Abraham Lincoln once said: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
The analogy about the need for strategy as a precursor to action, and ultimately, productivity, is as timely now as it was in Civil War America. It’s a long time since our nation and the world has seemed so precariously balanced, and the business outlook so opaque.
Productivity growth in Australia has been low for decades and continues to fall, with the recent 2024 Productivity Commission bulletin reporting that labour productivity for the entire economy fell by 3.7% in 2022-23.
According to the Productivity Commission, one of the key reasons for this slowdown is “a decline in business dynamism” – essentially the veracity of our commercial activity – which has “slowed the rate of innovation and technology” within our businesses.
Despite this, a large number of Australia’s corporate businesses and workers will spend much of this summer with their head, if not in the sand, at least resting on it.
Over the past two or three decades the right not to work from the week before Christmas until early February has become a national cultural expectation. And even when teams are back at their desks there is a tendency to wander in late, keep an eye on the cricket scores, or knock off early for that daylight saving margarita.
And while a long summer break is essential respite from the daily grind of hectic corporate life, it somehow always seems like a surprise when businesses only really start to get going in March or even April.
So how can corporate leaders and strategists better prepare to return to the office with a stronger sense of direction and a more creative or innovative outlook – ready to solve the challenges of the year ahead?
It’s simple really – outsource your axe sharpening.
Before you start booking flights, buying bathing suits, or wrapping presents, think about how you can prepare your your team or agency to do the research, extract key insights, and forecast trends for you, while you’re at the beach – so the only thing on your tidy desk when you return is a set of bullet point recommendations ready to be implemented.
Here are some of the key tasks you might want to start thinking about outsourcing now, so you can get chopping in the new year…
Review and reflect on the year
This is a great time to reflect on the year that was, so one of the best things you can do to prefer and sharpen your strategies for 2025 is to look back and review key information gathered throughout the year.
This could mean analysing and synthesising key information gathered throughout the year, including research, employee surveys, strategy workshops, market studies, or industry white papers to create a picture of key trends from the past year to help structure a plan for the year ahead.
Keep an eye on your competitors
Reviewing and reflecting on your competitors, or contemporaries, is a great way to gain insights into your own brand or business.
By first analysing who your competitors are, or who you aspire to be, then taking a deep dive into their unique selling propositions, their brand health and positioning you can highlight key areas where you can make gains of carve off a niche in the market.
Check in on your brand health
A brand health check measures how your brand is perceived by your customers and stakeholders (including investors and staff), and compares your brand to competitors and contemporaries.
The core purpose of this process is to not only understand the commercial strength of your brand now but to also measure and evaluate your brand on an ongoing basis, so you can help uncover issues before they arise, and develop strategies to manage them.
Information for brand health checks can be extracted and analysed in a number of ways including through qualitative research (stakeholders interviews), quantitative research (surveys etc), and through desktop research. Much of this can be set up and run prior to the summer break, and then analysed with key insights extracted in time for your new year strategies.
Customers are key
Customer satisfaction questionnaires have become a cornerstone of modern business, tapping. But how often do businesses really get down to the tin tacks of those brow furrowing NPS, CSAT and CES metrics.
How many executives can turn this data into succinct dot point recommendations?
If you’re looking to gain a better understanding of your customer needs surveys are a great place to start and can be in-market in the lead up to the summer break, and analysed in time for your return.
Turn your data into insights
In the digital age data has become the most valuable currency, but without the right approach to data analysis many of us are flying blind when it comes to extracting real insights from the information we’ve collected.
If you’re sitting on a pile of data that needs to be analysed, whether it’s Qualtrix or Google Analytics, the summer break is a great time to provide this information to your agency to make sense of it all.
Plan for your people
Making your business or corporation an aspirational place to be for existing and potential new staff members means reflecting on your culture, and a great way to do this is by undertaking staff surveys to inform your cultural planning, ESG commitments, psychosocial risk management, team values, and employee value propositions.
Those last few quiet days of the working year are the perfect time to undertake staff surveys, as your people clean up their emails and their desks in preparation for the summer break. So think about the people-problems you’ll be trying to solve in the new year and get the data to start the new year with all of the information you need to get started on strategy and planning. Just don’t mention the axe in this context!
Fuller’s brand research team specialises in extracting valuable insights from research and data to inform consumer insights, so you can be ready for 2025.
Contact us to learn more.