What is your strategy?
While there are a lot (and I mean a lot….) of definitions for this. However, in general the term strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal that will benefit your business (or any other enterprise that you may have). Strategy is a word that originates from the military.
In a military application:
Strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of a specific engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked. How a battle is fought is a matter of tactics: the terms and conditions that it is fought on and whether it should be fought at all is a matter of strategy, which is part of the four levels of warfare: Grand Strategy, Strategy, Operations, & Tactics.
Grand Strategy and Strategy deal mainly with planning, whereas Operations and Tactics deal with implementation of the overall strategy.
Grand strategy is an overall vision of where the company should be going. This is often communicated in the form of a mission statement. Generally the grand strategy is a long term goal that needs to be achieved by a series of well planned steps towards that goal.
Strategy is a one to two year path (or plan) that carries you in the direction that leads to the fulfillment of your grand strategy. The strategy must be clear, well laid out, and actionable.
Operations are large groups of actions that are designed to move towards the fulfillment of the strategy. For example “Finding Dentists” is a crucial step in obtaining the Business of dentists. There may be dozens of processes and actions that you can carry out to accomplish this.
Tactics. In general, tactics can focus on the daily, weekly or monthly (i.e. short term), and are associated with getting specific tasks done. Tactics can change rapidly. They will vary according to the experience and skill sets of your employees. A tactic for obtaining your clients may be direct mail. If that doesn’t work, you may try paid referrals from people that have some connection to your clients. In general it doesn’t matter what tactic (or combinaation of tactics) is used. As long as leads are generated, the overall operation of “Finding Business” will be successful.
Strategy is a process
Thinking on your feet is essential. Some of parts of your strategy may not work. Over time adjustments must be made. Do you know how?
Have You Tried Any Of This Stuff? Have You Even Heard About Any of This? .
If you haven’t, it’s costing you money, and probably business as well. Why? Because lack of an appropriate strategy means that you have a lack of focus for your limited resources. Conservatively you may not be reaching your potential with the resources that you have. Realistically you probably have a lot of wasted effort which will erode your bottom line.
This all probably sounds like a “Big Business” approach to you, and to be truthful, it is. Big Corporations do this every day, at a cost of Millions. But it works.
My Business is too small for this…
We hear this a lot. However, this type of approach can be easily accomplished with small Businesses as well. In fact it is usually much easier and less time consuming because smaller businesses tend to have a smaller scope, and a smaller set of problems to overcome. The important thing is to have a plan. We can help.