How important is strategy?
It’s been interesting to see which of our blog topics attract the most interest and the clear leader to date has been anything with strategy in the title!
A strategic plan is probably one of the single most important things any organization can produce. It puts in place the core foundations against which the organization can create, manage and measure success.
We’re not going to descend into any detail here but we will summarise what we believe are the three core things to focus on in strategic planning:
1. Market
You need to understand your organisation’s strengths, weaknesses, target market and the competitive threat you are facing. This will help guide you in which battles to fight and how to best to position your products and services to sell more and grow your business.
2. Change
The rate of change in IT becomes faster every year. It’s increasingly important to understand what trends are going to impact on your business in the short, medium and long term, and how best to position and respond to out accelerate your competitors.
In short adapt or die as you can’t stand still and hope that the targets and approach you agreed last year are still valid this year.
3. Communicate
Everyone in your business needs to understand your strategy and to be able to clearly articulate its principles. You want this to come across consistently in every touch point you have with your clients. More importantly you want your people to understand, believe in it and to work with you to make it a reality.
Lastly….
It’s worth bearing in mind that global corporations have at their disposal considerable expertise and experience but rarely send their key people off to a hotel for a few days to build a strategy. In pretty much all cases they bring in external expertise to help direct this work. They recognize the benefit of getting some help in this exercise.
In contrast most mid-sized businesses with far fewer resources at their disposal only bring in this type of expertise when they are going through a significant change in their business, perhaps an MBO or acquisition as part of the investors due diligence work. How much would they benefit from conducting this exercise perhaps annually as part of the new financial year planning exercise, and making use of some independent guidance?
If you’re interested in having an informal conversation on strategy please get in contact with us at Korolit.
anthonykking
We’re an independent and experienced consulting, programme management and executive resourcing business. We're focused on the needs of both public and private sector clients. We work with all sizes of organisations from local start-ups through to global concerns. Without the cost overheads associated with a much larger consultancy business we have the flexibility to take on small targeted assignments, or much larger work programmes. Every client relationship is valued greatly and treated with dignity and respect. Each engagement benefits from the breadth and depth of our expertise.
