Is your Strategy the right Strategy?
Brenda Etchells
Business Mentor & Trusted Sounding Board giving Business Owners the space to talk, explore ideas & overcome any challenges in their business. Uncover the Clarity, Focus & Confidence you need to grow your business.
As a Strategic Planning professional I have been reading, with interest, this book based on BCGs ‘The Strategy Palette’ which challenges the classical approach to strategic planning – Analyse, Plan, Execute. (yes, it was a sunny day!!)
Having spent many years rigorously implementing and following a classical approach in a large organisation, it opened my eyes to the view that the approach to strategy needs to adapt as the industry and environment shifts. In essence, as the title infers, your strategy needs a strategy!
The authors advise there are three questions you need to ask to ensure the right approach to winning in your industry.
1. How predictable is your environment?
2. How malleable is your environment (can you shape it?)
3. How harsh if your environment? (can you survive it?)
Depending on the answers determines the optimal strategic approach:
Now, I am not going to go into detail here as you can read into this model further if it interests you.
Link to culture
As someone who was heavily involved in target culture work in my last role, I am interested in exploring the alignment between the ‘right’ strategy and the ‘right’ culture to support it. Again this is covered fully in the book but here is my summary:
Coming from a financial services background, an industry that was becoming increasingly unpredictable, and open to disruption from challengers and fintechs, there was a move away from classical to a more adaptive approach – with agile methodology, innovation and ‘fail fast’ becoming the new modus operandi. However, whilst the target culture was pointing in the right direction, most employees were still entrenched in the ‘old’ culture of bureaucracy, governance, accountability and a ‘blame culture’. Not surprising after years of risk aversion and high regulatory controls! So, whilst alignment is key to success, there does need to be an appreciation that cultural shifts do not happen overnight.
How can I help?
If you work for a large organisation and would like to explore further your approach to strategic planning, I can undertake an audit of your current approach and/or provide consultancy. I also run a wide range of workshops which incorporate the Strategy Palette, as well as many other strategy tools. See my website for full details of my services and workshops available.
If, like me, you are a SME, don’t be afraid of strategy or planning. Together we can simplify the model to suit your business and help you to win in your chosen field. I am going to leave you with a lovely little video showing how the model works for a lemonade stand:
This demonstrates how very simple choices can make a huge difference to business.
Please get in touch for an initial chat on how I can support you with developing a strategy and growing your business.
Brenda
07702 617908
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5 年I should write a 2nd edition called "your strategy needs an Continuous Improvement Strategy" would you buy it Brenda Etchells