Brilliant Manoeuvre
To be truly successful, you can’t just adjust or adapt to change. You have to take the initiative and create the conditions for your own success.
Discussion
When you create the conditions for your own success, you are creating a situation that allows you to fully leverage your major strengths, especially your centre of gravity, while minimizing your competitors’ ability to leverage their respective strengths and centre of gravity. This is what the Wall Street Journal and Globe and Mail have done. By bucking the trend toward free news and content (actually not really free because readers are paying by having to watch ads) and requiring a paid subscription for its best content, both news providers are leveraging their unique reach, depth, and brand. Most other newspapers can’t do that because they don’t have the brand and reputation of these outlets. Consequently, they have no choice but to rely on advertising revenue while the WSJ and G&M are reaping the benefits through increased repeat revenue. Though the latter may have less readers, they are willing to pay for access to their site’s content. In doing so, WSJ and G&M are successfully making the transition to the online digital reality while also creating the conditions for their success.
Questions
Are your decision today likely to hem you in in the future? Can you innovate whle maintaining your future freedom of action?
By the way…
My ideas were featured in last Monday’s Globe and Mail: A military approach to business.
Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.
© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.