Vision and strategy development are critical business functions that allows a business to assess issues and opportunities, set future direction, discuss priorities and ensure strategic alignment throughout the organization.
A strategic plan is a living document that is managed and should evolve as market conditions change. Our experience tells us that companies who are unable to make strategic decisions, communicate direction and turn strategy into action suffer slow reaction time, poor accountability and under-performance.
Our experience in strategy development can help you solve those problems.
When Strategy Development Fails
When vision and strategy development are missing in an organization, we hear the same quotes over and over. How many of those below have you heard in your organization?
- “We have lost focus on our core business.”
- “Our leadership team is not aligned.”
- “No one is accountable.”
- “Everything is a priority, so nothing is.”
- “We aren’t tooled to execute this.”
- “Our annual planning is a bureaucratic exercise.”
Strategy Development Success Factors
Vision and strategy development have evolved greatly within companies over the past several years. Achieving success in today’s world requires a vision and strategic plan that:
- Are born out of inclusive and participatory planning
- Brings to bear external and internal knowledge
- Are fact-based
- Sufficiently inspire and motivate
- Enable downstream decision-making
- Clarify capabilities and investments required for execution
- Are continuous, agile and adaptive
Our Strategy Development Approach
We work from bottom to top on the “strategic pyramid” to ensure strategic purpose and alignment.
Our strategy development approach ensures that short-term activities are aligned with long-term aspirations, vision and purpose. Through market research and business analytics we identify key issues, opportunities and threats impacting an organization’s business model.
We work with you to refine your organization’s core purpose and vision and help you articulate the key strategies required to get there. We then plan, prioritize and organize the key strategies into a roadmap with short-term, mid-term and long-term horizons.
- Core Purpose & Values: Confirming the reason the business exists and the way it operates.
- Envisioned Future & Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG): Envisioning an inspirational future along with a motivating stretch target looking out 10 to 15 years.
- 3 to 5 Year Strategic Thrusts: Identifying the critical strategic thrusts required to achieve the BHAG stretch goal.
- Multi-Year Roadmap: Defining the key initiatives needed to effectively deploy the strategies over the next 3 to 5 years.
- Annual Planning: Begin developing an annual plan including key imperatives, priorities and ownership
From Planning to Execution
Developing effective business strategies is half the battle. Defining and prioritizing key initiatives and then actively managing these initiatives is critical. Deploying and implementing the strategies are equally important and in many ways, more difficult.
We work side by side with you to successfully enable, manage, deploy and sustain change.
Our EPM practice assists clients in establishing effective EPM / PMO functions and deploying supporting processes including portfolio management, budgeting, resource planning, project management and reporting.
Our OCM practice is focused on executive sponsorship, organization alignment, stakeholder engagement & adoption, training and communications.
Vision and Strategy Development Capabilities
Product and Services Strategy
- How well are current product portfolios aligned to market needs and competitor offerings?
- How should products be segmented and managed based on profitability, strategic purpose…?
- How can we drive more innovation, responsiveness and agility into the product development process?
Customer and Channel Strategy
- How satisfied are customers with products, pricing, services…?
- What are the driving factors to profitability within each channel?
- Which channels offer the largest opportunity for growth? How can we drive growth?
- How can we be more effective in servicing each channel via organization, support and technology?
Operating Strategy
- What are the core competencies of the organization?
- Which operating capabilities are most impacted by various strategies around growth, product, customer and channel focus?
- What is the nature of the required changes?
- What should our shared services strategy be?