Good Strategy is not an Accident

By Ryan D'Souza, Managing Partner

Strategy involves gaining continuous insights on the external market, creating innovative alternatives, developing a business design and ensuring the executability of that design by orchestrating and developing the organization's capabilities. It is not principally about creating a document or following a planning calendar, although both play a role.

What is good strategy? How can I ensure my strategy delivers business results? Strategy has never been more important. A good strategy targets high value customers, ensures your offerings are distinctive, positions you for strategic control and secures future profits. Weak strategies fail to take stock of the changing landscape and rely on tired or unproven business designs that typically result in poor market performance. Good strategy looks carefully at the organization's capabilities and ensures that critical tasks are assigned and appropriate measurements in place. Good strategy ensures that critical skills are in place and that the organization's culture supports outstanding performance on the critical work of the business. Weak strategies ignore organizational capabilities and blame resulting shortfalls on execution.

How good are you at strategy today? Do you want to get better? Strategy is not about a document. Strategy is about action. Whether good or bad, strategy shows itself in the everyday actions of the business. It is reflected in the quality of the dialogs we hold, the decisions we make and the actions we take. A structured assessment of those activities can tell us how good we are at strategy, and how we can get better. Developing effective strategy involves a range of skills that can be developed and practiced.

Organizations are complex systems. All the parts and their connections need to work well together. Superficial diagnoses of organization issues are the enemy of senior management. They can lead to a loss of credibility and sap valuable energy from employees. We take care and avoid the temptation to go for the silver bullet. We emphasize the attunement of cultures that enables people to be committed entrepreneurs for their company with processes that provide discipline and measure results.

Developing and executing a winning corporate strategy isn't easy even in the best of times. There are so many factors of uncertainty like business, global, economic and political to name a few that challenges companies today. To succeed in today's climate, companies must:

Strategy cannot be predetermined despite a companies true intentions. True strategy helps clients transform enterprise and operations by:

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