The past few years have brought challenges and uncertainty as the world has faced the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and supply chain issues, among other challenges. As a result, companies are finding it difficult to plan, and a new approach may be needed, according to Inc.com.
Although uncertainty can mean risk, it also can give companies the opportunity to expand beyond their current boundaries when handled correctly. When devising strategy, it is important to take a strict customer view, as well as to involve the entire company in the strategy development process. Revising your strategy should be continuous as you determine your goal and adjust and adapt the strategy on an ongoing basis; this can help companies thrive in a fast-paced, ever-changing market.
Inc.com offers the following steps to help devise a strategy.
- Find the big question. What question does your strategy seek to answer? The big question should stretch your business to expand its value creation—dreaming is encouraged. Ask customers about problems or frustrations they have encountered and work constantly to solve those issues. You also can regularly ask other stakeholders for new ideas. Sometime ideas have been mentioned before but were dismissed because they were deemed too ambitious.
- Break it down. Break down the big question into subsidiary questions relating to different facets of your operations or business process so you can anchor the strategy-devising process within the company. Use brainstorming exercises to come up with new questions rather than searching for answers. If people push back against the big question, be sure to ask them why it is not possible, which can bring up angles you may not have considered. The result is a series of sub-questions grouped into clusters by subject area.
- Generate ideas. Take each sub-question and start the process of generating ideas and strategic options. You no longer need to think about the questions or adjust them—you simply look for strategic ideas. Inspiration can come from within the company and outside it.
- Identify the best options. Which strategic options from the previous step best deliver on each of the sub-questions? First, define what success looks like for the process in question; then, run the new solution in parallel to the existing one. As soon as the alternative solution outperforms the existing one, abandon the existing process completely. Do this continuously as opportunities in the market change. You want each process to be part of your company’s true value proposition and ensure you have the capabilities and resources to master it.
