STRATEGY
STRATEGIC INSTINCTS Four Strategic Instincts Separate Great Strategists from the Others. Brian D Smith, Principal Advisor, PragMedic
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ou are probably all-too-familiar with the rigmarole of strategic planning – situational analyses and spreadsheets, slide decks and strategy reviews. If you’ve worked in more than one life sciences company, you have probably noticed that all companies have similar processes, even if they use slightly different jargon or acronyms. This mimicry of processes is so common that academics have even given it a name: institutional isomorphism. But if your firm and its rivals use the same strategic planning tools in the same way, where does your competitive advantage come from? I’ve been fascinated by this question for decades and in this article
I’ll share with you what my research has uncovered. Basic instincts
As a research professor, I go from company to company asking about what works, what fails and what makes a difference. It quickly becomes clear where competitive advantage isn’t coming from. Life science companies buy the same market research and use similar planning templates with comparable levels of skill. After all, in our incestuous industry people move around and share ideas so any ‘“secret sauce’ doesn’t stay secret for long. No, the source of competitive advantage isn’t in the strategic planning recipe
they follow. It begins long before they have even begun the formal planning process. It begins with the strategic habits of their senior executives, their habitual, almost sub-conscious way of thinking about where and how to compete. These instincts are so deeply embedded, sometimes unconscious, that they are best described as “strategic instincts”. Strong strategic instincts lead to strong strategies and vice versa. In my research, I’ve uncovered four sets of these instincts, behaviours that make the difference between strategically competent executives and their less strategic colleagues. In my work teaching strategic instincts, I shorten these to the acronym FACT (see figure) and I’ve explained them below. Framing
Framing is a term from cognitive psychology that refers to how people see the same situation in different ways, often leading to different choices. In my research, I find that strong strategists ‘frame’ the market and their strategy differently from others. Instinctively, they think: • The market isn’t about products, it’s about solving the customers’ problems • Winning is about creating customer preference; sales and profit will follow • Strategy is your choices about what to do and not do to create customer preference.
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P H A RM A F O C U S A S I A
ISSUE 47 - 2022
