I was involved in a project in the 1990’s for a chain of public houses (pubs) in the UK. At that time the competition authority was seeking to limit the power of the breweries over the public houses of the UK. It introduced a limit (2,500) to the number of pubs a brewery could own. The chain we were working for was owned by one of the major brewing enterprises.
At the time of our project the assumed strategic viewpoint was:
- Identity: A collection of outlets
- Purpose: A channel to market for the brewery
- Success: Volume of beer sold
- Means: Be somewhere people wanted to go (nice atmosphere, good food)
As part of the analysis we concluded that a more insightful viewpoint was:
- Identity: A portfolio of outlets (that could be developed and traded)
- Purpose: To be an asset that grows in value
- Success: The value of the portfolio (of pubs)
- Means: Identify pubs whose value could be improved
The purpose of the story isn’t to try to show we were ‘right’, but to illustrate that even basic questions can have quite different answers.
This story also illustrates the application of the 4 Key Strategic Questions