Sines, Sines, Everywhere Sines

There is an old saying about the grass always looking greener on the other side of the fence.  This truism applies to many areas in the business world.  As a result, corporate strategy and tactics often vacillate between extremes like a sine wave.  Identifying these moves, the reasons behind them, and the timing of the next peak in the wave can be extremely valuable, whether one is trying to strategize in a relationship with another company or trying to develop tactics for managing successfully within one’s own company.

There are numerous examples of sine waves in business.  Two of the most critical for business development are building internal teams versus outsourcing work and licensing versus owning technology or code. The key to mastering these strategic swings is to determine where the company is now and where it is headed in the near term to understand whether opportunity windows are opening or closing so that you can apply the right business and investment strategies, if you are an external partner, or align with the strategy if you are an internal stakeholder.

For internal stakeholders, fighting against the tide is a losing proposition and is more likely to hurt your prospects than help them as executive management is more likely to reward alignment while seeking to remove those who are seen as obstructive. For example, if a company is moving away from building internal teams toward outsourcing work, there is an opportunity to shift from managing internal teams to managing vendor partners. Both skills are valuable and necessary to deliver success, so catch the wave and move with the tide in whatever direction your company is moving.

Another common sine wave involves vacillating between hiring PMs who mind the gap between promise and delivery by being both customer facing and internal facing and hiring two sets of PMs, one set that is customer facing and one set that is internal facing.  The challenge with having two sets of PMs, beyond just having more PMs, is that they tend to get pulled in opposite directions by their stakeholders, increasing the gap between promise and delivery.  The challenge with having one PM manage both external communication and internal resources is that PMs who can “switch hit” tend to be unicorns, or at least very hard to find.

Tips and Techniques:

• Learn to identify shifts in big picture strategy between extremes.

• Map out roles where you can deliver value once the shift is complete.

• Align with executive management by helping to make the shift successful.

• Never express doubts or hesitations once the decision has been made.

• There is no “opposition” or “resistance” as we are all in the same corporate boat.