Oh no, it’s November! It’s that time of year again when organisations are positioning for market growth in the twelve months ahead. Their preparations will result in one of the following formulated outcomes:
- A poor plan well executed
- A poor plan poorly executed
- A good plan well executed
Clearly the latter is what all organisations strive for, so how is it then that many market growth plans fail? Our research points repeatedly to a one word cause - extrapolation.
This involves the usually mistaken assumption that the future will look very much like the recent past implying that success next year will most likely be achieved by a “more of the same” approach.
This is typically the background against which away-day planning sessions are set. This is understandable. Because the recent past appears to provide validated insights, so organisations feel comfortable in the assumptions underpinning their market growth plans.
This typically leads to the biggest error of all, reliance on the simple productivity folly that assumes two people will always produce twice as much as one. The result - too many additional business development professionals are hired at the wrong time putting a strain on organisational profitability.
The solution is a simple one, requiring the acquisition of reliably validated evidence upon which to base organisational market growth plans - a combination of market data allied to qualitative insights.
This may sound time consuming but in a world where data is increasingly available it is arguably incumbent upon the planner to seek it out. As for insights, it is important that the source is a truly independent one. The resulting decisions are too important and even more expensive, if got wrong, to be viewed in any other way.
