Strategy

Strategy is one of those words that is often used to confuse rather than enlighten. At its core, strategy is concerned with what you are going to do with the resources available to you in order to better your position. No one deliberately sets out to develop a bad strategy but there is an enormous skill involved in developing a good one. At all levels of business, developing a good strategy and executing it well are the keys to success.

Here is our process for going about it.

Work out the boundaries you are working within.
These will include the boundaries of your personal values (what would you consider to be unethical), your target customers (what is important to them, how far can they be persuaded to change current behaviour), your competitors (what lengths will they go to to defend their position) and your resources (which are only finite at a given point in time).

Work out exactly where you are delivering value to your customers.
This is often trickier than you think as value is something that customers define for themselves. You need to know your customers well to get meaningful insight here.

Make your best estimate of possible or likely changes that may affect any of the above over the next few years.

Generate scenarios and options for what you could do. Recognise that 90% of the things that affect your business are outside your control but you will be able to influence some of them (e.g. what customers think of you) and prepare for others (e.g. changes in interest rates). Develop three and preferably five scenarios. Re-examine each scenario to see if there are any “pattern breaking” or innovative actions that you could use to significantly change outcomes or customer reactions.

Estimate the likely financial benefit for each scenario along with associated costs and barriers to implementation. Attach risk estimates to each.

Plot your possibilities against risk/ reward and choose your best strategy.

Develop an implementation plan for putting that strategy into action.

We can help you to execution the above process in full, facilitate just one section or source the inputs you need for the decision making process. Whether you feel the need for a complete overhaul or simply an intervention to overcome an issue that is sticking you, contact us now.