Rajesh Tripathi

My views as published in the Times of India, 30-April-2014

In one of my earlier blogs I wrote about how strategy is different than a problem. Let me try giving some more insights about strategy and ‘misuse’ of the word strategy in the corporate. If I say that the strategy is futuristic in nature which defines decision of making thoughtful choices. These choices explain assumptions about choices and reasons of choosing to do something and why not to do something. But the reality is different. Very seldom, you will find the word strategy being used alone. Generally, it is sufficed with ‘planning’ or ‘plans’. Therefore, the strategy becomes strategic planning or strategic plans. This change leads to very catastrophic change not to the word itself but even to the thought process in the organisation. Plans or planning denotes actionable events which are scheduled in advance to carry out in an agreed manner later. It means aligning some doable actions. More so in organisations, strategic planning starts with referring to th...

Strategy – the most abused word in corporate corridors, is perhaps least understood. Different people use it for different reasons, giving different reasoning. However, the most common misuse by top executives of organisations is when they change a challenge into a problem and then try tackling such a problem by tried and tested tools. These tried and tested tools are put on piece or pieces of papers after long discussions – sometimes running from weeks to months, under the pretext of Strategy Making. Sometimes, another name of ‘Comprehensive Plans’ is used instead of strategy. Agenda remains only one, tackling s problem – far away from their real intention of making a strategy. Idea behind such activities in organisations is to feel safe & secured in the dynamic market conditions. The feel predominantly is that as they have well placed strategy in place, hence their business is secured. The reason of such acts of learned well educated executives around the world is overcome ...

You may find organisations struggling to make profit, despite their been having best quality producst in a different category.  Reasons - failure on their part to respond to customer need and ever changing world, complacency to shrug off need to change themselves and the worst, looking for reasons to justify not to change. One of causal relationship in these companies is their ‘inward’ looking approach. Cost and quality are hygienic factors in business today. No company can survive if it does flirt with quality or cost. At the same time none of these two provide, any base for differentiation and therefore no reason to charge premium. Companies which do not have ‘anything’ in their product or services to charge premium can only make ‘Survival Profit’ for short run. Lucky companies can slower down their speed to death as they luckily got a distinct product category. But question comes how long? New world has given a more serious threat as they lowered down their cost of p...

"Leaders need to 'see around corners' - to see something significant about the future that others don't see.' An apt saying for the current VUCA world, where everything & anything is volatile, uncertain, complex in nature and ambiguous by its presence or absence. Leaders make plan well in advance and try achieving them by organising resources around those plans. But the reality hits them hard on their faces when these plans are either under achieved or not at all achieved. This can very well be seen in slipping down financial numbers in majority of cases. Learning by most of executives to my mind is cribbing about the conditions & cursing it, instead of taking appropriate actions. At the same time there are leaders and organisations which undertake diagnostics and change themselves to 180 degree. It therefore means what all needs to be taken into account in this VUCA environment and come out successfully are. a.      Actions & Compreh...