Seth Godin explains why companies demand three-year plans while ignoring what comes next. He uses VHS recorders as an example: businesses kept investing in dying technology without asking whether it would matter in ten years.
This one kills us as strategists because it's ruining our industry and we don't know what to do about it.
Um,
sometimes though, they, they, they tell us things like, I want this to be quick and I only want to look 3 years in the future. So we, we in the industry are, this is a conundrum that we're not, we're facing. And most, all of us, I think, have compromised because we know there's something not quite right about asking that question or answering that question or meeting, working under those terms. We know that something is being left on the table, that there's some capability that we're not addressing. We know that we're not asking, we're not able to ask questions that lead, that take a trend all the way to its nasty conclusion. Like, oh, if you keep selling VHS tape recorders or you keep renting them, do you think that's going to end up well in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? We don't get to ask those questions.
Ep 35 Your Strategic Stagnation Isn't a Framework Problem—It's a Story Problem
The YouTube Strategy School: Why Your MBA Didn’t Teach You Strategic Thinking
