Business Strategic transformation

In a world that is rapidly evolving, with ever-changing economy, many variables and promising markets, all businesses and firms are trying to develop at the same speed, but no matter how fast they adapt, they cannot keep up with the changes of the markets and cannot exploit all the opportunities arise every day in this raging sea of customers' evolving desires and capabilities, and the emerging technology that has become able to lead the consumer audience more than the necessity itself.

Due to this, from time-to-time businesses has to take a strategic jump, to arise to the challenges and exploit those opportunities, in business language, do a “Strategic Transformation”.

This transformation is one of each company strategic plan in the current time, the unprecedented change to the global markets created unexpected pressure on businesses and firms, in addition to the unstable geopolitical environment creating threats from every direction.

Geopolitical elements constitute an important component of the external environment affecting international business operations. Together with other environmental variables, they are likely to influence a firm’s decisions on its future or existing international business activities. (Sharif As-saber et. all, 2001).

In this article, I want to focus on the first steps on a strategic transformation process, the area where we all usually miss the vision and start with the wrong foot, the preparation of the strategic transformation plan.

To be able to successfully prepare a business plan for a strategic transformation, you need to know where you are and where you want to go, this is the start point. Any confusion, miscalculation, or missing information at this stage will lead to a plan moving from the professionalism to the range of luck and probabilities.

Once you define where you are and where you want to go, you step into analysis. Completely avoid the pre-judgments, and enter the stage of collecting information and analysis without bias, but make sure to use appropriate analysis methods and tools for the situation.

Two of the tools I have addiction to in the analysis stage are SWOT and TOWS, the first one give you the full picture , and the second helps you to use your strength to compensate for your weakness, easy say, right?

Well, execution is not as easy as saying; some people will run to a meeting room, join all stakeholders, put a cross on the white board and start listing SWOT: Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats points and maybe find all solutions in the same session! anyway, that’s not how it’s done.

To identify your S, W, O &T, first collect the necessary information, you must only consider reliable source of information and confirmed documents, also it may be necessary to use some investigation and survey tools to complete the missing aspects of the information.

Having your trusted information in hands, start engaging your SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) and your internal and external stakeholders in different sessions, this will filter, verify and validate your data and information .

?

?

The next step is to do a stakeholder’s analysis, pick the most effective and influencing, organize your information and analysis results in one consistent, easy to read report that you send in advance, and conduct an executive workshop, where you will define your SWOT elements.

Issue your SWOT analysis report, remember, SWOT is an analysis, it should only give insights on the strength and weakness of the firm or business, not solutions or recommendations.

Now you know where you are, you know your strength and your weakness, you know your business future opportunities and future risks, what’s next?

You need to know where you are going, and that's the easy part, here you can put all your and your business dreams , shoot to the stars , aim as high as you want, but then you come back to reality and take all the OKR's ,targets & goals ? You take all of that and subject it to factual scientific analysis.

You need to go to another analysis tool, that could benefit from SWOT outputs as inputs. The TOWS analysis.

A TOWS analysis is a strategic planning tool that takes into account the threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths that the business faces. When a business wants to fully capitalize on opportunities in the external environment, for instance, to grow market share and earnings for staff and stockholders, it uses this type of analysis.

It allows you to get use of the full picture came as output from the SWOT analysis, gives you the ability to overcome certain weakness with the available strength points, gives you also what strength factors you need to overcome certain weakness factors that holds you back. It simply draws you a mind map with road marks on the obstacles, drivers, and triggers.

It is certainly valuable in a transformation journey to have the vision of when you will face obstacles and what are the appropriate ammunition available to you to overcome these obstacles, your journey will be much easier when you can anticipate the time and magnitude of opportunities and their impact on your business growth, especially when you know how to seize, and benefit from them the most.

With TOWS analysis results available, you knew where you are , and now you know where are you going, its easy for an experience project manager to engineer this strategic transformation .