The process of building and implementing strategy can be summarised in these 6 broad categories:
Click below to find out more about what's involved in building and implementing your business strategy, and then click ‘Next’ to start the survey.
Set the vision
- Perform a health check. It's important to start the process by understanding where you are today. This forms a foundation for all the work that follows.
- Define the owner's why. This is uncovered by understanding the story of the owner or owners and how the business came to be.
- Align owner & vision. It's about what the owners want from the business and, if there is more than one owner, agreeing on a vision that you are aligned with.
- Agree on purpose. It's important for all stakeholders, both internal and external to your business to connect to, and be drawn to your business. For example, staff, customers, investors, etc.
- Craft a compelling vision. In this step, you will craft a vision statement for the business using the owners' vision as a starting point. Articulating where the business needs to go is important to set a course to achieve it (your strategy). Your vision becomes the north star for your business.
- Set the values. A set of principles that drive behaviour for everyone in the business. These are crafted by the leadership team and then ratified by every staff member.
Build the strategy
- Identify strategic themes. You start by identifying the common themes that you see as you review your vision. There will be things that come up again and again. These are known as 'strategic themes'. As you do this, you will consider the whole of business. This is known as ‘systems thinking'.
- Gather inputs for strategy. Gather the inputs your leadership team will need to enable setting great objectives in line with your vision.
- Determine bullseye. Set your organisation's bullseye - what you will do and what you won't do.
- Develop strategic anchors. These are found in the core strengths of your business that allow you to win and service customers better than your competition. They also help you overcome critical challenges. They will be referenced in strategic decision making about your business.
- Set strategic goals. You need to know what success looks like. These goals will be set with a short, medium and long-term horizon. They provide focus on the actions that need to take place to achieve the vision.
Establish business cadence
It's important to set a rhythm of when you will work on strategy, so it becomes a discipline. In this step, you will work through setting up this rhythm using the platform. This will also help with accountability.
Create objectives
Having goals is not enough. You need to take action to do the work and establish measures to know the degree to which you have succeeded. In this step, we will introduce you to the 'Objectives and Key Results' (OKR) framework to help you do this.
Run the strategy
This is where you put your strategic plan into action. Through a series of regular meetings to review, adjust, monitor the progress towards your ultimate goal.
Review and reset
Where you come back, after a year, to review what you accomplished. A time to revisit your inputs, objectives, goals and then set some objectives for the upcoming year.
Understand Journey Pathway: Schedule Workshop