|
Return To Business Alignment
|
|
Strategy is more of a mindset than a document. The
ultimate form and structure
of a strategy needs to complement your organization, its culture and the
abilities of your people. But regardless of form, the substance of a
strategy need to, at a minimum, define the following:
- The overall direction of the company ---its
aspirations, goals and value proposition
- Its business model to create sustainable
competitive advantage
- The values, culture, and governance model
- The people and operational capabilities required for success
Strategy needs to be a dynamic, almost continuous,
process - the speed of change in the competitive landscape in which we
operate demands nothing less. Our facilitated approach to either
reaffirming an existing strategy or creating a new one is designed to
achieve these objectives, and more, by working through a defined series of
interactive sessions designed to help your leadership team not only
reaffirm or build a strategy, but develop critical learning capabilities in
to your organization so that they can make the strategy process an ongoing
and dynamic part of your business operations.
Examples of the interactive sessions and the base
objectives of each of these sessions follows. The specific sessions
that might be applied to your organization would depend on your specific
needs.
Establishing a Common Language
- Define the meaning and critical elements of strategy for your organization
- Understand various orientations to strategy and determine where you are
on this continuum
- Evaluating the current strategy of your organization and your current
results against that strategy
- Agree to the reasons that you are looking at your strategy - what do you
hope to accomplish
- Define the strategic design sequence you will follow in clarifying your
strategy
Analyzing The Business Environment
- Review current market conditions and key competitors
- Identify key customers, key stakeholders, and their expectations
- Evaluate current market conditions affecting and influencing your
organization
- Identify external factors influencing your organization
- Review the strengths and weaknesses of key known competitors
Forecasting The Future
- Identify assumptions about the future environment of the organization
- Identify your own "vital few" that will define your future
- Evaluate the impact of the "vital few" on your organization
- Identify alternative future business situations
- Conduct a SWOT analysis to determine potential ways to manage these
alternatives
Creating Core Ideology
- Develop an understanding of what a core ideology is and how it impacts your
organization's success
- Explore the legacy of your organization
- Define or refine your organization's mission
- Analyze the beliefs that have created your culture and crystallize your
guiding principles
Defining Your Strategic Direction
- Develop a framework to define the primary questions that must be
answered to establish your strategic direction
- Clarify a vision of your organization over a three to five year time-span
- Describe your future customers and how your deliverables and products or
services may change to meet their needs
- Explore your organization's core capabilities and competencies and define
the capabilities and competencies you will need in order to compete in the
future
Defining Your Competitive Advantage
- Understand customer's perception of value as the foundation of
differentiation
- Create a long-term business focus
- Identify competitive differentiators within your industry
- Do a competitor analysis against the competitive differentiators
- Select competitive anchors that distinguish you
from your competitors
and competitive necessities that define in which area you must keep up
- Develop a value position
Setting Goals
- Understand the importance of setting goals and tracking performance
- Develop the building blocks of goal-setting
- Identify your organization's key result areas
- Establish metrics in each of your key result areas
- Assess your current performance
- Set goals in each of your key result areas
- Evaluate your feedback system
Creating a Master Plan
- Understand the importance of an integrated,
master plan for managing your organization
- Select the critical success factors for your organization
- Identify major performance initiatives to implement your ideal vision
- Develop a performance initiatives matrix
showing the relationship between your critical success factors and
performance initiatives
- Create a project charter to guide the
implementation of each initiative
- Commission project teams for each initiative
Return To Business
Alignment
|
