This post wraps up the story on how to plan and manage a strategic change, as explained here. I already set out:

• how to migrate customers from the old business model to the new, and
• how to transition the staffing, ensuring the old model keeps working while building the new skills needed

So we are just left with how to build the new product/service proposition and any required capacities to deliver that proposition.

Winding-down the old proposition and old capacities is not a problem. That’s because we directly control both of them, rather than being subject to the whims of pesky humans (customers and staff)!

Building the new product/service proposition

Note first that our new strategic position may concern actual new products and/or actual new services. Or it may not mean either of those, but rather a new approach to how we do business. To illustrate – aircraft makers used to buy Rolls-Royce aero engines, along with a service-support contract. Now, they buy “power by the hour” where RR directly monitors and supports the engines for a fee-per-hour (very similar to how photocopier suppliers operate, with users paying $x per copy). No new product here, but a new ‘how’.

Whichever of these applies to our strategic change, we will have to build the new proposition … and for that we will need people with different skills than those people who built the old product/service portfolio (figure 1).

Figure 1: Building the new product/service proposition, dependent on growing new-skill staff.

Building the new capacities

This is the simplest resource-transition of all. Whether it is physical capacity we need, logistics capacity, IT capacity or something else, external providers are usually only too happy to provide or build it for us. And at whatever speed we need so as to fulfil the growing demand from new-type customers taking the new-type product/service proposition.

The exception concerns any new-type service capacity that relies on retraining or finding new-skill people – but the previous post shows how to do that.

Why are we doing all this ?!

Whether we are extending our strategy by adding a new position, or needing to transition our strategy – ultimately closing our current position – change is a journey, not a jump!

Specifying that new position (who to serve, with what, and how) is not difficult. It is not even especially challenging to estimate its potential scale and value (see here).

Much, much harder is to plan the journey, and then make it happen, adjusting continually as we go. That’s because we have to extend or change much or all of the current business system – target customers, products/services, staff types and capabilities, and capacity.

… and at the time making sure that the legacy business does not fall apart.

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Standard strategy tools and planning methods are hopelessly inadequate for this purpose – the only adequate tool is a digital-twin business model that plays out, over time, exactly how every element of the business system needs to change, and how performance will change with it.

As a senior leader, you have staff or consultants to build such a model for you. But you do need to guide its development and use – which you can learn about in this online course …

There is a low-cost ‘essentials’ option
… and get a ⅓ discount with coupon blog33 at checkout.