Does your strategy need a reboot?

Where to start

First, make sure your leadership team has clarity and alignment about where you’re trying to go and why. Second, ensure everyone across the business is clear about the organisation’s objectives. Third, stop doing activities that don’t contribute to your goals. Jamieson says the dividend from number three is savings on time and money. “You can reallocate that into something more meaningful, or take the win and bank it.”

Understanding choices that will drive your business towards an agreed path or target is part of a coherent strategy. Identify a direction, ambition, purpose. While business leaders used to take a five-year view, in today’s uncertain world a three-year timeline may suffice. Your company may have a different success lens than that of others. For some organisations, the next strategic objective will be profitability; for others, it might be attracting a different type of customer; while some businesses might be looking at diving into new markets. Define your strategic competitive advantage in those areas, and devise ways to sustain it.

Strategy must be contemporary and coherent. Jamieson says contemporary strategy is formulated openly, in a collaborative way. “We spend quite a lot of time when we’re helping businesses, talking about new ways of working. It’s about how you can run organisations in a modern fashion while including input from representatives across the business. The days of a board drafting organisational strategy in a dark room and spitting it out are gone.”  

One benefit of getting buy-in from everyone is that leaders don’t have to explain priorities and actions, because people have been part of the strategy process from inception.

Failing to get representation from throughout the organisation may mean missing good ideas and cooperation from key people. Having your employees on board leads to inclusive decision-making, where downstream problems are solved early. It means leaders don’t have to re-explain priorities that team members have already helped define. No extra steps are necessary in the execution and adoption of the strategic plan, since they’ve already been accounted for during the formulation process.

Having a coherent strategy means looking at how a master plan delivers on your ambitions. A coherent strategy provides clarity, direction, and a consistent basis for decision-making. It’s useful to people across the organisation to provide direction and inform choices such as investment and resource allocation.

Your strategy reboot might focus on a single aspect of your business. Jamieson says while the planning umbrella stretches across the organisation, not every component may need a strategy makeover. He gives the example of a construction business that already has a loyal customer base, great capability, facilities and profitability. “For them, the strategic problem is succession planning – what happens when current owners and managers want to move into a different role?” Another example is an online marketing platform where the bulk of the company’s performance is good, but leaders are trying to address how to respond to new market entrants in an increasingly competitive environment.