A large proportion of text books on strategy and many of the classic models you will no doubt have heard of, are driven by work with large corporates. A small firm is not a large firm in microcosm. However, this should not be taken as a bar to using these models but make sure you take them for what they are worth to you. Use them from your perspective, adapt them, use them where they are not meant to be used, add in your own ideas…they will get you playing with ideas, thinking strategically. It’s all about overcoming your barriers to thought and action.
Remember, you develop strategy your way, but whatever way you choose, you need to do it as a business, everyone, everyone needs to understand; towering contributions may come from the most unlikely places. It takes knowledge, insight, people working together and the courage and intelligence to act upon what you find out or decide.
There are two main perspectives in the strategy world. One considers strategy as a well-researched position that you eek out, fulfil and defend in a market place. The other suggests strategy is more emergent, allows for learning and change, might take one of many or consist of different parts. A ploy (disrupting, dissuading or discouraging the competition), a pattern (a strategy that emerges from the firm’s past behaviour), a position (in context and the market environment) or a perspective (again something takes form, emerges from the way individuals in organisations think, a gathering opinion, vision or realisation). It doesn't need to be a cascade. It doesn't always need to be a document, it can be lived patterns of behaviours and expectations, methods and tools and ways of appreciating information ideas and communication.
Moreover, are you sure you don’t already have the right strategy but you are just not doing it well and it needs to be refined and serviced better. Is it just about the capacity you have to be great at what you already do? If you look, can you see hidden patterns of success in your work, things that work well, that you can do more of? It might not be broken, you might not need to fix it. It might just need a good service.
Make sure you know why you are entering into a new cycle of thinking about strategy. Is it because the business needs to financially? Is it because you as owner are not managing the business well? Is it because you are stuck in a phase of change and development or because you are trapped in perspectives? Is it because you or the business are running away from something; you don’t have the right staff or skills or you’re procrastinating or trying to distract yourself, denial? Is it because the market is failing or competition is high? Make sure you know you know why. Yes, I know you know…but are you sure know? The problem or the opportunity may not lie where you think it does.
If you want your staff to be engaged in the future, make the future is engaging. Make yourself and the reasons staff stay in your four walls to earn a crust, engaging. Stop dumping ideas on people and forcing them to change. Make life good, now and in your strategic thinking. Strategic thoughts come thicker and faster with positive engaged minds and bodies. If you can make the future that engaging and that bright then it’s worth forking out for more shades.
Make the time and the space both physical and mental for strategic thinking. You have to be ready for it, switch off operational conversations and thoughts. Prepare.
Strategic thinking is not something to be done on an annual basis because it’s about time we were doing some strategy; as though it’s a box to tick. It is something you are continually re-examining, shifting with your hands on the tiller, an ever evolving journey whether or not you have an ultimate destination or you expect the process and objectives to evolve.
Strategy is a continuous process of learning from when things go right or wrong, from people and events. Make sure your organisation learns constantly, captures learning, and interprets it, implements lessons. Make sure you have systems, systems that you are not slaves to but that help you constantly build pictures of the reality of your business and markets. Make sure the formats and quality of that data lends itself to interpretation and insight. You work in a complex world, learn how to simplify it.
Don’t dismiss strategic options, the future might lie in partnership with others, in wholly unrelated products and services. It might be tweaks or giant leaps for humankind. It might be a whole new venturing opportunity. Think broadly and bravely.
If you don’t know where you have been, how you got here and where to go next, or you are too close the business and its markets to see…get outside help:
a. Facilitated or direct consultancy
b. Help to facilitate your thinking or the thinking of your team
c. Ask competitors, suppliers, clients or industry bodies for help.
d. Join a peer to peer group grounded in methods like action learning.
e. Use formulas and methods such as Appreciative Inquiry to take your thinking forwards in a positive direction.
- If you’re heart isn’t in the strategy that presents itself, don’t do it, it will make you stressed and miserable. If it’s not the reason or the knowledge you grew the business from and it doesn’t float your boat… think. If the strategy is powerful and will yield great high growth, sell or step aside with an innovative route to the funds created through the growth…think on that. Nobody wants to be working for a miserable unfulfilled entrepreneur, forced to do something they don’t really want to do, in a way they probably don’t like. No one likes a misery guts, there’s enough stress in life as it is.