The Secrets Of Strategy

A step-by-step guide to creating a growth strategy based on your current situation and future capabilities.
I bet you think you’ve got a strategy.

You can, but strategy as a concept is like love: much used and understood little. Many businesses (and this includes small entrepreneurs, large corporations, nonprofits, community organizations, governments, NGOs…operations) don’t really know what strategy is. or how to get a strategy.
And even if you have a strategy – is it the right one?

The best? It’s very important – says marketing expert Jay Abraham – and I agree – that a poorly executed superior strategy beats a well executed poor strategy, at any time.

It’s easy to say, “This is big business. We know what we need – why do we have to do all this extra work.” While a set of “no-strategic” marketing tactics can work well and produce good results, is it moving your business in the best direction? You may be making money, but are you making the most money possible? Can a different set of tactics implementing a superior strategy produce much better results?

Which brings me to the point of this two-part article: how to formulate a strategy. In the next 1500 words, I’ll outline the first half of the basic system for defining high-impact strategies in your business. (Just the first half? Yes. Although I try to make this as simple as possible, it still needs a bit of explanation, and editors and readers hate long articles!) So part 2 will complete the outline, and in In future posts, I will discuss each component of the system in more detail. detail.

Let’s start with a useful definition of strategy.

Strategy is the fundamental guiding principle for a series of interrelated decisions regarding the selection and deployment of resources and tactics, the aim of which is to realize the vision and achieve the objectives. decisions in a competitive and changing environment.

This definition tells us a few things:

1.The goal of all strategic decisions is to achieve your “decisive” or important vision and goals.

2.Strategy is the selection of specific resources and tactics to achieve desired results.

3.Non-static policy; they are sequential decisions and continue to evolve over time.

4.Comprehensive and comprehensive strategy. With that in mind, here are eight steps to formulating a strategy:

5. Define your vision

6. Gather environmental and competitive information

7. Examine your organization’s strengths and weaknesses

8. Choose a “big strategy”

9. Set decisive goals

10.Rate and rate your “SWOT”

11. Incorporate factors your internal and external to identify strategic alternatives

12.Choose specific strategies to execute

Of course, there’s one last step: turn your strategy into a strategy and game plan, and then execute. We will not discuss this in this article.

Step 1. Establish your vision.
People complicate the idea of ​​vision. A vision is simply a story that describes how you want things to be in the future. Some people can easily tell these stories – they know exactly where they want to go and what it will “look like”.

Others need help. The best approach is to answer a series of questions about what your organization does, what its customers or beneficiaries are, what its impact is, how big it is, where it is, it how it works, when all these things happen will generate, and so on. above. By answering these questions, your vision will emerge.

Of course, you may have had a vision. If so, now is the time to make sure it’s relevant and powerful.

The test of good eyesight is if it inspires; not only you and your management team, but all your stakeholders: partners, employees, customers, investors, suppliers, lenders, your community, your government and perhaps the general public. A great vision inspires and it also provides direction. Every action you take should raise your visibility. If not, don’t.

Step 2. Collect environmental and competitive intelligence.

To develop the best strategies, you must understand the world outside your organization. Quantify and qualitatively not only absolute levels, but also trends. Most important is identifying changes in the status quo. Key areas of concern include competitors, technology, market size and trends, the health of your customer industry, macroeconomic trends, availability of key resources (humans). people and materials), government regulations and other political considerations, as well as demographic and psychological shifts – such as customer tastes.

Design appropriate measures for each of these important external areas. For example, check your competitors for revenue, profit and market share growth (or decline), changes in products and services, changes in sales and marketing strategies, changes in Geographic analysis, strategic alliances and major customer announcements.

Macroeconomic factors include obvious ones like interest rates and trends and employment, production and consumption statistics, as well as better industry issues like home purchases new – impacting many types of business or defense spending – has an entirely different impact. set of fields.

Step 3. Examine your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.

Now it’s time to unravel your organization. Test each functional area for strengths and weaknesses. Identify the strengths that will help the company achieve its vision and the weaknesses that will hinder its goals.

Here’s a starter list of priority areas:

1.Potential New Leads (Marketing)

2.New Customers Potential (Sales)

3.Products and Services, both products and services available and those included in RandD

4.Finance or money, including cash flow, access to capital, revenue, profit, return on investment

5.Leadership, including alignment of values ​​and vision, decisive goals

6.People, including skills inventory, employee levels, employee retention, compensation
Other areas to consider:

7.Customer satisfaction

8.Customer service

9.Logistics

10.Competitive positioning

11.Unique customer recommendations

12.Management team

Administration Step Strategy selection Your main.

This “grand strategy” approach is based on industry/product revenue growth. It is specific to a major industry and/or product-focused business unit. If your business is more complex, you can repeat