Strategies fail.
That’s just a simple fact of business life.
But the key for most companies is how do you handle getting back on your feet when you have fallen down or stumbled?
In a lot of places, organizations will continue to sink good money after bad. They will keep trying to push to continue the same things that got them into the situation they are in and that have led them to the door of struggle.
This is always a bad idea because once you have made an investment in time and money, that time and money is spent and you aren’t going to recoup it, but you can spend more and waste more time, especially if you aren’t careful.
So what should you do in the case of a failed strategy?
Here are 3 ideas:
1. Make a decision to change:
As I mentioned above, you need to stop sinking money and time into a failed strategy.
This is often the most important decision that you can make because until you make the ultimate decision that you know you have to move in a different direction, you are going to continue to spin your wheels and be stuck.
So make sure you make a decision to stop doing the same things because you have always done them that way.
2. Understand what worked and what didn’t work:
It is highly unlikely that everything you did worked and that everything you did didn’t work.
Knowing what worked and what didn’t work is really powerful for redirecting your strategy.
Why?
Because you need to know where the results were coming from so that you can make the adjustments that are necessary.
By the same reasoning, you also don’t want to keep sinking effort into things that weren’t working.
3. Have a clear idea of where you are going:
When you are in the throws of a failed strategy, it is important to spend some time thinking about where you are now and where it is you want to go.
This is important because at the end of the failed strategy, you need to take a moment to recalibrate your efforts and get focus back on where you want to go again.