Strategic Objectives

​Over the last few months we have covered most of the major items needed for creating your vision and strategy. This month we will pull all of this material together and develop some strategic objectives.
 
Just before we do that though, I’ll cover off one more important issue. It is not good practice to develop strategy without some understanding of trends in your industry, your market, and the overall context within which you are running your business. Useful analyses include the Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis, and PEST Analysis, both easily googled.
 
I recommend that you take the time to carefully consider the questions and answer them as comprehensively as you can. It would be very unusual for there to be no insights for you from these analyses, and you should be as thorough as you need to be to discover them.

So now its time to identify the top three strategic moves you should make in the 3- to 5-year timeframe. Why only three? Solid research has shown that if you try to achieve more than three goals over any timeframe, you will actually complete fewer than if you just went for three. It’s that word “focus” again.

​Review all the possible moves you could make, based on your work on your target market and its greatest need, your value discipline and competitive advantage, and your environmental analyses. The idea is to select the three moves that together, will take you furthest along the journey toward your BHAG. Picture yourself three to five years out into the future, with your three strategic moves completed – have you made satisfactory progress toward your BHAG? If not, see if you can identify more challenging strategic moves.
 
To give you a better idea of what a strategic move looks like, I have included some of my clients’ below (suitably camouflaged).
 

1. Reduce cost of manufacture to 87 cents a litre
2. Complete the implementation of the new channel strategy
3. Set up a fully functioning, profitable [related industry] business
4. Establish a complementary range of second-tier products to compete in the commercial market
5. Develop and resource a comprehensive in-house HR function
6. Implement Operational Excellence processes and systems across the company

 
OK, that’s enough strategy for now. Next month, we will start a new topic – Execution, or getting stuff done.