In the Korean War, US Air Force Colonel John Boyd developed a concept called the OODA loop. He saw that the fighter pilots that could quickly cycle through the steps of Observe, Orient, Decide and Act were more successful in air-to-air combat. They were able to out-think and out-manoeuvre their opponents, regardless of the type of airplane they were flying. More successful pilots had a higher level of strategic agility.
Can this same agile decision-making framework be adopted for maintaining the success of a brand? Naturally, the timescale of a fighter pilot processing this OODA cycle is far shorter than a pharma brand-planning timeframe could ever be. However, the logic holds that a faster adaptation of strategy in response to an environmental change will bring with it a competitive advantage.
If we accept this need for strategic agility within our pharma brand teams, we first see that ‘observe and orient’ functions are already well established – continuously collecting, analysing, contextualising, and reporting insights and their implications for the brand and business. But to ensure a robust and future-proof strategy, being the fastest to understand a change in the market does not necessarily define success. It is critical for teams to rapidly organise and implement an appropriate strategic response to that change – to ‘decide and act’. It is the decide step that is typically the bottleneck that prevents teams from being strategically agile. The calendar of the annual brand-planning cycle provides a framework that can often restrict strategic decisions being made in a timely manner when market changes happen out of step with the brand-planning cascade.
It follows that a team seeking to increase their level of strategic agility must be prepared to make decisions responsively and outside of this brand-planning cycle. What are some of the ways in which teams can aim to increase their strategic agility?
- Scenario plan for expected/possible near- to mid-term future market events so that the strategy can rapidly and smoothly shift mid-year if needed, without huge upheavals and costs.
- View your situation analysis as a living document. It should consistently evolve to reflect changing market conditions, revisiting key insights captured both on a regular basis and when a significant market change occurs.
- Be prepared to pressure-test the strategy to respond to critical changes in the market. The goal is to ensure cross-functional alignment on any implications and “course corrections” (and associated resource) required. Any alignment that was gained in the annual brand planning process can be lost rapidly if there is division as to how a brand should respond to a change.
Market changes do not often come in sequence with the start of brand-planning processes, so the need to pressure-test is episodic. Given this, it is critical that brands react quickly, make the appropriate changes to their plans and ensure teams consistently maintain a strategically agile mindset.
For more insights around best practices in annual brand planning, stay tuned for our next piece focused on tactical planning and the dos and don’ts associated with the process.
