PERSPECTIVES

Setting timeframes for your strategy

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The purpose of brand strategy is of course to envisage a future for your brand: to project beyond current circumstances to where your brand might be. But, in terms of actually setting timeframes for your strategy, how far ahead should you be thinking?

An important decision

Every brand strategy is a speculation – an attempt to muster what you know and what you imagine, and to express that in a form that the business can coalesce around. Timeframes often seem arbitrary. Three years, five years … but when we question decision makers about why they have assigned that amount of time to a strategy, there’s no consistent feedback.

It’s an important decision. After all, you are asking the business to frame where you need your brand to be in order to be competitive. Timeframes set priorities, resources, budgets and so much more. They determine a frantic rush or a disciplined slow burn.

If you are intent on a deliberate strategy, you are potentially laying out your course for a very long time. However, if your strategy is adaptive, timeframes signal the frequency of reactions and, potentially, pivots. And if your strategy is iterative, then timeframes put the whole business on notice for when the next chapter starts, when the next hit is needed.

The timeframe for your strategy is T-shaped

Our approach for setting timeframes is to consider three factors.

The time it will take

The first timeframe is realisation. How long do you think it’s going to take to bring your strategy to life? A lot depends on the depth and extent of change you imagine. Some brands will be guided by a specific requirement. Others will look at what’s being planned and estimate how long they believe that will take to bring to life. Others will be reacting to what is happening around them and assessing their timeframe on their ability to respond. Some strategies will take place in chapters. Some will represent an overall shift.

The time you can see

The second timeframe is governed by tangibility. How much of your new strategy is based on what you already know, and how much is dependent on factors that you have yet to figure out? We often find there’s an inflection point. You can see so far ahead in terms of what’s required, and the rest is TBC. Different brands with different strategies will have different appetites for known/unknown. But it’s a balance. Without some level of certainty, the risk profile may be too high to get any buy-in. But if too much is known, if the new strategy is really just a continuation of business as usual, then effectiveness may be compromised.

The time you have

The third timeframe is competitive. How long before others react or the market moves on or consumer behaviours change or new technology redefines what’s normal? This time pressure recognises that the sector you trade in is dynamic. As others jostle for attention and competitive advantage, they too will bring things to market that change the whole environment for you and everyone around you. In some cases, you can see, or learn, what others are doing and speculate on what they are bringing to market.

Think of these three factors as a T – with the first two elements (the horizontal) defining the timeframes you control, and the third element (the vertical) shortening or lengthening how long you have before others intrude or interrupt your intentions.

Using this simple model, you can assess the relationship between your strategy and these different times.

How these strategic timeframes should work

Ideally:

The time your strategy will take is shorter than the time you have.

The time you can see gives you higher certainty over the time your strategy will take.

These timeframes point to your brand strategy having first-mover advantages.

Not ideally:

The time you have is shorter than the time your strategy will take or even than the time you can see.

In which case, you may be better to wait, protect what you can and adopt more of a second-to-market approach.

We can help you set timeframes for your strategy

Nor is this a once-off exercise. On the contrary, you should be continually assessing these three factors and using them to monitor the effectiveness of your strategy. Failing to do so can result in a stranded strategy, where your business continues to pursue a strategy that will not deliver the advantages expected, because time is against you.

Knowing the timeframe within which you judge success is one of many conversations in building a confident brand. If you want to assess how the T-structure could work for you, we offer rapid-resolution strategy sessions to help senior teams systematically examine how to make their brands more strategically valuable. More on how we can help here.

Acknowledgements

Photo by Donald Wu on Unsplash

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