TECHNIQUES TO CREATING EFFECTIVE BUSINESS STRATEGY

Basically whether you’re looking to set new business priorities, outline plans for growth, determine a product roadmap or plan your investment decisions, you’ll need a strategy.  we all need a plan, because when we do not plan, we plan to fail and to avoid failure there is need for us to develop a strong and reliably business strategy.

6 Techniques to developing Effective Business Strategy:

1. Compile your facts

In a bid to know where you’re heading, you have to know where you are right now. And so before you start looking ahead, you should review the past performance, or the current situation. And look at each area of the business and determine what worked well, what could have been better and what opportunities lie ahead.

Also there are many tools and techniques available to help with this process, such as SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis.

Also you should look internally at your strengths and weaknesses. And also for the opportunities and threats you should look at external factors. And a great framework for looking at external factors is PESTLE. (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental). Therefore, for your big idea or plan you would ask: what threats and opportunities could arise under each section?

And the most important part of this process is involving the right people to make sure you’re collecting the most relevant information.

2. Create a vision statement

Secondly this statement should describe the future direction of the business and its aims in the medium to long term. And It’s about describing the organization’s purpose and values. Also numerous business gurus have debated long and hard about what comes first in the list,  the vision, or the mission statement. However, in practice, you could develop both at the same time.

3. Create a mission statement

Also likewise the vision statement, this defines the organization’s purpose, but it also outlines its primary objectives. And this focuses on what needs done in the short term to realize the long term vision. And so, for the vision statement, you may want to answer the question: “Where do we want to be in 7 years?”. And for the mission statement, you’ll want to ask the questions:

• What do we do?
• How do we do it?
• Whom do we do it for?
• What value do we bring?

4. Discover strategic objectives

Furthermore at this stage, the aim is to develop a set of high-level objectives for all areas of the business. And they need to highlight the priorities and inform the plans that will ensure delivery of the company’s vision and mission.

Also by taking a look back at your review in step one, in particular the SWOT and PESTLE analysis, you can incorporate any identified strengths and weaknesses into your objectives.

Also crucially, your objectives must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-related). And your objectives must also include factors such as KPI’s, resource allocation and budget requirements.

5. Strategic Tactical Plans

Furthermore now is the time to put some meat on the bones of your strategy by translating the strategic objectives into more detailed short-term plans. As these plans will contain actions for departments and functions in your organization.
Also now focusing on measurable results and communicating to stakeholders what they need to do and when. And you can even think of these tactical plans as short sprints to execute the strategy in practice.

6. Effective Performance Management

Finally all the planning and hard work may have been done, but it’s vital to continually review all objectives and action plans to make sure you’re still on track to achieve that overall goal. As managing and monitoring a whole strategy is a complex task, which is why many directors, managers and business leaders are looking to alternative methods of handling strategies. Also creating, managing and reviewing a strategy requires you to capture the relevant information, break down large chunks of information, plan, prioritise, capture the relevant information and have a clear strategic vision.