Succeeding at Business in Southeast Asia

CHAPTER 6Building Your Strategy: How to Determine Where You Want to Go

Most people do not know the difference between a strategy and a plan. Strategy is your overlying idea of where you want to go; think of a ship captain saying we want to be at this port on Tuesday, this one on Friday, and another two weeks from now. The plan is how the captain will get to those locations; we will take this path with stops here and here, and go at this speed, and then it’s up to the crew to execute this plan.

The first step for us when we are working with a client— and we recommend it to any business—is to always develop a strategy, typically for market entry into one or two markets; occasionally, we do this for the company as a whole. Ideally, I think we should do this for a company as a whole first. If you do not know where the whole ship is going, how can you possible know where a part of it is going? Assuming you have a strategy for the whole of your business and now need one for your specific growth into Asia, let’s consider several options:

• Do you need to be in one specific country? This happens often when a client is pushing you to be in the market.
• Do you want to explore several markets to find the best one for you? This is a good approach if you are not sure where your best growth opportunities are.
• How will you manage this? Is there an overlying strategy for Asia or is it country-specific? Do you have an Asian management team or do you have your area managers reporting up through ...