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Strategic Strategy Development Process

Complete your strategic plan in three days rather than three months!

What is strategy?

Some of the key concepts in strategy include:

1. Being strongest at the decisive point - knowing what's important and directing your horsepower there

2. Fit to the external environment - so we surf with the waves rather than against them

3. Starting with a wide vision - so we consider all the strategic options

4. Ending with a narrow focus on what matters - like a magnifying glass focusing the sun's energy

5. It’s about big decisions that set the direction for many years, commit the organisation to significant costs and are hard to reverse. You can not afford to get it wrong and it can not be left to chance

6. It's about what NOT to be - often this is as important as what to be

7. It's about 'fit,' 'tradeoffs' and 'differentiation' - trying to be everything to everybody makes you boring and gray.

Why Strategy is important

Want a summary?

Click here if you want a short summary of the process: download file

Our Process

Business strategy sessions can be exciting, even exhilarating, so why so many uninteresting and boring? Every year hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent by organisations on strategic conferences, yet for several reasons much of it is wasted!

1. In most organisations, strategy is separated from creativity by a wide gap. These strategies are straight-line, linear, analytical and boring. They are too predictable, provide nothing new and add little value. Our process builds in creativity and produces magic that staff and customers love.

2. Strategic development takes three days rather than three months!

3. Strategy development uses little known secrets that allow even large organisations to create fundamentally better Strategic Plans.

4. From the start it recognises the central importance of grassroots people to implementation and builds this into the process.

The Stages

Successful strategic programs are a bit like going to a good doctor, it should have eight steps. Sometimes I get involved in all steps, other times the client has the skills to undertake some Stages themselves:

1. Examination - Strategy examination includes meetings with key managers to scope issues and to clearly understand what has happened in the past, what has worked, what has not worked and some of the key environmental aspects. Sometimes this stage also needs more solid research in which case Bruce would normally work with David Parmenter.

2. Diagnostics - Strategy diagnostics includes agreeing with the client what the real problems are.

3. Consultation - Strategy consultation occurs if the diagnostic is unclear or if there is to be more than one consultant involved, then it's critical to get the opinions of others and their understanding of their roles.

4. Prescription - Strategy prescription includes designing the program, with as many drafts as required until we have mutual agreement that the program will fix the problems. It must always include any side affects or short comings of the treatment and pros and cons of alternative approaches.

5. Pre Strategy Workshop - The most costly part of any strategic workshop is senior managers' time; to reduce this and ensure that the time together is used discussing your organisation, any concepts/models to be used are delivered before the workshop in the form of pre-reading and pre-workshop exercises.

6. Strategy Workshop Facilitation - Bruce is one of New Zealand’s most experienced facilitators in Strategy, however he is far more than just a top facilitator; he also has a deep business strategy knowledge and experience. He has helped many organisations find a more successful path to the future. He is known for his financial and creative strategic thinking skills (trained in finance and a practising artist). His background is in business. He knows what it’s like to be a senior manager. Before becoming a consultant he was Group Strategy Manager at the BNZ. Bruce has the experience and the confidence to challenge even the most senior managers and Board Members if he thinks their thinking lacks rigour or is insufficiently strategic.

7. Report - Most clients get Bruce to draft the Strategic Plan professionally. They love the way he reduces the essence onto one page. Bruce strongly supports the writing of the plan. This helps to formulate and crystallise the thinking. If it’s not written there will be as many versions of what’s important in it as there are people. But once it’s written and summarised down to one page (so that it’s quite clear what really matters) we need to find some way of symbolising that it is not tablets of stone.

8. Strategic Execution - Some companies think that just because the having a meeting with the theme ‘taking it to the next level’ means they are actually doing it. Usually the strategic planning is the easy bit of working strategically. The best laid plans are quite useless unless strategy implementation occurs and action results. Strategy implementation is by far the longest part of the process. It involves the alignment of every person, system and process in the organisation to achieving the strategies. More Strategy Processes fail at this point than anywhere else.

9. Follow up - In our experience all clients know that the strategies are critical to the health of there organisation but sometimes they require a follow up system to keep them from forgetting and slipping into the urgent and immediate. As part of the design we normally build in at least one three monthly follow-up session with managers.

10. Strategy Measurement - Bruce usually works with David Parmenter to ensure that the strategy has simple, relevant and timely measures.

The Content:

The content depends on the diagno'stics but often includes:

1. Environmental changes - Analyse and prioritise external environmental changes likely to impact on the organisation

2. Industry/sector trends - Undertake industry/sector trends and understand their impact on the organisation

3. Value Chain - Analyse the Value Chain for your industry/sector

4. Customer needs - Understand customer needs and build these into the Strategic Plan

5. Value Proposition - Identify the appropriate Value Proposition for your organisation (Customer Intimacy, Product Leadership or Operational Excellence)

6. Alignment of the Brand, Service Delivery and Organisational Culture with the Value Proposition (When these three are aligned the strength of the organisation is multiplied many times.)

7. Strategies - Identify strategies sufficient to achieve the Vision and limits the number of strategies to no more than 3 or 4

8. Report - Present your Strategic Plan on a one page summary.

What other clients have said

Comments from private sector clients

What would you say to someone else considering Bruce Holland?

Customers using Strategic Planning

• “I think the workshops were very useful, targeting intended objective. The prework was relevant and easy to follow. As for the facilitation, this was one of the best workshops/courses I attended. It was engaging and interesting. Use Bruce. Guaranteed to deliver. Very interesting and engaging methods of facilitating a workshop. Rating 5 out of 5 (one of the best I’ve been to).” Zvonko Lazic, Magnet Engineer, HTS-110.

• Very effective process whereby facilitator has low profile with consequential high involvement of participants. Process provided desired outcomes in timely and broadly involved manner. Overall score 4 out of 5. David Hill, Chief Executive, Capacity Infrastructure Services.

• The process was insightful and reminded me of exciting times at a previous job. this bought direction, confidence and belief to our ability to succeed. Go with an open mind and be prepared to be challenged. This process has bought direction to our company. It has identified our strengths as a team. Overall score: Five out of five. Murray Seamark, Manufacturing Director, Canary Enterprises.

• Great presentations, well managed and good deliverables. Enjoyed every minute. Highly recommended. You clearly delivered on what you set out to do - loved it all! Luke Maxwell, Manager Transaction Services, ANZ National Bank

• Brilliant prework because it really got me thinking in a bigger, strategic way before we got into the detail. No hesitation in recommending Bruce. Emily Loughnan, CEO, Click Suite, Business woman of the year.

• Good preparation material, well linked into workshop. Good facilitation with diverse group. Kim Wicksteed, Chief Executive Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi.

See what other clients have said about strategy.

When to use Strategy

1. When managers and/or staff are not clear about "our business"
2. When the organisation is not strong at "decisive point” (where it matters)
3. When there are too many priorities and manages don’t know what is important
4. When the organisation is not facing reality
5. Falling sales, profits, customers
6. Not sensitive to market place
7. If you constantly get unpleasant surprises
8. If you are constantly lurching from crisis to crisis
9. If your environment has changed
10. If the old strategies no longer effective
11. If managers and staff have no common understanding of Vision.

Probable outcomes of Strategy

1. Far more focus on what really matters
2. Taps into the wisdom of your people; based on the assumption that it’s better to out think your competitors than to outspend them
3. Improves ownership and commitment to the vision, values and strategies
4. More knowledge and understanding of the marketplace especially customers, competitors and opportunities
5. More energy and more focus on the goals, everyone working to the same agenda
6. People working hard on the business rather than in the business
7. Fewer surprises
8. People happier about working as a team and more committed to it
9. More collaboration and participation because everyone understands their role
10. A sense of accomplishment.

Product support

This product has been developed and is supported by Bruce Holland with help where required from other members of the Virtual Group Business Consultants. Bruce is a specialist in business strategy Wellington, nationally and internationally. He specialises in public sector strategy and other large private sector organisations.

Guarantee

All work undertaken by Bruce Holland is guaranteed. If at the end of the program the client doesn’t feel that they have received value for money, they may adjust the bill and pay an amount equal to the value they feel they received.

Key words: strategy, strategies, business strategy, business strategies, strategy management, strategic management, strategy development, implementation.