“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” (Irene Peter)

If I have learned anything over the past 30 years, both as an experienced practitioner and keen student of business strategy, it is this: Those who run companies have one basic responsibility. No, it is not to make money. It is to keep their respective companies running. The core of any strategy must, therefore, be sustainability.

Too often, you will hear the same answer, told smugly, when asked about the essence of business enterprise. Business, it will be knowingly explained, is about making money…the more, the merrier. In fact, greed is about making money, the more the merrier. Business is about building an enterprise that is capable of making money over the long haul. Strategies that yield unsustainable profits are short-sighted, short term and doomed to failure. Greed is short-sighted and almost never sustainable.

So, more than just building a profitable organizations, business leaders must be focused on building sustainable ones. A company must be able to withstand economic volatility, a hyper-competitive market, lengthy supply chain disruptions and, yes, catastrophic events. It is easy to make money when your boat, like those around it, is rising with the tide. But can your boat survive a tsunami? Can it survive a protracted industry slump? Can it survive the Chinese? How about new technologies? Sweeping regulatory changes? What would happen to your organization in the event of a major acquisition?

Sustainability in the management context is about ensuring that a company’s product or service offering responds to the needs of its customer base and that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. It is about its operations being as productive and as low cost as its competitors. It is about having a strong and stable customer base and a reliable supply chain. It is about having a stable cash flow and not having bank covenants that could strangle it when things become volatile. And, yes, it is about being prepared for catastrophe.

So, what is the first step in becoming a company from which investors can count on reliable, consistent returns well into the future? How does an organization become sustainable?

The answer is somewhat paradoxical. To be sustainable, a company must change. To change, the company must begin by strengthening the status quo.

Sustainability strategies require leaders to take a long-term view of their business. Getting the future right, however, first requires getting the present right. You cannot attract good people unless you take proper care of your current people. You cannot attract new customers unless you are adept at keeping the ones you have. You cannot usefully leverage a weak product portfolio. You cannot successfully expand a weak geographic base. Jim Collins writes Good to Great because you cannot go from Bad to Great. Without a strong foundation, you cannot get to there from here.

Sustainability, therefore, begins with understanding what you are doing right and then doing it better. Build from the foundation up, not the roof down. In other words, do not change. Evolve.

In a fast changing world, where most advisors would say that to succeed you must learn to change, it’s a paradox, to be sure.

As a starting point in leading my former company’s strategic plan exercise, I laid out a series of guiding principles, along with a process which we would follow almost to the letter. Included in the set of principles were 10 for product development and portfolio management. I offer these for your edification.

1. Good marketing works best in the service of good products, like Acquisio’s ppc management software (sorry for the plug – I’m a fan!).

2. Good products beat new products. Sustainable market leadership requires equal or better products than the competition.

3. Safety lies not in products but in portfolios of products.

4. Product lines must continually evolve as the market evolves.

5. The advantage goes to first movers.

6. Innovate rather than extend. In this way, you cannibalize someone else’s product instead of your own.

7. Seek technological leadership, but never be led by technology.

8. Competition always overtakes an innovation.

9. New products should not be developed, and current products should not be maintained, unless they are financially viable.

10. Product integrity and financial viability are the direct result of good execution.

At first glance, these principles appear straightforward, almost obvious, and your company may have applied many of them intuitively. My bet, though, is that there are products or groups of products in your company’s line-up that run counter to one or more of the guidelines and that their performance has been deleteriously affected as a result.

You may know of exceptions – successful products that break the rules – but invariably these exceptions will define and ultimately corroborate the rules.

Every company is different – to a point – and every market is different, again to a point. That said, I have found, over the years, that similarities outweigh differences and that one never goes too far wrong applying basic truths and process fundamentals. I would suggest, at the very least, you think about these guidelines not just abstractly but in reference to your own company’s product offering and those of your competitors. Better still, use them as a filter to see if your company is on the right track or if you are throwing fixed and working capital at losers.

A former boss of mine once opined that a point of view is worth 50 points of IQ. If you have a vision, stick to it. Build your enterprise around it. History shows that consistency and good execution of an imperfect strategy will usually win out over an excellent strategy badly executed. Of course, this was the same boss who, in referring to one of his less favorite colleagues famously said, “He has one opinion, and it is wrong”.

Saturn, a different kind of car company that never quite figured out how to make a go of being different and, as a result, made little difference to the fortunes of its parent GM, is now on the verge of extinction. It is ironic that the more Saturn made cars people actually wanted, i.e., the more mainstream it became, the less relevant and more redundant it became. In other words, it is good to have a point of view, but make sure the view has a point in the first place.

Starbucks had a strongly-held point of view about coffee and people and how the two could come together. And that was enough – along, of course, with impeccable execution – to make the company an institution and an icon. Over-expansion which led to under-execution, along with competition from the lower brow and lesser brews of McDonald’s brought Starbucks profits to a coffee grinding halt. Vivanno smoothies, breakfast foods and other unimaginative fixes proved to be little more than froth. So now, two years later, Starbucks comes out with its newest game changer: VIA Ready Brew instant coffee.

According to the company’s spinners and weavers, Ready Brew is a breakthrough in “soluble” coffee:

“Ready Brew is different – it’s full-bodied and flavorful, just like the Starbucks coffee you know and love…The magic is in a proprietary, all-natural process that we spent years perfecting. We microgrind the coffee in a way that preserves all of their essential oils and flavor. No other coffee company takes this step, and it makes all the difference.”

The wording is reminiscent of an old ad for Tab, a vile diet drink introduced in 1963. “How could just one calorie taste so good?” the jingle asked teasingly. “Because the Coca Cola Company kept the flavor in Tab.”

Ready Brew takes direct aim at the $17 billion instant coffee market. Starbucks hopes to satisfy analysts without resorting to franchising and other brand-sensitive restructuring initiatives. But you’ve got to wonder: will the Nescafe crowd spend more for a Starbucks brew and could a frapuccino freak fall for an instant coffee? Will the brand be damaged by its implausible dip in the soluble pond? My guesses are no, no and yes. Time will tell.

So what about those 50 points of IQ? Starbucks shows what happens when your view gets fuzzy and Saturn when there is no substantive and sustainable view in the first place.