Practical example. I need to set up a marketing department. What strategy do I inject? What tactics? There are many frameworks, should I learn them all before choosing one? Do I have to choose one? The answer is always the same. The more I transpose from the world, the more frameworks I come in contact with, the more I can do two very important things. Pattern recognition, there is tracing my issues under discussion back to at least partially known issues. Tailoring, that is, sewing a tailored solution from elements derived from the experience of others, without me having to experience everything myself and with the costs to me. Reading does no harm, but applying blindly, lowering random frameworks from above does a lot of damage. At the very least it doesn’t work, and it creates friction in the process.
Let’s go back to the marketing example. At one extreme I have the pragmatic, ROI-oriented approach (ref Dan Kennedy), broad-spectrum initial exploration and positive selection, i.e., I try many ideas and pursue the ones that yield the most return. Positive side, I just produce ideas, I don’t have to assume anything about their effectiveness because they will simply have to be mechanically tested on the playing field. Obvious negative side, the costs. On the other side of the scale is the laser approach, I systematically narrow the field and find the niche of personas most aligned with my product (ref Seth Godin), reduce costly efforts but simultaneously create value for my customers — or prospects as such — instead of noise.
The point is that the two approaches are not mutex, they are not mutually exclusive. I can start with the objectives of the latter and on that basis use the techniques of the former. Let me explain further. 1, I can have the goal – the strategy – of creating value and use an approach that is called product-first. And 2, in doing so I use the tactic of positive selection, of systematically reducing fruitless efforts. So we come – abstracting from marketing for a moment – to post-war Japan, the need to optimize costs and produce exactly what was needed, demanded by the market. From there all the Lean strategies of doing business, of doing factory, and now of doing services develop. I have to be mindful in deciding what I want to do/produce and I have to be mindful in deciding the how.
In this article I used lean marketing (ref Allan Dib) but I could have similarly talked about disciplined agile (ref Scott Ambler) or other paradigms. I used them as examples to say that in consulting the frameworks, the patterns of operation, can be learned and applied. But the real value is in learning them, abstracting and combining them, to synthesize from time to time the tactical-strategic tool that the specific case needs. Each company is an instance unto itself of the same abstract company-object, so there are constructs, constraints and superstructures that should not be simplified.