Here are two supermarket chains. Which one is better?

There is not a objec­tive answer to “which one is better” until you sub­jectively define success. You pick the metric, you pick the winner.

Of course you needn’t restrict your value judgments to financial metrics. You might want to consider stability, social good, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, per­sonal satisfaction, taking care of your family, quality of life, pride in what you do, mak­ing money, ownership, opportunities for growth, community service, providing em­ployment, travel require­ments, having a regular schedule, and on and on.

And of course you don’t have to run a supermarket chain. Deciding to run a super­mar­ket chain, or not to, further expresses how you define success.

Your definition of success doesn’t have follow any rules (other than the law). It doesn’t have to be complicated or immutable. It should, though, motivate, energize, and inspire you. If it doesn’t, why are you in the business you’re in?

Success first, strategy second

It doesn’t work to pick a strategy before you define success because a strategy is a means to achieve success. Picking a strategy before you define success is like asking for direc­tions without saying where you want to go.

It also doesn’t work to define strategy in terms of success. If you define success as, say, shareholder wealth, then you don’t say “my strategy is to increase shareholder wealth.” Well, you could, but it wouldn’t help because it doesn’t tell you what to do. If you think it does tell you what to do, then you probably have assumptions about what it takes to increase shareholder wealth. You might even think those assump­tions are self-evidently true and aren’t assumptions at all. We’ll get to such matters in future installments.

Success is deep

Success is not the same thing as performance metrics, key indicators, or whatever you want to call them. (It’s important to keep the concepts clear. It’s not so important to use specific labels. A rose by any other name would smell as profitable.)

For example, you may set a goal of 80% of customers being extremely satisfied with your product or service. Customer satisfaction is a metric, indicator, or whatever you want to call it, and 80% is a goal. In this context customer satisfaction may or may not be part of your definition of success. If it is at your core, if it is one of the things that moti­vates, energizes, and inspires you, then maybe it is part of your success. But if it is merely something you measure on the road to something more deeply im­portant to you, or if you wouldn’t worry about it if you found a better way to achieve what you want, then it is not part of your success.

How to define success

Shakespeare didn’t finish his sentence. It really reads, “To be, or not to be, in the super­market-chain business.” (You see why I abandoned English literature, and comedy.)

You might have a passion for supermarket chains, or bicycle chains, or chain-link fences, or chain mail. Whatever your passion, ask yourself why it’s your passion, no self-censoring allowed. That will give you a great start at defining success for yourself. It may even be enough by itself.

You can enlist others to help you. They may help you talk it through; they may have in­sight about you; they may remember things you’ve said.

There are even quantitative methods that can help you. I’ve used a market-research technique called conjoint analysis to help people figure out how they make tradeoffs… which is fundamentally what a definition of success is about. I value this more than that.

Copyright © 2011 Advanced Competitive Strategies, Inc.

Coming up next

In the next installment we’ll cover getting your colleagues aligned around a common definition of success. Alignment around success reduces friction, speeds decision-making, and clarifies stra­tegic thinking.

View Part 2 of the Series- What They Want

View Part 3 of the Series- Speaking the Same Language

View Part 4 of the Series- Generating Ideas

View Part 5 of the Series- “Holy Futures, Batman!”

View Part 6 of the Series- Deciding How to Decide

View Part 7 of the Series- (Still) Deciding How to Decide

View Part 8 of the Series- The Bottom Line

About the author

Mark Chussil is Founder and CEO of Advanced Competitive Strategies, Inc. and a 35-year veteran in competitive strategy. He has designed strategy simulators and conduct­ed business war games for dozens of com­panies, in many industries, around the world, helping them make or save billions of dollars.

A highly rated and entertaining speaker, Mark speaks about strategic thinking at confe­rences and in corporate workshops. He has written three books, chapters for five others, and numerous articles, and he has been quoted in Fast Company, Harvard Management Update, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Mark is also a Founder of Benefitics, LLC (which quantifies Social ROI for non-profit organizations) and a Founder of Crisis Simulations International, LLC. He earned his B.A. at Yale and his M.B.A. at Harvard.

8705 views