Putting together a session of “The Whiteboard Workshop” for a non-profit recently, I tried to distill my notes down so that I could help an organization that had been struggling with strategy setting for years so that they could gather around a clear set of strategic decisions.
My notes for the session highlighted my belief that strategy is about customers, progress, and flexibility. Strategy isn’t planning, perfection, and isolated from the rest of the business.
This led me to put together the following outline of 6 ideas:
- Know Your Destination: What is your ambition? What do you want your business or organization to become?
- Define What Success Looks Like: How will you know you’ve achieved your ambition?
- Who is your target customer?: Segment? Customer? Industry? Where are you in the market?
- Why Us?: What value are you creating that is better or different so that people are picking you over everyone else?
- What Resources Do You Need?: People? Frameworks? Tools? What do you need to implement your plans?
- What Actions Will We Take?: At the end of “The Whiteboard Workshop” we always leave with 3 action items that are going to be taken in the next 30 days. Focus on what you are going to do ASAP.
- My ambition in doing these workshops with organizations is to make strategy simpler for organizations and something that people revisit over and over again.
- This begins with this outline of ideas.
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