How To Build A Powerful Business Strategy
Over the last few posts, I introduced my Ebook 12 Steps to Business Transformation and I defined Vision, Mission and Values, which are the first 3 steps of the 12 transformational steps. This week we are going to talk about Business Strategy.
Defining the Business Strategy for your business is step 4 in my new Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”
Business Strategy considers all the internal and external market forces, your business strengths and weaknesses, your vision, mission and values, the service and/or product your business sells and the marketplace that you are selling into. The Business Strategy pulls all these divergent thoughts, ideas, conditions, and concepts together and defines a high level plan to engage successfully in the marketplace.
Without a clearly defined business strategy, your business is destined for decline and failure. This does not mean you need a 10,000-page business strategy document that takes years to write and now just collects dust on a shelf in your office.
What is needed is a simple, concise, focused and nimble plan that you constantly refer to, communicate from and measure progress against.
12 Steps to Business Transformation
12 Steps to Business Transformation is founded on a simple business model and describes the 12 steps required to implement and execute on the model. The whole model is summarized in the Thinking Business Blueprint shown below. And, as mentioned above, the fourth step in the Blueprint is to build a Business Strategy.
I have defined Business Strategy and how it is developed in the following articles:
Go ahead and spend some time and review these articles so that you clearly understand all aspects of Business Strategy.
Is a Business Strategy Necessary?
The short answer is “yes”.
A Business Strategy is necessary if you want to profitably grow your business and if you want to be prepared for the ever changing marketplace conditions.
The long answer . . .
Every organization in existence has some sort of a strategy. Without it, you wouldn’t be “organized” enough to have an organization! Some semblance of a strategy is required to establish anything.
Now some strategies are well defined and some are undefined. Some are clearly documented and some are not. Some strategies only exist in the founder’s head while others are communicated clearly to the organization.
However, your organization’s long term success is directly proportional to a properly defined, communicated and implemented Business Strategy.
So, what does this “mystical” Business Strategy look like?
A powerful Business Strategy is:
- Written down.
- Simple yet powerful. It is not complicated or verbose.
- Concise and clearly describes the actions that that the business needs to take.
- Flexible and evergreen. As the marketplace changes the strategy must be adjusted. As the “great business philosopher” Mike Tyson said “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Be ready and flexible to change your plan when the marketplace changes.
- Focused on just a few areas that the business can dominate rather than trying to take on the world.
- Measurable. It has clear business metrics that can be easily measured and monitored.
- Date stamped. It has a defined expiry date after which it must be reevaluated and rebuilt.
- Continuously communicated to the whole organization so everyone knows and understands the direction the business is headed.
- Owned. It has an owner that is responsible to put the Business Strategy into action. A strategy is no good if it just sits on a shelf.
Set aside some time this week to build a simple, concise, focused and nimble Business Strategy that you constantly refer to, communicate from and measure progress against.
“ However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Winston Churchill
Leave a comment below on your business strategy.
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