Strategy Myopia – preventing business from delivering their vision

The future is bright without Strategy Myopia

In the early 1980’s I had a life-changing business experience. I was about to graduate from university and was attending my first job fair that the Marketing faculty had organized. My first interview was with an executive from Unilever, a “perfect” company to join to learn what marketing in the real world was all about.

I sat down full of excitement, nervous tension and a dose of bravado from my success at university, thinking this would be great. Oh, how wrong one can be in one’s early, naive, years. The executive sat down opposite me and asked me one simple question: “Have you read “Marketing Myopia” by Theodore Levitt?” “Never heard of it”, I said, thinking the truth was the best way to go. The executive said “read it if you want a job in marketing”, and without saying another word, got up and left, leaving me stranded, stunned and crest fallen.

So, I stood up, dusted myself off and headed straight to the library to learn my second lesson of the real world in business: What was so important about an article that even my own professors had never mentioned? After reading the article, I understood completely.

Marketing Myopia expanded to Strategy Myopia

Which leads me to Seth Godin’s recent blog about Strategy Myopia. It starts with an experience of his that, amazingly, almost parallel’s my first experience with the executive at Unilever (Seth, I truly know how you felt :-)), and ends with his article that, in his words:

“This week, forty years in the making, Harvard published an edited version of my expansion of his (Levitt’s) idea, called strategy myopia . Strategy myopia is task focused. It’s based on a desire to get a guaranteed result for specified effort. It involves meetings and plans and powerpoints. Strategy myopia afflicts people who prioritize tactics over the hard work of finding a worthwhile strategy in the first place. We can avoid it, but first we have to acknowledge it and discuss it”.

Strategy myopia prevents executives from allowing their own vision for their business to come true, simply because they are focused more on tactics than strategy.  Once they cure this myopic tendency, they have the ability to allow enlightenment into their life, and for them to “get out of their own way”.  Learning things new allow executives to expand their leadership capabilities, and that is their primary role in an organization.  The lack of ongoing learning becomes a barrier to success, and feeling one “knows it all” is a dangerous leadership trait. Leaders should primarily be strategists, and if their core focus is on tactics, they are not being optimal for the organization.  By identifying and curing this myopia, they will open up their own (and their organization’s) future exponentially.

I strongly recommend that you read Seth’s new article on HBR. It has the power to enlighten owners, CEO’s, Presidents and executives who suffer from “myopic vision”, and gives them license to change from tactics to strategic thinking that will ultimately unlock a potential vision that may be trapped inside their heads.

So, BEWARE: “as many other strategy experts have warned over the years, if you’re going in the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going. Work on strategy today. You can always make plans tomorrow”.

Resolving Strategy Myopia makes a new vision a real possibility

Your vision is within reach if you think strategy, not tactics

Lastly, I love the following comment from his article: “If strategy is a philosophy of becoming, we’re seeking people eager to build something that’s not there yet”.

So that’s where you and I can meet. When you are finished reading Seth’s article, contact me and let’s discuss how to take the first step towards “freeing your vision” and building something that’s not there yet.

Neville Pokroy: neville@mastermindsolutions.ca has been creating reality from vision for companies across the globe.  From being the creator of the first cash retail loyalty program in the world to creating a unique marketing capability for a professional services firm, creating something from nothing is his forte.  Have a free discussion and find out how he can help you make your vision become a reality.

Complete the form on this page or email Neville today.