re:position

A monthly newsletter and community round-up, shining light on the art and science of powerful market positioning. 

Hello my friend,

It’s Q4 “formal strategy season” so I’ve been back in the boardroom. Shirt well ironed, very well behaved indeed. This will doubtless ramp up over the next six weeks, before the silly season pulls the handbrake and we all flop onto the beach. Personally, I can’t wait for the warm sand again, but there is an awful lot to get through before then.

One of them is our Market Positioning Social - a casual drink in early December to celebrate the year and the good brains that have crossed paths through this community. You can RSVP at the bottom of this email, and if you know a good central Auckland spot, hit reply and tell me.

A recurring theme this year has been how clarity is created, protected, and lived, especially in the boardroom. The unique challenges of Board-led strategy have had me pondering the overlap between governance and positioning. I think it might spark some useful reflections for you too. Let me know where it takes you, we’re in this together after all. 

I’ll see you all out there

AM

Who owns your positioning?

Sometimes I’m a contentious choice to lead board-strat. I’m a commercial strategist, unashamedly focussed on the process of active commercialisation, so no problem there. But I’m also known as that Market Positioning fella’ which sometimes raises a quizzical eyebrow, “does that make our strategy better or worse?” they ask.

Why boards don’t get positioning

Let’s face it, Market Positioning just isn’t a discipline that boards are familiar with. It’s not part of formal governance training, at best an abstract strategic concept that some may have heard of once. Thankfully my ego stopped getting bruised by this long ago. 

The most important line on your dashboard

Yet it’s true that great commercial strategy is always built around your positioning. After all, your market positioning IS the definitive expression of how you choose to compete for market share. It’s the very essence of your business model, the way you think you can beat your competitors and win. When it’s wrong, your performance tanks and valuation stalls. If you needed a dashboard with only one thing on it, this is it. 

For such a fundamentally important discipline, I’m curious why boards aren’t more aware of what it is and how it underpins the performance of the business they are paid to govern. So I’ve been asking a very direct question recently to find out more.

Who governs your positioning?

Spoiler alert: the answer is nobody, which is as useful as it is frustrating. Because I’ve noticed that the more mature the business, the more abstract their market positioning becomes. 

How maturity breeds abstraction

For early stage ventures, positioning quite literally is their compass. It guides execution of both product and goto market and so is well understood by the whole organisation. When I was over at Dosh (NZ’s outstanding Neobank) the other week, I was delighted to see that the founders have all the elements of their positioning pinned next to their desks. Top marks to James McEniery and a shout out to that extraordinary team! 

But something very human happens as businesses grow; life gets overwhelmingly busy and noisy. More people are hired and so proportionally fewer people have autonomy to make commercial decisions. We take our place in market for granted, as our success doesn’t feel so fine and fragile. So we don’t check our actions against our strategic plans as often as we used to.

By the time a business matures further to have a solid governance layer in place, even the exec will only refer to their positioning infrequently. Positioning becomes an abstract conversation, not an influence on our day to day actions. 

When strategy becomes someone else’s job

Practically, we forget what positioning is for because we’re told that strategy is somebody else’s job. After all, if you’re not responsible for navigating, you don’t pay attention to the road signs. 

A better question to ask

So back to my question, who should govern your positioning? On reflection, I feel it’s the wrong question for many of us. Instead, ask yourself; “Who is the guardian of my positioning?”

Who coordinates all the customer and competitor insights? Who digests the product roadmap and decides where the most profitable place in-market is for you right now? Who takes that and makes it live in your business? So every decision, at every level, by everybody, delivers against the positioning that YOU have chosen?

The answer isn’t a role, a process or a time of year. It’s a person. A person who keeps their head up, so they can see where you’re going. A person who knows that this is what they have to do to help you grow.

Perhaps that person is you?

Market Positioning Social!

We’re taking our Market Positioning Clinic offline and replacing it with an in-person social.

After a year of lively conversations, sharp insights and problem solving in Zoom rooms, it’s time to gather in person - a drink in hand and in the company of people who care about doing strategy well (and keeping it human).

Whether you’ve joined a clinic before or not, this one’s for you. And if you can’t make it, I’ll raise a glass your way until next time.

Join us to celebrate the year and the conversations that made it.

Brain food

Strategy can be such a needlessly pompous subject to read about, there is only so much HBR that I can handle, yet some people make it so very accessible again. 

I first came across Alex Smith through his excellent The Hidden Path newsletter. He’s written a short guide called No Bullshi*t Strategy, which is the perfect stocking stuffer for the strategist in your life. Concise, clear, on point and for everybody who wants to build a business strategy that they can use. 

Personally, I really enjoy his writing style and how simple he expresses his thinking. Highly recommended, even for those of us who need no introduction to the dark strategic arts. 

He's even written an accompanying manifesto. If you don't have time for the 138 page book, this one needs only a couple of mins. 

If you know anyone who might enjoy this read, feel free to pass it on or suggest they sign up here. 

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.

If you enjoyed this, you can find lots of other strategy waffle on LinkedIn. Come and join the conversation.