Business Strategy

This is huge.

And yet so often too little focus and effort is given to creating the right strategy. Sometimes there isn’t one at all - shock! How can you be on your journey without knowing the end destination?

Strategic planning is about the long term plan, usually 3-5 years. Whereas your business plans are shorter term; normally 1 year. The business plans are formed out of the Strategic plan and will cover a phase of the key strategic objectives you have set yourself.

Setting your business strategic objectives is one of the most critical set of decisions you will make. And there will be many choices. The single biggest issue in Strategic planning is knowing how to select the right options when there are clearly unknowns and uncertainties about the future; whether that be market trends, political trends, competitor activity, geographical considerations, etc. The question will be ‘what is the risk in taking strategic route?’.

Treat your preparation of the strategy as a journey on a path with several key steps along the way to the end goal of a robust strategy with measured risk.


 


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The good news is that are tools and templates which can help you form your strategic plan.

Key aspects in preparation of your plan are:

  • Starting with the market position

  • Linking your plan to your Culture to you Purpose, Mission and Values which must already be in place

  • Getting sufficient intelligence around your market and perhaps your competitors

  • Having the right team on board to create the plan

  • Allowing sufficient time

Understanding how your longer-term strategy will then lead to yearly business plans is vital in ensuring you create the right implementation steps and successful plan execution

 

Making bold predictions about growth targets is not strategy. Strategy must come with the clarity of the how as well as the what.

Tweaking product ranges and services is also not strategy. There are simply enhancements to the current business.

Strategy has to make bold steps to achieve growth or a step change needed in the business to achieve the Vision.

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