Stage-7: The Positioning Mode

Injunction: Anticipate!

The market, and even the company, can never be captured by validated facts and historical statistics alone. So businesses must activate Reality-centred thinking in order to appraise markets usefully and position the business in a way that will be profitable.

ClosedReview the Background

(a) Reality-centred mentality.
(b) Reality-centred principles in a career development context.

Success depends on:

  • Strategic positioning in the market.
  • Identifying potentials in long-term demographic and social trends.
  • Envisioning the future of the industry.
  • Recognizing that the mind of the customer is the key.
  • Using public relations effectively.
  • Resourcing realistically.
  • Accepting failure and cutting losses.
  • Raising barriers to the entry of new competitors.

ClosedImagination is Required!

Anticipating the future for commercial gain requires an imaginative penetration into a wide range of inter-connected forces, any one of which can change dramatically without warning:

  • The minds of customers.
  • Intentions and strengths of competitors.
  • Likely progress of technology.
  • Behaviours of politicians and regulators.
  • Industry trends.
  • Forces affecting societies and economies.

ClosedQ: Is anticipation product-centric? or is it market-centric? Or both?

Conclusion: The Entrepreneurial Mindset

The company once again spontaneously re-enters the market-centred domain, but now with maximal enhancement of market-centred principles: the business can be re-invented, management can make radical improvements and market leadership can flow from being first.

But success is dangerous. It breeds arrogance and complacency leading to disconnection from customers, related businesses and wider society. The company comes to believe its own hype: that its success is based on having a superb product or being a great company: and the media and hired consultants support it with flattery. Reality-centred principles offer the best antidote to this sort of arrogance and complacency: but it is not pleasant medicine.

Boards and senior management must understand that business is a tango, not a bull-fight: any success is a function of the firm’s interaction with the market.

Unless the entrepreneurial mind-set is maintained at all times, potentials for massive gains will be missed and the firm will become increasingly vulnerable over time.

Originally posted: July 2009