Aggressive Business Strategy: Think Externally to Stay Ahead

When Business Is Good
When business is strong, many leaders are tempted to assume that change momentum will take care of itself. History suggests otherwise. Sustained success often breeds leadership complacency, dulls strategic vigilance, and quietly increases vulnerability. If you feel comfortable with your current performance, that comfort may be your clearest warning signal that it is time for a more aggressive business strategy.

Periods of strong results are precisely when leaders need to push harder, challenge assumptions, and sharpen their business strategy — before the market does it for them.

Don’t Let Your Guard Down
Strong performance is not a signal to relax — it is a call to stay alert. Effective leaders continually pressure-test and refresh their strategy so the organization can adapt quickly to threats that could undermine its long-term health.

Disruption rarely announces itself in advance. Whether it stems from unexpected technological breakthroughs, shifting economic conditions, or political instability, it is the CEO’s responsibility to anticipate what may be coming, understand the implications, and ensure the strategy evolves ahead of the risk. Vigilance, not comfort, is what sustains success.

Think Externally to Create a More Aggressive Business Strategy

Rather than focusing primarily on the internal processes and systems that support growth, keep your strategic lens pointed outward — toward customers, competitors, and the broader marketplace. Markets move faster than organizations expect. Use leadership action learning best practices to continuously test your strategic assumptions, scan for early signals of change, and be prepared to act decisively to ensure that you will do what it takes to:

• Meet customer needs
• Focus on high growth
• Innovate your product and service offerings
• Gather external sources of information
• Track and monitor strategic progress

This is how leaders build a sharper, more aggressive business strategy — one designed to stay ahead of change rather than react to it.

3 Areas to Inform a More Aggressive Business Strategy

1. Your Marketplace
   The market may be working in your favor today, but what disruption is waiting just around the corner? Scan emerging trends relentlessly and resist the urge to dismiss them too quickly. Before you rule anything out, ask a simple but powerful question: why not?

   Many once-dominant players failed not because the signals were invisible, but because they were ignored. Kodak hesitated to challenge its film-based business model in the face of digital photography. The taxi industry underestimated how quickly ride-sharing platforms like Uber could redefine convenience and customer expectations. Market leadership belongs to those who question their assumptions early — not those who defend them the longest.

2. Your Customers
   Your most valuable strategic insights rarely come from your happiest customers. They usually come from the ones who walked away. Dissatisfied customers have already identified where your product, service, or pricing model fell short. That makes their feedback especially instructive.

   Seek out those signals early. Understand what pushed them to look elsewhere and address the gaps before isolated defections turn into a broader exodus. In competitive markets, listening to unhappy customers is often the fastest way to strengthen your strategy and protect your future.

3. Your Thinking
   Challenge your own thinking by assembling a cross-functional team to rigorously stress-test the business model. Explore plausible, high-impact strategic scenarios and work through what could happen if market, technology, or competitive conditions shift quickly.

   Some organizations formalize this process by running strategic “war games,” and strategic pre-mortems where one team defends the current strategy while another actively attacks it. Done well, this disciplined tension surfaces blind spots, exposes vulnerabilities, and forces leaders to confront risks before they become reality.

The Bottom Line
Leadership and strategic complacency are silent risks. Left unchecked, they expose organizations to sudden shocks from technology shifts, economic turbulence, and aggressive competitors. The antidote is disciplined vigilance — an agile strategy that is continually challenged, refreshed, and ready to respond when the unexpected inevitably arrives.

To learn more about creating a more aggressive business strategy, download Do You Have the Right Culture to Drive Your Growth Strategy Forward?

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.