Strategy Development
One of the most pivotal things that a leadership team or a business can do is be clear about the organisation’s strategy or it’s strategic approach. This means being understanding the economic context and market, being clear about where you are trying to get to and having practical options as to how you will get there.
We will help you with a range of tools to collect data to scan the horizon and help you understand the economics and market (an example being PESTEL)
We will collaborate to help you surface and become aligned around the key drivers and core competence of the business, whist help you build if needs be the strategic muscle. Practical tools like Value Disciples, Porters, Ansofff’s Growth matrix and the life cycle framework can be used to engage the team and organisation in understanding the challenge and mapping the direction.
One of the biggest challenges we see for clients is how to engage the people in the strategy and how to operationalise it, how to make it happen with energy and forward motion. Getting this right is critical to developing a high performance culture and meeting your outcomes. There are some simple disciplines that need to be in place.
What Strategic Alignment Skills are Required?
The competencies required to ensure strategic alignment are an important inclusion into the strategy skill set that leaders in organizations need. Your leaders will need to be able to:
- take a big picture perspective on problems, decisions, situations and events
- identify key stakeholders within the organization and within the marketplace or industry with whom your team needs to interact
- ascertain political agendas and adjust your decisions and actions accordingly
- integrate and assimilate information
- understand the interrelationships between issues
- recognize causal relationships
- be aware of the multiple effects of any actions decided upon
- view information from different perspectives and points of view, to interpret implications, and to make appropriate recommendations
- identify common elements or trends in situations and actions
- ensure strategic alignment between the macro-environment and the organization
- ensure alignment between different areas in the organization
- appreciate the pressures that each functional group experiences in the organization and work to mitigate them
- make decisions taking into account all the relevant variables
- make decisions that are aligned to the organization’s needs
- breakdown strategy into a practical performance plan to achieve it
All that gets done in an organization needs to be aligned to the strategy, in order to help achieve the strategic goals. Also, the implications of every action should be considered for every other part of the organizational system. In this way, the application of strategic thinking will result in strategic alignment throughout the planning and the implementation process of the strategy.
Our view is strategy isn’t a document, but and conversation of possibilities in action.