How To Complete Your Strategy in Two Days Rather than Two Months
Issues
Solution
These are all symptoms of a lack of strategy or understanding of the strategy. Our Strategy Process has two parts: 1. The Selection Process and 2. The Implementation Process.
1. The Selection Process
The Selection Process is about choosing which direction to take. There are often many options to choose from and selecting and agreeing which is best is vital to success.
The Strategy Selection process has been developed over many years and streamlined so that a group of people can achieve what would normally take the two weeks in two days.
- Do you spend far too long doing your Strategy? You should be able to involve all the key players in two days not two months like some do.
- Do your people work really hard on stuff that doesn’t matter much? With Strategy everyone agrees what’s important and puts their horsepower behind it.
- Do your people work hard on to maximize their own part of the organization but end up pulling against each other to the detriment of the whole organization? With Strategy, everyone sees how they fit into the whole and work to achieve it.
- Do your people misunderstand what makes the organization special and unique? If they do there’s no way customers can understand it. With Strategy, everyone agrees what makes the organization special so customers can’t help but understand also.
- Do your people not understand how their market and environment is changing? Since the past is a poor predictor of the future what used to work may not in the future. With Strategy, people understand how their market is changing and reallocate resources and effort to these opportunities.
Solution
These are all symptoms of a lack of strategy or understanding of the strategy. Our Strategy Process has two parts: 1. The Selection Process and 2. The Implementation Process.
1. The Selection Process
The Selection Process is about choosing which direction to take. There are often many options to choose from and selecting and agreeing which is best is vital to success.
The Strategy Selection process has been developed over many years and streamlined so that a group of people can achieve what would normally take the two weeks in two days.
Day 1: In the first day they analyse the external environment, develop their Vision, agree their Value Proposition, examine their main Profit Zones and end up agreeing on the 3 or 4 strategies to take them to their vision of the future.
Day 2: In the second day they further develop their Value Proposition by aligning the Culture, Brand, Service delivery options and Leadership style to the Value Proposition. They further develop their strategies by understanding them to a ‘bone-deep’ level (what, when, how, who etc); they then agree how to measure, monitor and report on the strategies. Finally, they agree on the options to implement the strategies, understanding the importance of getting this right because this is where most strategy processes fail.
Each strategy process is different and needs to be designed to achieve the requirements of the client and the amount of time available for the process; however, there are a series of steps that most follow including analyzing market conditions, analyzing the environment, creating a Vision, agreeing on the appropriate Value Proposition, aligning the organization to the Value Proposition, agreeing on the strategies and implementing the strategies. These steps are shown in the table below and most are described within this paper, except for implementation that is the subject of another paper.
2. The Implementation Process
The Issue
Do you find it difficult to get people throughout the organisation understood and implemented?
Research shows that 76% of strategies fail and it’s at the implementation stage.
In many ways selecting the Strategies is the easy part; it’s the implementation that is hard. This video will show you how to succeed:
Day 2: In the second day they further develop their Value Proposition by aligning the Culture, Brand, Service delivery options and Leadership style to the Value Proposition. They further develop their strategies by understanding them to a ‘bone-deep’ level (what, when, how, who etc); they then agree how to measure, monitor and report on the strategies. Finally, they agree on the options to implement the strategies, understanding the importance of getting this right because this is where most strategy processes fail.
Each strategy process is different and needs to be designed to achieve the requirements of the client and the amount of time available for the process; however, there are a series of steps that most follow including analyzing market conditions, analyzing the environment, creating a Vision, agreeing on the appropriate Value Proposition, aligning the organization to the Value Proposition, agreeing on the strategies and implementing the strategies. These steps are shown in the table below and most are described within this paper, except for implementation that is the subject of another paper.
2. The Implementation Process
The Issue
Do you find it difficult to get people throughout the organisation understood and implemented?
Research shows that 76% of strategies fail and it’s at the implementation stage.
In many ways selecting the Strategies is the easy part; it’s the implementation that is hard. This video will show you how to succeed:
Bruce Holland is our expert in this Strategy Process and has worked with many large private and public sector organizations to achieve the benefits listed above.
Client Comments
Client Comments