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Checklist: Developing Your Strategy

A brief summary on the three important phases of strategic planning: analysis, planning and integration.

Analysis
The value of analysis is that it leads to strong conclusions and decisions; it helps you to find the right direction. Analysis needs to be thorough, comprehensive and wide-ranging and to achieve this one technique stands out: questioning. In fact, with strategic analysis there are no good answers, only good questions. That is because strategy is subject to dynamic and constantly shifting forces with the result that the best answers will change over time. The Solution, therefore, is to question, decided the best approach, and then check that you are on course with further questioning. In this respect strategy is a little like ocean racing: it requires a clear course but also a constant checking position, awareness of external forces and a desire to improve.

Analysis creates a wealth of information. The next step is to extract the most valuable parts or those with the greatest effect on your strategy, summarize and share them. A summary of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is a useful way to analyse this information.

Planning
There are several stages in the strategy planning process, each relying on the completed analysis.

• Defining your purpose – this should summarize where you are now, where you want to be and how you will change.
• Explaining your advantage – people will want to understand how the business will succeed and what success will look like.
• Setting the boundaries for your strategy – it is important to be clear about the products and markets you will deal in, and those you won’t.

The important point to recognize is that strategy is about making choices and ensuring focus.

• Prioritizing – the strategy needs to emphasize specific products, customers and markets that are the most profitable or significant. Employees should be given specific responsibilities, objectives and resources so that the potential of these priority areas can be realized.
• Budgeting – recognizing the financial requirement of a strategy is fundamental to its success. The next step, therefore, is to develop a budget that meets the strategic objectives.

These issues should be clearly explained and used to gain people’s commitment and focus their attention.

Integration
The Strategy needs to take account of the realities of the business. It needs to be consistent with the work of other departments, the capabilities of employees and suppliers, and the expectations of customers. The challenge is to avoid confusion or conflict. This is really a ‘sense check’ that the strategy will work and it relies on the strategist asking and involving the right people at the right time. 

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