John Price
Managing Director
AMI
Strategic planning for any large company is never easy, but it quickly gets complicated for Latin America. Here’s why:
- Across Latin America, a multinational’s (or a multilatina’s) operations can extend across 20+ countries, all with different economies, regulatory environments and challenges that are hard to address in one cohesive plan
- Strategic planning often starts with a boilerplate sent from HQ, designed for an information rich market (USA, Japan, Germany, France, etc.) which is almost impossible to populate with accurate data from Latin America.
- In many cases, LatAm regional leadership teams are replete with marketing, sales, logistics and government relations talent, but are not equipped with in-house market research skills
- Strategic planning can spark or exacerbate existing power struggles between country managers and regional functional heads, introducing bias into the process as people defend their territory’s budgets above all else
- Large country offices (e.g. Brazil, Mexico) with more resources are better equipped to create, document and present their initiatives versus smaller offices, creating a bias that favors well-resourced markets
Cutting through Complications to Create Consensus
At AMI we’ve helped dozens of companies with their strategic planning, so by necessity we have had to build a more effective approach that included several crucial steps.
Starting at the top. We’re often engaged by the CEO or President of Latin America, and their support is crucial. These leaders understand the virtues of a well-crafted consensus-driven approach:
- The best ideas are chosen, not simply those advocated by the most influential managers
- Public consensus helps ensure buy-in and thus support from all key stakeholders
Consistent, thorough documentation. Before gathering the leadership team in one room, AMI does the outreach to country managers and other leaders to understand the initiatives that are most important to them. More importantly, we document these initiatives the same way for everyone, asking the same questions with the same process. This helps reduce—if not eliminate—bias so that all strategic planning initiatives are given the same weight and consideration… and with neutral language.
And we’re not just taking down what these leaders tell us. We also add our own research of different markets to offer objective support—or refutation—of the initiatives, all with the same neutral tone and organized the same way, similar to how we would present a report with study findings to a client.
Prioritizing. With materials covering initiatives in place, distributed to and read by the leadership team that gathers together for a two-day workshop, we divide them into cross-functional/regional tables. Each team table then evaluates 2-4 initiatives each and chooses their favorite(s). They present their favorite to the rest of the room, defending their decision. Together, the room of your company’s leaders whittle down a long list of growth ideas to a few of the most viable initiatives, that will drive your company’s growth in LAC over the next planning period.
Mapping out implementation. Once the room has discussed and debated and finalized together their top choices, efforts turn to planning how to execute on these initiatives. The second day of the workshop is dedicated to breaking down each winning initiative – brainstorming all of the inputs, support, success factors and resources, including time, that will be required to ensure success. By the end of the second day, a basic strategic plan is in place to tackle each initiative, crafted by each team table but debated by everyone in the room, such that consensus is built around how to grow the company over the next few years.
Flushing out the details. Once we wrap the two-day workshop, the company now has a 10,000-foot view of the priority initiatives and the key steps to implementing them. But that’s not enough. To really make this rough plan into a clear, actionable strategy, the company needs to know:
- The size of the market, particularly addressable market, in different countries
- Competitor price points for the products or services covered by the initiatives
- Political or regulatory threats that could derail initiatives
- How consumers or end users of these products or services will accept and adopt them
- What steps are needed to raise awareness in the different markets
- The market landscape for these products/services in different countries
…among other things. Without this, the implementation steps are a company’s best guess without vital input from the market. That input we call market intelligence.
Next Steps
Contact us to explore how we can help your company with its Latin American strategic planning. Partnering with experienced, third-party market intelligence professionals like AMI brings to your planning efforts:
- Objectivity—We don’t have an agenda other than to help your company focus its resources on the best plan to grow and defend your market position in Latin America.
- Data—We’re better-positioned to find the market numbers to help base your decisions on objective facts rather than relying on potentially biased sources inside your company
- Guidance—Our senior consultants have decades of experience with strategic planning, which helps us build clear, sincere consensus among independently minded and disparate management teams
Contact us to learn more about our unique approach and how it can improve your strategic planning.
