Every business leader would like to create a sound strategy and have it executed well. Accomplishing this, however, remains an elusive goal for most business organizations.Devising and implementing new and innovative strategies to exploit opportunities in a competitive world is daunting. Clearly, no one strategy fits all companies.
As with most complex problems., the solution to planning and executing strategy lies in creating a practical, step-by-step methodology that breaks the problem into manageable components to be addressed in a logical sequence. The 24 steps in this blog describe such a systemic process.
Ok, what exactly is STRATEGY?
Virtually everyone in our society is touched by the strategic choices firms make about their products and services. These decisions affect the workers, customers, competitors, investors, and communities of today's businesses.
The word strategy comes from the Greek word strategos, which means @a general@, and is derived from roots meaning "army" and "lead". Hence, a general is the leader of an army. In both the military and business, competition typically drives organizations to find ways to best their rivals through the effective use if their resources.
Strategy is often contrasted with tactics, another term with military origins, While strategy represents the big picture about "doing the right things", tactics are more about the details of "doing things right". Strategy sets the direction in which the organization will proceed while tactics determine how it will proceed.
The major strategic challengers for firms encompass how to please customers, win orders, and simultaneously achieve financial objectives on an ongoing basis.
For example, a firm could have a strategy to build market share by selling the lowest-priced product in its market. After implementation of the strategy, the competitors will react, and the firm's strategy will need a adapt to meet the new challenges. There is no stopping point and no final battle. The competitive cycle continues on perpetually.
An organization's strategy should evolve over time as a blend of the intended strategy and the firm's responses to events, learning from experiences, and emergence of new information and ideas. It is an iterative crafting process of making and implementing decisions, observing, analyzing, and learning from the results, and then making decisions anew.
To create, plan and implement strategies, one should first learn to think in a way that combines the rational and the intuitive in analyzing both hard and soft data to arrive at a uniques interpretation of opportunities.
The 24 steps contained in this blog hopefully will guide you through the process of formulating and implementing strategy. Regardless of their content and brilliance, though, strategies will not be successful unless they are implemented effectively and updated regularly.
"Strategy is a process, not an event"
Stay tuned for more.
