December 29, 2013

The core of strategy

This blog is based on two precepts that also guide my consulting:

Let’s spell that out.

Messaging is the core of strategy

The enterprise software business, in simplest terms, is about the building, marketing and selling of software. Messaging is central to all of those activities! In particular:

If we add another level of complexity, the story changes only a little.

Hardware/appliance configurations bring even less change to the discussion, except in the rare cases when one vendor gains preferred access to scarce components. So all told, messaging ties into a majority of software/service/appliance vendor strategic concerns.

The picture I’ve drawn here is very different from what you’d see in a discussion of Michael Porter competitive strategy, a 1970s paradigm that views strategy mainly from an old-industry standpoint. Not coincidentally, few 1970s MBAs accomplished much in the software business.

Messaging has many targets

Messages are consumed by many different kinds of people, for example technical personnel at buying organizations, business personnel at buying organizations, and various kinds of third-party influencer. Messaging needs to have different parts that are tailored to these different audiences.

Anybody who regards messaging as monolithic is being dangerously sloppy, or else doesn’t understand the IT industry.

Messaging is noisy

Messaging gets obstructed in multiple ways.

Craft your messages with care

Several of my posts offer guides to robust messaging. Most notably:

Related links

Comments

4 Responses to “The core of strategy”

  1. Some stuff I’m thinking about (early 2014) | DBMS 2 : DataBase Management System Services on February 2nd, 2014 1:51 pm

    […] strategic advice for all sizes of tech […]

  2. Messaging to multiple audiences | Strategic Messaging on February 16th, 2014 5:32 pm

    […] been advocating for years. Please see for example my recent post summarizing many of my thoughts on strategic messaging, and the more detailed posts to which it […]

  3. Judging opportunities | Strategic Messaging on July 16th, 2014 11:59 am

    […] I’m on record as believing that messaging is the core of strategy, you might think I believe that messaging plays into all this somewhere. You’d be very […]

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