Create a Strategy for Creating a Strategy

In the competitive marketplace, a leader has the challenge to lead an organization to help it achieve their goals. Every company is competing for market shares, customers, and suppliers. Each year, they are challenged by their stakeholders to do better than they did the prior year. To succeed, a leader needs to focus on business as usual and at the same time spend time thinking about the future.

As Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” How do we best focus on strategy?

Visualize the future

What is the purpose of the company? Are you doing what you set out to do? What do you want to achieve? What does success means to the company?

Spend time on strategy each day

It is easy to get caught up with the business-as-usual (BAU) activities on a daily basis, but if you do too much of BAU, there will be no time left to think of a strong strategy. I always spend 30 mins of my day thinking about strategy. I ask myself the question, what did I do to contribute to our strategy? I need to make sure I’m contributing to our strategy on a daily basis.

Train your direct reports

You cannot do it alone. To succeed, you need to inspire your people to help you achieve the goal. Mentor and coach them to help them raise their overall abilities.

Team involvement

I set up a workshop and invited the key contributors to my team. I include people who report to my direct reports. I shared my vision and list the five areas that we need to work on. I then let the team brainstorm and come up with ideas of what we need to do to achieve the vision. The team walked away connected to the strategy because they were involved and had a hand in it.

The purpose of strategy is to create a competitive advantage. This could be done through efficiency, innovation, and collaboration. It is important for every company to set strategy that enables them to achieve their goal. It is the leader’s responsibility to lead a strategic planning that helps the company achieve its goal.

Now that you have learned that strategy is important, what would do differently?