Strategy: Asking the right questions
Take some time to consider the major changes that occurred in your industry over the past five years. Could you have foreseen them? Perhaps yes… perhaps no… perhaps some. More important, have you even taken the time five years ago to consider what the major changes over the next five years would be? If you had, would your business be in a better position now?
Strategy is about shaping the future. This involves addressing a number of questions:
- Where are we now and how did we get here?
- What did we do well, or badly, to arrive at our current position?
- What business are we in?
- Will this remain the same, or will we need to change our business?
- If so, to what?
- What factors internal and external to the business will, or can, have an impact on what we do in the future?
- Where do we want to be in the future?
Only when we have addressed these questions, can we start addressing the next issue: how are we going to get there? Implementing a strategy is primarily about managing change. You might think that strategic planning is a waste of time because the future is too uncertain to predict. You might argue that locking a business into a plan causes problems when things change. It is true that the pace of change is such that you can no longer plan 15 or 10 years ahead, but continually.
Your strategic process should include flexibility and continuity to anticipate and embrace change, instead of fearing it and responding to it reactively. The old-fashioned way of conducting strategic planning, involving only a few of the senior elite who hide themselves away at some Game Lodge for a weekend, no longer applies in today’s age of radical change. Strategy is very much about getting your people involved and making time for them to make a contribution. If you think that developing a strategy in this way is costly, weigh up the cost of being unprepared for changes in the marketplace. Asking the right questions also means getting the imagination to work on the key strategic drivers that affect the way the marketplace works. It can often mean leading customers rather than following them. Focusing on the future does not mean forecasting, predicting, or working out a plan – usually, such attempts end in disappointment. It does, however, mean accepting that change will probably take us all into a new playing field.
Strategy today means tackling the questions that will shape the future:
- Who will be our customers in the future?
- What will their concerns and priorities be?
- What kind of lifestyle will they have?
- How can we get close to them?
- What will their preferences be for accessing products and services?
- What will the major channels be for reaching them?
What have you done today to shape your organisation’s future?
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