Strategy

 

Purpose & Values

Strategy should be built on your Purpose, the “why” you are in business.

Your Values are your “how” – the behaviours that you and your People will follow, within your team, when dealing with your Customers, Suppliers, investors, lenders and trusted advisers. In combination, your Purpose and Values guide the rest of your Strategic Plan.

Without purpose and values, it is like setting out on a journey with no set destination and no decision on how you will travel. 

Goal-setting & Planning

Once you have defined purpose ad values, the why and the how, there needs to be clearly defined timed goals and a solid business plan including milestone key results that define the sequential steps along the path to success. Your short and medium term goals must be aligned to your long term goals, because experience tells us that businesses can only really plan and budget for actions for the short term, but they need to be firmly aligned with, whatever success ultimately looks like; your Vision for the future.

Business Exit Planning

Few business owners plan their personal exit strategy. This is usually left until they are battered and worn out from years of toil trying to make the business a financial success. What most never realise is that a business in which the owner plays a significant day-to-day role in operations is generally overlooked by investors as they need to find a new operator of the business as well as hand over capital. It is essentially worthless without you. This is particularly important when you consider one means of business exit is a major health crisis that limits you physical or mental capacity, or worse, ends your life. Who will then deal with the legal and financial implications of your unplanned exit? Your partner or children?

A well-planned exit strategy means developing a business model in which you play a decreasing role IN the business over a sensible time period until such time your are only working ON the business and spend a greater proportion of your time with other aspects of life. Then, and only then, your business has real capital value that can be realized.

Key Performance Indicators, KPIs

How do you know if your Strategy is being executed effectively, your plans are progressing and your goals achieved? By establishing readily measured KPIs as part of the strategic planning. Without frequently reported KPIs, you don’t know how you are tracking. It is like going out and sprint training every day with the objective of winning a Gold Medal at the Olympics without someone running a stop watch regularly to see how your are progressing toward you goal time for the 100m sprint that will beat the world record.

We ask you to perform a Business Health Check before you talk to us so you know your benchmark position before deciding if discussing the possibilities with a Business Coach is a worthwhile use of your time. We also ask you to perform this check on annual basis to check if you have made the progress you expected. Likewise, you need internal KPIs to ensure each goal set in your plan has made progress, or, if not, be able to understand why and take corrective action.

So, strategy also involves the measurement strategy to be applied to determine successful progress to your vision.