with him directionally but it tends to be a matter of degrees - but I really like Get Back in the Box. It throws out the notion that we need to do more “outside the box” innovating and should instead focus on what we’re good at, and on your employees and serving your customers.

We spend so much of our time looking outside the walls of our company that we often overlook the opportunities inside our companies. Whether that’s the opportunity to hire someone internal rather than that promising external candidate - whether is looking at the innovation happening inside our companies rather than what our competitors are doing - whether it’s the constant testing, and second guessing we do around over our new products or our strategy.

Whatever it is, I’m afraid we’re wasting a lot of time looking externally rather than looking internally. And I know for a fact that we just spend too much time looking than we spend doing.

The people inside your company know what’s wrong. And in most cases, they know how to fix it. But no one has bothered to ask them. (And BTW executive leadership don’t qualify as “people.”)

Not too long ago I was preaching that companies spent too much time being inward looking and I’m afraid we’re entering a time where we’re too focused on the external. We need a balance but we also need the fortitude to not flinch every time something in the market changes.

The best strategy can be proven wrong in the light of data.

We benchmark constantly. We beta test. We pre-release an alpha. We run a million A/B test. We use multiple focus groups. Then test some more. We set goals and stage gates for internal innovation and constantly measure. I’m a big believer in data but sometimes a blip is just a blip. Not all changes are trends. Most goals are arbitrary to begin with so why do we treat them like laws of nature?

This post probably seems totally schizophrenia and I’m sorry about that.

Yes! We need to look outside the company.
Yes! We need to look around inside the company more.
Yes! We need more/better data.
Yes! All of that will help you build a strategy.

None of that will help you make a *better* strategy.
None of that will help you execute on that strategy any better.

Failure doesn’t mean the strategy was wrong.

Look at HP’s recent TouchPad woes. They bought Palm, build a decent tablet, then killed it. Then sold in a fire sale and guess what? People bought them. So now they’re going to make more and we may or may not be spinning out the PC business. This is a company with too much data right now. Their strategy was probably just fine, it just needed some tweaking (like cost).

Do you think Apple used data to make the decision to make the iPad?

One thing I respect about Microsoft (which in the case of full disclosure is a client) is that they are not just reacting to the market but executing on a deliberate strategy. Will it prove the right one? I don’t know but at least they’re not being (too) reactive - which isn’t something they can always say.

Here’s my 8 steps for creating and executing a successful strategy:

1. Look at all the data.
2. Watch the market, watch your competitors.
3. Then go back inside your conference room with the brightest people from inside your company (this will leave out some senior execs and include some junior level people).
4. Shut the door.
5. Create the best strategy you can based on your companies capabilities.
6. And then execute the hell out of it.
7. Adjust it in incremental steps constantly until it doesn’t work anymore.
8. Then start all over again.

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