Cannabis Firms, What’s Your Superpower?
How do shrewd cannabis CEOs stand out against competitors? They don’t try to do or be everything from a strategic or operational perspective. Instead, they find and double down on their company’s superpower.
Put another way, winning firms identify an internal capability (the alchemy of skills, knowledge, assets, practices and technologies) that they can consistently do better than anyone else – one that not only creates value, but also competitively distances them from their peers.
And then they double down on it.
Some examples of corporate superpowers include:
P&G – Turning consumer insights into strong brands
Toyota – Continuously improving manufacturing efficiency and quality while eliminating waste
Amazon – Creating powerful operational/IT platforms that can enable new lines of business
If you don’t have a cannabis superpower, you better get one fast. The cannabis market will be unforgiving for businesses that can’t excel in any meaningful way.
Leveraging your superpower into superhero status is the process of tightly integrating your mission and superior capabilities to produce unique consumer value – and market-leading financial returns.
From a standing start, this is fundamentally a 2 step process:
1. Find your superpower…
- Deeply understand why your customers and consumers buy from you;
- Analyze which and how your capabilities drive this value proposition;
- Benchmark your firm against relevant peers to understand your edge and uniqueness.
2….And make it a focus of your corporate strategy and resource allocation:
- Craft a strategic plan that outlines your market and financial priorities (with metrics);
- Integrate the superpower into your go-to-market strategies. For example, allocate sufficient resources and capital to sustain & extend your advantage;
- Capture the superpower through securing patents, codifying practices and baking it into the culture.
Examples of possible cannabis superpowers include:
> Being 'the' low-cost producer
> Curating 'trend-setting' genetics
> 'Total' quality product innovation and management
Not every capability is or should be a superpower. What you uncover and align around needs to be explicit (growing the best weed or having the best people is not unique), measurable and a powerful driver of key financial results like margin and profit.
Historically, most leaders likely stumbled upon their distinctive superpower. But once they did, they were able to outgrow, out earn and out compete their peers over the long run. Cannabis leaders, you now know better. Start to leverage your advantage and become that superhero.
#strategy #capability #operations #P&G #Amazon #Toyota