Directionally correct – the Emperor’s new clothes?

Talking about what is “strategic” compared to what is “tactical” at work is now old hat. It seems that everybody today is talking about seeking greater “business agility”. Recently I have trying to understand what exactly this means in practical terms over and above it being a convenient marketing sound bite. My understanding of the term increased this week when talking with a colleague…

We are doing a lot of work with a major international bank at the minute. During the week I was talking with a colleague who was trying to describe their COO to me. The COO has come into financial services from the telecommunications industry where they are in general much more comfortable with the idea of “build it, release it, fix it” rather than having to have everything perfect before it is shared with customers. My colleague said that this particular individual wants to go quickly, and that he will launch 20 to 30 ideas this year, of which he knowingly accepts that less than 50% will succeed. The COO said that the only way they could release that number of ideas would be if the initial assessment phase was as light as possible – he said that rather than seeking to understand if something is strategic or tactical, he would ask himself if it is directionally correct. He feels that this is sufficient because in today’s world you can’t tell if something is strategic before it is launched because you can’t predict what the market's reaction will be.

So if releasing new products and services quickly and not considering if something is strategic until after it is in the hands of customers underpins business agility, then the three obvious questions that this throws up for me are, one, what is going to be the backlash of this approach i.e. what will be the fallout from all of these half baked ideas and failed products and services, and two, is there not a better way of trying to understand the market and have an accurate idea of what should be strategic before it is released? My final thought I have is whether or not this is the way businesses have always operated and that this isn’t actually anything new. I’ll need to check with some golden oldies for that one.