How can you continuously improve your strategy formulation process?

Strategy formulation is not a complicated planning process, but it should include the five high-level steps below to ensure success: Understanding your strategy level Conduct internal & external research Build the plan backward Review progress regularly Take the first step: Implement

Assess if the current state of business is aligned with its purpose. Is it aligned with the organization's core values, mission, and vision? This assessment can involve identifying the KPIs, biases, performance data, and processes of resource allocation, prioritization, organizational alignment and validation of current state against business goals.

After working on over 50 strategy execution and transformation projects with clients with a 96% success rate, I am confident that the best way to define your desired state is through staff involvement. This ensures people are more receptive and primed for execution. Far too many strategies fail due to lack of understanding or acceptance by staff. I've written extensively on this open style of strategy process in my weekly newsletter.

Revisit your strategy map, and strategic plan for execution of strategy. Gap analysis performed from the current state can help define the near-term desired state and the long-term state. Review the strategy map to identify which performance indicators need to be improved and what inputs are responsible for driving the changes. Also, identify and review any new challenges or opportunities that need to be taken into account and addressed in the revised strategy map. These will provide action plan for communicating to the broader organization.

Traditional strategy formulation approaches happen in the “dark room”, behind closed doors. After being refined to perfection, it is announced to the organization. I recommend you avoid the dark room approach because it can miss important information. Also dark room approaches triggers an adverse psychological and neurological reaction in the rest of the staff. A better approach is where you involve those impacted or responsible for delivery from the very beginning. This means that the implementation is already starting as you formulate strategy and plans. It is a combination of strategy formulatioln and strategy execution. See futurebuildersgroup website for more.