“No plan survives first contact with the enemy”
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
“All organizations tend to become institutions.”
Carroll Quigley
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
“All organizations tend to become institutions.”
Carroll Quigley
The business-world corollary to this famous military observation would be, “No plan survives first contact with reality”. The business-world corollary to the second observation is “Businesses tend to love their models more than their customers.”
Reality is the field where our ideas about value propositions, customer preferences, resource allocations, delivery logistics and so forth are put to the test of engagement. And we might add, the challenge comes not only from the first contact with reality, but from the fact that reality intrudes on the world of plans and ideas constantly.
Engagement means entering into sustained contact with others. It has as its core element the quality of dynamism. Human beings, whether as individuals or groups, are marvelously unpredictable, and therefore any engagement unfolds a reality which could not have been fully anticipated. Engagements challenge plans, expose gaps and open opportunities.
Yet without planning there can be no ability to coalesce and grow the power to impact a market. Planning and modeling allow enterprises to predict, to prioritize, to scale.
There is therefore a dynamic tension between the planning/modeling side of a business against the flows and eddies of constant inputs from multiple external engagements. Every paradigm, every plan, every model is under the constant assault of reality. This is a taxing set of circumstances for any company to manage, and often they decide that it is easier to continue relying on “tried and true” methods, which unfortunately will address a market share which can only diminish. An even worse course presents itself when this decision is made by not deciding.
The Information Revolution has provided numerous benefits to businesses with dramatically increased access to data, much lower cost of communications, marketing and content delivery, and especially, speed of route-to-market. Flows of everything – information, capital, products, services, labor – have increased dramatically in the past few years. But our intellectual and business paradigms have not kept pace.
Our customers in the global market are also absorbing these new flows of information, resources and ultimately choices as they procure goods and services in pursuit of their own output objectives. The good news is that the volume of sales opportunities has correspondingly expanded. Less encouraging is the fact that businesses have not changed their modeling and planning methodologies to address, or even identify, this dramatically expanded range of opportunity.
The real significance of this increase in the size and pace of these global opportunities is that businesses can no longer plan, model, address and manage the multiplicity of these engagement points on their own. Accordingly, businesses consciously need to develop engagement strategies designed to reach out and enlist many entities which together can amplify and sustain their impact in the global market place. Expressed another way, businesses with global aspirations must create a range of external engagements and ecosystems, which will supplement, not replace, their traditional go-to-market planning. This need is inescapable, since few companies have the resources to bring these essential success components in-house – and even if they do, the digestion and alignment time costs blunt the positive impact of so doing.
These ecosystems can be long-term, short-term and/or even ad hoc, and should reflect the shifting requirements of companies as they confront these very rapidly changing dynamics in the global market. What should become a constant in business planning is not any given partnership, syndication or ecosystem, but rather operationalizing the continuing need to create flexible and low-cost combinations of external resources which will maximize awareness of, and impact on, the customer world.
As we analyze the global roll-out of infrastructure and services, the list of customer “care-abouts” should be the guide posts for a company’s creation of any given ecosystem. In the External Resources tab, we list some of the donor and development resources which shape, fund and drive significant portions of this roll-out. Each element has valid goals and objectives designed to help drive development on a global scale. Unfortunately, the development agenda and resources of the donor institutions, governments and NGO’s are not sufficiently coordinated to be really helpful to the recipient government. Of equal import is that very few of the recipient governments themselves have even a marginal ability to understand and absorb these inputs.
Helping your global customers achieve this and optimize their use allows you to become render a tangible and enduring service to them. Your company will no longer just be “another vendor” You can become a trusted partner in development.
With many decades experience in these markets, the professionals of Blacklin Associates have developed unique methodologies for engaging these customers, clarifying and accelerating their domestic and international vision and strategies, and empowering them to make maximum use of the manifold U.S. and international development resources to reach their national objectives.
These resources, enhanced by a unique and flexible approach tailored to a company’s value proposition, can dramatically extend the effectiveness of any company’s go-to-market model, achieve enduring customer intimacy as well differentiation from your competition.
Reality is the field where our ideas about value propositions, customer preferences, resource allocations, delivery logistics and so forth are put to the test of engagement. And we might add, the challenge comes not only from the first contact with reality, but from the fact that reality intrudes on the world of plans and ideas constantly.
Engagement means entering into sustained contact with others. It has as its core element the quality of dynamism. Human beings, whether as individuals or groups, are marvelously unpredictable, and therefore any engagement unfolds a reality which could not have been fully anticipated. Engagements challenge plans, expose gaps and open opportunities.
Yet without planning there can be no ability to coalesce and grow the power to impact a market. Planning and modeling allow enterprises to predict, to prioritize, to scale.
There is therefore a dynamic tension between the planning/modeling side of a business against the flows and eddies of constant inputs from multiple external engagements. Every paradigm, every plan, every model is under the constant assault of reality. This is a taxing set of circumstances for any company to manage, and often they decide that it is easier to continue relying on “tried and true” methods, which unfortunately will address a market share which can only diminish. An even worse course presents itself when this decision is made by not deciding.
The Information Revolution has provided numerous benefits to businesses with dramatically increased access to data, much lower cost of communications, marketing and content delivery, and especially, speed of route-to-market. Flows of everything – information, capital, products, services, labor – have increased dramatically in the past few years. But our intellectual and business paradigms have not kept pace.
Our customers in the global market are also absorbing these new flows of information, resources and ultimately choices as they procure goods and services in pursuit of their own output objectives. The good news is that the volume of sales opportunities has correspondingly expanded. Less encouraging is the fact that businesses have not changed their modeling and planning methodologies to address, or even identify, this dramatically expanded range of opportunity.
The real significance of this increase in the size and pace of these global opportunities is that businesses can no longer plan, model, address and manage the multiplicity of these engagement points on their own. Accordingly, businesses consciously need to develop engagement strategies designed to reach out and enlist many entities which together can amplify and sustain their impact in the global market place. Expressed another way, businesses with global aspirations must create a range of external engagements and ecosystems, which will supplement, not replace, their traditional go-to-market planning. This need is inescapable, since few companies have the resources to bring these essential success components in-house – and even if they do, the digestion and alignment time costs blunt the positive impact of so doing.
These ecosystems can be long-term, short-term and/or even ad hoc, and should reflect the shifting requirements of companies as they confront these very rapidly changing dynamics in the global market. What should become a constant in business planning is not any given partnership, syndication or ecosystem, but rather operationalizing the continuing need to create flexible and low-cost combinations of external resources which will maximize awareness of, and impact on, the customer world.
As we analyze the global roll-out of infrastructure and services, the list of customer “care-abouts” should be the guide posts for a company’s creation of any given ecosystem. In the External Resources tab, we list some of the donor and development resources which shape, fund and drive significant portions of this roll-out. Each element has valid goals and objectives designed to help drive development on a global scale. Unfortunately, the development agenda and resources of the donor institutions, governments and NGO’s are not sufficiently coordinated to be really helpful to the recipient government. Of equal import is that very few of the recipient governments themselves have even a marginal ability to understand and absorb these inputs.
Helping your global customers achieve this and optimize their use allows you to become render a tangible and enduring service to them. Your company will no longer just be “another vendor” You can become a trusted partner in development.
With many decades experience in these markets, the professionals of Blacklin Associates have developed unique methodologies for engaging these customers, clarifying and accelerating their domestic and international vision and strategies, and empowering them to make maximum use of the manifold U.S. and international development resources to reach their national objectives.
These resources, enhanced by a unique and flexible approach tailored to a company’s value proposition, can dramatically extend the effectiveness of any company’s go-to-market model, achieve enduring customer intimacy as well differentiation from your competition.
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