You do have a strategy for your business, don’t you?

Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.

Reid Hoffman (American entrepreneur and angel investor. Hoffman is best known as the founder of LinkedIn)

I continue to be amazed at how many business leaders I meet who don’t have a strategy for their business. To boot they more often don’t have a strategy for themselves! Most have ambitions to be very successful and yet don’t have a strategy to get there.

Those that do have a strategy are guilty of the next worse sin; not having the strategy developed by the senior team.

I’ll write about this again. For now, here are the top most common situations I find in Irish SMEs. (and I don’t believe they are limited to SMEs)

1. No Strategy
   Just traveling from one day to the next! Usually firefighting. The inner voice is saying “We’re too busy to do that stuff, we have a business to run, costs to cut, sales to make, we’re trying hard to survive!”
2. Strategy is in one persons head
   Usually the owner/MD. He started the business and has been pursuing a strategy since then. It’s worked till now so why change? “I know our strategy, I employ managers to manage, we have a business to run you know”.
3. Nothing Documented
   Often there is a good strategy but it’s not captured anywhere. Quite often because of this it’s not shared. As a result it’s unclear. And often it’s not implemented, at least not in any coordinated way.
4. Strategy is Fixed
   Some leaders think strategy is a once off exercise. “Oh yea, we did our strategy three years ago, here it is”. Strategy is a fluid process, it changes as often as markets/competitors change, economy fluctuates, technology changes, consumer demands change. I can here you ask how do we change our strategy as often as this? Answer = you need a ‘Strategy Tale’, a story that is kept alive all the time in the boardroom, canteen, out on sales calls, etc.
5. Leadership is lacking
   To develop and  execute strategy requires big picture thinking followed by attention to detail action. I find either one or the other (usually the latter). I rarely find both together. What’s more there is a serious lack of awareness that these qualities are required. What’s more again is that there is no plan or strategy to develop them. This is where the personal leadership plan comes in.

I could go on. And so I will. I think I will write a little article on this subject. After all it is my expertise area: developing strategy and teams to execute!