As a leader, do you know what your organisation’s business strategy is?
If you struggle to clearly communicate what your desired goals and future plans are for your business, and can’t lay down the steps you wish to take to get there, then how can you expect your employees to work effectively?
Business strategy is vital for any company seeking to grow its business in a strategic manner.
What is a business strategy?
Put simply, a business strategy consists of creating a clearly understood Vision (future destination) and set of plans, actions and targets which demonstrate how the business will reach its goals. The process gives you the opportunity to align employees on the organisation’s goals.
Ensuring that everybody within the business is on the same page, and working together to achieve the agreed next steps or milestones to reach the intended end goal is crucial. If you wish to create a culture of achievement, where employees understand the true value they are adding to the collective success of the business.
The Harvard Business Review states the importance to
Recognize that effective strategy execution requires communicating corporate strategy; ensuring that enterprise-level plans are translated into the plans of the various units and departments; executing strategic initiatives to deliver on the grand plan; and aligning employees’ competency development plans, and their personal goals and incentives, with strategic objectives.
Creating a business strategy undoubtedly requires continual time, effort and consideration. If given the correct attention, it can really catapult your business to success, making all the time and effort worth it.
Benefits of a business strategy.
Creating one forward-focused vision will align every employee. Establishing this direction helps everybody to focus on the same vision. It will help employees with understanding why your goals were chosen and what they can do to help reach them. Also helping to keep everybody focussed and driven, increasing employee satisfaction and engagement, it’s hard to see any negatives to developing a business strategy!
Without guided direction, it’s easy to make wrong decisions or focus on the wrong things.
A business strategy will set clear targets to aim for. You are less likely to get distracted and waste time on areas that are not moving you toward your long-term objectives. Having something solid to work towards is imperative to be able to ultimately measure success.
How can you improve your business strategy?
Many business strategies fail for a number of consistent reasons. The most common reasons for failure include:
- Unclear Objectives
- Loss of momentum
- Lack of alignment
To develop a business strategy, you have to understand where your business is at now. When you have a strategy in place you will know the plan to get from where your business is now, to where you want it to go, and what you need to do to get there.
Firstly, you need to take a look and make a note of the current key performances of your business, whether it be sales, turnover, customer satisfaction etc. Then assess the strengths and weaknesses and come to a conclusion of what you would like to change, or thrive in and devise your strategy with this in mind.
We believe that a successful strategy can not be created alone. To be able to truly excel, it needs to be created with support from everybody in the business. Discussion and debate are a must. Coming to an agreed conclusion, ensures that all employees are on the same track and allows more chance of success.
By working on your strategy and debating the issues you will come to an agreement in your business as to where you want your business to be in the longer term.
As you can see there are many benefits of having a business strategy, although the benefits will not work if your employees aren’t on the same page. So, if you are not currently clear on your business strategy it may be time to start working on developing your longer-term business strategy. Need help with this? We are happy to book a consultation call with you to discuss how we could help you to progress your business.
If this is something you might be interested in, click here to inquire now.
