Climbing Up The Right Wall – 5 Strategy Tips

Well kia ora folks. Thanks very much for taking the time to come and check out today's vlog.

I'm doing a series at the moment talking about strategy and business planning and how to implement them. And a question I quite often get asked is 'what's the difference between strategy and a business plan. So I give the following analogy:

Imagine if one of the kids said I've kicked my ball up on the roof. You go and get a ladder, put it up against the wall, make sure it's on a nice flat level piece of ground, and the rungs are all good. Then you climb to the top and get yourself up on the roof. But unfortunately you find your ladder is up against the wrong building!

So you've climbed up the ladder, but you can't get the ball because it's on the wrong building. That's strategy – making sure your ladder is up against the right building before you climb it.

And so in trying to keep things simple I've got 5 simple questions you can ask yourself when you're looking at reviewing your strategic plan and direction.

#1.

The first question to ask is, what's your winning aspiration, what's it all about, and what are you trying to achieve? If you haven't seen my vlog on working out that Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) you can find it here: https://www.planaconsulting.co.nz/new...​

#2.

The second question is, ask yourself where you're going to play, what geographical markets you'll be in, what industries you want to be in, what segments of the industry, what's your channel to market, and who are your customers. Basically, where are you going to do business.

#3.

The third component is around how you're going to play. What is it that's going to give you that competitive advantage that customers want to come and spend money with you as opposed to going to your competitors? Or more importantly, what is it that you can do that actually makes your competitors irrelevant, that moves you to a different place, and means you can attract those non-customers as well.

#4.

The fourth question is around asking yourself what management activities or capabilities do you need to do really well? That might be around distribution, knowledge, product innovation, a whole lot of different things. Essentially, what are the key things you need to do really well?

#5.

And finally the fifth question is to ask yourself what support systems do you need in place, what do you need to do to foster, support and measure the implementation of your strategic plan?

If you can answer these 5 questions then you're well on the way to starting to understand what your strategic position needs to be.

I'd love to hear any comments or feedback you have and if you need a hand with your strategic or business planning, please feel free to give me a call. So until next time, thanks for watching, ka kite.

For more about making your business a success, give me a call on 021 748 142 or flick an email to john@planaconsulting.co.nz