What Strategy Advice Would You Take?

🔊A question I get asked a lot 🔊

What strategy advice do you give companies when building a strategy?

And that is a loaded question with so many variables, however…

There are 5 real considerations I offer with strategic advice. These are foundational that can be transferable to any strategy!

1. Build a Framework

I’ve talked about this a lot. Before you start building your strategy, build your strategy framework! I’ve talked about this in previous videos. (backlink to a blogpost on Strategy Framework) It’s crucial that you cover all the areas ensuring you are taking a holistic approach. That generally involves 

• Customer / market elements 
• Teams / culture elements
• Operation / performance elements 

2. Get Specific

Yes, you need your MOONSHOT Vision, but that’s not good enough on its own. It needs to be broken down to

• Goals
• Program of works
• Projects
• Milestones / Targets
• Daily Activities 

This should be executed with military precision. 

3. Based On Data

Instincts are great, they truly are, I spend a lot of time nurturing and listening to mine.

But again, that’s only the starting point, data needs to back this up. Of course, you can decide to still take a risk if data doesn’t align with your instincts. But at least you are going in with your eyes wide open. Or maybe you need to focus more on finding the right data. This is an area where I truly push leaders with strategic advice. You can’t have tunnel vision, there has to be a correlation between data and the vision. This has to be seen by your team, so they too can believe in it!

4. Resourcing the strategy

I can’t emphasize this piece of strategy advice enough, this is where building the framework will make this element visible. You can build a great strategy, but remember your teams have a day job. And now there is another workload on top of them. Capacity will be required and needs to be built into the key stakeholders involved.

5. Build accountability

This follows on from the previous point. Accountability should be built-in into the design across the entire business. The strategy must be personal for this to happen. And that comes from getting them actively involved in it and making sure they win as well as the business.

One of my best pieces of strategy advice is to bring them on a journey. You can’t dictate your way to strategy success, the people must feel it and believe in it.

When building the plan, ensure everyone has a piece of it and a part to play

Don’t’ underestimate the multitude of layers required when building a strategy, however, when designed correctly, the foundations will be laid for great execution. 

💥 I hope this strategy advice helps, If you have any questions, please get in touch

In the meantime, have a great day