Strategy only becomes real when money and working hours start to move

A bold strategy does not mean constantly changing direction. It means committing to the chosen direction, protecting new business from the metrics of the old, and deciding what the company is prepared to give up. In Alma’s video podcast on sustainable growth, Susanna Takkunen from Accenture Finland and Santtu Elsinen from Alma discuss resourcing new business, letting go of the old and turning strategic choices into practical decisions.

A new direction needs time

In a fast-changing market, a company can drift into reacting to every new opportunity. The other extreme is to expect results from a new direction so quickly that the experiment is stopped before it has had time to become a business.

Susanna Takkunen, Managing Director of Accenture Finland, refers to L’Oréal’s long-term beauty tech transformation: the direction stayed the same, even though the results did not appear in one or two years. Strategic consistency does not mean that execution cannot be refined. It means that the company separates the direction from the way it is implemented.

Prioritisation shows in money, people and metrics

If a new objective is funded by dividing existing resources into ever smaller pieces, the organisation gets more tasks but no real ability to renew itself. New business needs its own support, investment, decision-making framework and metrics that match its stage of development.

This is also a question of letting go. Not everything old can continue with the same weight if something new is to be built properly. Strategy only becomes real when part of the work, budget and management attention moves towards the chosen direction.

“Prioritisation should actually show in real life and in the resources available, rather than only in the strategy we write”, Santtu Elsinen, Director of Alma Marketplaces, emphasises.

The value of AI does not come from a thousand separate use cases

The first experimentation phase of generative AI created working groups, pilots and numerous use cases in companies. When the expected value is not visible quickly, there is a risk of returning to old ways of working. According to Takkunen, the decisive phase is to identify the points where AI connects with the company’s core and operating logic.

Adding AI on top of existing technology can increase technical debt if the digital foundation is not renewed at the same time. Management therefore needs to decide whether AI is a limited tool for improving efficiency, a driver of renewal in selected businesses or the basis of the company’s future model. The same answer is not right for everyone, but avoiding the choice leaves investments fragmented.

A ten-year view forces the right question

The current business may be performing well, while the company’s future position remains uncertain. Takkunen suggests a simple test for management: what should the company look like in ten years’ time, and are the current capabilities, investments and operating models aligned with that aim?

Scenario work helps companies step away from the pressure of the next quarter. AI tools can lower the threshold for exploring alternative development paths, but the conclusions and choices belong to management. The purpose is not to predict one future, but to test where the current strategy holds and where it breaks.

A leader’s own actions show the direction of change

At the end of the discussion, Takkunen sums up her practical leadership lesson as continuous curiosity, learning and leading by example. It is difficult to expect an organisation to adopt a new technology or way of working if management only deals with it in speeches and presentations.

According to Takkunen, change requires involvement, but also the ability to make decisions. Management’s role is to build understanding, listen to evidence and commit to the chosen direction, even when full consensus is not always possible.

Elsinen, for his part, highlights the practical implementation of strategy. In his view, companies are often good at creating plans, but the harder task is to crystallise the strategy so clearly that people understand how value is created, what achieving the goals requires and what choices their implementation demands.

This article is based on the discussion in Alma Media’s Accelerator of Sustainable Growth video podcast, where Susanna Takkunen, Managing Director of Accenture Finland, and Santtu Elsinen, Director of Alma Marketplaces, discuss market reorganisation and companies’ ability to renew themselves. Watch all episodes here (in Finnish).

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