A monthly newsletter and community round-up, shining light on the art and science of powerful market positioning.
Hello again my friend,
This edition of Re:position comes with a warning. It’s all about planning. Which coming from a certified over-thinker like myself, risks dragging you, dear reader, into my whirlpool of self-satisfied logic.
But fear not, this isn’t strategic whimsy, but rather the creeping realisation that I choose my processes on autopilot.
I’d love to hear how this makes you reflect about your own work, so drop me a line, I always anticipate the banter you serve up after I’ve pressed send on each edition.
See you all out there, happy planning!
Andy
Why we need to bring back Plan B
Plan B; the universal short-hand for a reserve strategy, our least preferred option. For many of us, it’s perhaps even a metaphor for failure. Given that I set strategic plans for a living, you’d think my world would be full of Plan A, B and even C’s. But in all honesty, I can’t remember making a deliberate Plan B anytime in the past 10 years.
Why no Plan B?
It's rather peculiar when you think about it. Why don’t I have an alternative Market Entry Plan in my back pocket? Or a pre‑planned pivot ready for distribution, technology, or geography?
Its absence certainly isn’t due to my cavalier attitude to risk and planning, perish the thought. Rather over the years my approach to strategy and market entry has become highly iterative. I operate in very short planning cycles, raising and testing hypotheses quickly, then reacting to what the market tells our team in validation or in sales.
This approach works well and is often described as “Agile”. There, I’ve said the “A” word. A concept which has been warped and misused, yet still describes the strategic methodology that most of us adhere to. In my world of Agile planning, a Plan B is redundant because Plan A is designed to flex and evolve from day 1.
"However, it’s 2025"
And 2025 is different. Arguably that’s my favourite and most over used three word sentence right now. I use it to remind my teams that we living in extraordinary times and we all possess the agency to think for ourselves. Like many aspects of my work, the emerging unpredictability of 2025 has forced me to reconsider so many processes that I’ve taken for granted.
So as the impact of “unknown unknowns” loom ever greater, is it time for a popular renaissance of Plan B?
Reframing what Plan B means
I’ve always justified my own rejection of Plan B with somewhat macho arguments about focus and motivation. Having no Plan B helps everybody remain committed to delivering Plan A, until "The Market" tells us otherwise. In the past, having a back-up plan felt a little like admitting defeat before we had even tried.
Now I see it a little differently. With increasing unpredictability and pace of change in our markets, the success of any given plan is becoming a little less likely. Fewer things will proceed as planned, so I now accept that I’ll be forced to adapt or pivot my plans more frequently in the future. With this new context, it makes more sense to equate the preparation of Plan B with readiness rather than failure.
Confronting failure up front.
I’ve had to work hard to really shift my thinking, from believing I was just hedging my bets, to clearly stating that I was more in control of likely scenarios. It’s perhaps counterintuitive that the preparation of an alternative Plan B in our commercial strategy makes our plans more flexible, not less. When we’re shaping our workstreams around the expectation of failure, our thinking sharpens as we’re forced to consider the limitation of our own execution as well as potential flux in our markets. This tension can only strengthen our core plans, even if it takes a few more courageous conversations to get there.
"Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm"
Winston Churchill
Ultimately, embracing Plan B means confronting failure at the start and openly working with it. This isn’t a new idea, as Winston Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” On reflection, perhaps it’s been my own fear of confronting failure that has kept me from contingency planning so directly up front. Agile, market-first planning just kicks the decision to change into the future.
Contingency planning rationally imagines the possibilities before the emotional pressure is laid on.
Plan B+
Let me be clear, building a Plan B isn’t about giving up on Plan A.
It opens up our awareness of possible paths in advance; it avoids dogged, fixed mindsets and sharpens our planning for both known and unknown outcomes. Recently, I’ve discovered that thinking and planning for a pivot up front makes it easier to talk about a pivot when the team is under the pump.
I’m going to keep experimenting and let you know how this preparedness flows in commercial return. For me it’s still work in progress. But given how this simple concept can help us plan better, I urge you to reconsider your devotion to agile and bring back Plan B. Although this time, perhaps we might all see its true value and upgrade our Plan B to Plan B+.
When an industry body needs a reset: the OANZ story
What do you do when the structure holding an entire sector together stops working?
Organics Aotearoa New Zealand asked me to help rethink their business model. We turned a messy, fragmented picture into a clear framework for the future.
It meant tough conversations, sector‑wide consultation, and pulling together 80 different voices into one plan that can actually work.
This shouldn’t really be a feed the brain topic because it does the opposite. It frees the brain.
I stumbled across a productivity tip about Text Snippets a few months back and have found it so useful to help manage the challenges of a busy mind that I’ve become a little evangelical about it.
Text Snippets are reusable blocks of copy that you set up to a keyboard shortcut. It’s been an open secret for software engineers for years, where it’s used to insert code, but for anybody in business it’s a lifesaver.
Standard replies, descriptions, statements, links, whatever you need, saved and ready at the touch of a button. I’ve adopted TextExpander into my work, saving me from having to hunt around for the last one-para bio I wrote, and a myriad of other messy mind interrupting tasks.
You might know this already? But if you don’t, it’s the simplest way to make your work life demonstrably easier inside a day. Boom.
Whether you're facing a specific positioning challenge or just want to learn more, this interactive session is your chance to ask questions, share your experiences, and hear how others are approaching their positioning.
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3Green is a Commercial Strategy Practice in Aotearoa, led by B2B market positioning expert Andy Mitchell.
If you’d like to discuss your business’s market position, schedule a free 15-minute call with me. I’d love to hear what’s happening for you and explore how I can help.
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