What are major elements of Strategy?

If you ask many business leaders today about their strategy, they would say the following:

• My strategy is to be number one company in my industry
• My strategy is to increase the market share or revenue by x percentage
• My strategy is to enter this market
• My strategy is to have unique products
• My strategy is to be the lowest cost provider in the market
• My strategy is to have X% profit
• My strategy is to be a global company

Unfortunately none of the above statements is a strategy. They are only goals which the business wants to achieve.

Successful growth strategy must be built around five integrated pillars:

(1)  Fields: where is the business active today and where will it be active in the future? This includes the products or services which are offered by the business as well as the target market, industry and customers.

(2) Uniqueness: what differentiate the business and why would customer is attracted to your solution? Successful strategy leaders ask themselves how we can create a product or solution that beat our competitions big time. What features or added value that makes us differentiated and force the customers to pay highest price in the market? Ask yourself a question, why would customers pay premium price to buy an iPhone while same customer won’t be 10% of the same price to other phone?

(3) Tactics: what actions will the business take in order to lead and rule the marketplace? Some of growth tactics could be JV, acquisitions, licensing, etc. 

(4) Stages: How fast will business leaders take decisions and in what sequence?

(5) Commercial Sounds: what are the costs versus financial return? This would be a game of lowering different costs and increasing the selling price in order to achieve the highest profit.

Most strategy underlines one or two of the components without giving any attention to the others. Unfortunately, many business strategies fail because they focus on one or two aspects of the above five strategy pillars.

Jasim Aal Muhammad | Consultant - Growth Strategy | www.BrightStarOM.com | [email protected]