Draft:B strategy

• Comment: Neither source seems to even mention 'B strategy'? DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

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In business, a B strategy is a type of low-budget strategies that an organization formulates, but usually does not implement. The term draws reference from Hollywood B movies. While regular business strategies involve assessing the external environment, regulatory parameters, available resources, associated risks, other inherent concerns and subsequently setting comprehensive goals and an implementation plan, B strategy chooses to focus on one or a few of the abovementioned aspects or offers only a very high-level plan of those components.

Background of B strategy

While every business organization is expected to devise and refresh its strategy both regularly and in ad hoc situations (regulatory shock, opening of new market, etc.), not everyone actually has both the resources and resolve to do so. As an expedience, the organization will substitute a proper strategy with a shortened or simplified one. Proper strategy work is further diluted by more or more projects that are strategic in nature, but do not meet the definition of strategy, such as feasibility studies and business plans.

Difference with a real strategy

Despite its deliberate or forced incompleteness, B strategy is expected to look like a real strategy prima facie. That is, it still contains the typical if not all the components found in a regular strategy, including market analysis, gap analysis, strategy on products, distribution, pricing, etc. The B strategy usually invokes two ways to ensure the similarity with the strategy work. One is to cover all the components in a light-touch way. This requires the devisor of the strategy to be less rigorous with her work. The other is to focus on a few aspects of the strategy, typically, either the business side (market analysis, distribution, customers, products) or the operation side (target operating model, hiring, KPI, capex).

There can be various rationales for devising a B strategy. It can be a good expedience when the company is facing a lack of budget or time or both. For example, when a new market is suddenly available as a result of regulatory development, the organization may rush against time to devise a plan focused on driving topline growth and try to base such a plan on the existing operations, or vice versa. In other situations, the organization may be forced into coming up with a new strategy, or refreshing the existing one, due to request from stakeholders. For example, the organization has a new leader handpicked by the old one. The new leader would therefore want to renew the existing strategy without fundamentally refuting the current one, as that would potentially compromise her legitimacy as well. As a compromise, a B strategy can be used to paper over certain parts of the existing strategy without looking like a complete overhaul.

Impact of B strategy

While B strategy serves certain goals, its inherent pitfalls prevent it from shedding any valuable light to direct the course of the business. For a strategy to be effective, it needs to look into the long-term future, offer enough details, and be inclusive during the devise and implementation course. The B strategy does not have either the granularity or the resilience and consequently cannot navigate the business through the expected changes. This is, however, saved by the fact that there is usually no expectation for a B strategy to be truly effective to begin with.

Nevertheless, as the B strategy is expected at least to pass off as a proper strategy, such mismatch of the expectation and consequent resources gap usually leads to struggle of either the team that is tasked with coming up the B strategy (an inhouse strategy team or an external consultant) and, when the implementation is attempted, all the affected stakeholders across the business.