Strategic Vision Drives Organisations Success 

Drive Your Vision or Aimlessly Drift!

In today’s world, driving your business vision is the only way to ensure you stay focused on where you want to go and not pulled by short-term fads and fashions. 

The words strategic planning used to mean a once a year offsite discussion about where the organisation is headed. That thinking would be turned into an updated business plan with expectations and outcomes to be delivered over that next year. That type of strategic planning the corporate away-day provide very little in the way of strategic thinking and subsequently provided no or very little strategic value. Corporate away days became more a morale booster, with team building and bonding as the only measure of development. The reason why was very simple, if there is no strategic intent, no strategic review or re-evaluation them there will be no strategic outcomes.   

Strategic thinking is more vital today for leaders of organisation than ever before. The need for organisations of any shape and size to be able to determine why they exist and where they intend to exist in their market has never ben stronger. Whether it is new players finding their first footing in their market, through to established players redefining where they are within their sector, the need for leaders to define their vision and validate their strategy to achieve that vision has become more critical than ever. The drivers of urgency are not just those of ever more powerful stakeholder expectation, but more demonstrably the globalisation of every market sector and the transparency of strategy in what it delivers to business. 

Problems with Strategic Thinking

The problem building a long-term strategic plan, the traditional cycle of business planning is that it is too long and therefore slow to react to rapidly changing business environments; particularly the slow speed of implementing traditional business plans, which has damaged the reputation and credibility of strategy. 

The slow pace of organizational change driven by traditional strategic business planning results in strategies which are out-of-date before they ready to deploy. 

The net result of this process is that organizations are sluggish to respond in fast-changing markets, left wrong-footed by new entrants in dynamic, high-growth markets leaving leaders frustrated and impotent in competing with agile, new entrants. In an technology driven world where disruptive online behaviours enable markets and customers to change overnight, thinking strategically can seen to be an outdated way of thinking.     

Developing effective strategies is vitally important because without them organisations become inward looking, focusing on efficiency at the expense of growth opportunity. Without strategic thinking leadership teams becomes operationally efficiency driven rather than customer focused.  

The key element of strategic thinking is the ability of leadership teams to look at what is driving change within any sector. Inspiring vision is about drawing intelligence from scratchy, vague or even 'invisible' data to make informed decisions about tomorrow's market and develop an aspirational strategy to achieve that vision.

Planning for Tomorrow

What do we know about what tomorrow will look like and what opportunities it will offer? Here are my five defining statements about the need for strategic thinking:- 

1. It will happen whether we like it or not.
2. Markets are always changing, new opportunities are always arising.
3. If organisations strategically plan ahead they can successfully compete, rather than just survive by being a me too player.
4. Strategic thinking has to be achieved and implemented faster than a market is developing if players wish to stay or move into more profitable, growing and sustainable market segments.
5.  Without strategic thinking every organisation will go backwards in its market.

The Strategy Gap

The strategy gap: the lack of proactive strategic thinking is most often blamed on the lack of hard data 'facts' as the basis of making defined decisions. This has always been a factor in undermining the confidence leaders have in making plans for the future. 

As a result, strategic planning often focused on predicting the future based on historic trend lines, over-invest in gathering all available data, and produced a small number of safe directives often focused around the very near future, for the rest of the organization to execute.

This safety first approach to strategic planning leads to little steps, but is not really strategic thinking.  

"Genuine strategic thinking requires leaders to think of the future not based upon the past, but based upon the future market potential".   

                                                                        Richard Gourlay

With the advent of the internet there is now huge amounts of easily accessible affordable good data which is instantly and cheap to acquire. The world today has become a turbulent place, speed of change is no longer slowly evolutionary, but has become rapidly revolutionary in virtually every market. 

This has left the traditional strategic planning process with a fundamental problem, since the trusted, traditional and slow approach to strategic planning is based on assumptions that no longer hold. The static strategic plan is dead.

So why do strategy at all?  

Strategy is therefore under pressure as a process unlike never before.  If the outputs from traditional strategy, a traditional business plan with incremental evolution are no longer valued, then the value of strategy is being rightly questioned.  

The reason why strategy is not dead is that the strategic process, the way strategy is developed is essential in learning what is ‘right’, what is the future in a business sector.  This strategic approach to step out of your organisation and look at the market, defining internal aspirations and building the steps through experimental activity and forward pattern development enables shift culture to occur enabling agile strategy to be deployed. 

There are many renaming ceremonies for today's strategy process, all focusing on the move to redefine the strategic planning process, away from the traditional top-down long-term evolutionary strategic planning process to quicker, dynamic and responsive strategic thinking culture. This systematic and seismic shift in thinking away from process driven top down command and control process to one of continual strategic thinking culture. 

To make this shift to modern strategic thinking, leaders need to move away from traditional predictive planning to rapid prototyping supported by multifaceted experimenting.     

The second shift is that of 'frontline first' where leaders must enable the frontline with real decision-making authority. Successful strategic thinking requires objective and direction setting with a whole team focus.  Instead of a plan, the planning process is about whole team involvement in the mindset of goal achievement.              

The third and final major shift leaders need to focus on where the organisation is adding value to customers. As markets and customers rapidly change, who would have thought Google, the online search engine would be producing driverless cars, or Apple the IT company is managing middle-class health. 

What value any organisation customers value and are looking for is one of the major shifts which today's digital age is driving.   

 https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Leaders-Successful-leaders-business/dp/1508761965

Author Richard Gourlay, provides mentoring and leadership support to leaders, learn more click here

Business Startups: How to Start your Business Successfully

Starting Up A Business: You Need a Business Plan 

Starting a business is an exciting and yet daunting time for everyone, from the seasoned veteran to the first time start-up. Starting up a new venture in any field is one of the most frightening steps anyone can take. Stepping out from the known and safety of being part of another community to stand alone with your idea sounds exciting and thrills people, but also creates a mountain of new and often insurmountable challenges.  

  

The excitement of starting a new business can be quickly matched (and outshone) by the size of the daunting challenge you have set yourself. Where do you start in turning your idea into a business? For many it is talking it through with friends and family, seeing if it has legs, if it is a runner, trying to find the next step in turning the idea into a business.     

Hidden Challenges Facing All Entrepreneur

The next stage for many is to try to write down a plan of what they are trying to launch. This is where most people struggle, what to plan and how to plan what you are doing. How to turn your embryonic idea into a fully sized business is one of the hidden challenges facing every entrepreneur.

For many creating a business plan, is too big a challenge, re-defining it as a pointless exercise, or more realistic something they know they need to do, but want to postpone having to do it until the last moment, or later. Quite often planning their business is something entrepreneurs want to or try to delegate to other people. They want to keep the model flexible, or often in their head, I am working on it are other phrases I come across.

Putting All the Pieces Together

Yet to take any idea from embryonic idea to a recognizable business model, requires an investment in planning all the details of your business. Not just focusing on the core product or service, the exciting concept, but functional aspects of how the business will operate, from where and how, what operations have to be undertaken and by whom.   

Then a business needs to answer the biggest challenge, where will the customers come from and how. This key area is one, which entrepreneurs struggle to define publicly and honestly, relying on the old adage “build it and they will come.” But turning an idea into a successful business requires more than hope, it requires a clear plan, based upon a defined winning strategy driving a business model which makes sense and explains why it will succeed.

Defining The Optimum Solution  

The first step many successful entrepreneurs undertake is to review their idea and build their strategic plan, to take their idea from embryonic idea to a fully formed business model. From understanding your market and the size and scale of opportunity, to working out where to position yourself and what needs to happen to create interest in what you are offering and how you need to respond to it.

Developing a strategic perspective is a vital first stage in developing an agile and responsive business, by defining your strategic plan enables entrepreneurs to fully assess the whole business model, evaluating all aspects of your business and giving you all the ingredients for a business plan.   

Take Some Action

However you decide to start your business, do look for support. Run your idea past experienced people in bringing businesses to market, look at answering the difficult questions early, while optimism is vital, so is reality as is persistence.

 

If you are looking to develop your business model then look at developing your strategic plan for your business then why not look at my book Strategy: The Leader's Role by Richard Gourlay which will help you develop your strategic plan for your business.  

How To Grow Your Business Successfully

6 Great Reasons To View Richard Gourlay's Mentoring

Being focused and clear on where you are going and why with your business will put you in control and ultimately ensure you are more successful.  But how to take control is one of the biggest issues leaders face. Where to start and even how to start making changes to your business, making it become more successful is never easy. Moreover, the order you do all those elements, makes a real bottom-line difference to your business success.

Over the last 20 years I've worked with hundreds of business owners, from micro-businesses through to international PLC's and I've identified that there are some key factors that very successful owners do which ensure their success. While other business owners struggle to keep their heads above water. What I've learnt is that these simple and logical steps that successful people undertake, which make that 'something different' in what they do, delivers real results in taking the guess work out of their business success. 

I've spent years refining those key steps into a single programme of bite-size activities, my mentoring programme, of how to take the guess work out our business success. Each session supports leaders and business owners to work ON their business effectively rather than just spending more time IN their business.  

If you would like to know more then see my mentoring then get in touch to learn more about my mentoring programme click here or click this link:- www.cowdenconsulting.co.uk 

Below are some of the key things to consider in taking the guess work out of your business success:-  

6 Tips to Grow Your Business

1. Know what to Work ON

Knowing what you need to focus on makes a huge difference in where to invest your energy and resources.  I'm a huge fan of the leadership culture of working ON it not IN it. If you are not working on your business then how is it going to improve, how is it going to be ready and able to face tomorrow's challenges? But you need to know what is important to work on within your business, and why!  

2. Why you are working ON your business

Change is the only certainty in business. Today that has never been truer, the pace of change in every market has, and is, changing at an ever faster rate. The rise of the web, for example, has created rapid online trading and shopping which has rapidly accelerated change.  

How should you respond to those changes, fast enough and effectively enough to take full advantage of those changes, if you have ever wondered how, then my mentoring programme will enable you to understand why you are working on and put you in the driving seat of your business. 

3. Where to Grow

Every business owner wants to grow turnover, profitability or customer base, but how is the important question.  Where is tomorrow's growth coming from and how can you access it effectively and efficiently? This step-by-step programme will show you where growth is going to come from and how you can effectively access it.   

4. How to Make Change Happen

Doing what we've always done is the natural default behaviour that people fall back into despite best intentions.  Change is always easy to talk about, but harder to actually deliver. Change is always necessary to achieve success. This step-by-step programme enables you to create the right changes, which deliver the right results for success. Every step involves a single simple activity which is supported by a template in a workbook to create your success.      

5. Reduce the Risks

Taking your business from where it is today to where you want it to be tomorrow is essential to keep your business competitive and successful, but change involves taking risk. This proven programme reduces that risk by evaluating and balancing the risk factors effectively. Each step is focused around making sensible proactive decisions which have been tried and tested.     

6. It is simple to use

Taking the risk out of your business success is all about taking small, simple but highly effective steps which move your business where you want it to go. I have designed the programme to fit every type of business by size and sector and at every stage of its development. 

Short bite size learning, is what mentoring programmes can provide and is supported by easy to follow notes and action plans including all the templates and models you need to achieve your success. Supporting my bespoke mentoring programme are emails to help support you undertake each step. You can do the mentoring programme at your pace of learning the choice is yours.   

So if you want to take the guesswork out of your business success? Then this  effective programme is specifically designed for business owners from start-ups to established businesses owners to take the guess work out of your business success.  Contact me to learn more or see our website link www.cowdenconsulting.co.uk.

A good business starts with the end in mind: have clear objectives.

Vision
Having a vision is vital to be successful in the long term, but having objectives will ensure you get you there. Clear milestones for everyone inside your company, top to bottom are the essential component of a successful company. Every successful company has clear goals, strategic ones the outrageous ones (global domination) through to achievable tactical objectives.

Without clear (SMART, see below) objectives company’s loose focus on its goal. Without objectives companies can fall victim to strategic drift, this month’s whim and next month’s quick idea.  Without cascaded objectives at every level, good people’s morale falls as they cannot see where how they are contributing to the company’s success. Without objectives everything else in planning and execution is a waste of paper, time and effort.  

Objectives
Objectives should be like a pyramid, with the big objectives at the top, but at every layer underneath there should be the sub objectives that make the bigger one happen. A well run organisation should therefore look like a pyramid, in terms of objectives, with everyone working on their goals which build up together to achieve the big picture goals. This form of management managing by objectives MBO, (not to be confused with a management buy-out MBO), allows people to focus on their objectives, which are aligned to higher goals.

Try not to have too many objectives to achieve. I always recommend no more than 5 per person. The reason why 5? Because it keeps people focused and not drowned in statistics. Even at the company level remember the old KISS concept of simplicity, if you have page after page of objectives some will suffer unless you can resource them. Focus on what really matters to the business, what drives performance and how are they made up. For people think about their Key Performance Indicators, KPI’s they are doing a good job if… Classical KPI’s usually include: revenue, margin, customer numbers, retention, growth, production, saving, are amongst the most common.      

Objective Setting
High performance companies often drive all their goals by setting team objectives which are then broken down into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each individual employee. Try not to give any individual or manager too many. An easy way to achieve that is to ensure they can remember and recall them with ease when you meet them.        

    The benefits of setting objectives:

1.       Objectives define the entire purpose of your business (or unit) in a couple of sentences or bullet points or set of numbers.

2.       Objectives are often identified as key performance indicators at the individual persons performance.

3.       The objectives that you set determine the quality of the strategy or tactics that you will adopt.

4.       Goals allow you to Manage By Objectives MBO which avoids time in argument and also helps in introducing a more participative management culture where employees are encouraged to set their own objectives.

5.       Clear KPI’s per person is a successful way to evaluate performance as long as the KPI’s are numerate or translatable into a numerate language.

Remember SMART criteria to define attributes of good objectives:

That is:

·         Specific

·         Measurable

·         Achievable

·         Realistic

·         Timely

 SMART criteria include:

1.       Both short range and long range targets should be set.

2.       Both quantitative and qualitative

3.       Clear. Put them in writing, to be achieved within a specified time frame.

4.       Measurable. So that they can be compared with actual results.

5.       Challenging. This is so that staff will put greater effort and be more motivated.

6.       Achievable. Avoid overly optimistic goals as this might be counter productive due to their demotivating nature. Goals should be realistic, reasonable, reachable and beatable. Avoid hidden goals and don't be over specific.

Hope that gets you thinking?

regards
 

Richard Gourlay 

Successful People Plan Their Business

Business planning often gets a bad press, yet those who do sit down and plan their business are so much more focused, confident, and successful than those who float along with the economic tide. Over the past ten years as a strategic planner we’ve worked with hundreds of business owners and seen how those that create a plan and implement it, do so much better then those owners who try aimlessly lead their business on a wing, a prayer or a dream.  

According the latest BERR report, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s) together accounted for 99.9 per cent of all enterprises, 59.8 per cent of private sector employment and 49.0 per cent of private sector turnover. SME’s really do matter to the British economy, and yet they receive little effective support from Government agencies despite being the backbone of the economy, employment, and innovation.     

Why Businesses Don’t Plan       

“If you don’t make things happen, things will happen to you” Lanes Company

Having questioned business owners over the last decade the reasons why owners have not put a plan in place and executed it, the excuses range from not having the skills, make the time, or have the conviction of their thoughts. The number of owners  who know they should have a plan ‘we had one when we first started, but have not looked at it since’ is a common theme, as is being too busy fire fighting to realise that preventing fires starting is the best way to not have to fight them.  

Do business owners not see the value in developing a plan for their business? On the other hand, is the classic perception for business owners that frenetically staying alive is seen as being successful? For many not knowing how to plan is one major reason why people haven’t and don’t plan their business. Where to start and how to know what they are trying to achieve immediately puts people off planning. Business planning is also often at fault, the most common reason people have a plan is to secure funding from banks, that’s when banks did fund business start-ups (now they just offer a high interest mortgage backed by the Government). Therefore, once people have received funding they no longer see the main advantages of planning (and the real advantages are not around money). 

Planning Skills – Have some GOALS

"The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen." - Lee Iacocca

Planning takes time, resources, (grey stuff) not the executive trip to some exotic away weekend planning, but some time allocated to review where you are as a business, how your sector and industry are performing and what you want to achieve in the future. Whether it is looking at the next year or planning the next five years, everyone who owns or directs a business is responsible for setting its direction. However, just having a plan in your head, with the classic defence of ‘its flexible at the moment’ is either ducking the responsibility or deluding themselves.

The only way to have a plan rather than a dream is to have it written down, turned (if it is not already) into an action plan which is resourced and owned by someone to deliver. Only then do businesses go forward in a deliberate purposeful way. Only then do the right things happen because you made them happen and only then can everyone, employees, shareholders, customers, channel partners and even other halves, see your dream, share your dream, deliver your dream. That’s when planning works. It is a written document, which lives within your company, and it doesn’t matter if you are a one-man (woman) band or running a multi-national Plc.

What Planning Delivers

"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." – Robert Heinlein

Planning provides focus in strategic direction, its provides clarity of where the business is and where it is going as well as a vehicle for getting from where you are to where you want to be. Planning time provides time to reflect on personal and corporate goals, time to share and channel new ideas while reviewing existing activities.

Planning in a structured and open format develops clarity of purpose and a clear understanding of the organisational and individual skills people have and can use to leverage advantage. Bringing in outside views widens the planning horizon, which can drive businesses forward, which is why many successful businesses use non-executive directors or outside specialists to help drive their business forward. That is one reason why so many people volunteer to get support from people like the Dragons from Dragon’s Den, they are looking for expertise and advice which gives them confidence to go forward as much as the money.   

British business owners need to plan, more often to keep being successful. Good planning creates and sees opportunities as owners and directors lift their heads up from the daily grindstone. How often should you plan? Well it all depends on the speed of your market’s evolution, but even stable and stagnant businesses should review their business every year, and not just a light dusting (add ten percent and change the year) but strategically review what and how well they are doing.

It is only by looking for fresh opportunities and how to take best advantage of them, by planning your business around those opportunities that companies successfully compete in today’s business environment.

  

Planning is not a four letter word

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage" Jack Welch

The old adage, compete or get beat, is more relevant today than it has ever been. The rise of the Internet means there are no secrets, competitive advantage lies with those who can see an opportunity and adapt fastest to take advantage of it. Those owners and directors who see and go for opportunities become the stronger ones, and that is where good strategic business planning provides it real advantage.

By orientating a company to where it can retain better, win new and develop existing customers companies that plan their success out compete in their sector, and equally importantly have everyone focused on where they are going. From the smallest to the biggest every business needs to have a plan that is written down, owned and guiding your business in the direction you want it to go. 

Good Luck

Richard Gourlay



Learn more at: www.richardgourlay.com