Strategy formulation: Five serious issues demanding your attention

Formulating business strategy is not the type of task for amateurs. As a business strategist you have to be serious about six issues before you ever undertake strategy formulation. These six issues are of “make or break” nature demanding serious attention from corporate management:

1. First of all you must be very clear about the internal dimension of the business you are in. Significantly the major part of this dimension is connected with human interaction. Whether you go for top down or bottom up approach you have to understand that, the personal dynamics of the organization is the key factor. Being friendly with staff, you must understand how they are motivated to work and how they are driven to achieve set goals.

2. Alertness is key for assessing strengths and weaknesses of staff members. You must be super intelligent to recognize the nuances of their speech, rhythm of body language, shades of opinion, nature of attitude and finally quality of efforts. This is where you waddle between skills and drive. For example, the most talented or articulate person in your business may not have similar level of dedication towards his job!

3. Getting into critical point quickly is the next issue meriting your attention. Time is always limited and you must be trained to find the “fruit covered by leaves”. Unless you can get a hang of what the staff are trying to convey and the finer points that they mention or allow you to draw without even uttering tem, you will continue to read the leaves and miss the fruit.

4. Thinking strategically is the issue most of us talk about but never get it right. You have to master strategic thinking by envisaging how the future course of action evolves and how beneficial it is to the business and its stakeholders, including the staff members. Smart thinking apart, you must be able to communicate with others how the future is going to be and  what resources and technology would be required along with the type of new skills the business must develop in order to cope up with future demands.

5. Creative solution to problem is an area where an accomplished business strategist excels. Here the strategist must follow a set of analytical tools available in the public domain as well as his own proprietary tools that he keeps to himself. Box type strategic tools promoted by consultancy firms are of limited use in this ever changing business environment. Incidentally, major breakthrough in product innovation has come into light not by using any of these box type tools but by innovative and imaginative thinking. Success of Starbucks coffee is a fitting example!

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

What is the key skill business strategist must have?

Every business strategist builds up plethora of skills acquired from his learning, experience and strategic thinking. Amongst these specialized skills one overshadows all others. That is identifying the primary purpose. Here is a preview:

Carl von Clausewitz, the master strategist says succinctly in his book “On War”. “The talent of the strategist is to identify the decisive point and to concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring minor objectives”. There are five takeaways from his statement which let me explain on bottom-up process:

1.  In business strategy, goals are classified into minor and major ones. Most of the time Pareto Theory works and businesses find that they are preoccupied with minor objectives that sap their energy and consume enormous efforts and resources giving out fewer benefits that in most instances do not exceed 20 per centum of expected results.

2. This shortfall in results behove business strategist to weigh in on allocation of resources. In theory wants are more than resources at hand. Therefore, right allocation is vital amid limited and costly resources. Business strategist is now forced to fish out the minor objectives and cut down resources employed in pursuance of achieving these minor objectives.

3. In doing so business strategist must understand that he cannot close the secondary fronts entirely. If that happens opponents would be able to sneak through weak points in flanking attacks. A good example is a gas station that provides gas, oil and lubricants deciding to remove lubricants out of its shelves.

4. Concentrating attention and employing more than required resources to key sector is the open sesame for success of any business. Here there are two aspects: one is the physical and human resources employed on the key sector and the other one is the attention it gets from line managers and corporate bosses who are called upon to put that extra effort to make the key sector do well with an element of competitive advantage. Good example is the play store of the Google.

5. The final take away is to identify the key sector itself. This is going to be tough task. The key sector identified must be attuned to the primary purpose. Clausewitz calls it as “decisive point”. By being decisive means a combination of winning spirit interwoven with the purpose of achieving an advantageous position that provides more benefits than before. Put it other way, a business strategist must grab everything possible from the market and deny his opponents access to big deals. In military parlance this goes as anti-access and area denial (known in shortened form as A2/AD.

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist