What is Strategy? - Session 1

I was particularly struck by Porter's explanation that the essence of strategy is deciding what not to do. I knew that it was important for an organization not to try to do too much, but had never really considered just how important deciding what not to do is. Porter's description of Continental Airlines failed attempt to imitate Southwest Airlines was really interesting because brought home this point. Southwest doesn't just succeed in providing cheap no frills flights because they are simply better at doing this than other airlines. They succeed precisely because that is all they do. When Continental tried to imitate Southwest, but also tried to provide their traditional services they were unable to imitate.

I have definitely seen other organizations struggle because they did not decide what not to do. Malawi Children's Village (MCV), an nonprofit I am on the board for has definitely become less effective because we have not decided what not to do. I was originally attracted to the idea of MCV because it focused on village based orphan care, relying heavily on orphan's extended families and village volunteers to deliver cost effective care. While this part of the project remains intact it has become less effective because other projects have come to dominate MCV staff members time. The village based care was the core of the program because there was no central campus with other projects. By taking on other projects such as schools and clinics, the project stopped being extremely cost effective since extended families and village volunteers no longer provide a large proportion of the program's care.

MCV now runs a wide range of programs, and I believe that all are well intentioned and many provide valuable, quality services. However, it is difficult to identify anything we have decided not to do, and even more problematic, I am not sure that I could say what our distinctive competency is. Surely, when the program started the village volunteers seemed to provide the program with a unique advantage over other nonprofits, however I don't think this is still true if a majority of the programs budget goes to support activities that are taking place on campus and thus do not utilize the efforts of the volunteers. I am not sure what the solution is right now for MCV, and I think that the organization is in need of some serious strategic planning for the future. In this strategic planning MCV should definitely decide what it will not do, and perhaps even decide to stop doing some things it currently does.