Creating and documenting a business strategy is crucial for the long-term success of any organisation. A common-sense strategy that is specific to your business provides direction, enables better goal setting, and helps navigate your way through a competitive market place. 

In this post I will give you a basic outline for a business strategy.  In most cases it doesn’t need to be anymore complicated, just remember to do your research where needed and also involve your team and other relevant stakeholders. The bigger the organisation, the more complex the strategies become, but done well, that is just detail behind an easy to understand structure.

Get clear about your Purpose and Vision

This is an important step because if you do it right, getting staff and stakeholders on-board will be easy.  Your Purpose is WHY your business or organisation exists.  What problem do you solve for the customer or community?  Expressed well, this is a huge motivator for your team - they will understand the value they are creating for others. Your Purpose also creates a strong touchpoint for other parts of your strategy and keeps you aligned. 

Vision is the long term view of where you are going.  It should be aspirational and measurable based on what you realistically want to achieve within your addressable market.  Similar to your Purpose statement, it should be outward looking rather than simply about internal measures e.g. make lots of money!

Get real about your Current Situation

Your strategy needs to be in the context of a realistic starting point.  Consider the market within which you operate, current business performance, competitors, trends, supplier strategies, existing customer base and current customer expectations.  This is where the research and analysis comes into play.  Many insights, and opportunities, can come from taking a long hard look at your current situation.

Create Goals that will focus your Core Strategy for the next 1-2 years

Your Core Strategy is the direction your organisation is going to take based around some achievable and actionable goals. Of course these will vary based on the business, the current situation that you have researched above, market opportunities and also what you and your team want to achieve.  

Some examples may include:

• Enter a new market / open a branch in a new location.

• Build a new product to [meet a known market need].

• Optimise supply chains.

• Transform customer experience with digital channels.

• Grow direct sales via website.

• Grow and diversify revenue streams.

• Grow top 10 customers by 20%.

• Increase monthly recurring revenue by 50%.

• Reduce back office costs as a percentage of revenue.

• Acquire one of our competitors.

Focus on about five of these statements that are meaningful to your business.  For each of them, you’ll need to think next about how you are going to get it done.

Planning how to ‘Get it Done’

You can imagine any future that you want, but without breaking it down into achievable projects and initiatives, you’re just daydreaming.

For your Core Strategy, brainstorm with your team the projects and initiatives that need to happen to achieve that strategy.  Some could require further strategic thinking from your team e.g. a Sales and Marketing Strategy, a Product Strategy, a Digital Strategy, or an Acquisition Strategy.  These will still be execution focused, but within the context of the core business strategy. No matter what, the high level thinking needs to drop down into projects and actions that are going to change the direction and performance of the business.

Think about these projects across an annual timeline broken down into quarterly delivery.  Consider what can be delivered incrementally each month or each quarter that supports achieving a core strategy?  By taking an incremental approach, you can always stop a project if it doesn’t deliver, or if the strategy no longer makes sense.  What seems like a good idea now, may not be the right thing to be doing in six months time.

Prioritise your projects, but be realistic in terms of delivery and what can be achieved with the resources that you have available.

Communicate

A strategy only comes alive when it is communicated within the organisation. As a leader you need to sell your vision and explain how collectively you will achieve it (the strategy). Change is about people, so you will only achieve your goals if the team is on-board.

Monitor, Measure and Adjust

Regularly monitor and measure your progress towards your goals.  At least every quarter, ideally every month.  Look at what is working and add more focus there, look for things that are not working and make the call to stop that initiative if necessary.

Working with a business coach or consultant can really help develop fresh and thorough strategy development. If you need some help, get in touch!