The most dangerous moment in strategy is when your organisation becomes better and better at delivering something customers are becoming less and less interested in buying.
For decades, Tower Records was one of the great names in music retail.
Its stores were destinations. Customers could browse enormous selections, discover artists, talk about music and leave carrying something tangible.
Within that world, an entirely reasonable strategic question was:
How do we run better record stores and compete more effectively with other music retailers?
Better locations.
More stock.
Sharper pricing.
Stronger merchandising.
A better in-store experience.
But eventually there was a problem with the question itself.
Customers wanted music.
They did not necessarily need the physical object through which Tower Records had traditionally delivered it.
The Product Was Not the Outcome
A CD is not music.
It is a way of storing, distributing and accessing music.
For a long time, those things were so closely connected that distinguishing between them hardly mattered.
If you wanted an album, you bought the physical media.
If you wanted physical media, you needed somewhere to buy it.
The store therefore appeared inseparable from the customer need.
Then technology began pulling those things apart.
Digital downloads allowed consumers to acquire music without visiting a store.
Streaming went further. It separated listening from ownership itself.
Suddenly, consumers could access enormous music libraries without owning shelves full of CDs.
The customer outcome remained.
The mechanism for achieving it changed dramatically.
A Better Store Could Still Be the Wrong Answer
This is where the story becomes interesting for CEOs.
Imagine being confronted with declining store performance.
There are plenty of reasonable responses.
Improve the stores.
Negotiate better leases.
Reduce costs.
Increase marketing.
Improve inventory management.
Create loyalty programmes.
Close underperforming locations.
Each could improve performance.
None necessarily addresses the deeper shift.
That creates one of the most deceptive forms of Karamawari.
The organisation works harder.
Execution improves.
Costs are removed.
Processes become more efficient.
Yet the underlying strategic problem continues getting worse.
Why?
Because the organisation is becoming increasingly effective at answering a question customers are making less relevant.
Your Business May Be Making the Same Mistake
This trap is hardly unique to music.
Businesses naturally define themselves through what they currently sell.
Banks provide banking products.
Insurers provide insurance policies.
Universities provide degrees.
Manufacturers make products.
Consultancies sell expertise.
Software companies sell software.
But customers rarely wake up wanting your organisational category.
They want an outcome.
They want their money protected.
Their risk reduced.
Their capability increased.
Their problem solved.
Their task completed.
Their uncertainty removed.
Their life made easier.
Your product is simply the current mechanism connecting them to that outcome.
That word, current, matters enormously.
Success Makes the Trap Harder to See
The more successful a business has been, the more difficult this distinction can become.
Success creates infrastructure.
Stores.
Systems.
People.
Expertise.
Metrics.
Supplier relationships.
Capital allocation processes.
Leadership careers.
Eventually, the organisation develops an enormous institutional interest in the continuation of the mechanism through which it historically created value.
That mechanism then shapes how new problems are interpreted.
If you own thousands of square metres of retail space, declining sales naturally look like a retail performance problem.
If you manufacture physical products, changing customer behaviour may initially look like a product problem.
If you employ thousands of specialists around an established business model, disruption can look like an execution problem.
The existing business does not merely constrain your solutions.
It can constrain your definition of the problem.
This Is Karamawari at the Strategic Level
空回り, karamawari, describes effort that fails to produce meaningful forward movement.
We often associate that with recurring operational problems.
But organisations can experience strategic Karamawari too.
The warning sign is not inactivity.
It is enormous activity accompanied by declining relevance.
Another transformation.
Another efficiency programme.
Another customer initiative.
Another restructure.
Another technology implementation.
Another attempt to make the existing model perform better.
The individual interventions may succeed.
But the organisation continues losing ground because it is improving the mechanism while the customer is moving towards a different outcome pathway.
That is a brutal form of recurrence because every improvement can temporarily reassure leadership that the strategy is working.
Ask a Different Question
When a problem keeps returning despite competent attempts to solve it, CEOs should examine the question underneath the solutions.
Instead of:
How do we sell more of our product?
Ask:
What outcome is the customer actually trying to achieve?
Then go further.
Could they achieve it without us?
Could technology deliver it differently?
Could another industry deliver it?
Could they obtain it without owning what we currently sell?
Could the product itself eventually become unnecessary?
These questions are uncomfortable because they do not begin with preserving the existing business.
They begin with preserving relevance.
Don't Confuse What Customers Buy With What They Want
Tower Records is compelling precisely because record stores once felt inseparable from consuming recorded music.
Until they weren't.
That should concern any CEO whose organisation is responding to persistent decline by repeatedly improving the existing proposition.
Your customers may still be buying your product today.
That does not mean the product is what they fundamentally value.
And if you mistake the mechanism for the outcome, you can spend extraordinary amounts improving something whose strategic importance is quietly disappearing.
If your customers could achieve the outcome they really want tomorrow without buying your product at all, would your strategy recognise that as an opportunity, or would your organisation keep trying to build a better record store?
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