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The Ten Stages of Strategy

Successful strategic programs are a bit like going to a good doctor, it should have ten stages. Sometimes I get involved in all stage, 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.

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 Strategy 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.

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