OmniStrat launched today and I wanted to share some thoughts on what we’re all about; why making strategy social and simple will lead to success.
Our mission is to help companies succeed. We’ve chosen to pursue this through an online software application that addresses the core issues that get in the way of success, primarily poor planning and execution. For us, it’s not about the technology – it’s about people. We strive to make people the center of planning and execution, not systems.
Most people think about the reporting that goes into managing strategy execution. Reports are generated by presenting transactional data captured within internal systems. This performance monitoring is incredibly important to managing a business, but it is not strategy execution. To quote Sam Walton, “A computer can tell you down to the dime what you’ve sold. But it can never tell you how much you could have sold.” It also can’t tell you what product you should build or what markets you should enter. This is the heart of strategy. And these questions are answered by people making connections and insights with unstructured and in many cases subjective data.
By focusing on this “messy” data you can collect the raw elements that will be the foundation of your direction forward to new achievements. This will never happen looking at reports. This foundation is built when people talk; discussing ideas, challenges and relevant events, and yes transactional data. This critical discourse eventually comes together in a game plan on what could be done or what should be done to achieve something you haven’t done before. This is strategy. As long as we use technology as a means to an end, which for us is facilitating people interaction and critical discourse, than we are on the right path.
Simplicity is simple, at least the reason for wanting to achieve it. There are enough challenges interpreting events, data and possibilities. The process to arrive at a final plan or strategy should not be the challenge. Balanced Score Cards are notorious for both being really convoluted when you cascade a corporate strategy down to user-level metrics, but more problematic is that they use transactional data and claim to be dealing with strategy. At the end of the day everyone has to understand the linkages between what the executives want and what the employees should do. For us that is two degrees of separation from the goal to the activities – as simple as you can get.
So why are we doing this. I chose this mission because I have seen far too many companies fail to achieve what they set out to do. The reasons are many, some in their control and some out of their control. But the results are the same – at one end disruption at the other end devastation, to individuals, companies and communities. I have felt this first hand having been on the receiving end of bad plans that cost me my job and much heartache. OmniStrat is the result of my mission to help individuals and companies achieve all they can, with the resources they have, under the circumstances they encounter.
The starting point is knowing where you’re going. We will constantly challenge ourselves to make a profound improvement in the success of our customers. We encourage you to join us in our shared journey.
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