Strategy is one of those words that can easily get pulled into the pile of crap that most buzzwords exist in…its too bad that more of our so called “thought leaders” have such a poor grasp on strategy because it is an essential component of your business and the life it lives.
Your strategy basically tells you who you are, what you do, and how you do it.
If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.
Here are a few ideas to help you move strategy to the place of importance it needs in your organization.
1. Strategy can be set with 3 simple questions:
- What is the value we create or want to create for our market and buyers?
- Who can use this value and is willing to buy it?
- How do we reach them?
2. What is our mission?
All great strategies have a strong mission at their center.
Your mission should be simple and focused.
Your mission should focus on how you will change world, but not how you will do it.
3. Who is our customer?
All businesses have customers or they don’t exist.
To make the most of your strategy, you have to absolutely know your customer and know what is important to them.
4. Customer value:
What does your customer value?
How do you know?
Is it changing rapidly?
Is it consistent?
You need to know your customer well. And, you need to maintain that knowledge.
5. Planning:
For too many organizations, planning is an event.
Planning is and should be a natural part of your everyday existence.
Your teams should constantly be looking at their strategies and the results that they are getting to make sure that things are moving in a manner that is consistent with what you are hoping to achieve.
6. Make your strategy proactive:
Your strategy should be an proactive and focused on growing into new opportunities.
Too many strategies are reactive and focused on the opportunities that are coming, not the opportunities that have already passed.
7. Are you focused on the ideal markets:
Are you looking at your ideal markets or are you focused on any market?
To make your strategy super successful, you need to look for and attack your ideal markets.
Just because someone will do business with you, that doesn’t mean that you should do business with them.
You need to act accordingly.
8. Focus on results, not activity:
Make sure your strategy is directed toward results.
In too many places we see our strategies focused on activities like phone calls, likes, engagements, and other terms du jour.
Don’t get trapped on statistics and things that don’t mean much to your success.
Look at results.
9. Leadership counts:
Your strategy is only as successful as the leadership of the executives in your organization.
Your teams have to be bought in, from top to bottom.
10. Let your strategy live in the real world:
Your strategy should be alive and should live in the real world.
Don’t allow your organization to become like Kodak and lose everything while your head is stuck in the sand.
You live in the world, your strategy should be adaptive to the world around it.