One of the most powerful tools that leaders possess that enables performance and underpins the future success of their business is their approach to developing their business’s strategy. Few realise the potential of strategy to engage and motivate their entire organisation simply by adopting a more open and adaptable approach to crafting that strategy.

 

Active Knowledge Question:

Does everyone in your business get excited when they hear strategy is being reviewed and renewed?

 

To Compete

Strategy is how you intend to compete, but to compete effectively requires unity, with clear direction, alignment and focus, across your entire organisation.

If used correctly, strategy setting can be a process that unites and inspires an entire business behind a single vision and goal. The power of focus and alignment of all resources in a single direction can catapult a business into territories it never thought it could reach.

However, in many businesses, strategic planning is a lost art which has become regimented in tradition – same thing, same time each year.

As we all know, a well-crafted and articulated strategy is only words until successfully implemented. And you may well find that the thoughts expressed in your plan, or envisaged in your mind, need to evolve when it ‘hits the road’ and is being delivered in the competitive marketplace. This requires an organisation committed to delivering the strategy’s vision and is adaptable to ensure its success.

But many businesses develop their strategy and structure in a manner that will only hinder delivery and performance.

To leverage your strategy setting to its impact, consider following the following three stages:

• Crafting the strategy;
• Aligning (at times redesigning) the organisation’s structure to enable the strategy to be fully effective, and
• Supporting the team to deliver it.

Crafting

Your Lens

Whilst there exist very clear elements that must be considered in crafting strategy, each time the team comes together to review and recast strategy, it is vital that this is done with a freshness.

The risk of ‘same thing, same time’ each year is that assumptions and understanding are carried forward from cycle to cycle. More often than not, I have found that as teams sit down to develop strategy, they are impatient to get on with it and decide what will be done. Many participants have already locked in their view of what needs to happen before attending the strategy session. As a result, time is not taken to re-examine the most fundamental assumptions to determine what may have changed nor to ensure everyone is on the same page. And if they are not on the same page, using the opportunity to listen to everyone’s thoughts.

Working through the key elements that inform strategy is vital to ensure everyone uses the same lens to view the business, its customers, market, and its capabilities. The strategy typically falls out naturally when key elements are used as the lens.

The key elements are: 

• History: A consideration of the history of the business and identification of any significant events that may impact its future ability to compete. 
• Strategic Analysis:
  • Marketplace: The boundaries of the market in which the business competes, the characteristics of that market and factors that may impact it in the future. 
  • Competitive Landscape: Identification of competitors within relevant markets, the customer segments they target and market share, and the basis upon which they compete. 
  • Positioning: The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) facing the business, an identification of the resources and capabilities, and what the business is best at, leading to a consideration of how to compete. 

• The Organisation: Identification of the values and purpose that exist within the business and the role they play. An outlining of the organisational structure of the business that enables it to operate efficiently. 
• The Future: A succinct description of how the business will compete effectively in the future, tested against various scenarios and establishing simple guiding principles. 
• Financial Validation: A consideration of the financial returns expected to be gained under the competitive strategy and the adequacy of these returns. 
• Risk Mitigation: Identification of the risks associated with the strategy and steps that may be taken to mitigate these risks. 
• Implementation: A consideration of the impact of the competitive strategy on the departments and processes within the business, and the establishment of an action program to achieve the necessary changes. 

Adopt the right approach to strategy setting and a robust strategy with commitment will be the result.

Participation

If you want, and you should want, a complete understanding, support and commitment to your strategy across your business, then participation at all levels of your business is vital.

Crafting a strategy remotely from a business (the people who will ask to deliver it) and passing it down as a finished product will likely only yield disinterest and resistance rather than commitment and participation.

 

Using the key elements as a framework to craft strategy provides ample opportunity for engagement throughout a business, thereby winning buy-in.

Unity is built by starting at the foundations and working your way forward in crafting the final strategy. The steps in this journey are typically a shared:

• Awareness: purpose and motive
• Understanding: the dynamics of the market
• Acceptance: of capability 
• Unity: around options and choice
• Actionable: a winning competitive posture.

To arrive at a compelling strategy that everyone believes in enabling them to fully contribute and participate.

Structure

Design

Your strategy should deliver a ‘competitive posture’ being the way the business intends to compete in its chosen marketplace to win. And you win by delivering greater value to your customers than any competitor can match.

Strategy is never just an action list or a list of growth/profit opportunities. It is what value you will be able to deliver to your customers in fulfilling their needs.

Once your posture is taking form and then settled, you must also design and align your organisation to support the delivery of that posture and value. Structure does not follow strategy rather, structure informs and can limit strategy.

An organisation chart never reflects how your business works; it is only a chart of responsibility and delegated authority.

What happens where and how each part contributes to the whole reflects the working design of your business. Sketch a design of your business and ‘overlay’ it with your competitive posture and see if your business is operating in a manner that will deliver on your posture and the intended customer value.

Often organisations function according to an organisational chart that does not in any way align with how a business is trying to compete nor recognise the competitive value that each area is required to deliver.

Competitive Engine

The other aspect of design is how your organisation functions to enable the potential competitiveness within a business to be lifted to the surface and applied. Strategy must always invest in strengthening an organisation’s competitive engine as it is this engine that will determine the floor and ceiling to a business’s competitiveness and performance.

The steps in creating a competitive business are: 

• Start with a worthy leader who has an idea. An idea focused upon a need in the community (your potential customers) that you believe is unfilled. 
• Make that idea into a purpose to create a business. A purpose that will provide an enduring direction for the business, but which will also define its character and nature. 
• Acknowledge and accept the role of business in our society. One, which is not firstly premised around profit and wealth, but one sustained by an identified need that can be met. This is where motive emerges and either supports purpose or clashes with it. 
• Reach out and connect with a team of people who may want to join you in delivering on your purpose and in meeting the community (customer) need you have identified. 
• Craft a vision with that connected team and share it widely. Ensure that it is a vision that excites and energises. It is your quest. 
• Build a shared culture with that connected team that you as a leader support. One that will deliver on the character and nature of the business required to bring value to the identified community (customer) group. 
• Strengthen this core (leadership, team, purpose, vision, and culture), as it will form the enduring basis of competitiveness in your business. Trust and engagement are the key. 
• Confirm your customer focus and deepen your understanding of the community’s needs. 
• Assess your capability to deliver value to that community at a level that will allow you to outcompete others in your chosen marketplace. 
• Craft a competitive strategy (direction, alignment, and focus) that will lift your capabilities to the forefront and allow you to deliver the necessary value through a winning competitive posture.
• Energise and reward your connected team to deliver on the purpose and value. 
• Remove barriers to performance and growth. 

Delivery

DNA

Strategy is nothing if not delivered, and often delivery is simply assumed or considered someone else’s problem. Core to your strategy must be a culture and capability to deliver. And that will only come through process, training and investment.

A strategic goal must be the ability of your organisation to deliver, that is, to quickly and efficiently identify-define-scope-complete projects both large and small in all areas of the business.

Your ability to ‘get things done’ should be considered a core IP and fundamental to your enduring success.

A prime goal of strategy is always to build an organisational capability that is adaptable, evolving, self-learning, self-directing and always competing at its edge and beyond. 

Adaptability

The other aspect of delivery is the permission and ability to adapt. It is unlikely that a strategy as envisaged in the Boardroom will be exactly as it ends up being delivered.

And often, as a deliberate strategy is being tried in a marketplace, it will either need to evolve or other opportunities will emerge that provide a better outcome.

You need your team to be ‘awake’ to the need to evolve a strategy and to emerging opportunities. And you want them to know they have ‘permission’ to explore and vary as necessary to deliver on the intent of a strategy. Also, to stop if they believe the strategy will fail. There is nothing worse than a team that simply ‘do as instructed’ without thought.

 

Creating strategy should not be seen as a ‘task’ to be undertaken but rather an opportunity to renew and revitalise the commitment and participation across an entire organisation. Building awareness, understanding, acceptance and unity to create a clear direction, alignment and focus for everyone.