Ep 1: What’s strategy and what’s not!
Every so often, we have strategy meetings. For it not to be a mere ritual, we need to be clear we are in fact focusing on strategy and not merely trying to set goals, for there is a massive difference between the two.
What’s not strategy:
Your goals / objective
Your vision / mission
Your top-notch operational effectiveness
Your high standard quality
All the above are destinations a company want to reach, and strategy is the path. Strategy is the set of coherently planned actions towards the objective.
When the “strategy” process is basically a game of setting performance goals—so much market share and so much profit, so many students graduating high school, so many visitors to the museum—then there remains a yawning gap between these ambitions and action.
-Richard Rumi
Steps to create a strategy:
- Diagnosis – Critically analyse the situation, target customer and any factor that may influence your_Consider manufacturing a table, you study the various factors involved like the average height of your audience, the usage of the table, etc
- Setting up the guiding principle: With data from the diagnosis, make a set of principles that would be the guide by which every decision is going to be made._Your target audience are 5 ft tall which is shorter than average human height and the table is going to be used for long hours of work with mostly laptops on them. So, your guiding principle would be 1. Table should be made to fit the height of the users. 2. Make it comfortable for long time use
- Concerted action: Now we move towards executing the strategy with action that are coherently created with the guiding principle as a framework._ Making the tables shorter than normal tables and for long workhours, a provision to increase the height to a standing position would be a great innovation_
These steps of strategy building apply to objectives of any magnitude.
A good strategy does more than urge us forward toward a goal or vision. It honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them.