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October 8, 2001—Back
to the Future
Strategy is Back. The movie Back to the Future
is for kids and adult kids wanting to escape the present day into phantasy
games. But now we are back to the future in quite a different way. After 10
or 15 years of opportunism and patchwork tactics in every aspect of our
lives, we are now once again in the strategy game, forced to grapple
seriously with the future, defined in decades instead of days. The
opportunity has gone out of opportunism.
Preventive Medicine. This is as true in education, business, and
health care as it is in statecraft. For instance, tactical maneuvers and
technology splotches have raised costs explosively and damaged the national
health -- trends that continue unabated in spite of our fitful
experimentation with HMOs. About the only way to get out of the whole
health-care mess is to motivate individuals to take up preventive health
care -- a 360-degree change in strategic direction. In this vein, there is
some news about colon cancer this week on Stitch in Time. It is the second
biggest cancer killer, yet it could be reduced to almost zero by adequate
screening. Right now, strategy is the only thing that will work.
Unfocused Brands. In all sorts of enterprises, profit and non-profit,
we find folks who do not know what they are selling -- for a lack of a
strategy. In Agile Companies this week, you will discover that
brand-building has gotten so complex that the product itself has begun to be
forgotten (are we talking about cars out of Detroit here?). In several
entries on Big Ideas, you will find that schools have overstuffed the
child's day and made a mishmash of the curriculum: the 3 Rs, healthful
living, and a sense of proportion are forgotten. Good strategy, on the other
hand, would insist on purposeful simplicity.
Listen to Abigail. If all this is right, the way to get something
done now is to escape the moment and to think 10 chess moves ahead. This
means listening to different voices, unheard up to now, that utter sounds of
tomorrow. According to David McCullough's John Adams, the Adams
family could have died rich if only John had listened to Abigail: "Had the
Adams invested in government securities as Abigail wished, they would,
almost certainly, have wound up quite wealthy." So listen to your spouse,
your closest friend or a contrary thinker, and you may be able to get off
the tracks to nowhere.
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